Creating a Karmic Cascade – the impact of Buddhafield Base

‘It is true that humanity is faced with many problems. It always has been but perhaps not always with such keen awareness of them as we have today. We might be more optimistic if we recognized that we do not have to solve all of these problems. Our essential task—a big enough one to be sure—is simply to keep open the options for the future or perhaps even to broaden them a bit by creating new variety and new niches.’ – Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial

In creating space for place, purpose and belonging, Buddhafield Base aims to resource people with powerful, self-created states that they can then take back to their local communities, families and personal moments creating a positive karmic cascade that will have an impact through the network of being. Once we know we’re connected, once we feel like we know what to do next, then the rest comes naturally.

We live in a time where there is an epidemic of busy-ness, a constant edge of overwhelm and a seemingly rational justification for enormous fear. And those states, along with many others from the same genre, seem inevitable. Somehow, we’ve learned to bear them and even take enjoyment in the adrenaline, the sense of achievement and glorification of impossible work ethics. When was the last time we all stopped to wonder if we are being effective? Has that question become frightening? What if we’re hardly having any impact despite all that effort? Maybe we’ve lost the sense that it’s even possible to turn away from the constant tides of trying without leaving ourselves vulnerable to accusations of apathy, naivety, or laziness. Deep down though, we know that these levels are not sustainable. If there’s no other option, then global burnout will become the full stop at the end of the prevailing narrative. 

What is possible? 

There are states that we can embody that remind us of the possibilities of other ways. These exist all around us and we can see them in the naturing* of which we are all a part. Buddhafield Base is a dream that we’re steering towards becoming a reality. Once there, we will seek to be more awake to the alternative ways of living that are present everywhere but pushed to the edges of our reality. 

Everything depends on everything else. This often seems like stating the obvious but consider the full implications of it when it comes to our ability to have impact. Our actions have consequences within that framework. Let that sink in as a non-judgemental and real concept. Also, we are at the mercy of the consequences of past actions  in a way we can’t control, so there’s room in there to offer ourselves and others compassion. 

We see the results of our actions play out in immediate and long-term ways. In the wider world there have been unexpected examples of natural cascades that were logical but unpredictable in advance. Wolves changing the course of rivers, beavers engineering landscapes or otters restoring kelp populations, for example. The complexity of our ability to affect the world is awe inspiring. Yet we are only scratching the surface when we limit our understanding to what we can grasp with the thinking mind. It’s unrealistic and exhausting to believe that we can steer the whole of our experience in specific ways. But we can create gentle tendencies of direction. How do these small currents become a river that carries us where our hearts want to go? Through faith, collective intention and creating the right conditions for positive growth. Tending the literal and figurative garden of our lives to ensure the most beautiful fruits appear. 

Where does Buddhafield Base come in? 

The aims of Buddhafield Base are to create a place people can visit to experience values that create space for abundance and joy. It can’t be perfect all the time but the more moments of insight that we experience, the more they join up, the closer we get to wholesale change. We create an upward spiral in our repetitive, treadmill-based modern lives. The driving values of the project are meaningful work, authentic community, care for land and ecology and celebration of imagination and creativity. These are all distinct aspects of a unified vision that share these qualities: 

• Perceiving what really exists – over and over we need to pay attention. Through meditation, through receptivity. Whether exploring collective experience, watching the land or noticing our own thought patterns, we look for increasingly subtle levels. The aim is excellent discernment when it comes to finding the next expansive step on the path. 
• Recognising interdependence and relationships – we are infinitely connected to everything – our food systems, the global community of beings, the stuff we have around us. The more we are aware of that and the more we follow an intention to be kind to those relationships, the more depth and quality we see in existence. 
• Deep acceptance of expansion and contraction – in a dualistic world, we will experience these states. The seasons turn, relationships go through waves of ease and difficulty and our creativity comes and goes. Whether from our own expectations, societal pressures or unavoidable obligations, we are often leaning away from what is happening and feeling pain. Accepting this and having the space to lean into what’s happening is freedom. 

Buddhafield Base is a journey characterised by these values and the infinite ways to explore them. The tools we have access to need to make their way into our hands as often as we can manage to help craft the experience we want to share. This series of moments we perceive as our existence is more meaningful than we are usually aware of. The more intimate we become with that, the more space opens up and the more we can do to support every level of being.