Commitment to Environmental Practices

At BCBS, our commitment to the environment is deeply intertwined with our dedication to promoting mindful living. We believe that the principles of Buddhism naturally extend to caring for the Earth, and this is evident in our eco-dharma initiatives.

Our environmental efforts are comprehensive and multifaceted. We have integrated sustainability into every aspect of our operations, from energy use to waste management. Our campus features solar panels, energy-efficient buildings, and organic gardens. We prioritize reducing our carbon footprint and strive to create a harmonious relationship with nature.

BCBS also offers a range of programs focused on eco-dharma, teaching how Buddhist principles can guide us in addressing ecological challenges.

By embodying the values of wisdom and compassion, BCBS serves as a beacon for environmental stewardship in the Buddhist community and beyond. Our commitment to sustainability is not just a practice but a fundamental expression of our spiritual path.

Accomplishments

Installed Heat Pumps in Every Campus Building

Evaluated and Improved Building Insulation throughout the Campus

Switched to Energy Efficient Lightbulbs throughout the Campus

Switched to an Energy Efficient Cooling System for the Walk-In Fridge/Freezer

Installed Two Electric Vehible Charging Stations

Installed Solar Panels on the Dharma Hall to Offset Electricity Usage

Committed to Serving Organic and Local Farm Food When Possible

Established a Board Committee to Focus on Land Stewardship

GALA Initiative

Residential
programs

Global Awareness
Local Action

GALA is a BCBS initiative to inspire climate change activism grounded in Buddhist teachings and mindfulness. In this short video, BCBS Resident Scholar/Monk Bhikkhu Anālayo shares an overview of the GALA Initiative. Thanks to support from the BESS Family Foundation, BCBS will host GALA programs and events throughout 2025. Please check back often for the latest news and resources.

Mindfulness Between Early Buddhism and Climate Change

Bhikkhu Anālayo

In an era when climate change calls for a mindful and ethical response, Bhikkhu Anālayo’s new book Mindfulness Between Early Buddhism and Climate Change, published by BCBS, offers a profound and timely exploration of how the dharma can support contemporary efforts toward a sustainable future. This book is for those seeking to integrate their Buddhist path with the pressing ecological realities of our time.

Download Free Book PDF

GALA Online Program

In October and November 2025, Bhikkhu Anālayo, Rebecca Henderson, Rhonda Magee, and Jon-Kabat-Zinn will be teaching an online program exploring Global Awareness Local Action (GALA). 

Grounded in the idea that Buddhist ethics calls on us to act to mitigate and adapt to climate change, this GALA course, freely offered on a dāna basis, will share practices, conceptual frameworks, and workshops to support participants in mindful and skillful engagement in a world with a rapidly changing climate.

The course will be held every Saturday from October 4 to November 22, 2025. One teacher will offer an online session from 10:30 to 11:30 AM ET, and a second teacher will offer another online session from 1:30 to 2:30 PM ET.

The course website will include readings for each session, recordings of the teachings, and other resources to support a deeper engagement with meditation, Buddhism, environmental activism, and climate change.

Participants will be invited to join small groups based on geography and/or common interests to support each other in becoming more engaged in mindful climate activism.

Starting during the course and continuing through 2026, environmental organizations and others working for a more just and sustainable world will offer a number of workshops for participants. These workshops are intended to support us as individuals and/or in our small groups in embodying Buddhist ethics and mindfully responding to climate change.

 

The dāna offered for this GALA program will all go directly to BCBS’s solar project as we continue to transition to 100% renewable electricity.

The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies is deeply grateful to the BESS Family Foundation and our teachers for their generous support of this Global Awareness Local Action program.

Bhikkhu Anālayo, resident scholar-monk at BCBS, will teach on Saturday mornings in October. He will draw on the practices and teachings in Mindfully Facing Climate Change and his more recently published Mindfulness Between Early Buddhism and Climate Change. His teachings will focus on relating to the earth, the role of the mind, compassion, and impermanence.

Rhonda Magee, Professor Emeritus at the University of San Francisco Law School and a leading scholar and teacher at the intersection of mindfulness and social justice, will teach on Saturday afternoons in October. Rhonda will explore how mindfulness can help us expand our capacities for personal and collective engagement with a particular focus on working together for environmental justice.

Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard and a fellow of both the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will teach on Saturday mornings in November. Rebecca is a renowned scholar whose research focuses on how societies and economies can change to become more sustainable and just. Rebecca will teach about where we are now with regard to climate change, the resources we have to respond to the many dynamics of a changing climate, what is currently holding us back, what are the pathways and theories of change, and what we as individuals can do to contribute to a more life-sustaining world.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and one of the leaders in the movement to integrate mindfulness into medicine and approaches to well-being, will teach on Saturday afternoons in November. Jon will explore action-oriented mindfulness practices that can support an engaged response to climate change.

