September Sangha 2025

At the last Wisdom Teachings for the Polycrisis gathering, we delved into some of the most salient themes in Norma Wong’s When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse.

We talked about how many animals’ behavior gets odd when the climate and environment change dramatically, and how human animals are also likely feeling and responding to the unsettled energies of our home planet, whether we are aware of it or not.

We talked about this as a time of “collective acceleration,” when time seems to be speeding up - whether due to technological changes, or due to our heightened nervous system activation, which may possibly cause a faster perception of time.

We also talked about the “crisitunity” our current times present - my made-up word for Ji, “the crisis that opens the way for big leaps,” currently “the juncture between a devolving world and an emergent world.” This juncture opens a pathway for a “slipstream,” through which change can happen faster than we could expect or imagine.

Next time, we will delve into the juiciest theme of Roshi Wong’s work, how we imagine and visualize the “manifestations of the values, the ways, the spirit mechanisms of the world as we would have it be.” Because we can’t get what we want if we don’t know what it looks, sounds, and feels like, if we don’t know what we are trying to create and call forth.

I hope you may join us for this last session exploring When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse:
Monday, September 29, 5:30 - 6:45 pm at Energy Matters - click here to register.

Save the dates for Wisdom Teachings for the Polycrisis gatherings for the rest of this year:

October 27
November 24
December 22

And, here’s another resource for living in these times: Maggie Jackson on Being Uncertain as a Form of Wakefulness on Sounds True: Insights at the Edge.

In community,
Prajna