How to Love this World Right Now
An 8-Week Online Course for Young Adults 18-35
with Shinei Monial, Soten Lynch, Adam Lobel, and Ayya Santacitta
Weekly on Wednesdays October 29th - Dec 17th, 2025
4pm-5:30pm PT / 7pm-8:30pm ET
About This Course
Created in partnership with the BESS 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 guest teachers, 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.
The course is offered by-donation in the spirit of generosity, or dāna. Find out more about the practice of dāna here
Our Teachers
Ayya Santacitta
Santacitta Bhikkhuni Theri was born in Austria and did her graduate studies in Cultural Anthropology, focusing on dance, theatre and ritual. She also worked in avant-garde dance theatre as a performer and costume designer. In 1988 she met Ajahn Buddhadasa in southern Thailand, who sparked her interest in Buddhist monastic life. She trained as a nun in England and Asia from 1993 until 2009, primarily in the lineage of Ajahn Chah and has received teachings in the Shechen lineage of Tibetan Buddhism since 2002. Santacitta Bhikkhuni co-founded Aloka Vihara in 2009 and received Bhikkhuni Ordination in 2011. She is committed to Gaia as a living being and resides as senior weaver at Aloka Earth Room, currently located in San Rafael, CA.
Soten Lynch & Shinei Monial
Soten Lynch started practicing meditation on his own in 2006. He attended his first Zen sesshin in 2008 and entered residential, monastic Zen training shortly thereafter. He ordained with Chozen and Hogen Bays in 2013, and remained in training and residency at Great Vow Zen Monastery until 2020. He is a preceptor and dharma holder in the White Plum lineage.
Shinei Monial started practicing Zen meditation intensively when she met her first teacher, Satya Vayu, in 2007. She lived as a renunciant with him for five years, devoting herself to zazen and taking up a lifestyle of radical simplicity. In 2012 she entered residential training at Great Vow Zen Monastery, where she lived until 2020. She was ordained at the monastery by Chozen and Hogen Bays in 2015 and is a preceptor and dharma holder in the White Plum lineage.
Soten and Shinei met at Great Vow and discovered their shared love for the outdoors and simple living. The two began leading Zen meditation retreats together in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest in 2016. In 2020, they married and embarked on a 3,000 mile pilgrimage, walking from northern Mexico to Panama before spending a year as assistant teachers at Sangha Jewel Zen Center in Corvallis, OR.
Their teaching focus has been on facilitating Zen meditation in nature settings. They have lead many week-long Zen retreats in the Cascades Wilderness, as well as extended immersions along the Pacific Crest Trail, in rural Oregon and Mexico, and in the Peruvian Amazon.
Soten and Shinei are currently founding an earth-intimate residential Zen center in the Pacific Northwest and are in the midst of another pilgrimage from Mexico to the new Bells Mountain Dharma Center in Washington state. Soten is running the 1500 miles on foot with Shinei, newborn baby, and dog alongside.
Adam Lobel
Adam Lobel, PhD, MDiv, is a scholar-practitioner, ecopsychologist, and Buddhist teacher working at the thresholds of ecology, contemplative practice, and socio-political transformation. His ongoing appreciation for these realms come together in the Four Fields, a contemplative practice for ecological and cultural renewal. His research and teaching focus on Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism, contemporary theory, and environmental philosophy. A professor of Ecopsychology, he is also a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, a GreenFaith fellow, and active in movements for ecological justice. Adam is the founder of 4F Regeneration to support those serving the Earth. His work weaves together Tibetan Buddhism, philosophy, Ecodharma, and activism—ranging from rituals at fracking sites to riverside meditation retreats. Adam holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Harvard, where he explored the Dzogchen tradition. A father of two, he lives with his family among rust-belt landscapes and mossy forests, helping to practice regenerative futures. www.releasement.org
The course is offered by-donation in the spirit of generosity, or dāna. Find out more about the practice of dāna here
