Macy’s message was that the best way forward is by facing things in their nakedness. As she says in that same 2017 interview<\/a> (which I strongly recommend), “When people find that they can, and want to, feel and know and tell what is happening to our world, that is so much sweeter and [more] liberating than the opposite. When people get integrated and find how good it feels, then they really want\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0more than the narcotic of ignorance and delusion, as painful as it is.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n Buddhist philosophy<\/a> and practice helped her in this<\/a>, as it has for many. This is because Buddhism encourages sitting with the emotions we feel in order to see how they connect us to everything else, not just in the vague generality of “all things being one” but in the specificity of this, that, you, me, and every situation and intentional action. If this, then that. If not this, then not that<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If there’s a joyful message that Buddhism conveys, at least in its life-affirming Mahayana forms, it is that this moment<\/a><\/em> and every moment<\/a> provides an opportunity<\/a> to pierce through delusion and act in ways that bring forth beauty and a sense of solidarity with all sentient beings. Here we are (whoever and whatever “we” may be), in this together, with the capacity to act from this recognition of our togetherness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Joanna Macy, who passed away at age 96 a couple of days ago, was a profound inspiration to many in the environmental activist world. Among other things, she taught us that “environmentalism” was about dedication to the world around us and the relations that constitute it, that it begins from the deep experience of concern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691847,1],"tags":[4417,276,711253,711252,692725],"class_list":["post-14158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-buddhism","tag-deep-ecology","tag-eco-buddhism","tag-joanna-macy","tag-mahayana-buddhism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3Gm","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6236,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/12\/11\/zizek-v-buddhism-whos-the-subject\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":0},"title":"Zizek v. Buddhism: who’s the subject?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This started out as a response to Slavoj Zizek's recent talk here at the University of Vermont on \"Buddhism Naturalized,\" but evolved into a consideration of subjectivity, which happened to be the topic of my next post in the pre-G (process-relational ecosophy-G) series. So this can be considered part 1\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1358,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/25\/on-buddhism-objects-zizek-morton-etc\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":1},"title":"on Buddhism, objects, Zizek, Morton, etc.","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been meaning to catch up on the discussions over Buddhism and objects\/relations, Slavoj Zizek's critique of \"Western Buddhism,\" and related topics, which have been continuing on Tim Morton's Ecology Without Nature, Jeffrey Bell's Aberrant Monism, Skholiast's Speculum Criticum Traditionis, and elsewhere. I haven't quite caught up, but here are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13090,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2023\/01\/06\/zizeks-belated-reply\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":2},"title":"\u017di\u017eek’s belated reply","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 6, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Slavoj \u017di\u017eek has \"belatedly\" replied, in The Philosophical Salon, to some things I wrote in 2009 about his Lacanianism and his understanding (some would say misunderstanding) of Buddhism, and to other critiques of the latter. In his reply, he later mistakes another author -- of the blog And Now For\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2023\/01\/c7fabf9bedd0226bc5a75ba8dee670f4_230__2.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1109,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/08\/25\/spinning-the-earth\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":3},"title":"spinning the Earth","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M&hl=en&fs=1& Just by linking Carl Sagan's eloquent little Pale Blue Dot to the teachings of Gautama Buddha, James Ure's Buddhist Blog brings out the buddhism inherent both in Sagan's words and in the imagery of the Earth from space. That imagery (as I've discussed before here and here) is multivalent,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/p86BPM1GV8M\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6776,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/07\/02\/half-buddhist-half-marxist\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":4},"title":"Half-Buddhist, half-Marxist","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"For anyone who thought \"socially engaged Buddhism\" (a.k.a. liberation Buddhism, Buddhist socialism, et al.) was a marginal movement within the Buddhist world, Bruce Smithers's Tricycle article \"Occupy Buddhism\" shows it reaches high up the (sort of) hierarchy of publicly known Buddhists... to the Dalai Lama. It's a selective analysis (the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8777,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/31\/interview-autobio\/","url_meta":{"origin":14158,"position":5},"title":"Interview & autobio","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Interviews are funny things: you have to think on the spot, but later realize how deeply and profoundly imperfect (!) was your choice of words. The Imperfect Buddha Podcast has an interview with me in which host Matthew O'Connor (of\u00a0Post-Traditional Buddhism) and I talk at length about Buddhism, process-relational metaphysics,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Process-relational thought"","block_context":{"text":"Process-relational thought","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/process-relational-thought\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14164,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158\/revisions\/14164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2025\/07\/image-3-300x400.png?resize=300%2C400&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"