"We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now we return" ~Walt Whitman, who spent 30 years of his life in Brooklyn, from his poem "We Two – how Long We Were Fool'd," from his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, 1867
Above photo is a sunrise over a lake in Prospect Park, September 2025
Process
My final project for the Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy training was a weekend retreat entitled "Refuge and Restoration: Community Practice for Earth Activists." My intention was to discover how contemplative, engaged Buddhism could support climate activism. When my friend, Reverend Sarah Dojin Emerson, invited me to co-host a retreat supporting the Earth Activists convening for Climate Week NYC, my final project was born. This retreat was offered in collaboration with Sarah Emerson, Alayo Bascome, and the Brooklyn Zen Center.
Listening
Sarah and I conceived of the event as a soulful weekend of 1) earth-activist community tending, 2) Zen Buddhist and earth-based practice and ritual, and 3) spiritual self care.
We envisioned the weekend culminating in a centuries-old earth-based grief ritual in Prospect Park called the Jizo ceremony – an entreaty for protection to Jizo bodhisattva, whose Sanskrit name translates as the “Earth Womb” bodhisattva.
We purposefully chose the weekend prior to Climate Week NYC, when both the Autumn Equinox and a partial Solar Eclipse were taking place. We felt this significant turning of the seasons would provide a powerful threshold passage for our work.
Invitation
After choosing the dates for our retreat and becoming clear on our intention to offer the retreat on a donation basis, our invitation to Earth Activists was posted to the Brooklyn Zen Center website.
Photo to the left is of a member of my web of relations, reminding me during the retreat that synthetic, unnatural urban environments are simply reconstituted aggregates of the natural world, their very materiality proof of their membership in my web of relations.
Pre-Retreat Interviews
In my final project mentoring meeting, Ram encouraged me to think of the offering as an exercise in relationship building, and made the suggestion that I interview the participants prior to the retreat. This exercise proved to be invaluable, as it helped us begin the retreat at a much deeper level than had we arrived "cold." It also made it possible for me to support others very personally, post-retreat, and began some wonderful discussions and connections that are now ongoing. Following are the questions I posed to the applicants during their pre-retreat interview:
- I saw on your application that you ______. Can you tell me a little more about that?
- How did you come to climate activism?
- Do you have a daily practice? What is your comfort with/ relationship to Buddhist teachings?
- What are you hoping to receive from this retreat? (What would you ideally come away with?)
- Can you share information about our event with others?
Urban Retreat
earth's participation
ancestral home of the lenape
Brooklyn, New York is the ancestral home of the Lenape. The leaf pictured to the left is from a sassafras tree, treasured by the Lenape for its medicinal value.
When I arrived at the Brooklyn Zen Center, I walked the neighborhood, introducing myself to the land, tuning in to the Earth beings there, and asking the trees for blessings for our gathering.
In future workshops and retreats, I would like to dwell in and on the natural history of the place where the retreat is held with the participants more, helping us each discover our relationship to the history of place, that we are always stepping into a land with its own stories.
Retreat Schedule
- Friday 6pm - 8pm: Introductory session with guided meditation and opening circle with introductions
- Saturday 9am - 6pm: Morning session with poetry, framing; Dharma talk with Sarah in the Zendo with the BZC community; Lunch; Afternoon session with "Milling," "Open Sentences," small group discussions and large group sharebacks; Grief and vows ritual designed by Alayo & Marga in the BZC courtyard (Joanna Macy's "Five Vows"); Closing with singing
- Sunday sunrise: Jizo Ceremony in Prospect Park; Closing with singing ("We shall be known by the company we keep..."); Tea and nibbles social time
Sunrise Jizo Ceremony in Prospect Park on the Autumn Equinox & Solar Eclipse
h i g h l i g h t s
Earth Altar in the courtyard of the Brooklyn Zen Center in front of the linden tree where Alayo and Marga offered the earth ritual.
The Community "Tree Room" at the Brooklyn Zen Center where the majority of our retreat took place
The Brooklyn Zen Center Zendo
The group preparing for the Jizo Ceremony, making their bundles and reflecting.
considerations
right relationship audit
Theory of change: I believe that positive evolutionary change comes about through the intention to end suffering, and then learning the skillful means to do so (practicing the Eightfold Path). Through this retreat I intended to give myself a learning opportunity to see where and how I could help to reduce suffering, and to raise my own awareness as to where I was unconsciously contributing to suffering.
