Buddhist Approaches to the Natural World: Resources for a Time of Global Climate Change
- October 21st, 2025, Karin Meyers, “From Borderline Sentient to Buddhas: The Strange History of Plants in Buddhism.”
- November 11 (4-5:30 PT) Christopher Ives, “Realizing Our Embeddedness in Nature as Nature.”
- March 3 (4-5:30 pm PT), Janet Gyatso, “Being With Animal Kin: Buddhist Resources for a Posthuman Ethics”
Upcoming event
Being With Animal Kin: Buddhist Resources for a Posthuman Ethics
Janet Gyatso, PhD
March 3, 2026
4-5:30 pm PDT
This talk will be held online on Zoom
This talk will build out of the current plight of (non-human) animals in the global agro-industrial complex, offering a range of Buddhist resources to develop ethical commitment and action in response. It will highlight the extraordinary virtues, beauty, and moral value of animals, and suggest ways to use Buddhist practices of perception in order to notice animal life more deeply. The aim is to breed moral commitment and circumspection around human privilege. It will suggest ways to directly detect our interdependence and shared predicament with animals, using adaptations of Buddhist mindfulness and visualization meditation. More broadly, this talk aims to create new visions of human life that protect natural resources and promote interspecies justice.
Janet Gyatso is a scholar in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibet. Her PhD is from University of California at Berkeley in Buddhist Studies. Her books include a study of Tibetan autobiography, and an intellectual history of medicine in early modern Tibet. She has also been writing on memory; sex and gender; and on the current female ordination movement in Buddhism. Gyatso is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies and co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion. Gyatso is Harvard Divinity School’s first Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies. Her present research and book project focus on animal ethics.
Past Event
Realizing Our Embeddedness in Nature as Nature.
Christopher Ives
Nov 11, 2025 (4-5:30 PT)
This talk—and conversation—will consider Buddhist resources for overcoming the felt sense of separation from “nature” as something “out there” while at the same time highlighting certain limitations of traditional Buddhist approaches to nature. In particular, such doctrines as conditioned arising, non-dual modes of experience, and the sentience of other-than-human animals constitute rich resources for constructing a Buddhist environmental ethic, but they have ecological limitations, several of which can be addressed through engagement with Gary Snyder’s notion of reinhabitation and David Abram’s writings on the intelligence and expressiveness of animals.
Christopher Ives is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. In his scholarship he focuses on ethics in Zen Buddhism, and currently he is working on Buddhist approaches to nature and environmental issues.
His publications include Zen Ecology: Green and Engaged Living in Response to the Climate Crisis (2025); Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (2009); Zen Awakening and Society (1992); a translation of philosopher Nishida Kitarō’s An Inquiry into the Good (co-translated with Abe Masao, 1990); and a translation of Hisamatsu Shin’ichi’s Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition (co-translated with Tokiwa Gishin, 2002). He has also published numerous book chapters and articles in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, the Eastern Buddhist, and elsewhere. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics and the Advisory Group of the Forum on Religion and Ecology.
Originally from Litchfield, Connecticut, he received his B.A. in Psychology from Williams College and his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from Claremont Graduate School. He currently resides with his wife Mishy in Watertown, Massachusetts, and relishes getting out onto the trail and out into the surf.
Past Event
From Borderline Sentient to Buddhas: The Strange History of Plants in Buddhism.
Karin Meyers
Tuesday, October 21st, 2025
This talk examines evolving Buddhist views on plants across Asia, from an early Indian ambivalence regarding their status as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration to Mahāyana denials of their sentience, and Chinese debates over whether or not plants, though insentient, nevertheless have “Buddha Nature.” She will put these Buddhist perspectives into conversation with contemporary scientific research, noting striking parallels between ancient Buddhist and contemporary debates about plant intelligence, and how new understandings of plant learning and sociability are contributing to contemporary Eco-Buddhist thinking and practice.
Karin Meyers (University of Chicago PhD, 2010) is a Senior Professorial Lecturer in philosophy American University in DC. She previously taught and directed the the Masters Program in Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute’s Centre for Buddhist Studies in Nepal, and served as Academic Director of Mangalam Research Center in Berkeley, CA, where she co-directed the 2022 NEH Summer Institute, The Imagination and Imaginal Worlds in the Mirror of Buddhism. Her scholarly publications include articles on intention, free will, and contemplative practice in Buddhism, and as well as on method in comparative philosophy. She is currently editing a volume of essays on Buddhism and the Imagination. Karin has practiced meditation in Theravada, Tibetan, and Zen Buddhist traditions. She is a certified qi gong instructor and recently took precepts in the Zen Peacemaker Order (White Plum Asanga) with the ordination name Koshin (“heart-led”).