World as Lover, World as Self Quotes

“Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready.

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call "participation mystique," we were as one with our world as a child in the mother's womb.

Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began -- the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.

Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“Be generous with your strengths and skills. They are not your private property, and they grow from being shared.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“Just as lovers seek union, we are apt, when we fall in love with our world, to fall into oneness with it as well. We begin to see the world as belonging to us as intimately as our own bodies. Hunger for this union springs from a deep knowing, which mystics of all traditions give voice to.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“To see all life as holy rescues us from loneliness and the sense of futility that comes with isolation. The sacred becomes part of every encounter when you open to it and let it receive your full attention. I don’t have to go to Chartres Cathedral to be in the presence of the Divine. It is right here. This understanding is essential for facing collapse and living in this time. This means that our sorrow is sacred, too. Within us, all is grief for what is happening to our world—the despoiling of earth, the extinction of our brother and sister species, the massive suffering of our fellow humans, the terrible injustice of dominated and colonized peoples. But when we feel isolated, we stifle that sorrow and rage in order to fit in better and to avoid aggravating the loneliness. Experiencing the sacred as immanent helps people to befriend their pain for the world and not fear that it will isolate them. Moral distress is not only honored in all spiritual traditions, it also serves as wholesome feedback, necessary for our survival. To recognize this brings us back to life: It’s okay for me to be here. It’s okay for me to weep for the horrors that have befallen people of color and all those oppressed and brutalized. It’s okay for me to weep for generations who aren’t even born yet. That’s because I belong. That’s because I am part of the sacred living body of Earth.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“time. This means that our sorrow is sacred, too. Within us, all is grief for what is happening to our world—the despoiling of earth, the extinction of our brother and sister species, the massive suffering of our fellow humans, the terrible injustice of dominated and colonized peoples. But when we feel isolated, we stifle that sorrow and rage in order to fit in better and to avoid aggravating the loneliness. Experiencing the sacred as immanent helps people to befriend their pain for the world and not fear that it will isolate them. Moral distress is not only honored in all spiritual traditions, it also serves as wholesome feedback, necessary for our survival. To recognize this brings us back to life: It’s okay for me to be here. It’s okay for me to weep for the horrors that have befallen people of color and all those oppressed and brutalized. It’s okay for me to weep for generations who aren’t even born yet. That’s because I belong. That’s because I am part of the sacred living body of Earth.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

“Yet, even focusing on this present life, disciples often queried the Buddha as to who is responsible for the habits, sufferings, and pleasures we experience. In reply, he refused to say that they are caused by a past actor with whom we have no more connection. One cannot categorically separate the “I” who experiences the result from the “I” who set it in motion; for they are not discontinuous. Yet neither are they the same. One cannot say that “one and the same person both acts and experiences the result,” for the person is different, altered. There is a continuity, but it is not the continuity of an agent as a distinct and enduring being. The continuity resides in the acts themselves that condition consciousness and feelings in dependent co-arising. It inheres in the reflexive dynamics of action, shaping that which brought it forth.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Planetary Renewal