we began this b o o k looking at how to reduce harm and how to be with harm as a witness and compassionate advocate for the earth. In this chapter we turn to wisdom insight—using the mind to understand the interdependent nature of reality, with systems think- ing as a tool for analysis. The Buddha spoke of the two pillars of practice as compassion and wisdom. As we witness the suffering in the world around us, we see that cultivating a compassionate heart is crucial to the green path. But the heart alone can too easily be carried away with the depths of the suffering. The practiced systems thinker is able to balance a heart response with a wider view of the whole earth system, a view that acknowledges many contributing causes and conditions. Identifying agents and histories can illuminate the complex causes behind an environmental problem. Seeing things as interdependent and mutually co-arising can inform our compassionate urge to relieve suffering.
In traditional Chinese painting, landscape scrolls convey detailed images from multiple perspectives, offering the viewer many ways to enter the landscape. We are invited, for instance, to engage the intimacy of the near view in river-bank scenes or perhaps a small tea shelter. We are led to experience the high view from mountaintops and waterfalls. But the paintings also include a third perspective,
what is called the “deep view.” Here we look deep into the painting to see the inner folds of the mountains, the ridges behind ridges understood not literally but rather in the mind’s eye. Embracing the deep view means looking beyond what you see at first glance, look' ing more deeply for the hidden structures and causes behind what we observe.
UNDERSTANDING ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
In every environmental educator’s toolbox is a compass, a hand lens, binoculars, field guides, and also a ball of yarn. Yarn for what, you wonder? Not for measuring or marking off plots, not for identifying plants—no, this yarn is for the food-web game. Students stand in a circle, and the instructor begins by throwing the ball of yarn to one person while holding onto the leading edge. That person throws the ball to another person and so on, creating a criss-cross network of yarn strands linking the whole group together. The lesson is about how everything in the universe is tied together. Students sometimes hold signs to identify their role in the food web: grass, rabbit, snake, hawk. To show how the system works, the instructor tugs on one link (as if hoarding resources) and it pulls other links taut. Someone else drops the link she is holding (as if she is leaving the food web), and the line grows slack. To simulate pollution or disaster, the instructor has many students drop their links. Death takes its toll, and system relations grow thin.
The parallels with ecosystems are convincing; that is why this exercise is used over and over again for every outdoor science camp. After many teaching seasons with my own ball of yarn, I encountered a seventh-century Chinese Buddhist teaching from the Hua Yen school that used a house of mirrors as a metaphor. Something clicked in my mind. Was this not a much earlier version of the food-
Embracing the Deep \ r iew
web game? In the scripture, Master Fa Tsang is trying to explain the nature of reality to the empress of China. Though the famed teacher had given a number of lectures on Buddhist philosophy, true realization had not yet penetrated the mind of the empress. So the teacher set up a demonstration in a palatial hall, placing mirrors on all four walls as well as the ceiling and floor. In the center of the hall he placed a small Buddha with a candle. The effect was to muh tiply the image of the Buddha ad infinitum wherever the empress looked. Aha! A moment of insight! The empress saw that the Buddhas mind is everywhere and infinite in its appearances throughout space and time.
Effective as this was, it was not a very portable lesson since it de- pended on having a hall of mirrors at hand. Thus, teachers devef oped another metaphor drawn from early Vedic literature to make the same point. “Indra’s Net” was described as an enormous net stretch' ing across the universe in all directions. To conceive of this in your own mind, visualize a huge fishnet of linked lines extending ad in- finitum across horizontal space. Add a second net stretching across space vertically. And then imagine an endless number of nets crisscrossing every plane of space. At each node in every net, and at every point that the nets intersect, picture a multifaceted jewel reflecting every other jewel in the net. There is nothing outside the net and nothing that does not reverberate its presence throughout the net. Indra’s Net is a truly marvelous conception—a universe of glittering jewels all linked together in one interwoven cosmos. The metaphor illuminates in a dramatic way the interdependent nature of reality, infinitely linked and infinitely co-reflecting.
