Zen Ecology: How to Mindfully Engage the Climate Crisis

Discover a way of living that can help you slow down and stay grounded--and at the same time reduce your ecological impact and engage more fully with the climate crisis.

It may seem as though living ecologically and engaging in activism sacrifices our own enjoyment and happiness on the altar of doing the right thing. In this book, professor, naturalist, and Buddhist author Christopher Ives offers an alternative: a way of living that can actually be more fulfilling than the modern consumerist lifestyle. Rather than deprivation, it can bring us richness.

In Zen Ecology, Chris outlines his environmental ethic as a series of concentric circles, beginning with ourselves and then moving outward into our communities, all the while focusing on spaciousness, mindfulness, generosity, and contentment. At the individual level, we deal with distraction, clutter, and ecological harm. Here, Chris offers ways to help us pay attention, simplify our lives, and lower our impact. Then, we explore how to envision our home as a ＂place of the Way,＂ with Zen monastic life as a model for this--without having to be a monk! Next, we realize our embeddedness in nature and emplace ourselves in community with others, including other forms of life. Finally, we build on this basis to engage in activism to create a world that is more supportive of ecological health and spiritual fulfillment.

In this way, we avoid the two extremes of apathy and burnout, and uncover a way of living that is simple, joyful, embedded in nature, connected to others in community, and supportive of collective action.

Christopher Ives is a professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. In his teaching and writing, he focuses on ethics in Zen Buddhism and Buddhist approaches to nature and environmental issues. His publications include Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage; Meditations on the Trail: A Guidebook for Self-Discovery; Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics; Zen Awakening and Society; a translation (with Masao Abe) of Nishida Kitaro’s An Inquiry into the Good; a translation (with Gishin Tokiwa) of Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.