Earth Days in Los Angeles, April 2026

ALTADENA'S EARTH DAY 2026

Today is Earth Day, so how shall we honor our Mother [Earth]? We can start by calling her Bhumi, Tierra, or Gaia. Then it might help to honor the Goddess as giving so much to us, our very bodies. Sure there's a karmic reason and an invisible alignment/arrangement of particles that make these amazing vehicles we're powering, but it is earth (base materiality) as the "what" these bodies are or appear to be. Is there "spirit" (prana)? Yes! That wind-like thing, the ephemeral airs as explained in Yogic philosophy and detailed in a collection of sacred Buddhist texts referred to as the "Higher Doctrine" (Abhidhamma or the "Dharma in Ultimate Terms"), can be called a "spirit" (pneuma). That's what "holy spirit" in Abrahamic religions seems to be getting at.

We have hardware and software as modern analogies, but in the past the seers had dense mud and invisible air to make the same comparison of the yang (hard) and yin (soft) that is this "self." Self is a persistent illusion, hard to grasp and understand, but the Buddha went to great pains to explain it in two doctrines, one being the Five Aggregates and the other being (in response to the common question, "Well, what is there then?!") Dependent Origination. If one understood the latter, the question of "what is there?" would not confuse the asker to assume there has to be something solid and "real." In the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, there's "something" (shadows), but that doesn't make them real, that is, that doesn't make them what they appear to be.

So this body, this earth, made of soil and the Four Great Elements (mahabhuta, the dhatus, which strangely are not "things" even though they sound like the most fundamental things but rather are qualities/characteristics of materiality, and that material can be reduced to something translated by Ven. Dhammadipa as "particles of perception" or what the historical Buddha called kalapas).

So thank you, Mother! "Where to next, Columbus?" Crass sings. Why? Westerners are imperial menaces in the world...

What is Earth Day?

Pat and Dick and a tree named "Piney" at WH

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22nd to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated across the planet through earthday.org (formerly Earth Day Network) [1], including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries [1, 2, 3].

In 1969 at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco, the peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere.

This day of Nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by him and signed by [Burmese Theravada Buddhist] Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations.

A month later, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, and hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the national coordinator.

The name "Earth Day" was coined by the advertising writer Julian Koenig [4]. Activist Hayes and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More

• Chris Nyerges, Best Friends and More  (Mtn Views News)
• Mountain Views News, combined edition

Why keep it to a day? Pasadena leads the charge to make it last a whole month.

Earth Day 2026: Things to change to save Earth

• City of Pasadena (One Arroyo, Instagram)
• As of this year, it's EARTH MONTH beginning March 30, 2026: Proclamation - Earth Month - Office of the Mayor of Pasadena

• ALTADENA's Earth Day
• Solvang Garden (urban ranch)
• 280 Crosby, Sunday, April 19

The Solvang Ranch (280 Crosby St., Altadena, California) is a historic 3,100 square foot craftsman courtyard house built in 1915. Situated on nearly an acre, it has been meticulously restored by owners Rob Bruce and Greg Gill and is known for hosting community events, such as the Soul Force Project's Earth Day Celebration. More

• Events for April 2026 – LA's Exposition Park
• Earth Month 2026 (LAparent.com)

Earth Day Pasadena

Playful goats/kids do yoga

Earth Day Celebration in Pasadena, Los Angeles? These are the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, one of the most Buddhist places in the United States. Join us and the City of Pasadena as we celebrate Earth Day and the official release of the goats into the Arroyo ("gully," "wash," dry riverbed). This family-friendly event includes goat yoga, a goat petting zoo, educational experiences, and interactive booths from local sustainability organizations. Let's celebrate and find our Flow. How? Goat Yoga in the Arroyo. Enjoy a lighthearted outdoor yoga experience surrounded by playful goats, Nature's great grass eaters. This beginner-friendly yoga session blends movement, laughter, and connection with nature, offering a unique way to relax, recharge, and celebrate the arrival of the Arroyo Goats. More: OneArroyo.org

Goats may save LA foothills

Altadena Earth Day (Colorado Blvd)

