[Buddha-l] Walking the walk

[jkirk]

Link includes beautiful portrait of Macy--painted as part of the artist's
series, Americans Who Tell the Truth.  Joanna
====================================

http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Joanna_Macy.html

Joanna Macy Biography
Buddhist Scholar, Systems Theorist, Ecologist, Teacher, Activist, 1929[?]–

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that
we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for
quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a
millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves
and each other.”

Joanna Macy bridges worlds. As an author and experiential workshop leader,
she spans Eastern and Western thought, links the past and future with the
present, and joins human consciousness with perspective from other life
forms. Macy calls this the “Work That Reconnects,” and its purpose is to
help people realize that being alive at this time is an extraordinary
opportunity to influence the fate of the Earth and survival of future
generations.

What makes this time so fertile, says Macy, is that what she calls the
Industrial Growth Society (IGS), which focuses our lives on “getting ahead”
as it treats the world as “our supply house and sewer,” is self-destructing.
At the same time, a vast movement toward a life-sustaining society is
gaining momentum. “You will not see this revolution on television,” she
says, most media having been subsumed by the IGS. On joannamacy.net, Macy
articulates how this movement, which she and others call “the Great
Turning,” is building.

Whether the life systems on which our existence relies can survive the IGS
is the critical question. We don’t need to know the answer, says Macy; the
stakes are so high that intentional action to change our course is
imperative. “How dare I be discouraged by a possibility so trivial as
personal failure?” asks Macy, quoting one of her students. Nor does it
matter exactly how one works toward a life-sustaining society, in her view.
“The truth is that all aspects of the current crisis reflect the same
mistake, setting ourselves apart and using others for our gain,” she writes.

As a deep ecologist, Macy draws upon her doctorate in Buddhism and systems
theory, on her experience living in India and Africa and teaching worldwide,
and on poetry and science, She addresses the reasons for the grief, fear,
sadness, uncertainty, and numbness that prevail in modern life and keeps
bringing attention back to what is sacred and true: the wondrously
interconnected and intelligent web of life.


    
         
 

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