Spiritual Ecology Lecture

 

Buddhist Awakening in the Middle of the Climate Crisis

Speaker: Dr. Deane Curtin, Hanson-Peterson Endowed Chair of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College. He is the author of several books and many articles. His research now focuses on Buddhist social ethics and the ethics of climate change, supported by a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship. He is based at Tibet House, Delhi.

 

This talk sketches out a Buddhist environmental ethic, the path of an eco-sattva. It then delves into Buddhist social ethics in search of practical advice on responding to planetary suffering. Questions include: what does the climate crisis look like from a Buddhist perspective? And, does the cultivation of traditional Buddhist “perfections” (such as patience as the antidote to anger) help us see what a practical Buddhist environmental ethic might look like? 

 

(Collaboration: Tibet House)