Joanna Macy - author, Buddhist, environmental activist, and scholar of general systems theory and deep ecology - died one month ago in Berkeley at the age of 96. Macy created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change that brought a new way of seeing the world as a wider global community. Her many books include Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power; World as Lover, World as Self; Widening Circles, A Memoir; Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects; and many more. Joanna was a deeply influential figure to the community at Bioneers.org , a nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet, founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their online obituary refers to her as the "First Lady of Deep Relational Ecology"
Macy first encountered Buddhism while working with Tibetan refugees in northern India. Her spiritual practice was drawn from the Theravada tradition of Nyanaponika Thera and Rev. Sivali of Sri Lanka, Munindraji of West Bengal, and Dhiravamsa of Thailand.
Her pioneering interest in Deep Ecology takes a holistic view of the world humans live in and seeks to apply to life the understanding that the separate parts of the ecosystem (including humans) function as a whole.
We include a link here to her meditative talk 'Climate Crisis as a Spiritual Path', taken from her 2021 interview produced by Old Dog Documentaries. It helps answer an essential question: How are we going to live our lives fully, with inner peace and courage (and even joy) as we confront a world that is destroying itself? We hope you find it illuminating.
