Sending Some Love to Earth

I hear a lot about sending love to humans, being kind and appreciative and compassionate to teachers, loved ones, friends…even enemies.
 
I hear less about sending love to the earth. Yet of all beings (if the earth is a being, and isn’t she?), doesn’t the earth deserve love, too? Doesn’t she deserve appreciation, and for once, instead of extracting from her, for us to give her our best, our love, our kindness, every good thing we’ve got? Seem like it’s the least we can do.

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 488. Welcome.

I wrote this Wake Up Call from my office, which is surrounded by giant oak and olive trees. It’s beautiful. I’m very lucky. I love urban landscapes, too, but this landscape is so gorgeous. And it reminds me, every day, that it doesn’t seem like we’re remembering to center or protect or love the earth so much these days. I could talk about this in the context of climate emergency – we’d probably all be familiar with that context even if not everyone agrees. But I think I want to talk about this – above loving the earth – in an even bigger context.

Last time on the Wake Up Call I was wondering out loud, posing the inquiry, about whether metta is already fully present and operating underneath all of our human obstacles, all of our greed, hatred, and delusion, just waiting to be uncovered. And if it is, then how that probably means there are a whole lot of folks who, for me anyway, are full of love and compassion, obfuscated to be sure, but still full, and who I just don’t see that way, or see that way yet. So that’s some of my work, and maybe some of us are doing that together. 

And then if that’s true, then what about the earth? Tuesday was Earth Day – Happy Earth Day! – and what about the earth? If all beings are full of love, what about the earth? Is she filled with love and compassion and joy, too? Is she in balance even though right now she looks completely off-kilter? Is this too weird a question? 

I wonder. It seems to me that there’s something so powerful about nature, about the earth – something so powerful and so loving and so compassionate. Not the personification of love and compassion and joy, but the model of those – maybe the best model we have.

For example, she doesn’t discriminate. It’s not she offers shade in certain communities and not in others, or hills only here but not there. She isn’t retributive, unlike a human. She doesn’t hate. She exists in the present moment (albeit maybe a long, billion-years present moment). She has no greed…and in fact, I’d say she doesn’t even possesses anything. 

Some of you know that I used to teach real estate classes before I taught mindfulness. And real estate is all about possession, and ownership. What does it mean to convey a fee simple? Or to own one? Or to make a loan and take a security interest in one? I love that the law gives me perpetual ownership of a slice of earth – it’s so silly! Even if I were to give that slice to my daughter, and she has a daughter, and she has one, and so on, someday the slice will be inhabited by someone other than me and my line, by beings who probably won’t even be human, if it’s inhabitable at all. How can we own the earth, even with all these laws, these constructs that say we do. I think indigenous people have a more reasonable approach, treating the earth, as something alive and to be in communal and sacred relationship with. 

That attitude is echoed in mindfulness as well, in the point of view that we’re all connected. Truthfully, mostly I’ve heard this talked about in relation to humans and other living beings. But if the earth is alive, then interconnection seems like it has to include the earth, because all of us (except the Blue Origin crew) are firmly planted here. So when I’m doing formal mindfulness practice, the first place I like to touch into is the earth. Because I’m right here, on it. Even when I’m feeling ungrounded, I’m still right here. And so is everyone, and so are all beings, since the earth is home. There’s nowhere else, that we know of anyway.

That’s why for the past few years I’ve been adding the earth into metta practice. One of the classic forms of metta practice is to wish ourselves well, then our teachers and benefactors and beloveds, then friends, strangers, enemies or difficult people, then all beings…and, at the end, I’m adding the earth. Maybe you’re doing that, too. 

I don’t know exactly how metta works. In the ancient stories, it convinces tree spirits to protect and serve the monks in the forest; it tames a wild elephant; and it does other magical-seeming things, too. But I don’t know if it can do that now. 

What I do know is that when I’m practicing metta, I’m thinking well of others – people right in front of me, people far away, difficult people, sometimes even people I think of as enemies. And that well-thinking, or well-wishing, changes my attitude. And then when I walk into a room in that changed attitude, it seems like the feeling in the room changes, and eventually even the attitude of the other people in the room, changes. And the other thing that happens is that it’s not just the attitudes of others that shift. It’s also my attitude towards them, even when they’re people I doubted I could believe in, meaning, people I doubted had love or compassion or wholesome joy in their hearts. In those moments, metta operates almost as a kind of suspension of disbelief – a suspension of my own disbelief in people who are unkind or aggressive or are causing harm, and in their ability to let go of greed, hatred, and delusion and wake up.

That’s my experience, anyway. And if metta really does work like that, if it’s that powerful, then how might it affect the earth? Right now, as far as I can see, the general attitude towards the earth is that she’s a resource, we take what we want, and after that we sometimes try to patch her up, when that’s not too expensive or cumbersome. 

But what if we thought of the earth differently? What if we thought of her as a beloved, and said metta for her – a lot – as a beloved being…maybe our most beloved? How might we begin to think differently about the earth, and about owning her and extracting things from her and dumping things on her and ignoring her? Would we begin, instead, to take care of her instead of always taking from her? 

As usual I’ve got no answers. But these questions feel alive to me and maybe they feel alive to you, too. If so and you’d like to, let’s practice some metta for the earth.