Right Action

Dear Friends,

We have been considering the turn of the year, the light in the darkness and related themes, all this Solstice season.  In the North, it is the time when the outward show of flora and fauna is at its furthest recess, like a time of death before the rebirth of Spring.  

In the Buddhist tradition, much is made of Right Action -- for instance, right action would include not doing harmful actions.   In respect to our larger theme, love of the earth, we might take Right Action to include things like voting, political engagement, demonstrations, eco-friendly purchases and behaviors (electric cars; bring your own shopping bag; recycle; avoid plane travel; be more vegan).  

Right Action could also include an inner activity, even if it does not look like like much and has no outer evidence or correlate.  That is, our deeds of love and connectivity, our collaboration with the inner side of the earth, our silent and motionless working with the environment in its own life, is action.

This all came to mind as I climbed a local hill today, passing by this snowy Buddha in someone's front walkway.  He doesn't get around much in this time of COVID, but we can sense his inward activity, only fortified by the snow. 

A person's light may grow as their body approaches death.  The landscape's inner light may be more evident in winter's darkness.  Our doing may be empowered by non-doing.  And the Earth's total light may be all the more evident to us as we see extreme climate change and its irreversible consequences.  So our meditation today will be, once again,

What does the Earth want? 
 

Only this time, we'll try to grow increasingly silent, increasingly personal, as if to address the Earth directly, uninhibited by distinctions between inner and outer action, and ask, 
 

What can we do together?

with love,

Michael