Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.
Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi in there somewhere?
Tonight was the Time 100 Gala, where Time Magazine celebrates 100 of the most influential people in the world today. This year, three religious leaders are included.
What Richard Cizik, Patriarch Bartholomew I, and the Dalai Lama have in common is that they’ve all made headlines from leading green movements within their respective faith traditions.
Richard Cizik
Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian miniser and head of the Office of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals fights global warming by quoting the Bible and calling on congregations to practice “creation care.” Cizik challenges conservative evangelicals to recognize climate change as a serious threat to the health of the planet.
Cizik also makes friends with scientists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Eric Chivian, ignoring a once perceived barrier between the religious and scientific communities.
By Chad Crawford •
March 24, 2008
David Loy, a Buddhism scholar, presented a lecture at Vanderbilt University recently describing a spiritual perspective on the challenge of consumerism.
There is a video available that is worth watching if you have a free hour and, like me, are into this kind of stuff! Otherwise, I will give an overly simplistic summary below.
The basic spiritual crisis we face as individuals is our failure to recognize that the sense of self is a construct. The construct creates a feeling of alienation. This causes us to try to find meaning in accumulating wealth and things to verify our existence, creating further anxiety and sense of lack. The solution to the problem is to realize that the sense of self is indeed a delusion. This results in a caring attitude toward everyone else because of the recognition that we are not separate but part of a whole.
If the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground, as the Buddha said, then does the hand feel the hand when it feels a tree?
Due to commercial and illegal logging, the rate of deforestation in Thailand has been one of the highest in Asia.
Most of the primary forest in Thailand is gone, with secondary forest only covering roughly 20% of the land area. This is compared to over 70% forest cover prior to World War II.
As Perry Garfinkel states in Buddha or Bust: “The environmental impact [of this deforestation] is inestimable—from silting that kills fish and leaves riverbeds dry, to the loss of nesting and feeding for birds and other wildlife.”
Enter the forest monks of Thailand, who have come to be known as environmental or, “Ecology Monks.”
Surf, sun, and fun - the most common things Long Beach, California is known for. Thanks to Wisdom Tees,
we can add another phrase to that list: sustainable style. Many of the
eco-clothing brands like to use shocking images on their apparel to try
and inspire others to act, but Wisdom is different. "We believe that
wearing our Wisdom tees with purely positive and inspiring
affirmations, one will have a clear impact on his or
[…]
