Convocation 2023 With David Loy
Convocation 2023 UU Buddhist Fellowship
Convocation is a biennial opportunity for UU Buddhists to sit together, compare notes on our sangha experiences, study and play together. We have been holding convocations since 2005. We have a resident teacher offering dharma talks and opportunitis for informal teaching all weekend:
Ecodharma: Buddhist Perspectives on the Ecological Crisis with David Loy
Dr. David Robert Loy is a professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Loy is one of the founding members of the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado. For our weekend together, Loy writes:
“Traditional Buddhist teachings help us wake up individually and realize our interdependence with others. To[1]day we need to wake up collectively in another way. We need to wake up to what is one of the greatest dan[1]gers that humanity has ever encountered. Buddhism can help us understand and respond appropriately to the climate emergency driven ecological crisis. Neither the Buddha nor Asian Buddhist traditions have faced the complex set of challenges of the twenty-first century. Yet Buddhism includes many teachings that are relevant to our situation.
There are profound parallels between our individual human struggles which Buddhism addressed and our ecological predicament today. The parallels suggest that the eco-crisis is as much a spiritual challenge as a technological and economic one. In both cases, at the root of the problem is our illusion of separation: that “I” am separate from others, and that we are separate from the natural world.
Perhaps the most important thing that Buddhism has to offer today is a new version of the bodhisattva — or ecosattva — path, which can respond to collective and institutionalized versions of greed, ill will and delusion (the three poisons). All this suggests, the ecological challenge is also a challenge to the ways we understand and practice Buddhism.”
Our Convocation will be held April 27-30, 2023 at The DeKoven Center, 600 Caron Butler Drive Racine, Wisconsin 53403.
Registration and Housing costs will be set and announced in the fall of 2022.