UHCL : Buddhist Perspective: Climate Change Is About Personal Ethics, Activism

Press release from University of Houston-Clear Lake:

October 7, 2021

Geshe Wangchuk and five other monks worked several hours a day throughout their weeklong
visit to UH-Clear Lake on a sacred mandala, a spiritual, ritually constructed symbol made of sand that represents a form of sacred
architecture. They also presented two lectures to the community, including one on
climate change.

Buddhists believe that spiritual practices should be employed along with education
and activism, and spiritual resources can help move people forward. “From a Buddhist perspective, when we ask how we can overcome climate change, one
of the answers is that people do not feel the problem is actually related directly
to them,” Geshe Wangchuk said. “We would say that wisdom comes from interdependent
originations. This means, we are all interconnected. This is reality. So, if we believe
we are all interconnected and dependent on each other, those natural resources that
we have in the world like water, trees, mountains and air, are how we stay interconnected. 

“Therefore, if you understand this, destroying those resources causes direct harm
to us, and also indirect harm to many, many things. So, this is not only a worldly
purpose, but a beyond-worldly, or spiritual purpose. Once you harm something we all
depend on, you also harm yourself,” he said. Making ourselves more altruistic, Geshe
Wangchuk said, will influence the protection of all those resources to which we are
all connected.  

There are those who see climate change as an ecological or environmental issue, or
perhaps a social or economic issue. But ultimately, he said Buddhists believe human
actions are the source of the problem. 

Geshe Wangchuk said that climate change is about our personal ethics. He said he believed
climate change is happening because of our imbalanced sense of personal values and
what we believe is important to us as human beings on this planet.

“First you have to transform yourself from contaminated things like greed, craving,
grasping, unnecessary needs and wants,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with having
more, but while you’re in that process, you ruin the resources for everyone, because
it’s the demand for those ‘things’ that comes from self-cherishing. We no longer concern
ourselves about others.”

If people focused on cherishing others instead of wanting more things, he said, altruistic
motivations will be uppermost in their mind. He added that our values are too connected
to having possessions, and that the central problem was our personal ethics—what we
believe we can do, versus what we should do. 

“If people practice selflessness, become more content with what they have and are
less attached to things, they will automatically become more aware that a person is
just one but humanity is infinite,” he said. “If you can create this in your mind,
there will not be any more issues at all with this.”

Geshe Wangchuk said that as they have toured the United States and spoken about their
perspective on climate change, they have encountered differing reactions from their
audiences. 

“There are those who say this problem is not related to them because it has to do
with rich people who are expanding their businesses and using up the natural resources,
and they can’t do anything about it,” he said. “Our human nature is, if we don’t experience
something personally, we don’t take it seriously. It doesn’t matter if you’re wealthy
and you have a lot of property if you don’t have air.”

A core Buddhist belief, Geshe Wangchuk explained, is in the principle of cause and
effect. “We believe in questioning and in debating in our monastery,” he said. “This
is our method. One mind is only one perspective. To be a geshe, you have to work through
personal logic and debates with 10,000 monks. That is how you become sharp. We have
to study Socratic debate 23 years, six hours a day.”

Ultimately, he said, it is not about arguing or conflict. “We debate, but it is to
have more knowledge and more wisdom. Debating about global warming is worldly, but
we are Buddhists, so we know there are spiritual ideas beyond worldly things. We first
need to be trained in worldly problems so we can work to get beyond them,” he said. 

The monks are on a two-year “Sacred Arts of Tibet” tour of the United States, with their visit to UHCL arranged by Associate Professor of Sociology Stephen Cherry, a practicing Buddhist, and sponsored by the College of Human Sciences and Humanities.

For more information about the Sacred Arts of Tibet tour, go online. 

This press release was produced by University of Houston-Clear Lake. The views expressed here are the author’s own.