Inner Nature & Outer Nature: Inseparably One
By Mark Moore
(First published in Tergar International’s “Path of Joy'“ Newsletter, April 20, 2024)
In March 2024, the Tergar Meditation Community invited Earthville founder Mark Moore to write a guest editorial for its blog and its Path of Joy newsletter on the theme of “compassion for planet earth,” which is the topic of world-renowned meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s video teaching of the month for April, 2024. You can watch Rinpoche’s video below (or on YouTube) and read the original blog post here (under the title “What Can We Stop Doing to Help the Planet?”).. Mark’s guest editorial is reposted below. You can also read Tergar’s interview with Mark and fellow Dharmalaya Institute cofounder Mai-Linh here.
A Buddhist proverb advises: “Stop throwing stones in the water. Soon enough, the ripples will fade, the surface will return to calm, and once again the moon will be clearly reflected.” Usually this is understood as a metaphor for what in Mingyur Rinpoche’s tradition we call “non-meditation”: less about doing, and more about what we stop doing. The less we do to disturb the mind, the more mind’s nature manifests automatically.
Can we understand our relationship with all of nature in this way? What might it mean to “stop throwing stones” on a planetary level?
Like the mind, the earth is imbued with resilience enabling it to return to harmonious equilibrium if only we allow it enough time undisturbed. During the COVID-19 period when industry and combustion slowed for a time, we saw how dramatically air pollution dissipated in just two or three months. Skies cleared, and people in the plains of northern India enjoyed views of the Himalayas from their homes for the first time in their lives. That was a taste of what our world can be like when we simply “stop throwing stones.”
So, what can we do — or, more to the point, stop doing — to allow nature to return to equilibrium as Rinpoche describes in this month’s video? Climate science shows that the most helpful things we can stop doing include two big ones:
Consuming anything that requires burning (for example, anything made in a polluting factory, or that crosses an ocean to reach us);
Consuming animal products, which in the aggregate contribute more to climate change than any other single cause (when transportation and deforestation related to the meat and dairy industries are factored in).
Stopping (or even greatly reducing) these two consumption patterns can do more to help nature recover than all other efforts combined. And there’s much more we can do simply by doing less: we can buy less, fly less, drive less, use less nonrenewable energy, and so on.
Giving Things Up vs. Simply Giving
The catch, of course, is that — whether we’re talking about our own minds or the planet — to “stop throwing stones” means changing some habits. And when it comes to practicing compassion for our world, sometimes we feel as though we have to “give up too much.”
As I’ve gradually thrown fewer stones over the past 30 years (and, in my “day job,” helped others do the same), one shift that has proven helpful relates to what Rinpoche says about intention and volition. The more we connect with compassion for the earth and its beings as the intention, we feel the naturally arising wish to help however we can, and we come to experience our “doing less” not as “giving things up” but simply as giving. We give nature the gift of undisturbed nature. We offer space and time for her to recover.
The more we experience ourselves as inseparably part of the whole of nature, the more it feels like the most natural thing in the world to take care of the whole world, the way a hand naturally does what it can to take care of the whole body.
About the Author
Mark Moore has been leading meditation retreats and sustainability programs in the Himalayas and beyond since 2010, including Joy of Living retreats for Tergar. Cofounder of Dharmalaya Institute in India and Earthville Institute in the US, he has been exploring wisdom traditions and sustainability solutions since 1995. He began his studies of meditation and philosophy with the Dalai Lama and other master teachers in the 1990s and has deepened his practice through trainings with Mingyur Rinpoche since 2007. An educator by day and artist and writer by twilight, Mark divides his time between the Himalayas and the Colorado Rockies. He loves nature, music, service, and fair-trade vegan chocolate.
Mingyur Rinpoche’s short video on compassion for the planet.