Not surprisingly, this Buddhist concept was picked up by modern environmentalists, who saw it as a perfect representation of John Muir’s famous words: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Indra’s Net provided an understandable image for the ecological worldview in
a way that conveyed the awe and appreciation that environmental' ists hoped to inspire in society. This metaphor has had particular cachet among those who see a compatibility between ecological think- ing and Buddhist thinking. Every link in the net represents a relationship in the myriad food webs of myriad ecosystems; every jewel represents an organism, river, or mountain in the planetary web of life. Tarnish a jewel with soot or sludge, and it shines much less brightly; break a link with urban sprawl or clear-cutting, and ecological relations suffer.
I was completely enamored of this metaphor for a number of years and happily shared it with whomever would listen. If I could have built a demonstration model, I would have tried. But now I see it would have fallen short of truly representing the dynamic nature of reality. The net of jewels is a map or model but only of a single moment in time. To begin to conceive of the true nature of the universe, you would have to imagine all the nets in motion in a variety of patterns and all the jewels changing constantly in size, shape, behavior, and location. This brings us closer to reality, yet still it falls impossibly short. In any given moment, the whole universe is changing, morphing, growing, moving, learning, adapting beyond any human comprehension. No single model can even come close to capturing all that is going on.
If I were still teaching sixth-grade science camp, I would give up my ball of yarn and offer the students a more dynamic experience of systems in motion. In this exercise, we begin by forming a circle in a wide open space . 1 Each person silently chooses two other people in the group to follow as they move. The directions are simple: keep yourself equidistant from the two people you are following. You can be right in between them or equally far from both of them. When the instructor says “go,” everyone begins to move and the “system” takes on a life of its own. The movement is impossible to predict since it is the sum of all the simultaneous decisions of the participants.
Embracing the Deep View
It can be pretty funny to watch the group as people struggle to keep up with their reference points. Like the yarn game, this exercise can include variations, such as holding some players up in prison or refugee camps, thereby reducing the vitality of the moving system. Almost as interesting as the game is the debriefing afterward, when you ask people to explain what happened. They find it dumbfounding that such a complex pattern can arise from one simple rule.
This game gives people a taste of being part of a dynamic system. Even though the system’s movement is governed by just one rule, it opens a window on the interdependent, spontaneous, dynamic, and infinitely complex nature of reality. Their imaginations can take the next step—what if there were two or three rules governing our behav- ior as members of the system ? Of course, the instructor helps them remember that there are many physical, biological, cultural, economic, and political rules that people are following ^// the time in all of their interactions. Exercises such as this can help people develop a receptivity to systems thinking and a more flexible view of the universe.
THINKING ABOUT SYSTEMS
Why think about systems ? How can this help us understand the nature of environmental problems or the way human beings are deeply tied to ecological systems in virtually everything they do ? Actually, we are “thinking” about systems all the time; we just may not notice. Our minds and bodies have evolved in the context of ecosystems, climate systems, food webs, social systems—all of these are shaping
human organism across time to be a successful animal. Our senses are constantly providing information on the state of the surrounding system—the color of the sky, the pace of traffic, the tone offamily voices. We are responding to systems all the time and adjusting our behaviors accordingly. We all want to survive, and for
and honing the
the most part, that depends on fitting in with the systems we must relate to. Formal systems thinking builds on this animal body level of knowing that is already embedded in our limbic brain from many years of evolution. With our highly developed neocortex, we can study and observe systems and develop useful mental skills in recog' nizing systems behavior.
Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) was one of the first people to articulate general systems theory in the West. He called it “a way of seeing.” Working in the 1930s, he found that reduc- tionist approaches to biology fell short in describing organism be- havior. He saw each plant and animal as a whole, not so much a thing as a pattern of flows in space and time. Each being was not only whole in itself but was also part of a whole system, being shaped by it and also shaping it in turn. He also saw human beings as wholes, rejecting mechanistic views of human behavior and laying the ground' work for Gestalt and other systems'oriented psychologies yet to come. He characterized nature as an open system, with flows of matter, en- ergy, and information passing through constantly. His term for this flow was Fliessgleichgewicht, which means “flux'balance.” 2
But what is it that is in flux'balance ? In the Chinese worldview, the entire cosmos consists of dynamic energy fields, constantly in flux and driven and permeated by ch’i, which is sometimes trans- lated as “vital force or power.” This flowing energy fills the universe and is present in all material forms. From moment to moment, it is constantly transforming, shape-shifting, becoming, unfolding. The Chinese term to match Bertalanffy s flux-balance is sheng-sheng-pu-yi— “incessant activity of life creativity.” 3 We can compare Chinese and Western views of environment and see that our understanding of systems will be very different depending on our assumptions and worldviews. Western views tend to be more mechanical and atom' istic: we speak of “environment” as our surroundings, the background to our everyday activities, something that is relatively inert, except
for occasional big surprises such as earthquakes and hurricanes. In contrast, the Chinese view encompasses much more: it includes the deep structure and process of life itself—sometimes visible, often hidden. In the Chinese classic text, the Tao Te Ching, the Tao, which is “nowhere not present,” is the true environment for all human and ecological activity.