In the News

BCBS Joins
Conservation Easement

BCBS was recently part of an effort to put more than 800 acres of land in Barre under the protection of local conservation groups. This ensures the area will remain a quiet place for wildlife, outdoor recreation, and yogis for generations to come.
Learn More

BCBS Honored as
EcoDharma Beacon

BCBS was recently hailed as an “EcoDharma Beacon” by Buddhistdoor Global because of our work in minimizing our environmental impact, cultivating ecoDharma in North America, and collaborating with other environmental organizations.

Learn More

Upcoming Programs

  • May 9-13, 2025
  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

Living Ecodharma: Finding Fulfillment in Healing and Loving the Earth

This program will be a sacred gathering of wisdom keepers, teachers, and community leaders with a deep, embodied love for and active spiritual practice of caring for our planet. In this time of polycrisis, where overwhelm is everywhere around us and inside of us, we will give ourselves space to feel, return to our bodies, grieve, and also let in the joy and refreshment of the Earth and our true nature.

Thirty contemplatives will gather to explore and embody our love for our planet, practice in community, find rest, and offer our wisdom to one another. We will center practices that bring joy, pleasure, and fulfillment in our care for our world. 

Learn More
  • May 21-25, 2025
  • Larry Ward and Peggy Rowe-Ward

Widening the Heart: The Practice of Interbeing

Thich Nhat Hanh used the word “interbeing” to describe our interconnectedness. He said that we inter-are with one another and all of life. What will help us to remember and embody this truth?

In this program, we will explore practices that help us to experience our interconnectedness. Specifically, we will engage in the natural world with nature as our teacher and nature within. We will practice with our family, spiritual, and land ancestors. And we will explore our shared humanity through practices that help us to build a truly beloved community.

Teachers will be Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddha, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the natural world.

Learn More
  • July 8-13, 2025
  • Dawn Scott and Rupert Marques

Courageous Heart: Meeting the Spirit of our Times with Steadiness and Love

The vulnerability of living is a potential portal inviting us to respond to the turbulence of our times with compassion and clarity. In this program, we will call on the four establishments of mindfulness as a refuge and guide, helping us to metabolize the collective violence and ecological wounding that moves through our hearts, bodies, and beloved planet. Through guided meditations, periods of sitting and walking meditation, movement, communion with the more-than-human world, relational practices, and chanting, we will widen our capacity to heartfully respond to the beauty and difficulties, consciously calling forth the deep biological imperative for freedom.

Learn More

Resources

  • Bhikkhu Anālayo

Mindfully Facing Climate Change

In what ways can Buddhist practices, intellectual traditions, and communities support us in mindfully and skillfully working to mitigate and adapt to catastrophic climate change? Can Buddhist thought and practice help us in feeling deeply and acting prudently without being overwhelmed by fear, anger, blame, or guilt?

Bhikkhu Anālayo addresses these questions in this Mindfully Facing Climate Change lecture series.

Learn More
  • Multiple Authors

The Dharma of Plants

This issue of Insight Journal explores the Dharma of Plants, the wisdom we might gather from the plant world or through our relationship to individual plants.

It does so from a variety of perspectives, drawing on personal experience, modern scientific insights into the intelligence and social lives of plants, as well as classical Buddhist traditions.

Learn More

Past Programs

Recognizing the need for Buddhism to speak to the current causes and manifestations of suffering, many teachers at BCBS integrate contemporary social, political, and ecological issues into whatever Dharma topics their programs address.

Here is a sample of recent programs grounded in the orientation that environmental work is part of contemporary Buddhist practice:

  • Practicing the Dharma as Earth Activism
  • Tim Ream
  • Kirstin Edelglass, Dawn Scott, Rupert Marques, William Edelglass
  • Turning Toward the Climate Emergency Together
  • Nic Redfern
  • Bhikkhu Anālayo
  • Kaira Jewel, Konda Mason, Eden Tull
  • Buddhist Resources for Engaging the Climate Crisis
  • Chris Ives
  • Meditations on the Trail – Being Fully in Nature as Nature
  • Chris Ives
  • Spacious, Vibrant, and Responsive: A Dzogchen Ecology for the Anthropocene
  • Adam Lobel
  • Climate and Climate Justice for Dharma Teachers
  • Stephanie Kaza and William Edelglass
  • Buddhist Responses to a World in Crisis
  • David Loy
  • The New Bodhisattva Path: Buddhism in a Dangerous Time
  • David Loy
  • EcoDharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis
  • David Loy
  • Buddhism and the Ecological Challenge
  • David Loy
  • Engaging the Call for ReLOVEution: Dharma-Informed Activism for These Times
  • Thanissara
  • Belonging to the Earth: Wise Action Toward a Life-Sustaining Society
  • Jess Morey
  • Becoming a New Saint
  • Lama Rod Owens
  • Discover your EcoDharma: Provocations and Possibilities for Practitioners
  • Kristin Barker and Adam Lobel
  • A Wild Love for the World: Grief, Gratitude, and Belonging
  • Joanna Macy and Stephanie Kaza

Deepening Practice,
Building Community.

Deepening Practice,
Building Community.

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