How should the spiritual community respond to climate change? What would be “an appropriate response”? It’s easy to get worried. We expect that our children will live in more difficult conditions. Scarcity of resources will lead to wars and raise the worst of instincts. If we don’t introduce a significant change, we will trigger a chain of irreversible reactions that may wipe Homo sapiens from the surface of this planet.

Fear of Extinction talk

How is it possible that we are hurting ourselves so much? Usually, the modernistic exploitation with its greed and ignorance is given as the answer. Very often, fingers are pointed at popular politicians or social groups that are the holders of this attitude.

The overpopulation race between nations is something less visible and definitely less popular. We are just too many on this planet. The COVID pandemic is not the biggest threat for Earth, the human pandemic is. The fear of being dominated by neighbours forces governments to create demographic programs that work against Earth’s mechanisms of self-regulation.

As a response, environmental activists get together and build awareness to integrate with nature. Some of them spend sleepless nights finding the right argument to convert deniers.

Fear

The sensation of fear dominates discussions. What are we actually afraid of? I don’t think that we can destroy the whole planet. Of course, we can change it. We are very successful so far. We can not annihilate the all life on it. Life is too adaptable and we are less powerful than we want to believe. Life is very creative. There are even new bacterias that learned how to live on plastic floating in the ocean. We can only make it hard for humans to live in comfort. Ultimately, we are capable of making the planet impossible for us to survive.

The last one is the most scary. Let’s imagine Earth without us. All art and other cultural products would be worthless because nobody would interact with them. By creating art, making inventions, writings, etc., we try to escape individual death and become eternal. This way, some parts of our ego can get encapsulated inside various cultural products and leave our body like sailors in a lifeboat when the mothership sinks. Imagine a crew running to a lifeboat and discovering that it is very unreliable. Our egos must be in a similar state seeing that our civilization may not make it.

This vision helped me to realize that there is an irrational belief that the human species is meant to exist forever. Buddhism has a strong confidence that everything that was born must die. There was a moment in the history of the planet when human kind branched out. We can think about this moment as our species’ birth. So it seems that we will have to die too. For example, the probability of events like an asteroid falling on Earth or a deadly virus in the near future are low, but even something very unlikely will certainly happen if we have eternity to wait.

We also cherish a naive view that we are the goal and the final product of evolution like the whole world and life in it were created only with this one intention that we could become who we are. We see ourselves as superior and the other organisms as only an intermediate stage so that we could evolve or only as a necessary environment for us to live in. Personally, I don’t see any evidence for that. It is just another manifestation of our egocentric attitude. Similarly, we wanted to believe that Earth is the center of the universe. Holding these views prevents us from a fear that one day nature can erase us like millions of other species in near feature.

The fear of extinction is very similar to fear of dying. If it paralyzes us, we can not live. Thus, in some sense, we are already dead. We need to overcome this fear in order to enjoy the freedom of living. In a similar way, we as a species must overcome the fear of extinction.

How do we deal with it so far? We fantasize about spreading to other planets or uploading our mind into a computer. In the same way, we try to escape from thoughts about our own death. We believe that scientists will find a cure for aging or we join a virtual reality to run away from the limits defined by our bodies. But the truth is that we will die. The same is true about our species. Regardless how many planets we will inhabit, one day it all will end.

New Perspective

Thanks to this new perspective we can stop being busy with our fear and turn towards more positive values and help them to rise. We can trust that Earth (including us) has enough resources to find creative solutions. The current alternative is that we can try to scare everyone to make this person more involved in a process of making other people scared. Although I have a lot of sympathy for genuine environmental activists, this fear amplification stops me from being more involved.

My motorcycle instructor told me about a desert road. It is straight for miles. Somewhere in the middle there is a turn on it with nothing but a single tree. Surprisingly, it was known as a place of many fatal accidents. All motorcyclists hit this single tree although there was nothing around. Because there was nothing around, they fixed their gaze on it and ran into it. We may have the same problem with the climate disaster.

It could be a self fulfilling prophecy. This is the paradox of duality. If we are shouting that the planet is dying we create a counter-reaction, i.e., people who deny. Both sides are driven by the same fear. It is just a different method of dealing with it. For example, some people just get tired of being threatened all the time and they resist.

The biggest disaster is that the topic became a political toy. The politicians are not interested in solving problems but in keeping people divided, scared, and angry. So climate change has become a fetish in the political fight. It divides us instead of uniting. I don’t know how to change it. It wouldn’t be good if politics ignored the environment either.

