Writings

Here you can find various articles by Bhante Sujato. These are reflections on different aspects of facing up to the climate crisis as it unfolds. Posts with the title “Harbingers” form a loosely-themed series by Bhante Sujato, which includes analytic articles as well as personal reflections and short stories.

the union of the two towers—how to build a government out of ai

Bhante Sujato 25 November 2024 How the tech oligarchs will realize their dream of replacing government with machines.

machines make everything worse

Bhante Sujato 14 November 2024 A poem about machines and how they make everything worse. This came to me in Poland.

into the woods—AI is not therapy

Bhante Sujato 13 November 2024 Therapy is a human endavor, its successes measured in unique moments. Turning to machines for therapy opens the road for a mental health crisis.

Risky Business—secular materialism is the philosophy of the apocalypse

Bhante Sujato 7 November 2024 We thought we had mastered matter, and ended up its slaves.

is this our doom?

Bhante Sujato 29 October 2022 Let us follow it through. What happens when things get bad?

The Harbingers

Bhante Sujato 17 April 2022 A cli-fi novel of despair and enlightenment for the reasonably hopeless.

the bookkeeper and the bees

Bhante Sujato 16 March 2022 A little story that may afford some passing amusement.

For the changemakers

Bhante Sujato 6 July 2021 This is one for all those who want a better world, and wonder why it seems so hard.

Puddytat

Bhante Sujato 4 February 2021 Since the internet has devolved into essentially a delivery device for cute cat memes, I thought I’d add my own spin on the genre. Except it’s a tiger!

Harbingers—I’d rather be a Doomer than a Boomer

Bhante Sujato 22 September 2020 Young people, we are told, are increasingly falling into the fallacy of climate “doomerism”, a disaster supposedly as bad as denialism that threatens their mental health and undermines action. But a lack of supporting evidence raises the possibility that anti-doomerism is just a moralizing stance. Might rejecting the mainstream environmental advice that “we must have hope” be, rather, a prerequisite for moral realism? Empowerment is a modern invention that depends on the brittle assumption that we do, in fact, have power. Acceptance may prove a more resilient basis for a new morality.

Fairy castles

Bhante Sujato 11 September 2020 A fable by Bhante Sujato on living in a world of alternate realities.

Things as they are

Bhante Sujato 22 February 2020 A Buddhist monk’s view of the climate emergency

Harbingers—It’s Nice to Have a Choice

Bhante Sujato 15 January 2020 The climate crisis is slow-moving and dispersed. It seems abstract, as if action can always be delayed another day. But its impacts can be sudden and specific. Those who survive do so in a diminished world. It is hard enough to lose those who we love; it is harder still to have our capacity to do anything about it taken from us, bit by bit.

Harbingers—The Far Side of the Sky

Bhante Sujato 8 December 2019 I have always been suspicious of hierarchical moralities that, through a process of seemingly careful and fair-minded reasoning, somehow place the reasoner at the very pinnacle. Buddhists are as susceptible to this as anyone else. We are not what we pretend to be, nor are we who we think we are. But when all things come to an end, perhaps we shall reveal who we were all along.

Harbingers—The Marsh’s Edge

Bhante Sujato 18 July 2019 Even after all things are lost, it is in the small moments that redemption may be found.

Harbingers—The Other Chris

Bhante Sujato 17 July 2019 A man survives the end of the world alone, only to finally meet a friend. It is a short story about how views shape the world.

The serpent Gurrangatch and the hunter Mirragan

Bhante Sujato 28 June 2019 This essay was presented by Bhante Sujato at a plenary session of the Sakyadhita 2019 conference in Leura, NSW. Global warming is an unprecedented threat to the survival of our civilization and culture, indeed our very lives. The aboriginal myth of Gurrangatch and Mirragan tells of a time when the land of the Blue Mountains was shaped in the struggle for life, a struggle marked by both passion and restraint. While the future has never been more uncertain, our wisdom traditions offer us ways of talking about and responding to change as conscious individuals able to reflect on and choose our own responses.

Harbingers—A Fireside Chat

Bhante Sujato 20 June 2019 This short story was inspired by the resilience and wisdom I saw in women of a certain generation. “Sharon” is a prototypical Aussie woman’s name; “Leslie” is one of the strongest women I know; and “Katy” is named after a leading character in a story by Joanna Russ, the first line of which somehow stuck with me for four decades.

Harbingers—The Right Thing to Do

Bhante Sujato 4 June 2019 Hope is an inadequate virtue for the times in which we live. The real question we must ask ourselves is this—regardless of how things turn out, what kind of person do we want to be?

Harbingers—How to read about the end of the world

Bhante Sujato 8 May 2019 Media accounts of the climate crisis aim to present a balanced perspective—the crisis is urgent, but we still have hope. When examined closely, however, the crisis is described in terms of facts, while the hopes are described in terms of wishes and fantasies.

Harbingers—Gods & Monsters

Bhante Sujato 28 February 2019 A very short story about a very big story—how the world ended, and how we, who ended the world, will be seen by our children.

Harbingers—as the oceans heat up

Bhante Sujato 21 January 2019 While we dally and debate, the world is heating at an incredible rate. Most of the heat is absorbed by the oceans where we cannot directly feel it, but that does not make it any less dangerous.