Joanna-Macy on deep ecology

Quote: Joanna Macy; "All the world’s systems are interconnected; nothing exists in isolation."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“All the world’s systems are interconnected; nothing exists in isolation.”
– Joanna Macy

Source: World as Lover, World as Self (1991)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "Despair and gratitude can coexist; embracing both expands our capacity to act."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Despair and gratitude can coexist; embracing both expands our capacity to act.”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Journey On in Peace (Crossing the Boundary)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people..."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people…”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy (with Chris Johnstone)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation..."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation…”
– Joanna Macy

Source: On Being with our World (One Earth Sangha)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity..."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity…”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Greening of the Self (2013)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "The work that reconnects helps us transform despair into constructive action."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“The work that reconnects helps us transform despair into constructive action.”
– Joanna Macy

Source: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy (with Chris Johnstone)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness..."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness…”
– Joanna Macy

Source: World as Lover, World as Self (1991)

Quote: Joanna Macy; "When you look at what is happening to our world and it is hard to look at whats happening..."

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“When you look at what is happening to our world-and it is hard to look at what’s happening to our water, our air, our trees, our fellow species-it becomes clear that unless you have some roots in a spiritual practice that holds life sacred and encourages joyful communion with all your fellow beings, facing the enormous challenges ahead becomes nearly impossible.” – Joanna Macy

source World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent times (ed. Parallax Press, 2007) - ISBN: 9781888375718

In Memoriam: Joanna Macy (1929-2025)

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of philosopher, mentor, teacher, activist and visionary, Joanna Macy. Joanna died peacefully at her home in Berkeley on July 19, 2025, at age 96, surrounded by family and friends. Her passing marks the end of a life devoted to weaving together Buddhist wisdom, systems thinking, and ecological awareness.

Joanna’s work synthesized principles of Buddhism, systems theory and deep ecology philosophy, creating frameworks that helped countless people transform despair about planetary crisis into engaged action. Her doctoral thesis, “Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory,” linked codependent arising with systems thinking, offering intellectual grounding for what would become her signature teaching methodology.

Profile: Joanna Macy

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Joanna Macy (1929-2025) was a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Born in Los Angeles, she earned her PhD and spent five decades developing the Work That Reconnects, a group methodology for addressing ecological grief and cultivating engagement.

Macy studied at Wellesley College and conducted doctoral research on systems theory and Buddhist philosophy. Her academic work explored connections between Buddhist concepts of dependent co-arising and contemporary systems thinking. In the late 1970s, she began developing what she initially called “Despair and Empowerment Work,” proposing that people needed structured ways to acknowledge grief about ecological and social conditions.

Quote: Joanna Macy; "All life is interdependent; we cannot survive without the web of relationships that sustain us."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“All life is interdependent; we cannot survive without the web of relationships that sustain us.”

– Joanna Macy

Source: Coming Back to Life, 1998

Quote: Joanna Macy; "Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an active engagement."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an active engagement.”

– Joanna Macy

Source: Active Hope, 2007

Quote: Joanna Macy; "of all the dangers we face..."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.” - Joanna Macy

—

Quote: Joanna Macy; "The more we open our hearts to the pain of the world, the more we are able to act effectively."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“The more we open our hearts to the pain of the world, the more we are able to act effectively.”

– Joanna Macy

Source: The Work That Reconnects, 1998

Quote: Joanna Macy; "We dont have to surrender our individuality to be part of a collective movement."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“We don’t have to surrender our individuality to be part of a collective movement.”

– Joanna Macy

Source: Active Hope, 2007

Quote: Joanna Macy; "When we face our fears, we discover hidden strengths we never knew we had."

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“When we face our fears, we discover hidden strengths we never knew we had.”

– Joanna Macy

Source: The Work That Reconnects, 1998

For the healing of ourselves and the world, we need to be able to stay open

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“For the healing of ourselves and the world, we need to be able to stay open, to be present to our world and other beings, and all that it is going through. This is a great necessity, a great secret and a great freedom for us.” – Joanna Macy

Book: “World As Lover, World as Self”, by Joanna Macy

Sat, 21 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“An enduring classic of the environmental movement, Joanna Macy’s poetic, groundbreaking call to action is poised to inspire a new generation“

https://www.parallax.org/product/world-as-lover-world-as-self-a-guide-to-living-fully-in-turbulent-times/#product-content

Parallax press has released a 30th anniversary edition of Joanna Macy’s important book, outlining her approach to practices for engaging with the global ecological situation.

It’s official: humanity is in crisis. Facing the magnitude of our global situation as individuals leaves us feeling powerless and despairing. When we need wisdom and solace, there is no better than Joanna Macy, one of the grandmothers of modern environmentalism, whose life’s work has been to hear and heal our pain for the planet. World as Lover, World as Self draws on a lifetime of deep awareness that re-focuses us on the natural world, where readers can find the spiritual nourishment to envision a future built on a sustainable relationship with the earth. Rooted in the Buddha’s teachings of paticca samuppada or “interdependent co-arising,” Macy’s reflections were radically relevant for activists who wanted to address the underlying mindset of fear, greed, and selfishness that give rise to overconsumption and the ultimate destruction of our world. Drawing comparisons to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, this definitive 30th Anniversary edition gives a new generation of readers the real reasons we cry out, and the depth to make a difference.

