By Alissa MacMillan
Q: My wife and I often note to each other that the summer seems longer than it used to be or that autumn is warmer than before. But I wonder if it’s true and, if it is, what that means for the environment.
A: Absolutely. In many ways, mindfulness and meditation practices like Zen Buddhism already connect us to nature and the environment, reaching both our inner selves and the wider world.
“At its core, you can’t meditate and not realise that you are just one part of the web of life,” says Jen Ardis, a mindfulness teacher and mental health educator from Blue Heron Mindfulness in Cork. “Once you start to pay mindful attention to literally anything, be it your breath or a tree or a bird or a flower, you can’t help but see the interconnections.”
The word ‘zen’ means meditation, explains Soshin Mary Laheen Roshi, resident teacher at Earth+Sky Zen in Dublin, where they practice Japanese Zen Buddhism. “Our practice is simply being here now, sitting in the present moment.”
With a focus on the breath, these practices “keep your mind away from the future and away from going back to the past, from things you want to do later or things people said yesterday,” Laheen says. “It’s a very simple practice, the practice of being here now,” one leading to a unity with mind and body, and with all other creatures.
Instead of “mind,” they say “body-mind,” the mind resting on the breath – “breathing is so basic to human life, it is life,” and physical posture is central. Being here now, “connects us to all other beings, as we breathe the air of all other beings, including non-human beings,” she says. “You are aware of the birds, you see the sun rising at dawn, you see the interconnection.”
‘NO WAY OF BEING SEPARATE’
Ardis also looks to the idea of “interbeing,” inspired by the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. You can, for example, practice “mindful eating,” she says: When eating a carrot, “notice the shape, colour, texture, taste. You can see everything that went into making the carrot, the rain, that the rain used to be a cloud, a river, a glacier, it’s cycled through other bodies, the soil, the compost that was so many other beings, even the communities of microbes in the soil. You see how everything has come together to make any one thing in existence, me, the carrot, the bird. There is no way of being separate.”
This unity and interconnectedness itself tends to concern for the earth.
“When you begin to practice meditation, you become more environmentally aware because you become more aware,” says Laheen. Their sittings, which happen at dawn and are aligned with place-based events like the solstices, full moon, and ancient Irish festivals, incorporate physical practices like sewing, growing food, and cooking, all of this bringing us closer to the natural world we’ve lost. Even cleaning “is a very zen-y thing to do.”
THE HERE AND NOW
Our feeling of being cut off from nature is connected to the climate emergency, she says. “The reason we can do such heinous things to the environment is because we feel separate from the earth.”
Being here now might sound simple, “but we find as human beings it’s difficult to do,” Laheen says, which is why, in zen practice, they have a “container,” or a structure to the physical practice, sitting in the classic meditation posture, on a cushion on the floor, those structures “allowing you to be free to be here now.”
It’s common for our mind to wander, “it is in Australia next Christmas,” she says. “This sense of separation from ourselves is what meditation heals. The body-mind becomes one; instead of sitting here thinking of something else, we constantly bring the mind back to this present moment, for those short times every day, and then we bring that awareness into our lives.”
“Our world is set up to distract us, to bring us out of ourselves” Ardis adds, making it “very hard to choose to keep coming back to a mindful awareness of things.” It takes practice, why it’s called “mindfulness practice,” she says, adding, the historical Buddha was “practicing” his entire life.
BUILDING A SOLID BASE
But it’s a practice that comes with innumerable rewards, Ardis notes, research showing personal benefits like increasing positive emotions and positively impacting ruminative thinking, which is a part of depression, helping with anxiety, and, for long-term meditators, it slows down the body’s ageing process.
Even more, “We start to develop a more spacious ground of being where we are,” she explains. “Gradually, over time, we become more stable in ourselves and relate to ourselves in a more friendly way.” Meditation can foster self-compassion and compassion for others and can lead us to make changes, “to move through the world with a little more awareness and respect, stepping a little bit more lightly, even in the choices we make,” like choosing the carrot that hasn’t been intensively farmed.
As with anything, it’s a matter of setting up a regular practice, Ardis adds, be it three or twenty minutes a day, even creating a space that’s inviting for you. Choose something to focus on, like your breath, your hand, or a smell, and use it as an anchor, even noticing your warm cup of morning coffee. Allow yourself to be in that moment, she says, reminding us, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “we practice mindfulness because we enjoy it: enjoy your sitting, enjoy your breathing, give yourself that break, bring it back to nature.”
It’s also a way to face our anxieties, climate and otherwise.
“People are often drawn to meditation practice because they are really suffering,” says Laheen, perhaps coping with addiction or in a terrible life situation. Concern about the future of the earth is another reason, and meditation can help. “In the practice, we reduce sensory input and become more aware of the senses, so you become more aware of the world at large and the natural world.”
Meditation helps build a solid base, says Ardis. “We’re able to meet whatever we experience with more of a sense of spaciousness, a broader perspective, more calmly, and less reactively,” giving us a capacity to meet difficulties and welcome emotions instead of pushing them away. This “opens the door for taking action,” and connecting with people in the community.
Laheen sees the necessity of practicing with others, in a real place, as a way of countering despair. “We affect each other’s hearts by sitting together, our energy, there is a vibration between us, that’s invaluable.”
As Laheen explains, the individual is connected to the universal, and the small rituals of the practice connect the inner world to the whole universe.
“You’re doing nothing if you don’t have an inner world and if you don’t face yourself and recognise your individual story,” Laheen says. But it’s only half the story. “The other half is the whole universe, all sentient beings, starting with the people sitting beside you.”
Ardis adds, meditation can lead you to ask yourself: “What does meaningful action look like to me?”
“We have a choice,” she says. “We can live our life numbed out or we can open to our experience of being alive, because this is the only moment we have.”
