Eco Dharma
Awakening to our Interconnection with the Earth
At a time of profound ecological and social disruption, Eco Dharma practices offer our community ways to listen to the wisdom of the earth and stay present with our grief and uncertainty while cultivating compassion, equanimity, responsibility and connection.
What is Eco Dharma?
Eco Dharma combines the teachings of the Buddha (Dharma) with modern ecological awareness, inviting us to experience ourselves as inseparable from the living Earth. This view flows directly from the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination, the understanding that nothing exists independently, but arises in relationship with everything else.
Eco Dharma practices help us to experience ourselves as inseparable from the living Earth. In this view, meditation, ethics, and awakening are not removed from the world’s suffering, but arise within the web of relationships that sustain life. Ways of directly knowing we are one with nature have long been part of many wisdom traditions around the world. Those traditions remind us that human wellbeing depends on living in right relationship with land, water, air, fire and all living beings including the humans in our earth community.
How Mountain Stream’s Eco Dharma Program Manifested
In 2025, Mountain Stream launched its Eco Dharma Program through a collaborative vision inspired by Guiding Teacher Adam Stonebraker. With the generous support of the BESS Family Foundation, we are intentionally growing this program and the impact it has on our community through expanded programming, deeper community involvement and service, and the formation of an Eco-Dharma Council to help shape the path ahead.
Ongoing Eco Dharma Programs
Eco Dharma Council Meetings: We meet once a month to connect, practice together, and design programs and service projects.
Temple and Garden Care: Once a month the community gathers to clean the temple and tend the garden, with the intention of expanding Mountain Stream’s outdoor space into a more welcoming place for practice and connection with the earth.
Community gatherings and rituals on Earth Day, the Solstices, and Equinoxes.
The Work that Reconnects: 5 Week Course with Constance Washburn in the spring and fall.
Exploration of the Elements daylong in honor of Earth Day with Adam in April
Eco Dharma Week with Ayya Santacitta & Constance Washburn, in June
Embodied Sutta Study and Art Practice Workshops with Lakshmi Prasad and Ameera Godwin, in spring and summer
Khenpo Karma Tenkyong: Teaches twice a year: spring and fall
Programs and Projects in the works:
Supporting land service projects in our community
Creating walking trails, sitting spots, covered gathering spaces, gardens for children and adults on the Mountain Stream land.
Work with schools to bring mindfulness, nature connection and land stewardship into the curriculum.
Bringing in a variety of teachers and guides to explore awakening through awareness and practice in nature.
Nature based collective art and collaborative crafts
Council of All Beings (Work That Reconnects Ritual)
Mindfulness, meditation and ritual practices in nature
If you would like to join our Eco Dharma Council, please reach out to Lauren at Lauren@mtstream.org
The Eco Dharma Program at Mountain Stream has been influenced by many great Buddhist masters and modern teachers such as Joanna Macy.
The Mountain Stream Sangha is greatly influenced by the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajan Chah who, like the Buddha, took refuge in the forest and listened to the wisdom of nature.
“Like the Buddha, we too should look around us and be observant, because everything in the world is ready to teach us. With even a little intuitive wisdom we will be able to see clearly through the ways of the world. We will come to understand that everything in the world is a teacher. Trees and vines, for example, can all reveal the true nature of reality. With wisdom there is no need to question anyone, no need to study. We can learn from Nature enough to be enlightened, because everything follows the way of Truth. It does not diverge from Truth.” - Ajahn Chah
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh coined the phrase interbeing to express our interconnection with all of life. To acknowledge our interdependence with the web of life we drop our ego and find ways to live in harmony.
"When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing." "You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you... In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer." - Thich Nhat Hanh