Buddhism and Global Ecology

Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Buddhism.

• What familiar Mahayana ideas and practices do you notice in the readings?
• What ideas, practices, or imagery seem new to you?
• What ideas or practices that might connect to sacred space, landscape, or ecology do you notice?

• Please reflect on the art project and two museum visits. What aspects of Tibetan and Himalayan concepts of sacred space, sacred landscape, mandala, pure lands, or precious ecosystems stood out to you? What was your experience of engaging these concepts through art and reflection, in addition to text or film?
• Reflect on the film A Gesar Bard’s Tale. How does the connection between memory, community, religious practice, and relationship to the land play out in this film?
• Reflect on the connections Emily Raboteau makes in her review article between climate change, landscape, memory, trauma, history, and family. Have you thought about landscape and ecosystems in this way before? In what ways are specific places in the natural world sites of memory for you? In what ways does this way of thinking about landscape resonate with A Gesar Bard’s Tale?

Shielding the Mountains. Produced and written by Emily Yeh. Directed by Kunga Lama. 2009. 20 minutes. English and Tibetan.

Pema Chödrön, “How to Practice Tonglen Meditation,” Lion’s Roar, January 1, 2025.

• Tonglen is one of the main Tibetan Buddhist meditation techniques for developing compassion and bodhicitta. Pema Chödrön is a famous North American nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition who teaches widely on this practice.

Geshe Langri Tenpa (1054–1123). “Eight Verses of Training the Mind.”

• Lojong, or mind-training, is another important Tibetan Buddhist meditation technique for developing compassion, wisdom, and bodhicitta.

Jey Tsong Khapa (1357-1419), “The Foundation of all Good Qualities.”

Alternate translation with Tibetan: “The Foundation of all Good Qualities.”

• 14th-15th century Tibetan primary source text, in English translation, published by a contemporary international Buddhist organization. Tsong Khapa (or Tsongkapa) is one of the most famous Tibetan Buddhist writers, philosophers, and Buddhist masters. He is remembered as founding the Geluk tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which is the tradition of the Dalai Lamas. This text summarizes the entire Buddhist path according to the Tibetan tradition, in fourteen short verses.

Kaza, Stepahnie, and Kenneth Kraft, Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Enviornmentalism. Shambhala, 2000, 33–42.

• This is an excerpt from The Life of Milarepa, probably the most famous Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist lifestory. Milarepa is an 11th-century figure, remembered as one of the founders of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also remembered as a renunciant who lived in wilderness areas and taught ordinary people (including many women). He is famous as a poet and singer. Milarepa lived an early life of suffering because of his uncle’s cruelty, committed a terrible crime of revenge and murder at his mother’s insistence, and then dedicated his life to Buddhist practice after a crisis of remorse. He is remembered as the first Tibetan to reach enlightenment in a single lifetime. Marpa is his guru, to whom he is devoted. As we will see, guru devotion is a key theme in Tibetan Buddhism. Milarepa’s life story is often presented as an example of outstanding devotion, and as proof that anyone can practice Buddhism, even people who have committed crimes or suffered terrible harm.

Please watch/listen to these contemporary re-enactments of Milarepa’s “inspired songs” (Tib.: gur).

Pitkin, Annabella. “Sustaining the Sacred Mountains: Tibetan Environmentalism and Sacred Landscape in a Time of Conflict.” In Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions II, edited by Gregory Adam Scott and Stefania Travagnin. DeGruyter, 2020, 181–91.

Yeh, Emily T. “Transnational Environmentalism and Entanglements of Sovereignty: The Tiger Campaign Across the Himalayas.” Political Geography 31 (2021): 418–28.

Yeh, Emily T. “Blazing Pelts and Burning Passions: Nationalism, Cultural Politics, and Spectacular Decommodification in Tibet.” The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 2 (May 2013): 319–44.

• This article covers the same endangered tiger campaign as above, but from a different social angle, focused on commodification, and has color photos.

Gayley, Holly. “Re-imagining Buddhist Ethics on the Tibetan Plateau.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20, 2013.

Germano, David. “Remembering the Dismembered Body of Tibet: Contemporary Tibetan Visionary Movements in the People’s Republic of China.” In Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, edited by Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1998, 120–38.

Pommaret, Francoise. “Encounter with a Dream: Bhutanese Pilgrims in Tibet.” In Tibetan Ritual, edited by Jose Cabezon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Huber, Toni. “Tibetan Pilgrimage: Concepts and Practice.” In The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 3–20.

Fields, Rick. “The Buddha Got Enlightened Under A Tree.” In Dharma Rain, edited by Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft. Shambhala, 2000, 323–28.

Walker, Rohini.“The Indigenous Science of Permaculture,” KCET, December 23, 2019.

Proehl, Ariana. “Welcome Black to the Land: Inside Sonoma County’s First Afro-Indigenous Permaculture Farm,” KQED, August 1, 2022.

Raboteau, Emily. “Lessons in Survival.” New York Review of Books, November 21, 2019.