"Seventeen of us, aged from 20s to 60s, gathered for an afternoon run by the Centre's Manchester Engaged Buddhist Kula.
First the Kula members talked about how they practise the precepts and the challenges they face doing this. In particular, Simon Bradley gave the example of imagining that his carbon footprint was quite small because he lives in a residential community. On checking his footprint with the World Wildlife Fund's Carbon Footprint Caluculator he found that he'd need 1.5 worlds to sustain his lifestyle, even though he cycles everywhere and gets a weekly organic fruit and vegetable box.
The only thing that would make a realdifference to his footprint, he found, was to switch from gas central heating to a woodburning stove, and he wondered how realistic such a switch would ever be for people on low incomes.
But he said it wasn't therefore hopeless and pointless - we make change together, encouraging and supporting each other. So then we split into small groups two explore two questions:
- How do we practise ethics? and
- How could we be more radical?
And then we wrote our resolutions on paper leaves and stuck them to our BAM tree in the Buddhist Centre reception. I found it a great support to me in being explicit about my commitment. I undertook to try to borrow instead of buying.
I was really inspired to see the team work among the Engaged Buddhist Kula. I was so inspired by the afternoon generally, I decided to do more for BAM! Since our next event is a Medmob, I went home and on Facebook I posted a video Clear Vision made of a 2011 Manchester Medmob, to encourage people to "take action just by sitting there".
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