After a delicious soup and salad supper at tonight’s Movie Night we watched the following video, setting the main feature―The Age of Stupid, a climate-change drama―in poignant, cosmic context. Thank you for hosting, Greg and Sohan!

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Get all the info on our Movie Night page.

Responding to climate change effectively requires understanding it deeply.

For a Buddhist view on the roots of climate change, read the excerpt from the new book A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency, featured in yesterday’s Shambhala Times post Buddhadharma and the Planetary Crisis. Also, see the other Shambhala Times articles tagged Buddhist Response to Climate Change.

If you’d like to join in the Kootenay Shambhala Centre’s efforts to bring this view down to earth through practical action, locally and beyond, contact Russell Rodgers or Jim Northcote at info@nelsonbuddha.com.

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The Kootenay Shambhala Centre is hosting a “Sounds of 350″ gathering in support of a binding climate change agreement at the December United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

The gathering will include time for silent contemplation, chanting practices designed to clear obstacles, and 350 recitations of a mantra from the Heart Sutra, which helps dispel fixed modes of thinking.

Everyone is welcome.

For more information go to 350.org/node/13088 or contact Jane DiGiacomo at info@nelsonbuddha.com.

Canadian journalist, broadcaster and author Gwynne Dyer is scheduled to speak at the Capitol Theatre in Nelson on October 20th about geopolitical implications of large scale climate change.

Here are some related links:
• Climate Wars - Gwynne Dyer at the Capitol Theatre
• A synopsis of Gwynne Dyer’s book The Climate Wars
• Gwynne Dyer’s website

In an article posted on the Shambhala Times today, former Shambhala Europe Director Chris Tamdjidi discusses discovering the world’s magic as a key aspect of environmental protection. See Buddhism and Ecology: Environment as our Teacher.

Please consider reading (and following the Dalai Lama’s lead in signing) The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change.

This declaration, composed as a pan-Buddhist statement by Zen teacher Dr. David Tetsuun Loy and senior Theravadin teacher Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi with scientific input from Dr. John Stanley, will present to the world’s media a unique spiritual view of climate change and our urgent responsibility to address the solutions in the run-up to the U.N. Climate Treaty Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

20 Apr 2009 - The Sakyong offers Protecting the Earth; a call to contemplation and action on climate change

The Sakyong offers these teachings in support of Earth Day, this Wednesday, 22 April, and the work of the Touching the Earth Working Group of the Sakyong’s Council.

Protecting the earth

A call to contemplation and action on climate change

Our precious planet and the innumerable beings who dwell here face an unprecedented crisis. The escalating threat to the world’s environment and climate stem from a profound predicament that affects all humanity. We are ever more rapidly losing our connection with the sacred nature of our world. This tragedy affects us in so many ways, but at its heart, it is a crisis of the spirit. We are harming our planet and fellow beings because we are losing touch with the basic goodness of our own sacred being.

This disconnect from our primordial basic goodness is amplified by unparalleled technological and industrial capacity, dramatic population growth, and the vast inequalities we witness everywhere in our world. Read the rest of this entry »

Russell Rodgers writes:

I’ve run across a good website that brings together commentary from prominent Buddhist teachers and provides a good selection of links on climate change and alternative energy news: http://www.ecobuddhism.org/

Also, Gwynne Dyer’s three-part series “Climate Wars” on CBC Radio’s Ideas can be downloaded as podcasts at http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/podcast.html. Dyer is a British military historian and journalist with extensive international contacts in the scientific world, intelligence community, military, and social sciences. I find his writing very well researched. He presents a synthesis of views that you probably wouldn’t find elsewhere.