The City of Pasadena and the One Arroyo Foundation are set to host a distinctive Earth Day Celebration this Saturday, inviting the community to witness an innovative approach to landscape restoration and wildfire risk reduction. The highlight of the event will be the deployment of approximately 600 goats into the Arroyo Seco ("Dry Gully"), where they will embark on a targeted grazing mission across 100 acres to clear invasive vegetation. This natural method not only helps protect the beloved Arroyo but also offers a fascinating spectacle for attendees of all ages. More: pasadenanow.com/weekendr

• 
  Events for April 2026 - City of Pasadena
• LASAN's Earth Day Los Angeles 2026, Saturday, April 18 • 10:00 am-2:00 pm | Eventbrite
• Celebrate Earth Day in Pasadena | Visit Pasadena
• Earth Day in Descanso Gardens
• Earth Month by ColoradoBoulevard.net

(Anunnaki Revealed) Sumerian texts reveal what existed on Earth BEFORE the Anunnaki

• The Anunnaki in ancient Sumerian literature (cuneiform stone tablets), Tiamat and the Abzu: Jewish (Semitic) Christian (Roman universalism) borrowed/stole all these ideas for their Tanakh/Old Testament texts

Consciousness is not what we think (video)

Annaka Harris, Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, 2/11/20; Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The phsyical heart is closer to the seat of consciousness than the brain between the ears.

Buddha's Brain (Dr. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.)

Science is finally catching up to Buddhism (Abhidharma), realizing the unbelievable fact that "there is no self" because all things are impersonal. (Mahayana Buddhists hedge this powerful insight by saying there is a self, even a higher self as in Hinduism, but it is interdependent; in other words, "there is no separate self." That makes it sound like there is no self separate from other selves, as in "We are all One," rather than what is really being said, which is that there is no ego, soul, self, personality, being because what appears to be the atta or atman (self) is completely dependent on Five Groups clung to as self: body, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. The self is not a unity but a composite of ever-changing phenomena. Each of these groups or aggregates is composed of countless different elements grouped and classified according to their function. "Self" is a psycho-physical epi-phenomenon of rapidly arising and perishing particles (kalapas, form, body, composed of the four general qualities of ultimate materiality) and mind-moments (cittas, a stream of events that constitute awareness) that does not persist unchanged for even one moment because each composite arises, turns, and vanishes in three consecutive sub-moments that constitute one mind-moment. The same is true of each kalapa or ultimate particle, as explained in Buddhist physics in the Abhidhamma of the Pali canon. This is interesting because author Annaka Harris, the wife of prominent meditation proponent Sam Harris, almost certainly knows about the Buddhist position on these questions of ultimate reality.

• Annaka Harris (née Gorton, born 1976) is an American writer whose work touches on meditation, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and consciousness. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019). She is the wife of Sam Harris:
• Samuel Benjamin Harris (born 1967) is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author, and podcast host. His work touches on rationality, religion, ethics, freewill, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and AI. He came to prominence for his criticism of religion, Islam in particular, and is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. His first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. He has since written six additional books: Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in 2010, the long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014.

The physical base of consciousness is near the heart.

Buddhism exhausts the topic of "consciousness" (vinnana), but for all that one is left with a definition of it as simply "awareness." It is also pursued as "mind" (mano), that which measures or reckons or compares (manas), subconscious (bhavanga), streams of "mind-moments" (cittas), and as an inseparable part of the Five Aggregates clung to as self, one of the four groups of "mental formations" (sankharas) -- and always, always an impersonal PROCESS (verb), never a static OBJECT (noun).

Here Harris, echoing this problem of getting a handle on a better definition, chooses to translate consciousness as "experience." That is not even as good as awareness. There are in Buddhism six kinds of awareness: consciousness associated with each of the five senses and consciousness associated with the sixth sense, "mind." (Some Western translators note that all that mind does is a version of the other five senses, or it remembers or projects the other five in their absence, but "mind objects" (dhammas) -- "things" that are not sights, sounds, tastes, tangibles, or fragrances -- like ideas are not taken in by any of the other senses, so it is its own sense door with its own objects.

