Earth Holder Sangha 

We invite all young practitioners from age 15 – 39 to join us at our monthly “Wake Up Earth Holder Sangha” sessions. It is initiated and organized by siblings from Wake Up, the Earth Holder Community, ad Plum Village Monastery in France. We meet on the first Sunday of the month, 17h-18.30h Paris time (CET) on Zoom.

Next meeting: Sunday 5 May 2024.

Start time in different time zones:
* 11 am New York time (EST)
* 8 am Los Angeles time (PST)
* 4 pm UK time
* 5 pm Paris time (CET)
* 8.30pm India time (IST)

Meeting ID: 917 8184 029
Passcode:  clouds
Zoom link: https://bit.ly/earthholderzoom

Join the Wake Up Earth Holder mailing list to stay up to date about our gatherings. For further information, please write to earthholder [at] wkup.org. You can also stay connected through our sangha forum on Basecamp.

All young people from 15 – 39ish are welcome to join!

Our intention: We offer a space for Wake Uppers and friends who have the aspiration to help protect Mother Earth to come together once a month and share about this very important topic.

“We have to take up the practice of Earth Holder Bodhisattva and make protecting and preserving the Earth a top priority… We cannot say that we are too busy to take up this work… We must work to increase awareness of the situation because only mindfulness, awareness of what is happening, can save us from the path of certain disaster we are currently on.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Many of us feel anxious, alone or overwhelmed when we look at the scope of environmental destruction and the state of our planet. We have a deep aspiration to protect the earth and help all beings, but sometimes we might experience a lack of hope, energy, or seeing a way forward. Thay has taught us that “The way out is in”. So we want to practice together to take care of ourselves, and to learn how to connect more deeply with the earth and the wonders of life inside and around us. One focus of our sessions will be to support and nourish each other by cultivating joy, peace and siblinghood. In that way we can strengthen our inner resilience, so that we can better face the challenges ahead and have more energy, inspiration and confidence to take concrete actions.

Meeting structure:

1. We start with a short guided meditation and a few songs (10 min), followed by a
2. Short inspirational input: watching a short excerpt of one of Thay’s Dharma talks (about 10 min) and possibly another short clip by an activist or scientist (5 min) about climate justice, or reading a short text. Then we will practice
3. Dharma sharing in small groups (70-90 minutes), and end with 
4. A song or dance with the whole group.

About the origin of the name “Earth Holder”:

Our teacher Thay has translated the name of the Bodhisattva Dharanimdhara as “Bodhisattva Protector of the Earth” or “Earth Holder”:

“The Lotus Sutra mentions the name of a special bodhisattva—Dharanimdhara, or Earth Holder—as someone who preserves and protects the Earth. Earth Holder is the energy that is holding us together as an organism. She is a kind of engineer or architect whose task is to create space for us to live in, to build bridges for us to cross from one side to the other, to construct roads so that we can go to the  people we love.” 

Thich Nhat Hanh