Breaking Bias is climate justice
My thoughts on Climate Week...and a heartfelt THANK YOU for making the release of Breaking Bias and my 40th year around the sun extra special.
Last Saturday, I gathered with more than 100 of you, my Beloved Community, to celebrate the launch of Breaking Bias and the last year of my 30s. I was filled with love and gratitude to be surrounded by my beloved community and to share our joy together.
As I shared during the event, I felt the urgency to write Breaking Bias after meeting Oprah and witnessing the horrors of January 6, 2021. Four years later, we are in another fractious election season, with wars overseas and widespread efforts to distract us from the truth of our interdependence. At this time, my sincere intention is that this book contributes to what many of us pray for daily—reconciliation, solutions, peace, understanding, and healing.
Breaking Bias can often feel like heavy, scary work, but this event reminded me that it can also be a source of beauty, connection, care—and fun! There was music, singing, laughter, meditation, and so, so much more. I’ll post pictures and a high-quality video in the coming days, but for now, you can watch it on Instagram here!
My heartfelt gratitude to:
Susan Davis for a powerful conversation on ‘why Breaking Bias, now,’ evolving human consciousness, undoing whiteness, our 15 million ancestors, and so much more.
My fiancé, Justin Senense and friend Dan for opening our hearts with song and helping us “Imagine” a world where belonging replaces bias.
Julie Fahnestock for MC-ing and offering a spacious structure for our time together.
John del Cuento and the Middle Church Choir for helping us feel the vibration of freedom in our hearts and bodies.
My beautiful blended family, Mahmud, Council, Josh, Juki Kim, the Littlefield staff, and all who helped with the event's production—it truly takes a village!
And all of you! Regardless of your physical presence, I felt your spirit and blessings.
Breaking Bias Is Climate Justice
This week is Climate Week, and advocates from around the world are gathered in NYC to build political consensus around the climate crisis. In Breaking Bias, I discuss biases that fuel our disconnection from the climate and the natural world: biophobia (objectification of the living world) and speciesism (objectification of nonhuman life). Here’s what I wrote:
In the moment before his enlightenment, the Buddha triumphed over Mara [the ego-self fueled by greed, hatred, and ignorance] through the radical act of touching the Earth. In this simple act, he embodied the wisdom of interbeing and vanquished [Mara]. This action declared to Mara, You are not real. What’s real is the Earth, right here, below me. It is from the Earth that my body has come and it is to the Earth that it will return.
In the words of poet W. S. Merwin, this simple act demonstrated to generations of wisdom-seekers that:
The Earth is what we’re talking about. Accepting the Earth, not owning the Earth, not possessing the Earth, but the Earth just as it is, abused and exploited and despised and rejected and plowed and mined and shat on and everything else, you know. It’s still the Earth, and it is, we owe everything to it.
In the last 500 years, particular members of our human family whom our indigenous relatives call their younger siblings have forgotten this truth…They’ve designed and forced all of humanity into a global political system that breeds hatred, competition, and separation; an economic system that requires at least 3 percent annual growth to avoid stagnation and recession; and a culture that severs our connection with our bodies, one another, more-than-humans, and the living Earth. Scholars point out that for our current global system to remain stable, it requires a doubling of the global economy every 23 years.
Where does such growth come from? Deforestation of rainforests, polluting the oceans and air, mining, fracking, extraction, and the destruction of living ecosystems and ancient human cultures. At this point in our history, we have crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries and are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. The doubling of our global economy every 23 years is a material impossibility.
We feel the impacts of this separation in the polycrisis of ecological collapse, wildfires, atmospheric rivers, tornadoes, hurricanes, pandemics, mass shootings, rising authoritarianism, meaningless wars, extreme inequality, mental health crises, and entrenched poverty and suffering among our human and nonhuman relatives. The roots of every single one of the crises are seeded in the minds of humans like you and me. Albert Einstein, one of the most famous humanists of the 20th century, is supposed to have said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
There is no better time than now to step up, grow up, and show up for ourselves, one another, and our Earth. Many elders remind us that we don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we merely borrow it from our children. At this time, we have no choice but to face the challenges of our times. To do so, we must make qualitative and quantitative changes in our souls and lives in the footsteps of all ancient and modern wisdom-keepers. For me, breaking bias is our starting point to create new realities toward a world where all beings belong, just as we are, in the fullness of our diversity.
Help Amplify Breaking Bias!
I hope you’ll help me amplify the book’s important message with four simple actions.
1) Order Breaking Bias and share a picture of yourself reading or listening to the book on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok, and tag me @anuguptany.
2) Leave a five-star Amazon review. It really helps with the algorithm so others can discover it.
3) Please introduce me to any journalists, TV/social influencers, or podcasters you know who’d be interested in talking to me about the book’s themes.
4) Share this email with five others at your workplace, family, faith community, or your children’s schools who’d be interested in reading/listening to the book.
You can also attend one of my upcoming virtual or in-person events in NYC, DC, Boston, and beyond. Please reach out to me or my team if you have any other ideas! I know that word-of-mouth will be central to spreading the message of this book.
Thank you again for your support and love. As we sang together at the end of the release party: May you be filled with lovingkindness. May you be well. May you be peaceful and at ease. May you be happy. And may we together build a world where belonging reigns!
Some housekeeping…
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