Social location: As a queer, mixed race, neurodivergent, able-bodied, first generation American, educated but of modest financial means, I enjoyed offering this retreat in diverse Brooklyn, on a donation basis, so that anyone who had interest could participate. Something that came up was an elderly member of the BZC sangha who had registered but was not able to ascend the set of stairs to the community room due to an injured knee. In the future I will give more consideration to the accessibility of the location. Also, I was heavily reliant on my phone the entire time I was there, as it seemed were many of the participants traveling there for Climate Week and the retreat. This could easily have been a technological barrier to entry for some without access to the technology, or for the elderly who might not be as fast with the technology, or for those without the financial means to access technology.
Cosmology/ Spirituality: In offering this retreat focusing on Buddhist practice and Earth-based practice, I was careful to call myself a "Buddhist Eco-Chaplain in training." I am growing in this practice. Yet I am citational to the Buddhist lineage of teachers who offered this training, and work to discover how I am situated within the teachings I have received. I have been citational to both Vedic and Native American earth-based practices for some time and work not to appropriate Native American cultural components of earth-based practice while still expressing the essence of connection to earth those practices embody.
Working from my gifts rather than from obligation: My gifts center around midwiving evolutionary transformation in individuals and groups. Working at the intersection of contemplative practice, engaged Buddhism and Earth ritual very much lights me up. I felt like a kid at Christmas the entire time, without a shred of obligation.
Movement ecology: My work is located in the contemplative support given to those doing active reformation and resistance work, offering them a space of refuge.
Co-liberators/ lineage: The Extinction Rebellion folks who participated in the retreat are clearly allies in this work and I look forward to further collaboration with them in the future. I want to deepen my capacity to listen with the Earth as I offer more programming like this, relaxing into her holding of us.
Deep time/ prophecy: My practice includes regular tuning in with the spiritual ancestors, the ancestors of land, and in particular, the planets as ancestors. Engaging this domain informed my offering of this retreat very directly, bringing in deep time awareness as I walked with others through the seasonal and solar system passages of the Autumn Equinox and the solar eclipse.
Symptom vs. Root: This offering was definitely focused on providing relief for a symptom (activist burnout). Reaching more deeply into the root might involve an ongoing offering for activists that explores how contemplative practice can fuel their activism.
Process: In the future I would like to lean into an Interspecies Council to inform my offerings, so that support, wisdom, and healing can flow simultaneously to and from Earth and all her beings – human and other-than-human.
Funding/ equity: The retreat ended up costing me about $1,200 in travel expenses. While it felt wonderful to offer this space of refuge to earth activists by donation, in the future I will work to create local, less expensive offerings, or find more support for travel, including offsetting the carbon impacts to the environment due to airline travel. The environmental impact of airline travel remains deeply troubling to me, as a high cost of these offerings.
Complementing the practice with creativity and art to communicate the vision: During our retreat we employed an ancient creative practice of making offering bundles to a deity. The tactile nature of this practice imbued the group ceremony with such a grounded calm. I would like to remember that inviting people to make things as part of a ritual can be empowering to the participants to make the ritual their own, and to make the ritual really come alive.
LEARNINGS
- Relationship building: keeping the focus on the chaplain relationship with the retreat participants helped create a stable container. All eleven participants remained fully engaged throughout the three-day experience.
- The Work That Reconnects group exercises we did helped establish strong group coherence.
- We had 22 registrations, 11 participants. The weekend before Climate Week NYC may not be the best timing for earth activists, although those who participated expressed appreciation for the opportunity to center and prepare for the week ahead.
- "Embodying" the ritual: being in the Zendo with Sarah taught me about taking great care with every movement of ritual, being in full presence during ritual.
- Being less scripted and more present to the emergent in the group space is a learning edge for me.
- Learnings about traveling to offer retreats: extra effort needed to eat well, schedule in downtime after returning, factor in considerable expenses, both to myself and to Earth (the impact of airline travel on the environment).
acknowledgment & Gratitude
- Thank you to the faculty at the Sati Center's Buddhist Eco-Chaplaincy training program.
- Thank you to my BEC 4 cohort for their support, inspiration, and ideas.
- Thank you to the Brooklyn Zen Center for graciously hosting this retreat and welcoming us into their spiritual home.
- Thank you to Sarah Emerson for partnering with me to offer this retreat, and for her mentorship throughout.
- Thank you to Alayo Bascome for their partnership, facilitation, Cancerian nurturance with unexpected bagels and such, and their good humor.
- Thank you to Earth, Prospect Park, and the Japanese Pagoda tree that witnessed and hosted our Jizo Ceremony.
- Thank you to the Lenape, ancestors of the land.
- And finally, deep bows of gratitude to Earth, our mother, our home.