The Paul O. Ingram Lecture

Earth Day Lecture 2026

``Dancing with Uncertainty: Buddhist Pathways to Climate Resilience``

Dr. Stephanie Kaza

Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies
University of Vermont

7:00 pm | Wednesday, April 22, 2026 | Scandinavian Cultural Center

Free and Open to the Public and will be live-streamed on PLU’s YouTube channel
Organized by the Religion Department and the Environmental Studies Program

Registration is Requested

PLU Religion Department and Environmental Studies Program welcome you to the 2026 Paul O. Ingram lecture, being held Wednesday, April 22nd, 7:00 pm, in the Scandinavian Cultural Center, on the first floor of Anderson University Center. We are very pleased to have Dr. Stephanie Kaza as our lecturer this year.

About the Lecture: 

Buddhist philosophy and practice has become quite popular in today’s ethically motivated activist movements, from consumer awareness to climate justice. Buddhist concepts of interbeing, bodhicitta, and ecosattva help to address the challenges of climate change by framing activism as applied spiritual practice. Climate emotions of greed, rage, dread and despair are welcomed as human passions whose energy can be transformed to honor and protect human-earth relations.

In addressing the ecological crisis, Buddhist thought is a natural support with its foundations in interdependence, mindfulness, and compassion. Key to building resilience for the unfolding climate chaos and its globally devastating impacts is the Buddhist understanding of self as other, self as community, community as self. I will draw on classic teachings by Eihei Dogen, Kobo Daishi (Kukai), and Thich Nhat Hanh to highlight nondualistic experience as pivotal to a true understanding of interdependence. We will then turn to the Buddhist concept of upaya skillful means to explore compassionate practice to build community resilience in the face of planetary upheaval. Dancing with profound uncertainty may bring unexpected emergent pathways for awakening from outmoded self-centered views.

About the Lecturer:

Dr. Stephanie Kaza is Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont and a long-time student of Soto Zen Buddhism. At the University of Vermont, Dr. Kaza was honored with the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award and the first President’s Distinguished University Citizenship and Service Award. In 2024, she received the Freudenberg Lifetime Achievement award from the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences.

Her publications include:

  • Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times
  • Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume
  • Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism
  • Conversations with Tree: An Intimate Ecology
  • A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time

Event Details

Speaker: Dr. Stephanie Kaza

Time: 7:00 pm

Date: Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026

Location: Scandinavian Cultural Center

Free and Open to the Public

Held every other year, this lectureship celebrates the work of Professor Emeritus Paul O. Ingram. These lectures continue Dr. Ingram’s work in extending understandings of all religions through scholarship and teaching in comparative religions and interreligious dialog, by bringing to campus scholars whose work exemplifies the comparative, descriptive, and analytic methods that define the field.

Previous Lecturers:

2024 – Julia Watts Belser
2020 – Jamal Rahman
2018 –  Michelle M. Jacob
2016 –  Sharon Suh
2014 –  John B. Cobb
2012 – Daniel Kent