In my last post I discussed how hard it is to sustain a happy and hopeful life as an environmental advocate when things are looking so grim. But we are more than social and political animals. In the midst of the global ecological disasters it is possible–even necessary–to feed and water our spiritual selves. To this end, I offer a re-written version of the classic Buddhist text, the Heart of the Prajnaparamita. I call it The Earth Holders’ Heart Sutra.

Global warming is emptiness, emptiness is global warming.
Global warming is not other than emptiness and emptiness is not other than global warming.
The same is true with overpopulation, pollution, fracking and other forms of resource exploitation.

(Bell)

All ecosystems are marked with emptiness.
They are neither produced or destroyed,
neither defiled nor immaculate,
neither increasing nor decreasing.
Therefore in emptiness there is neither forest, nor city,
nor ocean, nor mountain, nor desert.
No bird or rat or fish or bear or lizard or child.
No breeze no splash no scent of rotting flesh no thirst
no tender caress no sunset.
No native habitat (from wetland to new urbanist co-housing development),
no resilient communities and no extinction of them
(from failure to adapt to casualty of war).
No species extinction, no cause of species extinction, no end of species extinction,
and no sustainability.
No fixing and no success.

(Bell)

Because there is no success,
we, grounded in perfect understanding,
find no failure in our aspiration to heal Mother Earth.
Having no failure, we overcome grief, liberating ourselves
forever from struggle to realize nirvana in this moment.
All Activist Buddhas in the past, present, and future,
thanks to this perfect understanding,
arrive at full and right Insight Environmentalism.

(Two Bells)

In my next post I will discuss the meanings and implications of The Earth Holders’ Heart Sutra.