‘It’s shocking really’: Devon community tracks River Dart sewage spills as reflected on by Sensei Michael Jinpa
At low tide, our Harborview Point inlet reveals everything the water carries. Decaying eelgrass, forgotten mooring lines, plastic remnants, and dark silt lie open under the morning fog. Water is neither polite nor deceptive; it mirrors how we live upstream. Reading about the Devon community and their work tracking River Dart sewage spills, I recognized this uncomfortable encounter. Faced with sewage fouling their cherished river, residents chose action. They built a system to track discharges in real time, bringing concealed issues directly into the light.
Seeing Things as They Are: Clear Seeing and Compassion
In Zen practice, we begin with seeing things as they actually are. Our tradition calls this yathabhuta-nanadassana. This demands spiritual discipline, turning our gaze toward existence’s wounded, unsanitary, and inconvenient aspects. We must not flinch. Ignoring our collective effluents, whether literal waste or the quiet poisons of greed and apathy, is spiritual avoidance. The Devon monitors demonstrated clear seeing; it is the first and most essential act of compassion. By mapping the spills, they refused ignorance’s anesthesia.
During my years as a hospice chaplain, I often sat with families navigating terminal diagnoses. Avoidance is a natural impulse during crisis: grievance, denial, or assigning blame. People often try to escape the grief of what is broken. Yet, healing begins only when people gather, acknowledge the illness, and plainly state what hurts. A polluted waterway is a body in distress. When a community maps sewage outflows, it acts like a vigilant caregiver. They keep a clinical chart. They are not merely protesting institutional failure; they attend with rigorous care to a sick relative.
Interconnection: There Is Only Here
Our tradition teaches pratityasamutpada, or interdependent co-arising. Nothing exists in isolation. The river does not end where the town begins, nor does our responsibility terminate at the municipal pipe. What we discharge upstream inevitably enters fish cells, river mud, and downstream bodies. Water utility companies sometimes treat a living stream as an invisible gutter. They do this to protect corporate margins or balance sheets. However, they operate under a dangerous illusion of separation. They imagine an “outside” where they can discard waste without cost. But in this interconnected universe, there is no outside. There is only here. This applies to the River Dart sewage spills and every other waterway.
I find immense spiritual dignity in these citizen environmentalists’ practical nature. They did not retreat to a hillside to lament modern industry’s fallen state. They did not exhaust their vitality in hollow cynicism. Instead, they gathered water samples, collected data, and built an open tool. Their neighbors could then know when it was safe to swim and where restoration remained unfinished. In the Mahayana path, wisdom is meaningless without concrete form as skillful action. Their online platform expresses mindful stewardship, converting passive anxiety into patient, collective guardianship.
Tonight, the tide turns again in our harbor. The water pushes against the municipal pier’s stone pilings with steady, quiet rhythm. Rivers and oceans forgive extraordinary human neglect, but their patience is not limitless. Cleaning a river, like clarifying a clouded mind, is not an overnight accomplishment. It requires daily, unglamorous attention: testing the water, telling the truth about contamination, and refusing to turn away until the current runs clear once more.
Leave a Reply