Feed 'Em

I normally love a good, cold winter. But since I got sick, it's like I'm made out of rice paper and just have no cold tolerance whatsoever. Northern Arizona winters were just right. Because the big snow accumulations usually happened late in the day or overnight, I'd wake up to ponderosa pines laden with snow and sun glittering through the icicles. Every time I saw it, I'd think "Winter Wonderland." The low humidity meant neither winter nor summer was too extreme. But the past few years there have seen colder winters and hotter summers. Global warming isn't going to spare any Wonderland.

Similarly, winter in Maryland has been brutally cold this year. It's my first winter here, and I've done my fair share of complaining about it. Actually it's more like complete bewilderment, as I walk outside into the icy air and say things like, "Is it really this cold? How can it be? It barely even snows here!" I find my head chronically cocked to the side like Forrest Gump. But the locals are complaining, too, and they don't seem overly delicate. (Especially not the guard at the local Social Security office-- she's about the toughest-looking person I've ever seen. Like she could just look at you and crack a bone.)

The cold winter has put wildlife in jeopardy. Biologists are scratching their heads (though not in panic, they insist) at the curious absence of acorns along the entire East Coast this year. The lack of their staple food plus the cold has led to record numbers of squirrels dying from starvation.

So here we all are-- humans and animals alike-- being increasingly frozen and melted each year as if we were being stored in a huge, malfunctioning refrigerator. Toss in eight years of unregulated corporate greed that encouraged irresponsible consumer spending, and that deliberately ignored and suppressed scientific evidence of global warming (all of which can be filed under "W") and we all know what a mess we have on our hands. Ecosystems and economies thrive on homeostasis. Neither does well with crisis-- the imbalance has to get absorbed somewhere and always rattles down the food chain to take out the weakest links first.

One of the things I love about Buddhism is that it's always concerned with the weakest links. My Lama has this thing about feeding hungry beings. In a teaching years ago she said, "I feed everything." It's true-- wherever she goes, her trees are always filled with bird feeders and she routinely feeds the deer and other wildlife.

Inspired by her compassion, our sangha has put out birdseed, salt licks, corn and nuts at the temple and our own homes to help the wildlife survive. I have one skinny squirrel in my yard who's so hungry he eats bits of garbage he finds in the common areas. He doesn't even look up as I step two feet from him. I've been slopping fatty peanut butter on a fence post for him, which he devours every day. My lousy camera phone won't let me get a good picture of him, but I did get this shot of Patch mesmerized by the squirrel. You can pencil in a scrawny squirrel in the upper left corner.


With hunger affecting more and more people, Jetsunma asked us to begin a food bank at our Maryland temple : "Give what you can, Take what you need." I saw it today-- one day after this picture was taken. We already need a bigger bin.


Times are hard and probably will get harder. A box of macaroni and cheese might just be the new face of compassion in 2009.