This dynamic view offers a broad foundation for viewing harm and sources ofharm. The systems view helps us to think about not just ecosystems but also social systems, economic systems, and political systems. It calls for a much more comprehensive response to environmental concerns than do traditional views. A surface-level cleanup of a polluted river or an oil spill may solve the immediately visible problem, but what about all the contributing systems that generated the problem in the first place ? If we take a deep view based in the ever- flowing ch i, we may be more likely to ft nd root causes. We are also far more likely to see ourselves as real players in the whole story, players whose habitual actions generate significant consequences.
OBSERVING SYSTEMS BEHAVIOR
There is no one approach to observing systems; biologists and sociologists each have their own tools, ministers and athletic coaches have come up with others. To develop a systems mind you begin by looking at the fundamental qualities or behaviors of systems. This work is gratifying because learning in one arena easily translates to other settings. If you are a gardener, you can practice observing the systems of your garden—the plant-animal relations, the soil systems, the weather. If you are a parent, you can practice observing your family system— the sibling relations, the weekly rhythms, the changing needs of each person over time. As you use the lens of systems thinking, you will build capacity to understand nature and environmental concerns
as systems—intertwining, overlapping, cross-influencing, and more complex than we can yet explain. This way of seeing offers a very powerful counterweight to the fragmenting, separating views so em trenched in Western approaches.
Let’s look at some basic aspects of systems. First, the whole (system) is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, if you took the system apart and only looked at its parts, you would no longer have systemic-level behavior. The system as a whole has its own unique qualities that are not necessarily represented in the parts. A living, breathing human being, for example, is composed of tissues and organs. The heart pumps blood, the lungs inhale and exhale, but neither of them alone is able to run, love, or cook. A coral reef is filled with many colorful coral communities in wild and dazzling shapes, but a single polyp alone does not produce the dance of tropical fish and crabs that fill a reef
Second, every system is composed of subsystems and is itself part of a larger system. Planetary systems exist within galaxies, cells within tissues, nurse logs within forests. These can be mapped or modeled in various ways. We have the branching tree metaphor of evolution and taxonomy or the metaphor of rivers and watershed. Another model is that of nested boxes, like the set of ten Russian dolls someone gave me, one inside the other—all the way down to the teeny tiniest. We could think of the knotted fishnet, the Indra’s Net model of systems relations, or some of the many electronic models for information storage and access. Some models imply a set of hierarchical relations; others are more free form.
To practice systems thinking, you start with almost anything and look at what systems it is part of and what systems it contains. When I look out my window toward Mount Mansfield, I see the peak as part of the Green Mountain ridge that runs north-south through Vermont. Or I could see it as part of the cell phone grid sending signals from its high point to link up with other signals. Or I see it as a
major ski area within the Vermont winter recreation system. If I drive up the winding toll road, I could see each altitudinal bioregion, climb' ing from the oak'beech'maple forest into the balsam hrs and pines, and on up to the stunted, gnarled trees and moss gardens of the rocky peak. Pick a single moss garden, and get down on your hands and knees—worlds within worlds appear. Tiny pools connected by minia- ture waterfalls, insects hiding in the shadows, a small stone with its own world of lichens. The world becomes quite magical—how can there be so much going on ? This experience is at the root of much re' ligious experience, the sense of awe and wonder invoked by the sheer complexity of it all. Words fail; a sense of the mystical takes over. This practice is what my husband calls “Big Fun,” delighting in the deep view of the universe. Of course, the same practice yields heartrending insight when applied to systems of war, injustice, or poverty. I can also look out my window to Mount Mansfield and see the Green Mourn tain Air Guard flying over in tight formation as part of a defense sys' tern that is part of a national government that must procure oil, no matter what the environmental cost.
