We seek peace in our own lives through meditation and the study of the Dharma (the traditional Buddhist teachings). We contribute to peace in our communities through ecological restoration, as a remedy for some of the violence done by development.
At our Wild Plant Nursery and the field sites that it serves, we work to conserve the native plant communities of the greater Washington region, home to one of the richest floras in eastern North America. Our Tree Bank / Hispaniola is conserving the forests of central Hispaniola, the richest surviving remnant of the Caribbean forest biome, a global biodiversity hotspot.
We see ecological restoration as essential to conservation because many natural areas are now too small and isolated to persist over the long term in their current state. In the greater Washington region, we are reestablishing forests and meadows on degraded sites. In central Hispaniola, our Tree Bank farmers are replanting native forest on their lands.
“Speaking Broadly” is intended as a collective blog for the Sangha. But because the issues that we deal with are long-term—that’s true for both the ecological and the psychological issues—entries on this page will arrive more slowly than do those of a regular blog.
What we lack in speed, we hope to make up for in quality. We hope to create a collection of on-line essays that are conceived and written well enough to prevent them from going stale.
We are starting with four entries, three of which were published on our previous website. We hope to add more entries at the rate of one or two a month.
Chris and Lisa Bright are the Earth Sangha’s founders. For one-paragraph profiles of them, click on the “Whe We Are” tab on the About page.
We plan eventually to add several more contributors to Speaking Broadly.
Above: An eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina) foraging in the leaf litter of an oak-beech forest along northern Virginia's Occoquan River. This one is a male. You can tell because it has red eyes; females of this species have yellow-brown eyes.
THE ESSAYS
Zen Q and A: Seeds and the Whole Mind, by Lisa Bright, February 3, 2011
I accept that the mind should not “abide in forms,” as the Sutras say, but I don’t understand where else the mind could abide! Zen teachers often talk of “no mind” or “big mind,” but as a practical matter, it’s not clear to me what these terms have to do with my own mind, in the usual sense of that term.
Gentle Poverty, by Lisa Bright, February 2, 2009
It’s painful just to think about what the current economic downturn is doing to so many people—forcing them out of their jobs and homes, denying them adequate food and healthcare. I’m not sure I can imagine what it would be like to actually experience such things.
Our Lady of Asphalt, by Chris Bright, January 21, 2009
There is a church called Saint Mary of Sorrows near my house, on a street that contributes a little stretch to one of my usual running and cycling routes. A usual stretch but, until recently, not sorrowful. It used to be very pleasant, because the church property contained a substantial little block of forest.
Just Look, by Chris Bright, June 4, 2008
Take Commonwealth to Guinea. Straight on Guinea; right on Braddock; right on Rolling Road. Left on Old Keene Mill, which becomes Franconia. Left on Thomas; right on Meriwether; left on Cloud.