Tuesday

Touching the Sea, for a change

Elias and Sven at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, California

New York City Shambhalian Angela Alston, Outreach Coordinator for A Sea Change, a new documentary on ocean acidification, the hitherto-unseen underbelly of climate change. She writes, “The film is gloomy, cheerful, whimsical, and inspiring” and invites readers to a free premiere in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 14, in Washington, D.C. For details, click here.

We asked Angela to give us a few words about her social engagement work from a Shambhala perspective. We thought you would appreciate what she had to share….

“I’ve never been part of the organized left, which is often too rigid and aggressive and just plain not fun. I’d like to put all the buddhists and other folks on a spiritual path in a bag with all the progressive/lefty folks, shake well, and bake to a turn. Then maybe we’d see enlightened society.

As a student of Shambhala Buddhism who spent six years working for progressive media, I was constantly challenged by the disconnect between my personal practice, the Shambhala community, and the activist community.

At the time – this was 2001 to 2007 – the Shambhala situtation felt like home to me, but concern about the environment seemed oddly absent, at least in New York City.  And having spent considerable time in the outdoors, hiking and gardening, especially in arid areas, environmental issues like the growing water shortage were second nature.

Though I felt a deep respect for Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s emphasis on starting clean up on your own manure pile, the stink from beyond was pretty hard to ignore. Meanwhile at work, a daily, live, progressive TV show, the approach was constantly that of putting out fires, metaphorically speaking. No time for dignity or courtesy because we’re saving the world: that was often the unspoken message. Again, the environment was strangely absent from the coverage.

Now, in 2009, I find myself in the remarkable place of finding my practice, environmental awareness, and livelihood coming together. My work for the past year has been doing outreach for A Sea Change, a documentary just about to premiere (March 14th in Washington, D.C.).

The film embodies belief in basic goodness, though it’s about what is arguably the most urgent and potentially devastating aspect of climate change, ocean acidification. The basic premise of the film is that, if we inform ourselves, listen, contemplate, and then take action, we can change the world, presented in the form of a letter written by a grandfather to his grandson, and emphasizes lineage in the way that we do.

The film’s mood ranges from gloomy to whimsical to inspiring; it actually brought tears to my eyes the last time I saw it (for perhaps the fifteenth time). Working on it is one of the greatest gifts a Shambhala warrior film lover and maker could have.

Readers may also be interested in this World Ocean Day initiative.

You can watch the trailer and learn more about A Sea Change at http://www.aseachange.net/

Or watch this [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/c_urb-mr_-8" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]