Episode Details

Greetings Friends,

Here we are in the heart of summer. I am writing this a week after the passing of beloved eco-dharma elder Joanna Macy. We are also in the middle of our summer read of The Hidden Lamp: 25 Centuries of Awakened Women. The koan story that we explored this week was Case 13: Chen’s Mountain Flowers and the commentary happens to be written by Joanna Macy. So I want to take the time in this post as well as the dharma talk audio to appreciate Joanna Macy’s life, work and practice through the lens of the koan.

Chen’s Mountain Flowers: China 7th-9th Century

Chen was a laywoman who traveled far and wide, visiting famous masters. After she realized enlightenment, she composed the following verse.

Up on the high slopes, I see only old woodcutters.

Everyone has the spirit of the knife and the axe.

How can they see the mountain flowers

reflected in the water—glorious red?

Joanna wrote about and lived her life with a wild love for the world. This was demonstrated in her activism, her translations of Rilke’s Book of the Hours, her work at building containers to help those engaged in the on-the-ground activism to connect with the emotional and spiritual side of their work and her own dharma practice. The koan Chen’s Flowers also speaks to a wild love for the world. One we are invited into through Chen’s simple poem.

I want to share an excerpt from an interview with Joanna Macy where she is speaking about her love for this earth/world, being less afraid of her fears and belonging—we are already home, she says:

It is so great a privilege to be here on Earth at this time. I have had the good fortune to drink from three great streams of thought—the buddhadharma, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Each gives me another way to know Gaia and to know myself. Each helps me be less afraid of my fears. I have had the joy of helping others experience this too, of seeing them take the Work That Reconnects further, building our collective capacities and our trust in reciprocity.

Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. We will find more ways to remember, celebrate, and affirm this deep knowing: we belong to each other, we belong to Earth. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from her. We are already home.

Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our climate. When we turn and open our heart–mind to Earth, she is always there. This is the great reciprocity at the heart of the universe. My gratitude to all. May we experience “sheer abundance of being,” as Rilke says, and know that we truly belong here.

Here are some resources if you would like to connect more to Joanna Macy’s Life Work.

On-being—An interview with Krista Tippett and Joanna Macy where several Rilke poems are shared

Work that reconnects—Joanna Macy’s website with lots of free resources

Lion’s roar interview—An interview with Joanna Macy about Buddhist practice and Eco-dharma

As I turn over this koan and Joanna Macy’s teachings and legac