By the way: This Earth Day: Our breath, our life, our world

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This Earth Day: Our breath, our life, our world
By: Amy Smith - World Wide Life - 04-16-20
Re: https://www.worldwildlife.org/storie...life-our-world

Photo link: https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/...jpg?1587051935

Could sitting and observing our breath this Earth Day better connect us to the natural world? When I started practicing mindfulness meditation more than 15 years ago, I had no idea that sitting in silence and focusing on my breath would not just offer me insight about my own personal experiences, but also open doors of understanding about connection: our connection with other people, wildlife and with the planet.

Mindfulness—defined as moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness—can be cultivated through meditation and other ways to recognize what is happening in the present moment in the body, heart, and mind. One common instruction in mindfulness meditation is to sit still and quiet the mind by focusing attention on the sensations of breathing. Concentrating in this way can help to settle the “monkey mind” that swings from thought to thought, busy planning what’s next or ruminating on the past. As the mind settles, we see our physical, mental, and emotional experiences more clearly, and with more access to this information, we can make better decisions, and presumably live happier, more fulfilled lives.

I started meditation in response to the death of my father, in search of some way to manage the immense grief that I felt. I felt stuck in grief. With time, however, I learned that I had the capacity to hold all aspects of my experience of grief with kindness, and by giving it space, the grief was able to change and flow. I got unstuck.

As my practice deepened, I sensed that I was not just one human being breathing, but that the Earth was breathing me. I was reminded that I depend on the earth to breathe, to be alive. The world’s forests and the ocean’s phytoplankton produce the very oxygen that enables my survival. The food I eat is harvested from the Earth and is a combination of plants, sunshine, water, nutrients, and the efforts of many human hands. The water I drink flows from a river that is fed by rain and purified using tools that were derived from human ingenuity. And in turn, I breathe out carbon dioxide that feeds trees and phytoplankton, recognizing that I am part of a much larger system that’s dependent on reciprocity. I have a vital role to play in keeping that system in balance and have set an intention to live lightly and reduce my impact. Meditation allows me to reflect, with wonder and gratitude, on the intimate connection I have with this incredible living planet and all living things.

The connectedness of people and the planet has never been more evident to me than in the last few months with the surge of the COVID-19 crisis. The coronavirus has been identified as zoonotic, meaning that it was transmitted from animals to humans. The risks of such outbreaks have increased dramatically in recent years as the human population grows and encroaches on wildlife habitat. Risky wildlife trade also facilitates the likelihood of animal to human disease transmission. Additionally, climate fluctuations can affect disease transmission, and with changing climate patterns resulting from anthropogenic climate change we are seeing a greater uptick in infectious diseases. How humans are engaging with nature is having direct effects on public health. When we come up close with some of the gravest impacts of our actions on people and the planet - such as what we’re living today with the coronavirus - how do we not despair?

This is when I come back to my mindfulness practice. When I sit in meditation, I sometimes experience waves of grief about the damage we’ve done to nature, or the physical and emotional suffering experienced across the globe as a result of COVID-19. Much like the grief I experienced with my father’s passing, with mindfulness I can acknowledge the grief I feel for the planet and people affected by COVID- 19 without judgment. I also hold it with the understanding that any damaging actions we’ve taken have stemmed from forgetting our interconnection with the Earth and all its creatures, human and otherwise, from the mistaken assumption that we’re isolated and separate. I can give my grief the space it needs to shift and flow without getting stuck, and that enables me to access something much greater.

As I meditate, I turn my attention back to the breath. I breathe in and out, sensing myself both breathing and being breathed, and I’m able to access a deep care for this world that flows naturally from understanding my place in the whole web of life. This care keeps me from despairing about our current situation and motivates me to make different choices to reduce my impact and to protect what I cherish – this incredible living planet and all of life.

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Earth Day Anniversary Reminds Us We Are All In Same Boat
By: Paul F. DeLespinasse - NewsMax - 04-21-20
Re: https://www.newsmax.com/paulfdelespi.../21/id/963874/

Photo link: https://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/Get...axsidesize=600

Earth Day was first celebrated in the United States on April 22, 1970. Fifty years later, we observe its golden anniversary.

By 1970 Americans were aware of the dangers posed by pollution. A number of localities and states had recently passed environmental legislation. Shortly after the first Earth Day, President Richard Nixon proposed creation of what became the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon correctly thought that national standards would be better than forcing producers to cope with a complicated maze of conflicting local requirements.

Although pollution had originally been regarded as mainly a local problem in specific places, by 1970 it was becoming apparent that the planet as a whole was threatened. The spectacular pictures of the whole planet from outer space drove home the fact that earthlings of all nationalities traveled in the same boat and that we lived on "Spaceship Earth."

Buckminster Fuller had coined the expression in his 1964 book, "An Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth." These words neatly focused our attention on the fact that our planet is a closed system. Nothing "goes away" to someplace else when we put pollutants into the oceans or atmosphere. There is no "carpet" under which we can sweep the dirt we produce.

The coronavirus pandemic reminds us that the earth also has a single biosphere and that it is impossible to keep health threats from attacking everywhere.

As a teenager in the 1950s, I had wondered whether our automobiles, using up oxygen while burning gasoline, might use up all the earth's oxygen and leave us nothing to breathe. But I decided that the earth was so big and there was so much oxygen in the atmosphere that there was no danger of this happening. Anyhow, I must have assumed, our scientists, engineers, and political leaders would have warned us if running out of oxygen was a real danger and would have done something to head it off. Perhaps I was a little naive!

It turned out that oxygen really isn't a problem. But carbon dioxide, created by internal combustion engines and many other processes, is all too much of a problem. This is not because it makes it impossible for us to breathe, but because atmospheric carbon dioxide produces a "greenhouse" effect — the more carbon dioxide, the more heat coming in from the sun we retain. This process could increase average world temperatures by several degrees during the current century.

Global warming would not be unwelcome if it wasn't too much and was distributed in the right places and times of year. A warmer earth might make northern areas in Canada and Russia more hospitable to agriculture. But the warming effect of a runaway greenhouse effect will not be distributed on the basis of our convenience.

Instead, we will see shrinking glaciers, oceans that may rise by several feet, more extreme variations in local rainfall (droughts and floods) and temperature, and more devastating hurricanes.

Rising sea levels alone could produce extremely unpleasant consequences for hundreds of millions of people living in cities that will go under water. This, in turn, will produce major problems for those fortunate enough not to live in these cities, who will be inundated by refugees escaping the drowned cities. Today's refugee problems will seem trivial by comparison.

As Earth's people, we are all in the same boat. We will share the same fate if we don't get a grip on current climate trends. Perhaps now is not the time for wars and hatreds to run rampant when we all have a mutual interest in preventing our ship from sinking.

Like the coronavirus, ominous climate trends are a common enemy that we can fight most effectively when we do it together.

Fifty years after the first one, Earth Day is more important than ever.

About this writer: Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School.