Two more aspects of systems behavior relate to how a system main' tains itself and how it responds to changing conditions. These behav' iors are fundamental to all organisms—finely tuned selfmaintenance and adaptability as needed in order to survive. Without welkdevef oped behaviors that maintain stability, the system unravels. Our most fundamental physiology as human beings is regulated to sustain regular breathing, steady heart rates, and balanced chemical flows. Forests, too, are stabilized by internal processes of soil chemistry and decompose tion. Unfortunately, there is no such a thing as “the balance of nature,” a fuzzy phrase that mostly reflects wishful thinking. But there are highly evolved feedback mechanisms within any given system that provide constant information about how the system is doing. You know this from your own experience. Feeling a little chilly on a cool autumn night ? Put on a sweater. Getting too hot from the Indian curry ? Have
some cooling yogurt. Dampening (or negative) feedback generally communicates the message Had enough? Then have a little less. We, and all other living beings, are constantly and actively adjusting our behaviors and internal chemistry to maintain as close to optimal state as possible.
But our usual behaviors aren’t always appropriate if conditions change. (And conditions are always changing.) To see what works in a new circumstance, we try something and wait for feedback. If the message is Good, that works, do more, then we keep going with the new behavior, which seems to be more effective in the new circum- stance. This is the basic mechanism in learning; teachers and par- ents who know how to give amplifying (or positive) feedback are very effective in reinforcing the behaviors and skills they see as valu- able. Ecosystems too are constantly adapting to changing conditions and responding to amplifying feedback in various forms. A meandering river channel will push farther into the bank along the inside of a curve at peak flow. If it is a season of heavy rain, the forceful currents will change the shape of the channel to meet the raging river. Positive feedback that enhances the flows in the system can be good, as in a boom year for pollinators. But amplifying feedback in runaway mode means a system is out of control and no longer able to meet the changing conditions—waterlogged soil turns to landslide, brush fire becomes holocaust. We can also see runaway feedback in addictions, when more alcohol, more sugar, or more war is no longer effective and the system destabilizes into chaos.
One way to understand feedback relations in a system is through disturbance. Northern forests are regularly disturbed hv avalanches and ice storms that cause physical havoc, and insect invasions that cause biological distress. If a system can recover quickly from the disturbance, we say it is “resilient.” We see how quickly young trees grow back in the gaps left by the storm. We see how insect predators multiply to feed on the invaders. You can observe this in your own family system. What happens when a small crisis passes through ? Which members of the family weather it well and who takes a long
time to recover? For those who are more sensitive, is there a way to build their resilience (confidence, immune system, inner strength)?
Yet another lens for understanding systems is through examining the role of borders and centers. What gets in, what goes out? And through what gates, by what messages ? Who lives at the center, who prefers the edges ? If the gates or borders change, through clear-cutting, for example, how does it change the forest as a compatible home for its usual inhabitants ? All defense systems, biological and otherwise, are about defending borders and centers. You can observe your own defense systems—your tone of voice when irritated, or the way you respond to catching cold. You can also think about how you defend yourself from painful information about the environment and how you manage media flows coming in through your mental gates. Observing systems at whatever level available to you is very instructive. What you learn about one system will not necessarily apply directly to another system, but the learning process itself builds capacity for understanding other systems.
Once we understand the systems around us, we can better understand how to influence those systems and create positive change. Many people in the world have taken the initiative to help restore forest ecosystems and mitigate global warming through planting trees. Last year alone, members of the Arbor Day Foundation planted over eight million trees, engaging citizens in many towns and regions in the re-greening of the landscape. Where forests have been decimated by harvest operations, tree-planting establishes vegetative cover that in turn protects soil from washing away. Where skyscrapers and asphalt have turned cities into urban heat islands, tree-planting adds cool shade, which reduces the heat buildup in summer. By being active agents in Indra’s Net, we can invest in ecosystem restoration, reversing the runaway degrading feedback and helping the system recover positive growth and stability. At the same time, our actions generate a personal sense of well-being, reinforced by positive feedback.
