Mourning

A few years ago, some of my friends from the city fell in love with a patch of wooded land a few miles outside of town. After they bought it, several months passed before I had the opportunity to visit, and over this time my anticipation grew, as I heard them tell how beautiful it was and their plans for the place.

When the day came that I finally saw it for the first time, instead of feeling joyful at the beauty they had described, I was struck by a wave of sadness at what I saw as a deep wound and horrible scar. The land manager in me saw a small part of our planet that had been abused for decades and left for dead. Based on the structure of the forest it was apparent that, perhaps twenty to thirty years before, the plot had been subjected to a mosaic of clear cutting and high-grading. High-grading is an old forestry technique in which loggers remove the most valuable trees—typically the largest and healthiest—leaving the poorest genetic stock to repopulate an area. It can take centuries for a forest to recover from high-grading, and the practice leaves the landscape susceptible to diseases, pests, storm damage, flooding, reduced water quality, and exotic species invasion.

Furthermore, although this soil was not suited for it, I could tell that sometime farther in the past the area had been used for row-crop agriculture. I could see the degraded soils, the poor regrowth of the trees, and the change in tree species composition that results in postagricultural forests.¹ Looking at this land, I saw a gash in the fabric of nature, overrun with nonnative invasive species and greatly diminished wildlife food resources. My friends saw a beautiful patch of forest that was theirs to nurture and bond with. We were both correct.

A heightened awareness of nature does not always bring comfort and peace. It can at times, in fact, touch on exactly the opposite. With deeper connection and perception, you run the risk of feeling the suffering of the world. With that in mind, some might wonder: Why would anyone want to learn to love nature more deeply and become more connected, if the dawning awareness opens us up to so much pain? Is it perhaps better to not notice?

Of course, if we go down this path, we might as well ask why we should love anyone or anything, since it is guaranteed to open us up to eventual pain. The Buddha pondered this question millennia ago, and his insight is often translated into, “Life is suffering (dukkha).” But that is not all. More fully explored, the Buddha’s insight also says there is a path out of suffering. Is nature awareness and connection suffering? Yes and no. There is suffering, but not only suffering.

With loss and pain there is also love. The two cannot be separated, as they are two sides of the same coin. The point is not to avoid pain in life. It is to learn to stay fully open and balanced with everything that arises, deeply connected to the richness of all experiences—the good and the bad—knowing that when it hurts the most it is simply a testament to the depth of our love.

Yes, my friends’ land had been abused, but this isn’t all it was. It wasn’t defined as nothing more than its abuse. It was still a natural system. The trees that were still there were reaching majestically toward the sky, capturing sunlight energy, and making carbohydrates to pump into the ecosystem. Mother deer still nursed their fawns. Chipmunks and squirrels still moved seeds around, eating some but planting others. The songbirds still sang, chatted with each other, called to their mates, and fed their babies. Black bears still wandered through, hungrily eating the wild raspberries.

What I have realized over the years is that trying not to notice or acknowledge environmental damage is the worst of all options. Whether we are trained or not, we sense what is going on. We can feel it in our bones. Kept in our unconscious, this feeling weighs us down and leads to despair. Better to learn to see, to truly perceive, what is going on around us. In this way we can acknowledge our role—our role in the unbroken chain of humans who have been stewards of the land and who have caused the damage leading up to now. And we can acknowledge our role in the present through recognizing which of our actions lead to more harm, the beneficial ways in which we do act, and the potential we carry in our role in a future built on healing and caretaking.

And this is the key. We can’t undo the past—but we can learn from and understand it. We can’t make our current reality different from what it is—but we can acknowledge it honestly. We can mourn the losses and use this emotion to guide us to healthy action that will shape the future: Actions that help us see clearly and deeply what is happening and our role in it. Actions that help us acknowledge the guilt and loss and appreciate what is here now. Actions that honor the depths of the dissatisfaction in our bones, bring it to the surface, and provide us opportunities to heal, working with the grief and gratitude simultaneously.

Try: Go outside and look, listen, feel, and smell what is actually going on around you. Focus and deeply perceive reality. Try to remove your mental filters that are making sense of everything, justifying, rationalizing, etc. Just take in what is.

Whether you are in a city or deep in the woods, the nature around you is both damaged and whole at the same time, and we are not separate from it. Open to the suffering of the plants, animals, and land, and allow yourself to become receptive to the beauty and radiance of the nature around you. Imagine yourself as completely connected to all the beings around you. Let yourself steep in this awareness. Their suffering is your suffering, but also their joy is your joy.

A very old and powerful meditation from the Tibetan tradition called Tonglen can be practiced to work with the healing of the land. Tonglen translates to something like giving and taking or sending and receiving. This practice was introduced to me through writings and workshops of beloved Buddhist teacher, author, and nun Pema Chödrön.²

Choose a spot in nature or bring one to mind that along with its untouchable beauty you can see or sense pain or imbalance in as well. Take a few minutes to bring awareness to your own breath and body and to come more fully into the present moment. Now to the degree that you feel comfortable begin allowing any feelings of disturbance or harm to the land to enter into you. Imagine that, like the vast sky, you have room to hold everything that you take in. You can breathe in pain, anger, guilt, or sorrow and let it expand and move as it will. Let there be an openness, a welcoming even, as if you are greeting and offering kindness to a weary friend who has arrived at your door.

Now, on an exhale, feel, sense, and imagine letting everything go. Release back out into the world all that you have taken in but now with the medicine that it most needs, breathing out a sense of calm to meet anxiety, forgiveness to meet blame, or love to meet pain. Breathe in again, embracing and holding the suffering, as a parent would for their child with warmth and compassion. Let yourself feel deep like the ocean and rooted like a mountain, with room to hold everything that arises. Breathe out and again release, let go, and imagine the land receiving all that it needs to heal and thrive. Do this for a few minutes and allow yourself to stop whenever you need to. Tonglen can be hard on many levels, so remember to share your kindness and compassion with yourself as well. Let the practice build over time, strengthening like a muscle that can support the land and your connection to it.