Earth, Spirit, Action

983 words first published in Common Ground, San Francisco June 2005-05-15

In 1972, I left my job as a systems engineer with IBM to study Buddhist meditation in India. Upon my return to Australia, my friends and I built a meditation center in New South Wales. I thought that the rest of my life would be devoted to the inner search for peace and enlightenment.

They say that if you want to make God laugh, make plans. So it was with me. In 1979, I found myself dragged back into “the world” when loggers threatened to cut the Terania Creek rainforest in Australia's Nightcap National Park. Terania Creek flowed below our meditation center and when some neighbours tried to prevent the logging, I felt compelled to show up. Suddenly, everything changed: I heard the trees screaming. I heard them crying for help and I couldn't resist that call.

Admittedly, the experience was frightening and a bit bewildering. "Trees screaming"? Gimme a break! But when I began studying these forests, I discovered that there was a basis for this connection. The human psyche is Earth-born: It has co-evolved with the forests. The rainforests began 130 million years ago in the super continent of Gondwanaland, before today's continents started to drift apart. Only in the last few million years did our human ancestors clamber down from the trees to seek their fortunes on the ground. Deep down, these forests remain our ancient psychic home. When we see this home being torn down, a powerful spiritual and psychological reaction is to be expected.

This was the first direct action in defense of rainforests anywhere in the world and, as we searched for arguments to defend our little patch of bush, we discovered that the rainforests are indeed the womb of life; home to more than half of Earth's plant and animal species. Yet satellite photos showed that they were being destroyed so rapidly that they could be annihilated in a single human lifetime.

In those days, society had yet to develop antibodies against theatrical protest antics, so newspapers and TV gave us full coverage. In less than two years, more than 70% of the people in New South Wales wanted to halt rainforest logging. The government passed laws protecting not only Terania Creek but all of the best rainforests stretching from the Queensland border to just above Sydney, 500 miles to the south. Our Rainforest Information Centre (RIC) went on to defend temperate rainforests in Tasmania and the tropical rainforests of far north Queensland. New national parks were declared and soon were included on the UN's World Heritage list.

Through the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, I travelled the world, forming rainforest action groups and publicising the plight of the rainforests, while RIC won protection for forests from India to Ecuador, from New Guinea to Siberia. A 1986 cover story in the "Christian Science Monitor" described me as “the town-crier for the global village.” But for every forest we protected, hundreds disappeared. It soon became apparent that the forests could not be saved one at a time. Nor could the planet be saved one issue at a time. While we were protecting forests, holes were appearing in the sky and humanity was choking on the toxic exhaust gasses of progress.

By 1995, my activist energy was wavering. I was feeling burnt-out. I had completely abandoned the meditation and spiritual dreams that had propelled my earlier life. So I returned to India and spent a month in Lucknow with the 86-year-old spiritual teacher Sri Poonjaji, affectionately known as Papaji.

In the meditation hall, where hundreds of us from around the world inscribed our spiritual questions addressed to Papaji, I wrote about my demanding activist life and my yearning for spiritual renewal. I fully expected him to advise me to turn my focus inward and return to meditation. Instead, when he spoke, his deep voice carried a different message: "When you take care of your Mother,… when you are helping the Earth, then you are helping everybody who is living on the Earth — plants, animals, and men. So, my dear friend, your work is very good. I bless you for this task that is in hand." Regarding the conflict between my activism and my spiritual yearnings, Papaji replied: "Let me tell you, both sides can happen simultaneously…. They need not interfere with each other. In the morning sit quietly for five or ten minutes. The rest of the time you may give for the world."
What a blessing! I felt Papa's words rekindle the wavering flame inside me. Now, as I approach my 60th birthday, I feel the spiritual and the ecological drawing together powerfully in my life. The RIC has started the Dharma Gaia Trust to nurture awareness of the complementarity of Buddhism and ecology and to raise funds for the forest monks in Thailand who protect old-growth trees by dressing them in saffron cloth and "ordaining" them to keep the loggers at bay. RIC also supports projects in India where we are helping to protect the mighty rainforests of India's Western Ghats while reforesting the sacred Arunachala mountain where, many decades ago, Papaji sat at the feet of his own guru.

We have a deep longing for reconnection with the Earth. Every intact indigenous culture has, at its root, a series of ceremonies whereby the people acknowledge their interconnectedness with the Earth. We "moderns" are the first culture to relegate these rituals to the realm of mumbo jumbo and, in our enlightenment, proceed to dismember the Earth. As the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Naht Hanh has said: "The most important thing that we can do is to hear inside ourselves the sounds of the Earth crying."

John Seed is offering 12 experiential "Earth, Spirit, Action" workshops in the US this summer. All of his facilitator fees will be donated to ecology projects and indigenous survival programs in India. For schedules and more information, see www.rainforestinfo.org.au