SYSTEMS VIEW OF SELF
What if we apply all that I’ve been saying to our views of the self ? How are we to understand the self from a systems point of view? Very quickly we see that “self ” is not what we have been told. We don’t really operate independently with free will governing our actions, not if we are a part of multiple systems. Each of us reflects the day’s weather and the mood in our household. We act from the legacy of our parents’ values and the deeply familiar psychological habits of our families of origin. We speak from our knowledge of woods and streams or oceans and beaches. We offer an opinion as a member of a company or agency. Looking closely at our situation, it becomes obvious: we don’t exist apart from these systems. Understanding this powerful and basic truth is critical to the green practice path.
As a practicing Buddhist, I am particularly interested in this question of self And as an environmentalist, I want to know what motivates people to take action. This takes us back to “call and response.” We hear the calls of environmental celebration or distress because we are always receiving information through the systems we are part of If the call is reinforced (with amplifying feedback) then it carries more weight, and we are willing to invest our time in responding. If we perceive ourselves as part of a larger system acting through us, then we put less weight on our own needs and perspectives, taking more of a whole earth perspective.
One of the first systems thinkers to catch the attention of environmentalists was biologist Gregory Bateson. In his book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, he used the activity of woodcutting to illustrate this systems view of self 4 As the woodcutter for our household in California, chopping wood was one of my favorite chores. I loved the swing of the ax in my hand, the smell of the freshly split wood, the beautiful chips piling up around the stump. Stacking wood is an aesthetic delight for me, requiring care at every placement to keep the
weight and balance just right in the stack. Bateson described the ac- tions of chopping wood as being located not just in the person but in the “total self corrective unit” that is continually receiving feed' back from the ax, the chopping block, the wood, the eyes and brain, the muscles at work in the chopping. That’s what I love about chop- ping wood. By training my mind on the whole information loop- wood to eye to arm to ax—I actually perceive the flow of feedback, I see myself as part of a circuit of energy. I see the wood correcting me, I see the ax teaching me how to use its weight, I see my breath chopping the wood through the ax.
Bateson’s work went unnoticed by most psychologists in the 1970s, but his understanding of systems feedback informed later develop- ments in the held. In their book titled A General Theory of Love, Thomas Tewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon described what they called “limbic regulation.’ The limbic brain, situated above the brain stem and beneath the neocortex, is the center of emotional response to the external world. Limbic signals influence physiological functions that keep us ready to deal with what comes our way. Limbic regulation is a mutual simultaneous exchange of body signals that unfolds between people who are deeply involved with each other, especially parents and children. The authors suggest that you may be most stable as a social human if you have well-developed synchronization with nearby loved ones. Their work implies that people can’t be completely stable outside a social system because they are too deprived of feedback. Self-sufficiency is a myth. They recommend finding people “who regulate you well” and then staying near them.
This neurological research provided insights about more than emotion and love. The studies showed that learning itself depends on limbic regulation. Monkeys raised in isolation develop different brain chemistry from monkeys raised in a social environment and are prone to despair and anxiety. Children raised with love (which translates as high limbic engagement) develop more stable memory capacity than those who are abused. Memory is the activity of making
neural links that together add up to recognition. Held securely in the stable limbic signaling oflove, children are more able to build up link- ing bits of information in the brain and retain important patterns of information. The letters of the alphabet “stick.” A child puts together color, shape, and smell to mentally see the object described by the word “flower.” The limbic feedback in the family system provides stability that then supports the feedback of learning. If his or her pri- mary relations are emotionally troubled, a young child’s neural cherrr istry is less stable, which then affects the capacity to learn.
We could take this work a step further from a systems perspec- tive, and imagine that a child also learns through some sort of limbic regulation with nature. If we take the Chinese worldview of flowing ch i, the systems circuitry Bateson described is also happening between people, plants, and animals. Our “self ” is then a flowing stream of information and communication with all those we live with. Deep ecologist Bill Devall calls this the “ecological self ” or the “true self ” Mitch Tomashow writes of our “ecological identity,” the way we recognize this flowing stream in our individual experience. Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of “interbeing,” the self that coexists and co-arises with all other life. 5
In order to counter the terrible mountain of despair and helplessness we may feel in facing environmental abuse, it is important to remember that each of us is a participating agent in these energetic loops; we can help shape the loops through action and feedback. Agency is everything in a world with so many challenges. Even as the feedback is shaping us, we are shaping the feedback and the shape of the systems we are part of We are learning and adapting, and we are influencing others to follow our model through limbic resonance. When we model environmental responsibility, we are not just being virtuous; we are creating a limbic opportunity to influence others. Understanding the world in this way, we can use positive feedback with intention to care more effectively for the systems we are part of
PERCEIVING DEEP TIME
So far I have said very litde about time or perceiving systems as manifestations of events in time. Our experience of time is so tied to our own human life spans that it can be difficult to comprehend other scales of time. In the twenty-first century, time only seems to be accelerating. Slow or long views of unfolding situations can seem out of grasp in our harried world. To see systems as they change across time requires a conscious effort to step back from the present-moment viewpoint.