The Development of the Deep Ecology Process

Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Our Philosophy page describes Arne Naess’s call for “therapies which heal our relations with the widest community, that of all living beings”, and notes that the processes answering that call were developed largely by his coauthors on Thinking Like a Mountain. What follows traces that development more closely: how a workshop first conceived in response to the nuclear threat became, over four decades and in two hemispheres, the body of practice now generally offered as the Work That Reconnects.

Practice: Breathing Through

Mon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Joanna Macy offers the following practice as part of the preparatory work for the “Honouring our Pain for the world” component of The Work That Reconnects. See also her own 2005 training video of this practice, and our guided audio recording of the same.

Basic to most spiritual traditions is the recognition that we are not separate, isolated entities, but integral and organic parts of the vast web of life. We can open to the pain of the world in confidence that it can neither shatter nor isolate us, for we are not objects that can break. We are resilient patterns within a vaster web of knowing.

Book: “Active Hope: how to face the mess we’re in without going crazy” by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The challenges we face can be difficult to even think about. Climate change, pandemic uncertainty, extreme inequality, economic upheaval, and mass extinction together create a planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. Active Hope shows us how to strengthen our capacity to face this crisis so that we can respond with unexpected resilience and creative power. Drawing on decades of teaching an empowerment approach know as the Work that Reconnects, the authors guide us through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality, and holistic science. This process equips us with tools to face the mess we’re in and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society.

Despair and Empowerment: Joanna Macy's Foundational Work

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Everything ported into the “Honouring Our Pain for the World” section of this site — the Truth Mandala, the Mourning — has one direct ancestor: Joanna Macy’s Despair and Empowerment workshops, developed in the early 1980s in response to the psychological toll of living under nuclear threat. This is the historical foundation, with sources.

The book

Joanna Macy, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983) — free to read at the Internet Archive. Forty-seven exercises for working through despair, isolation and powerlessness in the face of nuclear war, environmental destruction, and social injustice, developed from Macy’s own workshops of the same name.
A later, freely available essay covering similar ground: Joanna Macy, “Working Through Environmental Despair”.

The psychological grounding

Macy’s central insight drew on psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s research on “psychic numbing” — the emotional shutdown Lifton documented in survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Macy recognised the same numbing in people living under the threat of nuclear war: a widespread, anticipatory retreat from unbearable knowledge. Rather than responding with more facts and statistics, she built group exercises that gave fear, grief and anger a structured, safe space to be spoken aloud — the direct template for what later became the Truth Mandala and the Mourning.

Three Stories of Our Time

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Rather than offering its own analysis of causes and solutions for the crises of our time, the Work That Reconnects invites us to take a fresh look at what we see happening around us. The model of “Three Stories of Our Time” helps us do this. Each of these stories reveals a profoundly different lens through which people understand the world we all live in. Taken as a whole, they help us make sense of what we see and experience, and choose how we want to live our own lives and engage in the work of change.

Corbett Process - Strengthening Our Intentions

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

From Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy & Molly Brown (2nd ed., 2014, Chapter 10). Full instructions and further resources at the Work That Reconnects Network — the primary home for Joanna’s work online. “Corbett” is a place name — a town in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon, where the practice was first workshopped — not a person. Please acknowledge the source when you use this practice.

The Work That Reconnects recognizes the intrinsic organizing power of intention. This practice amplifies a personal intention by testing it against several perspectives at once — roughly 45–60 minutes.

Gratitude as a Revolutionary Act (training video)

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Gratitude as a Revolutionary Act (Joanna Macy, 2006) is a training video made as a companion to Coming Back to Life, for facilitators — both those new to this work and those more experienced — wanting to ground a group in gratitude before moving into the harder stages of the spiral. See also the accompanying teaching points drawn from the same chapter.

Watch it via the Work That Reconnects Network — the primary home for Joanna’s work online (may require free registration).

Coming from Gratitude: Teaching Points

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Paraphrased summary of Chapter 6 of Coming Back to Life (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown, 2nd ed., 2014). Full teaching points at the Work That Reconnects Network — the primary home for Joanna’s work online. See also the companion training video.

The spiral of the Work That Reconnects begins with gratitude, not because the world’s condition doesn’t warrant grief and anger — those come next — but because gratitude is what grounds everything that follows.

