Because we had roamed around in and out of a few topics yesterday, I decided to mostly lecture today with the hope that we would catch up a bit but that there would still be a lot of good questions from my friends.
From what I read toward the end of class:
There is no solution to the ecological crisis.
To say there would be such a solution claims that it is a problem. And the ecological crisis is not a problem. Rather, it is an aspect of our situation. We are situated not as beings attempting to solve a mathematical puzzle or to get around a tactical obstacle: We are situated as beings-in-crisis, as entities in a time of revaluation needing to accept karmic responsibility. Certainly nature herself cries out under our karmic debt. But again, this is a profile of our comprehensive existential crisis. Compartmentalizing our responses and our responsibility merely repeats how western dominated globalization drove us into this situation and has left the majority of humanity on the edge of expulsion. To engage in evaluating a new dharma as a transvaluation of previous values, our revaluation must bring about a new bhakti: originary performances of devotion that arise from accepting our karmic responsibility in being forgetful of the encompassing “being of being” or satyasya satyam: “the truth of truth” that all things and processes are expressions of the encompassing One.
from my paper, “Bhakti begins from our situation: Dharmic comprehension of crisis” (unpublished, 2016)
CALL ME MAGGIE 