One of my environmental heroes, Rachel Carson, had a masterful sense of time. Though most people know her primarily for her monumental 1962 work, Silent Spring her understanding of time is represented soulfully in her earlier sea books. She was at heart a marine biologist, happy to spend hours and hours walking along Atlantic coast beaches or poking around in Maine tide pools. Though she did not use these terms, she was clearly a systems thinker with a deep view. Her sea writing is infused with a felt sense of time operating at all scales, from the ephemeral to the geologic. She had the remarkable ability to suspend identification with her own life span and enter fully into the experience of time as manifested in tide-pool anemones or the movement of glaciers. Her close observation of the monthly and yearly tide rhythms kept her in contact with the cosmic movements of the sun, moon, and earth. She felt her studies of the constantly changing shoreline kept her own life in proper perspective.
For the differences I sense in this particular instant of time that is mine are but the differences of a moment, determined by our place in the stream of time and in the long rhythms of the sea. Once this rocky coast beneath me was a plain of sand; then the sea rose and found a new shore line. And again in some shadowy future the surf will have ground these rocks to sand and will have returned the coast to its earlier state.” 6
A deep time view may come more naturally to those who watch butterflies or explore the shapes of rivers and mountains over time. Geologists and evolutionary biologists have much to offer us in this regard. They look for clues that tell something about the nature of systems operating in other eras and climates. They describe patterns in rock formation or erosion that may account for evidence of earlier such events. They are able to see present time intermingled with past time and imagine also future time—how an eroding mountain will eventually crumble to the sea over thousands of years. Perceiv- ing time this way is a cultivated skill. It takes patience and repeated practice in seeing across time, helped along by those more experienced and gifted in this way of seeing.
The Dominican cofounder of Genesis Farm, Sister Miriam MacGillis, has developed a deep time exercise to give people a sense of cosmic and evolutionary time. It is similar to the experience of walking a labyrinth pattern, in and back, finding your way through the maze one step at a time. For this “cosmic walk” the path is set up in a spiral, with points along the way to mark key events in the creation of the universe. Each point is marked by a burning candle and a small card. As people walk the spiral, they pause at each candle to read the next event in the story, beginning with the first flaring forth of the Big Bang. The walk is held in silence to allow each person to find his or her own experience of what Father Thomas Berry calls “the universe story.” Yet everyone is walking together, all part of the story being told again in a new way. This ritual walk calls up the experience of systems over time, the larger temporal contexts we are part of As I walked this spiral with my students, each candle, each important moment of the universe story opened a glimpse of deep time. I could feel in my mind and body a sense of immensity, that these gifts of time—our sun, the planets and stars, our home earth— were the results of systems within systems operating across many timescales.
Embracing the Deep Vie w
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In the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Buddha speaks of “ten penetrations” as yet another deep view of time and existence. The cuh minating tenth aspect is: “All times penetrate one time. One time penetrates all times—past, present, and future. In one second, you can find the past, present, and future.” 7 What are we to make of this seemingly.mystical teaching? Thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei Dogen took this up in his essay on Time-Being. “Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.” 8 From a systems perspec- tive, this is deeply logical. The traces of systems activity reflect what has come before (the cumulative feedback), and the current systems as we see them are in this very moment shaping what will arrive in the future.
This deep view of time reinforces a sense of self as process more than thing, a sense that we are always arising, right alongside all other beings spontaneously becoming themselves as well. Within this dy- namic universe of existence, we are very much situated in systems of time and space. And it is within these specific systems we are able to act. As participating agents in political, economic, family, and environ- mental systems, we can make a difference. The evidence is all around us. Flow will we choose to act ?
PART TWO