Tag: bekandze

Visions of a post-doom world

jembendell

Was Jesus Christ a Buddhist monk? That is the subject of a few books and films which focus on the many years between childhood and the time of his preaching that are recorded in the Bible. The BBC documentary featured evidence from a Buddhist Temple that mentioned a famous teacher from afar, with the local name for Jesus. Learning from different wisdom traditions makes a lot of sense. So perhaps ‘the son of God’ might have explored that as well. I mention this speculative history because both Christianity and Buddhism have been important to my own experience and understanding of the world. In more recent times, I have focused more on learning from Buddhist insight, partly because it has been new to me. This is reflected in the name of our farm school, which is the Sanskrit word for healing through transcending separations: Bekandze Farm. The word features prominently in the Medicine Buddha Mantra, which is one of the oldest and most popular. This was the background to why I was delighted to appear in the podcast series “Buddha at the Gas Pump”. I wrote some reflections about that discussion with Rick Archer, and posted them as an article on LinkedIn. In the pod we discussed the question of whether or not we need, or benefit, from a vision of a better future, in the material realm, including humans or wider life on Earth. Below I cross-post the article. For it I used the JemBot to summarise a few of the ideas in my book Breaking Together. If you want to go deeper into any of these ideas, then studying with me is possible, twice online and twice in person, during 2024.

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My other past writings on LinkedIn are here.

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The Benefits of Collapse Acceptance – Part 1

jembendell

For years I felt quite timid about my concerns, and then my conclusions, on the dire future of modern societies under increasing environmental stress. When my Deep Adaptation paper went viral, I didn’t ride the wave onto TV screens and into bookstores. The topic was too sensitive for that, and I felt too raw. At the time, I was somewhat confused about how to integrate my own anticipation of societal collapse into my own life. Therefore, I focused on engaging people who already shared my outlook, to engage in open dialogue on the potential positive ways of responding. Five years later, I have learned much from the many people who made major life changes precisely because of their recognition that we are in an era of unfolding societal collapse. I discuss some such people, and their many positive ways of responding, in Chapter 12 of my book Breaking Together – a chapter now available as a free audio. Within it, I provide an edited list of the benefits of collapse acceptance. Because there are indeed benefits from not only being curious or aware of collapse risks, but actually accepting that such a collapse is coming or already under way. That is a key message from former Occupy Wall Street activist Karen Perry, who created the list of benefits.

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