Dear Earth, we are not alone.

This weekend eighteen Buddhists from different traditions came together in your name, dear Earth. We are all members of Extinction Rebellion and we wanted to feel less alone.

At the start of the first day I led an exercise where we all stand in a circle facing each other. Someone calls out a category they themselves belong to – ‘who’s got a dog?’ or ‘who’s vegan?’. Everyone who belongs to that category steps forwards into the middle, and we look at each other in recognition.

We called out many categories – who likes cycling, who’s not heterosexual, who has a sibling who’s died – and mostly we were not alone. This not-being-met happened just twice – only one of us liked engines, and I can’t remember the second one. Of course if the circle was bigger they wouldn’t have been alone.

It made everyone happy. It’s good to remember the things we have in common – we spend so long focusing on our differences. When I feel nervous when about to speak in front of an audience, it helps me to remember that we all eat and produce waste and sleep and cry. We are all made of the same messy stuff. We all want to be loved.

We are not alone, darling Earth. Whatever we feel, someone somewhere will get it. We have each other, we have you, and we have your marvellous abundant flora and fauna.

Who has a heart that pumps? Who yearns? Who breathes?

Love, Satya <3