How to Tame Extinction?

The real solution should address the cause, i.e., the fear of losing our “escape pod”. We may try to extrapolate the knowledge accumulated thanks to “being with dying”. As long as one is afraid to die, one can not fully live. So we may gain some new perspectives when our society learns how to deal with the fear of extinction.

Catastrophic Movies

Death is a topic of many books and movies which help us think about our own death in a safe environment. In a similar way, catastrophic movies can help us deal with thoughts about extinction.

Expressing Emotions

At Great Vow Zen Monastery, we had a ceremony in which participants were invited to express their grief and other emotions related to climate change. The act of becoming aware of our emotions is healing itself. It is good to stop for a moment and contemplate the situation instead of randomly acting to prevent the disaster. Fear is not a good motivation that gives healthy fruits. Healing strong emotions gives us a more sober overview of the situation.

Trust Earth

Generally, maybe we should trust more that everything is happening for a reason. It is all part of a bigger plan. We have a tendency to tweak things to correct nature. We are working hard towards making this planet unbearable. We are forgetting that we are also part of nature together with our trash and pollution. Instead, we see ourselves as Earth owners or at least some type of groundskeepers.

Our being here or our potential extinction can be part of a bigger plan we don’t understand. Why do we think that it all must be about us? Maybe we are here only to create a good environment for cockroaches to thrive in the future evolving into something more meaningful than humans. Don’t worry. Maybe you will reincarnate as an intelligent cockroach in a couple million years to find yourself in a better position than now ;).

Earth is taking care of us like a mother takes care of her children. We are the child not the parent! Why do we want to take control? How to be a good child? Some birds kill the weakest chick to feed stronger ones. What if we are this chick, now? Should we be selfish? I’m sorry for these provocations but I’m just testing your capabilities to think and act in an egoless way. I’d like to remind you that our overgrown ego that wants to endlessly expand is the ultimate cause of this situation we are dealing with. The fear is only the fear of ego:

to lose control (apocalypse preppers),
limiting itself (deniers),
to die (believers in a miraculous solution).

We are not only ego. We are much more! There is still something that can not die.

Of course, the instinct of surviving is also an intrinsic part of our nature. We may trust that we will naturally know what to do when the time comes. My feeling is that the recipe to save the planet is embedded in our own nature. We should trust our internal wisdom instead of constantly correcting things. It may look like the famous attempt by an eldery parishioner to restore the deteriorated painting. She also had good intentions as we do, but we must accept that we can’t be smarter than nature.

Pray and Meditate

It is always good to meditate more. It prevents us from acting out and gives us better insight into the situation. It helps us also to harmonize with whatever we encounter. However, we don’t have to meditate in Buddhist tradition only. All contemplative practices are equally good. But we can go beyond this. Many ordinary activities like knitting, jogging, gardening, etc. have a similar effect. Everyone can find something for themselves.

Respectful Education

It is always good to spread information about raw data and let people come to their own conclusions. It works better than convincing. We can just say: “Here is a graph of how the temperature has been changing. What do you think about it?” It seems that there are a lot of good resources, e.g., NASA has a great web page tracking parameters like global temperature, co2, arctic ice, sea level change, etc.

People who convince assume that their object is lacking something, e.g., knowledge, intelligence, mind clarity, maturity, etc. Convincing is the violence. It will not give good fruits. Our job is to make data available, accept our conversation partners as they are, and be only cheerleaders of their growth based on their own values and resources. We should trust that all these independent individual development processes aim at the same goal.

Death Letter to Intelligent Cockroaches

We can ask people to write a letter to a new intelligent life that will evolve after our extinction. It is so surreal that it can break through some rigid beliefs. Putting people in a position `to believe that we are already extinct can also help to tame our emotions. Anyway, it would be interesting to hear what they would like to say. What will you write? The instruction can be as follows:

Let’s imagine the situation where the climate changes in such a way that it becomes obvious humans will not survive. However, we may expect that in a couple million years a new intelligent life will evolve who will be able to understand our culture and language. We can leave them a letter in a special box. What would you want them to know?

Your ideas

I wanted to give just a few propositions on how to deal with the fear of extinction, to demonstrate that something different can be done. I’m sure that you can be more creative than this. What would be your propositions? Please, write a comment and let’s brainstorm. Help others to be inspired.