Belonging and Reindigenization
through
Ceremony, Science and Zen

Kritee (dharma name Kanko) was born and raised in India by a single mother in the family of a visionary lawyer and Gandhian freedom fighter who taught her to speak up for love and justice. She came to the United States at the turn of the century to start her scientific research on environmental science. Today, she holds the titles and credentials of a Climate Scientist-Educator, Meditation teacher, Buddhist Zen priest, Grief Ceremony leader. She is founding spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, two nonprofit organizations based in Boulder (Colorado).

CLIMATE AND ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE

As a scientist and climate educator who offers consultations to many organizations, Kritee is shaped by over 25 years of rigorous Earth, Environmental and Climate research experience at some of the most prestigious academic, non-profit and multilateral government organizations in the world.

Kritee served as a leading scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the leading environmental nonprofits in the world focused on confronting the climate crisis, for about twelve years. In her role as a Director of the Climate Smart Agriculture program, she helped farmers grow more food at lower input costs with less climate pollution. Her areas of expertise include Agriculture, Soil Health, Nitrogen & Water Use Efficiency, Environmental Microbiology, Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry, Mercury Pollution, Cancer Biochemistry, Computational Genomics and Methane and Nitrous oxide emissions. See her complete CV here.

GRIEF AND RAGE CEREMONIES

Grief is love. Rage is an inner call for justice. We do not grieve unless we love. We feel anger and fear because we care and we dare to feel.

In these times of polycrisis, Kritee facilitates Ecodharma gatherings that are sacred ceremonies for and with human (and increasingly more-than-human) communities, to draw together past, present, and future into a space in which transformations of personal and collective traumas can occur. These ceremonies include acknowledging, verbalizing, singing, chanting, drumming, wailing, angering, swaying and shaking out our exiled emotions of grief, rage, shame and fear.  

Her articles and interviews on grief ceremonies for processing trauma have appeared in Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, New York Times, Washington Post, The Cut, California Public Radio and several podcasts including “A Matter of Degrees”.

ZEN BUDDHISM AND ECODHARMA

Kritee is a fully ordained Zen priest (Osho) in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain Zen. She provides traditional Zen training and leads meditation intensives (sesshins) in her lineage. Kritee also leads both in-person and online Ecodharma retreats, workshops, and courses for people of color, women, faith leaders, and other groups that work at the intersection of trauma healing and collective action for justice. Kritee regularly talks about the inseparability of climate and racial justice at national and international academic and Buddhist forums.

She has served as faculty for many organizations for courses at the intersection of climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing, and spirituality, including Stanford University, University of California (San Francisco), One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute, and Lama Foundation.

LOVE, NONVIOLENCE AND JUSTICE

We aren’t facing just climate or ecological crisis. We are in the midst of a polycrisis: a cluster of interdependent crises that include barbaric violence, escalating racial, social, economic inequities, religious fundamentalism, polarization, refugee crisis and mental health epidemic.

Facing this worsening polycrisis can be daunting, enraging and depressing. Kritee feels we must heal of our past traumas through meditation and ecodharma practices to begin to belong, to re-inhabit the web of life and to reindigenize). In addition, we need to strategically assert our truths in the social, political and economic realms. Through courses like “Dharma of Resistance” and Ecodharma workshops and retreats, Kritee teaches a strategic and principled commitment to Nonviolence, justice, and love that involves the deliberate pursuit of change with the deepest possible spiritual love for all beings.

REGULAR EVENTS AND RETREATS

Kritee leads regular Zazen (silent) and guided meditation sessions several times in a week. Most events include the option of joining remotely via Zoom. She also leads multi-day residential Zen intensives and Ecodharma retreats. Please sign up for our newsletter to receive more details.

CONTACT