Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat best known as the architect of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, has turned to a new strategy for protecting the world’s climate: spreading the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Buddhist monk and peace activist who died in 2022.
Driven by pain and grief over climate change, Figueres began organizing – with her team at the organization Global Optimism – retreats for those engaged in climate and biodiversity work. The first retreat took place in June 2022 in partnership with Plum Village, an international Buddhist practice center and monastery located in the rural southwest of France, founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh and Chân Không in 1982. The next year, Global Optimism and Plum Village began organizing regional retreats across the globe.
“I discovered the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh 10 years ago, and they have been so helpful to me to keep my agency, keep my spirits up, especially when I’m feeling low,” Figueres told me in a recent interview. “I thought they can be helpful to other people, so these retreats are an offering to put a positive net under all the work we do.”
I met Figueres in the summer of 2024 at Plum Village. I’d been invited to spend four days at the monastery via a short but intriguing email that promised a “global climate and nature community gathering” that would enable participants “to expand their understanding of global ethics for systems change.” How could I say no?
On the morning of Day One of the retreat, the meditation hall was neatly lined with rows of 150 or so cushion-seated participants, intently listening and copying down the whiteboard in their notebooks. A monastic named Brother Spirit offered an introduction to the four noble truths of Buddhism, which deal with suffering and the path toward ending it.
“We cannot escape the suffering, but we can lessen it,” Brother Spirit said, drawing a diagram on the board.
Later, Figueres explained how she applies Buddhist teachings to her work to protect the climate.
“I have been dealing with the pain and grief of what we see disappearing in front of our eyes, and the pain and grief of so many, to put it mildly, highly frustrating meetings that don’t get to where we need to arrive,” she said. “This frustration, pain, or grief can lead to de-motivation on the part of those who in this fight for the common good.”
Figueres said the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh have helped her take a broader view of her life’s purpose.
“For many decades, I’ve felt that it was my responsibility, together with my hundreds and thousands of colleagues, to address and change the trajectory of climate and biodiversity in order to bequeath a much safer planet to future generations,” she said. “When you have that self-imposed responsibility on your shoulders, it makes the work very, very hard because there are so many things we don’t control.”
But she has found strength in the Buddhist concept of the ultimate reality: “the mega reality where humans are just a tiny spot in a much bigger, constantly evolving reality.”
“To understand that there is a historic reality where we do our everyday work, and then an ultimate reality in which there are other forces at work and we don’t have an influence, was very helpful to me,” she said. “I can live and work in order to be the best person and have the best impact, but ultimately I am not responsible for the outcome.”
In the retreat hall, Brother Spirit gave an overview of what can be described as Plum Village’s theory of change: If we wish to change systems, we must begin first with ourselves – because we are the systems. Climate change, after all, is anthropogenic. Capitalism, White supremacy, overconsumption: They exist only within us. That morning, I pondered to myself how it feels to be aware that I am climate change.
Figueres, too, has been considering the strong emotions that climate change can provoke.
“How do you transform the pain we all feel?” she asked. “Transform does not mean turn your back and push it under the carpet. But how do you actually use it very intentionally, and let me say, compost those feelings into what you want to do positively out there in the world?”
Thích Nhất Hạnh often used composting as a metaphor for transformation. He summarized the idea with a pithy aphorism: “No mud, no lotus,” referring to the idea that the lotus flower only roots and blooms in the mud. He taught that people spend much of their time in the mud, wading through complex, inescapable, emotional experiences.
In the meditation hall, Brother Spirit asked, “What do you think Earth wants from you?”
I jumped to my usual answers of purpose and profession. But then Brother Spirit challenged us: “Not as an instrument of doing, but as her child.”
I struggled at first to think of an answer. But then I thought of what I might want for my own child, and the answer presented itself as obvious: to be happy. To find love in all the Earth’s cities and creatures, sidewalk cracks, and clouds. To find this love in me.
And perhaps this is what Plum Village – and Figueres – wanted me to understand most: Earth is not something separate and outside of us. We are Earth and Earth is us. To lessen the suffering of myself is to lessen the suffering of Earth.