Breathing With Trees

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Breathing With Trees asks a simple thing: sit or stand with a plant, and breathe deliberately, attending to the literal exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide passing between you. In a workshop flow, this process can function as a linking and grounding piece between an Honouring Pain for the World process (such as the Truth mandala or Cairn of Mourning) and “seeing with New Eyes. It can also be a regular personal practice - connecting :seeing with new eyes” to basic breath awareness practices

Book: Thinking Like a Mountain-HTML version

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This post holds an HTML version of the text of the book “Thinking Like A Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings”. Published in 1988, this seminal text by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Arne Naess and Pat Fleming outlines their collective vision for a “Council of All Beings” group process. These workshops, aimed at healing humanities’ illusion of separation from the natural world, were a response to the multifaceted challenges which face us to day in the form of intersecting ecological and social crises. Later developments gave rise to what are now referred to as “Deep Ecology” Workshops, and the “Work that Reconnects”.

The Shambhala Warriors — A Prophecy

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

From World as Lover, World as Self (Joanna Macy, Parallax Press, 1991). For more of Joanna’s own telling and context, see the Work That Reconnects Network’s page on this prophecy — the primary home for her work online, and the first place to look for anything of hers referenced on this site.

I often tell this story in workshops, for it describes the work we aim to do and the training we engage in. It is from a prophecy that arose in Tibetan Buddhism over twelve centuries ago. I learned of it from my Tibetan friends in India when, in 1980, I heard many of them speaking of this ancient prophecy as coming true in our time. The signs it foretold, they said, are recognisable now, in our generation. Since this prophecy speaks of a time of great danger — of apocalypse — I was, as you can imagine, very interested to find out about it.

The Council of All Beings

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

By Joanna Macy, Ph.D. Written for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Full source page: rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/Joanna Macy.htm.

The Council of All Beings is a communal ritual in which participants step aside from their human identity and speak on behalf of another life-form. A simple structure for spontaneous expression, it aims to heighten awareness of our interdependence in the living body of Earth, and to strengthen our commitment to defend it. The ritual serves to help us acknowledge and give voice to the suffering of our world. It also serves, in equal measure, to help us experience the beauty and power of our interconnectedness with all life.

Breathing Through (training video)

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is Joanna Macy’s own version of tonglen, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of breathing in suffering and breathing out ease. In her written instructions for it, she describes the exercise as “adapted from an ancient Buddhist meditation for developing compassion.” Here she teaches it directly, in a training recorded in 2005.

See also Macy’s written instructions for this practice, and our own guided recording of it.

The Truth Mandala

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Joanna Macy’s Truth Mandala, reproduced from Coming Back to Life (Macy & Brown, 1998). The dominant “Honouring Our Pain for the World” practice in current use — see also The Cairn of Mourning and The Role of Hope in the Truth Mandala as companion pieces, and the Work That Reconnects Network’s own introduction to this stage of the spiral for the wider context. Full source page: rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/truthm.htm.

Purpose & Background

This ritual exercise provides a simple, respectful, whole-group structure for owning and honoring our pain for the world, and for recognizing its authority and the solidarity it can bring. The practice emerged in 1992 amidst a large, tension-filled workshop in Frankfurt, on the day of reunification between East and West Germany; since then it has spread to many lands. To many participants it has been the most significant experience in a workshop, if not in their lives.

John Seed's Introductions to the Council of All Beings Workshop (full transcripts)

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Transcribed by Chris Lehman from the Council of All Beings workshop at Northern Pines Lodge, Maine, USA, 24–25 October 1992, and reproduced here as the numbered sequence in which John gives them over the course of a workshop (I–VI), to be read in conjunction with the full workshop manual. Reproduced with permission as part of John Seed’s shared process materials — the first section is the fuller companion to the excerpt already published in Despair and Empowerment: Joanna Macy’s Foundational Work and to John’s own essay referencing the same Hopi encounter. Sections II–VI are reproduced with only obvious transcription typos corrected; John’s live, spoken register — asides, digressions, the parenthetical notes he added afterward — is otherwise left as he gave it.

The Cairn of Mourning

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A facilitation note by John Seed, drawing directly on Joanna Macy’s Despair and Empowerment work. These days the Truth Mandala, is usually used, but the Carin of Mourning can be a useful replacement in a shorter process, or in contexts where the intensity of the Truth Mandala may be difficult to present safely or deeply. See also hope’s place in that process. Full manual context: Mourning section of the complete Council of All Beings Workshop Manual.

Book: Thinking Like a Mountain - PDF

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Below you will find an embedded PDF version of the seminal book by John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess which gave rise to the “Council of All Beings” group work, later referred to as “Deep Ecology” workshops.

Embedded PDF:

Gaia Meditations

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Excerpt from the book “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings”

for the full text visit: Book: “Thinking like a Mountain “html version

by: John Seed and Joanna Macy

What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of water, earth, air and fire, that’s what I am, that’s what you are.

WATER — blood, lymph, mucus, sweat, tears, inner oceans tugged by the moon, tides within and tides without. Streaming fluids floating our cells, washing and nourishing through endless riverways of gut and vein and capillary. Moisture pouring in and through and out of you, of me, in the vast poem of the hydrological cycle. You are that. I am that.