For decades, the scientific community has warned of a global environmental emergency with increasingly compelling evidence. The collapse of ecosystems, the depletion of natural resources, and climate change represent an unprecedented threat to humanity.

The current socio-economic model forces us to choose between maintaining our current lifestyle or making significant changes to ensure a habitable planet for future generations.

Buddhism can offer an integrative vision to address these crises by working on the three fundamental pillars that support the current paradigm.

1. The three contemporary crises

Scientific studies show that we have exceeded certain limits and, if we do not change course, our civilization, humanity, and the biosphere will have to face serious consequences in this decade and the following ones.

This global crisis covers three areas: the climate, the biosphere, and the resources needed to sustain our society, especially energy. Let us briefly explore each of these.

a. Climate crisis

Unprecedented changes (in at least a million years) in the evolution of the physical and chemical variables of the atmosphere and the ocean are what give rise to Climate Change. These changes are largely caused by the increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) —such as CO2, and methane…—, a product of the burning of fossil fuels.

This increase has had disastrous consequences for life on Earth including changes in precipitation patterns, more frequent extreme events, rising sea levels, loss of Arctic ice, rising average temperatures, and desertification.

According to the IPCC (the United Nations panel that compiles all scientific evidence on Climate Change), it is necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in the coming decades to avoid worsening the current situation, which is already extremely delicate.

b. Ecological crisis

The ecological crisis has another impact on our way of life. It is generating significant changes in the planet’s ecosystems at all scales, both spatial and temporal.

Entire populations of pollinating insects are being lost, soil fertility is declining, aquifers are shrinking, the presence of invasive species is increasing, ocean biochemistry is changing and global food production is falling. All of this poses a serious risk to food security.

In addition, the presence of pollutants of all kinds such as plastics, heavy metals, and pesticides continues to increase.

c. Energy and resources crisis

Access to large volumes of energy is essential for the functioning of the current socio-economic system. This has been made possible by the massive use of fossil fuels. However, production of these fuels has stagnated, and their exploitation is unsustainable due to the emissions they generate and their impact on climate change.

The current problem is the need to switch to renewable energy sources that have different and limited characteristics and material requirements. This reduces the ability to increase energy production in the future and may lead to resource shortages in a situation where they will be increasingly needed due to the two previous crises.

2. The three pillars that cause them

To understand how we have reached this situation and what individual and social factors have contributed to maintaining the existing inertia, we propose a scheme in which the individual is at the base of the thought system.

In this system—illustrated in Figure 1—the individual is considered part of society, but separate from it, and both are part of an ecosystem modulated by a changing environment, but society, as a collective, is also assumed to be separate from the latter two. In this sense, the scheme—erroneously—does not recognize either the importance of the conceptualization of the individual (how he sees himself and the system) as a pillar of this construction or the separation of each of these layers.

And what sustains this (mistaken) segmented vision of the system of the individual, society, ecosystem, and environment? Three pillars: individualism, materialism, and progress.

Below we explain why these three pillars are fundamental to our identity and our society, and why, at the same time, they are conceptually and emotionally incongruent, inevitably leading us to emotional states of distress.

a. Individualism

It is based on differentiation and egocentrism. It promotes competition as a driving force for change and justifies rivalry between individuals, groups, countries, and species.

b. Materialism

It focuses on the physical world and only links emotional satisfaction with material satisfaction, generating a reactive mechanism that directly associates consumption and happiness.

c. Progress

It is related to well-being, and it is expected to always bring improvements. This generates dissatisfaction in the present and decreases tolerance to frustration when reality does not meet the expectations imagined in the past.

From a Buddhist perspective, these three pillars are based on the three elements that make the wheel of existence or samsara turn (figure 2).

At the central axis of this wheel, we find three animals: the pig, the rooster (or bird), and the snake, which represent the three poisons or emotional states of affliction —ignorance, desire, and aversion respectively— about the three pillars :

▪ The pig represents ignorance or confusion and refers to the pillar of individualism because, as beings, we depend on other beings and the environment in horizontal relationships, not in a situation of domination of the individual over the rest.

▪ represents desire, attachment, or craving and corresponds to the pillar of materialism. Our attachment to possessions and a certain lifestyle causes us stress and insecurity.

▪ The snake symbolizes rejection or aversion and is related to the pillar of faith in progress. It implies a conception of reality focused on the expectation of indefinite improvement that, when not fulfilled, generates frustration and aversion to the present moment, leading to anger.

3. Reflections and strategies to face the three crises

The Buddhist response to the triad of individualism-materialism-progress is clear: if ignorance (individualism) is overcome, the other two (materialism and progress) collapse.

In this sense, a proposal for an alternative system would be to understand the individual as part of a whole made up of different layers, with the boundaries that separate each of them being permeable and diffuse. This helps us to position ourselves outside of what we assumed in the previous vision, where the individual was the reason for all the other parts (figure 1).

If we take this new model we see ourselves as a backbone, but without the excessive individual self-centeredness and superiority that the current vision instills in us. An alternative scheme is therefore proposed in Figure 3.

However, it is difficult to directly address confusion (ignorance/ego/individualism), so an indirect strategy is needed that undermines all three pillars together. This method must work simultaneously on the rational and emotional parts, applying antidotes or alternatives to the prevailing individualistic view.

a. Interdependence and the range of altruism

To dismantle individualism, it is necessary to adopt a conceptual notion of interdependence that recognizes that an individual is nothing without his or her connections to other beings and environmental factors.

In other words, the individual is largely defined by his or her relationships and actions. The emotional work to overcome individualism begins with empathy, which can lead to loving-kindness, compassion, and bodhicitta. Each of these elements represents a gateway that promotes connection and collaboration between individuals (for more information, see Lesson 6, Equanimity, from Ven. Khenpo Rinchen Gyaltsen’s Letting Go course ).

b. Collection and functionality

To combat materialism, one must understand that the world is not just made up of objects, but of functional relationships between objects and beings. This reduces the reactivity of egocentrism and dilutes identification with the concept that “material well-being is happiness.”

Emotionally, presence and recollection are practiced, which help to create distance and perspective on the materialistic vision and provide meaning to the interdependence developed in the previous pillar.

c. Impermanence and renunciation

Faith in progress is overcome by the concept that everything changes. And this change does not go in the direction we want but involves causes and conditions.

The recognition of change (and its immediate consequence on us, which is to accept loss, criticism, pain, anonymity, and their opposites as natural and passing facts) leads us to accept the impermanence of things and life. With this realization, we complement the interdependent functionality of the other two pillars. The illusory duality of attachment-aversion collapses under the reality of existence itself.

The practical and emotional level is cultivated by contemplating that everything alive will die and meditating on constant change. This develops renunciation, which gives us the necessary distance from this demand that reality conforms to our expectations, and helps us to adapt to change with minimal harm.

These three strategies allow us to face a future marked by the three current crises.

4. Do you dare to act?

The article proposes that the three contemporary crises – climate, ecological, and energy/resource – are based on the conceptual and practical separation of ourselves from other people, society in general, and nature and that this is due to three basic pillars: individualism, materialism, and faith in progress.

These crises require a change of social paradigm that must be supported by a new vision of the world. To dismantle the dominant vision, it is necessary to cultivate the counterparts inspired by the Dharma since change is born from an internal transformation: on a conceptual level, it leads us to accept interdependence, functionality, and impermanence; and on an emotional level, it leads us to renunciation, presence and the range of altruism that culminates in bodhicitta.