Coming Home to Mother Earth

Maíra Fernandes de Melo, Engaged Serenity
of the Heart (pronouns she/her), is a Brazilian
journalist, scholar, poet, activist, and Order of Interbeing aspirant. Born in the lands of Tupinambás, Rio de Janeiro, surrounded by the waters
of the Atlantic Ocean and the mountains of the
Atlantic Forest, she has also lived in Argentina,
land of Guaraníes, where the dense stream of
the Paraná River embraced her body. She has
Indigenous (Potiguara and Puri) and European
(Portuguese and Spanish) human ancestors, and
is a daughter of Oxóssi, Orisha of the forests in
Brazilian Candomblé.
taking care of those gardens in the depths of
our minds.
Since we are talking about justice, the
Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Maat, is also sometimes depicted holding a scale that weighs
human hearts against feathers on Doomsday.
Earth holding for me means working with fierce
compassion through the path of lightheartedness. When we practice interbeing with the
awareness that “man is not our enemy,”1 we
naturally build trust. With trust, destroying the
Earth won’t be necessary anymore. The endless circle of taking will stop spinning!
1Thích Nhất Hạnh, “Recommendation,” Plum Village.
Accessed July 11. https://plumvillage.org/articles/
recommendation/
Chaya Ocampo Go, True Radiant Cloud (pronouns she/her), ordained as a member of the
Order of Interbeing at Blue Cliff Monastery in
2019. She is a Filipina scholar and activist committed to well-being and survival in marginalized
communities across the Philippines. Her doctoral research features three short films on women
leading grassroots disaster response efforts: Barangay Magiting (Village Heroes) (2019).

Mick McEvoy shares how we can
heal the suffering of ourselves and
our planet with the reconnecting
practices of immersive deep
ecology retreats in Plum Village,
Upper Hamlet.
We are living through incredible times.
Collectively, our planet’s human and
more-than-human family is in the midst of
a climate and ecological emergency. As a
human family, we are also in the midst of
a social emergency. As a species, we have
become disconnected from the natural
world. We have forgotten how to live with
our “original instructions,” in harmony
with the Earth and all those we share her
with. This triple emergency is the root
of deep suffering for many. In the fire of
this crucible, we created our biannual
Coming Home to Mother Earth Retreat
in Plum Village, Upper Hamlet, France.
This in-person retreat focuses on the
teachings and practices of mindfulness,
deep ecology, nature connection, and
rewilding.
On these two-week-long, immersive,
and experiential Coming Home to Mother
Earth retreats, our guests and our teaching team collectively dive deeply into
these themes, supported by the Upper
Hamlet community and the Happy Farm
family. Whilst we acknowledge there is
ill-being and suffering, we also acknowledge that there is a path to well-being
and healing; this path has been set out by
the Buddha and continued by Thầy. As a
Coming Home to
Mother Earth
Ocean

group, we take refuge in nature. During
our service meditations, we explore and
experience the regenerative cultures and
practices of the Happy Farm, spending
time outside on the twenty hectares of
Plum Village land that we are rewilding.
Together through practices, workshops,
and service meditations, we bear witness
to the teachings offered by this wild land,
which run parallel to the teachings of
Thầy and the Buddha and lead to healing,
transformation, and regeneration.
As the aspiration to create and curate
these retreats grew stronger, an insight
ripened within me. I like to share this insight with our guests as we gather each
morning before stepping out onto the
wild lands: every human who experienced
healing and transformation over the
forty-one years of Plum Village’s history
has been held and supported in that experience by our silent partner, the Earth.
In Plum Village we can practice walking
meditation outdoors each day. The climate is so kind that we can sit outdoors in
a circle and practice Dharma Sharing for
practically the entire year. In Plum Village
we can practice like the Buddha’s Sangha,
outdoors in the natural world, surrounded by the forest. With every retreat group,
I take a moment to pause, to stop, and
to acknowledge how this land, the land
of Plum Village with the Earth under our
feet and the blue sky above our heads,
has acted as an agent of healing, transformation, and regeneration for hundreds of
thousands of humans over four decades.
Thầy knew. He took the Sangha out into
nature. He led us outside from the meditation hall to practice walking meditation
in the oak forests. He knew that the Earth
heals us.
I always like to offer a land acknowledgement. “These are the unceded lands
of the Wild Boar and Red Squirrel, the Kestrel, Black Winged Kite and Marsh Harrier,
Happy Farmers

the Viper and Grass Snake, the Southern Swallowtail Butterfly and the Blue Carpenter Bee. We
pay respect to them and all their kin—our kin. Of
the four-legged, of those who crawl, those who
fly, those who swim, and those who dwell in the
soil, of our human and spiritual ancestors who
lived on these lands: we ask permission to dwell
together here.”
Our immersive workshops explore the confluence of rewilding and the Dharma. The titles
of these workshops include: Interbeing, Emptiness, and Nonself; Impermanence and Letting
Go; Practicing the Full Awareness of Breathing/
Ānāpānasati Sutta in Nature; and Bearing Witness, Going Forth, and Nonfear.
I receive huge nourishment from the wild
when I share the workshop called The Diamond
Sutra in the Natural World. The Diamond Sutra
is the earliest recorded teaching on deep ecology. I particularly enjoy sharing this teaching because I see that it has the potential to transmit a
type of superpower to those who receive it. The
Diamond Sutra exists to help uproot the notion
that we are separate, isolated, and disconnected in our lives and in this world. It offers clarity—
we are in fact empty of a separate self. With the
rationality of science, the Diamond Sutra illuminates the reality that we are this Earth that carries us, that our bodies are made up of elements
from all corners of the cosmos. We are deeply
connected with all life on this planet and the entire cosmos. How can we ever be lonely again?
… every human who
experienced healing and
transformation over the
forty-one years of Plum
Village’s history has been
held and supported in
that experience by our
silent partner, the Earth.

The Diamond Sutra empowers us to uproot
four notions to help us see our own true (wild)
nature and the true nature of reality. These are
the notion of “self,” the notion of “human being,” the notion of “living being,” and the notion
of “life span.” For myself as the facilitator, I delight in the infinite ways that the wild illustrates
the folly of these four notions. The notion of life
span tells us a story that we and all beings are
born and then we die. Death is the end. I lead
the group deep into the forest amongst majestic green oaks—beautiful, sculptural, dead
trees—and notice how the forest floor is covered by their fallen bodies. Are these trees dead
or alive? This dead wood is full of life. Home to
countless beings. It is full of beetles recycling
the wood. They are food for woodpeckers and
countless other birds. Mycelia of fungi penetrate these branches deeply. They are covered
in lichens and moss. This dead wood is critical
to the health of our woodland ecosystem. This
dead wood is full of life. No birth, no death. Only
continuation.
The notion of living beings assumes there
are non-living beings. In the forest, I pause. I
reach down and pick up a limestone rock, the
kind of rock that makes up many of the Plum
Village buildings that offer us shelter. Why is the
calcium in this limestone a non-living being, yet
the calcium in my teeth (the only part of my skeleton I can touch) a part of my living self? I am
a living being, yet this rock of limestone is not?
On and on we go together through the forest, a
perfect place to explore and uproot our limiting
notions.
The Diamond Sutra is the
earliest recorded teaching
on deep ecology. We are
deeply connected with all
life on this planet and the
entire cosmos. How can we
ever be lonely again?