Sponsored by the BESS Family Foundation, How to Love This World Right Now is an eight-week live online course that invites us to examine our relationship to a changing Earth and World: Earth as the living planet we breathe and depend upon, and World as the horizon of meaning we inhabit.

This course will be led collaboratively by teachers of all three Buddhist vehicles: Ayya Santacitta, Adam Lobel, Shinei Monial and Soten Lynch, as well as a guest teacher, each of whom will be sharing their unique wisdom and perspective on existential questions we face in a time of ecological transformation: what does it look like to liberate ourselves from ways of being driven by control, convenience, consumption, and a desire for certainty? What would it look like to bring awareness to and live in recognition of our non-separability from the biosphere of Earth, to our fundamental co-existence with the Earth as a living, intelligent being? 

We’ll be drawing upon the wisdom of Buddhist and other non-Western traditions to help expand our frames and un-fix our narratives around not only what is happening, but how we can more fully turn toward it. 

We’ll explore how loving this world can go beyond wonder and affection and into increased capacity to be with, allowing us to mourn and hospice that which is transforming or dying, and uncover a sense of devotion that can open us to our next steps on the Path.

Program Format: The course will be structured in a way that weaves together discussion, teachings, guided meditations, and practice, with reflections for contemplations in-between sessions. 

Classes will be held over Zoom weekly on Wednesdays from October 29th-December 17th, 4pm-5:30pm PT / 7pm-8:30pm ET.