One Earth Zen
We are excited to announce our collaboration with One Earth Zen, a Zen Buddhist group led by One Earth Conservation’s own board member, Meredith Garmon. We are joining efforts to expand our Nurture Nature Program that invites people to connect more deeply to the awesome reality that is this planet and her ecosystems and life.
Our Nurture Nature program also helps people grow five intelligences – emotional, social, multispecies, ecological, and spiritual. Growing these five intelligences is one aspect of Transformative Conservation that calls on us to facilitate human inner transformations regarding our relationships with ourselves, others, life, and the planet. The other aspect of Transformative Conservation is outer transformation that changes how societies are organized so that they are more just and where all beings have the chance to flourish. Transformation, with accompanying ecological and multispecies justice, is also the aim of One Earth Zen, which invites people into a daily practice of Zen meditation.
One Earth Zen will also be leading in-person retreats with One Earth Conservation in South Carolina in the near future at One Earth Zen Monastery and Parakeet Perch. Subscribe to our newsletter below to receive updates on times and places.
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What does Zen have to do with Nurturing Nature?
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Sustaining ecological consciousness requires spiritual grounding in awareness of continual presencing, dynamic impermanence, and interdependent co-arising. Zen practice grounds and centers us in an abiding joy as we undertake wise and compassionate stewardship of the earth and all her beings.
1. Interconnectedness / Dependent Co-Arising. At the heart of Zen is the realization that all things are interconnected — no being or phenomenon exists in isolation. In ecological terms, this mirrors the web of life: forests, rivers, animals, humans, and air are mutually interdependent. Zen practice cultivates a felt sense of this through meditation, mindful living, and direct experience in nature, dissolving the false boundary between self and environment. Practitioners often develop a deeper, intrinsic motivation to protect what they no longer see as ‘other’ but as an extension of themselves.
2. Non-Attachment and Simplicity. Zen encourages simplicity, contentment, and reducing unnecessary desires — values fundamentally at odds with consumerism, overexploitation, and waste. By embracing a minimalist, mindful lifestyle, Zen practitioners tend to consume less, live more sustainably, and tread lightly on the earth. This lifestyle naturally aligns with conservation values: less resource use, reduced waste, and a greater focus on ecological harmony.
3. Direct Experience with Nature. Zen often locates awakening experiences in simple encounters with nature — the sound of rain, the shape of a rock, a bird’s call at dawn. Many Zen monasteries and practice centers are deliberately situated in natural settings, fostering a contemplative relationship with the land. This nurtures reverence and stewardship.
4. Compassion for All Beings. The ethos of non-harming (ahimsa) and compassion for all sentient beings is foundational. This extends to animals, plants, and ecosystems.
5. Non-Duality and Deconstructing Human Exceptionalism. Zen undermines the idea of a sharp separation between humans and nature. In Zen realization, ‘nature’ isn’t something out there, to be used or protected from a distance — it’s what we are. This worldview challenges exploitative hierarchies and anthropocentrism, supporting egalitarian ecological ethics.
Question: “I’m glad to see that Zen practice supports and cultivates environmentalist values. But I’m already thoroughly imbued with environmentalist values. Why would I consider giving up an hour or so a day in my busy schedule to take up a Zen practice?”
1. Perhaps you could use some inner stability amid the ecological crisis. Many environmentalists experience profound grief, rage, and despair in the face of ecological degradation and climate catastrophe. Zen doesn’t fix these emotions, but it offers a practice for facing them squarely — for being fully present to them without getting overwhelmed or numbed out. Zen isn't escapism; it’s training in equanimity amid impermanence. For someone already committed to environmental work, this can mean the difference between burnout and resilient, long-haul engagement.
2. Holding the values might not be enough. One can intellectually believe in interconnectedness and ecological reverence — but Zen is about directly experiencing those truths. Through zazen (seated meditation), mindful walking, or simply observing a crow’s call on a cold morning, the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘world’ can soften in a way that merely agreeing with environmental values won’t deliver. This deep, wordless experience of unity can revitalize and deepen a person’s environmental commitment in profoundly embodied ways.
3. Training in attention and presence is helpful. At its heart, Zen is about radical presence: tasting tea as if it’s the first and last cup you’ll ever drink, listening to the wind without overlaying it with commentary, sitting with breath and body just as they are. In a culture of distraction — including in activist circles — this training in full presence can be an antidote to scattered, reactive, and emotionally draining engagement. To be a better caretaker of the earth, we must first become better perceivers.
4. Zen practice begins to reduce the egocentric righteousness that can be a pitfall of ecological activism. Activism of any kind — even noble, essential activism — can get tangled up with moral superiority, judgment, or attachment to outcomes. Zen helps loosen these traps by constantly returning practitioners to don’t-know mind and to compassionate presence beyond categories of good/bad, success/failure. For conservationists, this can mean working fiercely for life on Earth while releasing clinging to results — a paradoxical posture that fosters both clarity and peace.
5. Opening to mystery and humility. Zen practice often leaves you with fewer answers, not more. It dismantles the illusion of control and fixed meaning. For an environmentalist wrestling with existential crises, uncertainty, and the limits of human agency, this can be liberating. It allows for a love of the world not based on saving it, but on simply being with it.
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Logistics
One Earth Zen provides 60-minute practice session on Zoom five mornings a week: Tue-Sat at 7:00 ET/ 6:00 CT/ 5:00 MT /4:00 PT.
Our format:
Opening Chants: 8 mins
Zazen (silent seated meditation): 25 mins
Kinhin (walking meditation): 5 mins
Sutra service (recitations): 9-10 mins
Dharma discussion: 10 mins
Closing Song
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Find the Zoom link and additional information at: https://OneEarthZen.org
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