Harris then makes a small advancement by making the distinction between "experience" (bare awareness) and "consciousness" in the sense of complex thinking or reasoning or self-reflection, which is actually what most of us think we're trying to get at when understanding or explaining consciousness. That kind of consciousness is not addressed, except that the Buddha defines it in extreme detail in the "Higher Doctrine" or "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms" (Abhidhamma) texts, exploring it like a dispassionate scientist from inside the experience then grasping it as impersonal (not-self).

This is going to hurt. Everything you think you know is false

Conscious: A Brief Guide (Annaka Harris)

(Tom Bilyeu) What if everything you think you know about yourself is wrong? Most of us have the intuition that we have a "self" that is separate from our body and brain and that we can control our experience with conscious will. But what if that isn’t true?

Bestselling author Annaka Harris is devoted to challenging our deepest intuitions about the nature of consciousness and the self.

We may not have free will but we had this child.

In this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, she discusses experiments on the cutting edge of physics and neuroscience and explains why those experiments matter.

The result is a fascinating conversation that will leave you questioning some of our most cherished, comforting intuitions. 

SHOW NOTES

• Consciousness is exactly as mysterious as it seems to be [2:29]
• Annaka defines what consciousness is [4:54]
• Tom and Annaka discuss the story of Phineas Gage [6:31]
• Annaka talks about the difference between consciousness and high-level thought [9:14]
• There is a basic level of consciousness that doesn’t involve awareness of consciousness [11:35] 
• Challenging intuitions is a basic element of the scientific method [14:58]
• Is there outer evidence of conscious experience? Is consciousness doing anything? [18:46]
• Upending comfortable intuitions is eventually a freeing experience [20:57]
• Annaka explains how the brain binds disparate signals to make them seem congruent [22:23]
• Annaka and Tom discuss how much unconscious brain functioning we take for granted [27:09]
• Annaka describes the false sense of self and conscious will [29:53]
• We make decisions before we are aware of them [33:41]
• Annaka discusses the question of whether or to what extent plants are conscious [35:30]
• Trees take care of their own kin, and defend their kin [40:48]
• What if consciousness is a field like gravity? [43:39]
• Annaka describes the double-slit light experiment [46:13]
• • The Double-slit experiment • Double-slit experiment explained!
• Measuring an event can change the past [51:41]
• Annaka discusses problems with the views that consciousness emerges from life [54:25]
• Annaka shares the impact she wants to have on the world [1:03:06]

AUDIO: Author Annaka Harris on the topic of consciousness (Rich Roll)

.

QUOTES: “There’s something jarring about learning that the things that feel most true to you about reality are possibly not structured that way.” [21:29]

“We feel that consciousness is behind our willed actions, when in fact, there is a lot of neuroscience to suggest that it’s actually the reverse. It’s at the end. That all this processing happens, a decision gets made, and we’re kind of the last to know.” [31:54]

“We have no evidence that consciousness is due to complexity.” [1:00:24]

FOLLOW ANNAKA HARRIS: Website: annakaharris.com INSTAGRAM: bit.ly/392CIl1 FACEBOOK: bit.ly/2GTsk36 TWITTER: bit.ly/2RUoY63

BOOK: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind [2:19]

• Impact Theory full episodes PLAYLIST

IMPACT THEORY MERCHANDISE: http://bit.ly/ImpactTheoryShop

Join Discord community for all the amazing things: impacttheory.com/discord

No Impact Man (film); Milky Way in View

Stunning views of Milky Way next week
(Space.com) A dim new moon and shift in weather will combine to create a skygazer's paradise. What's on view

• Space.com: Readers' favorites
• New Hubble photos (Y!)
• Powerful moon rocket

• Listen to the Story (NPR)

Meanwhile, on Earth, the new movie "No Impact Man" wants to save the world. (NPR, 9/11/09) It "is an environmental docu-mentary that also works as a 21st century climate change comedy of manners. Its prota-gonist, Colin Beavan, is the latest in a line of idealist heroes who are both admirable and somewhat ridiculous, an Albert Brooks sort of character. In 2006, the Manhattan writer came up with a book proposal: He would live for a year "eco-effectively." That means, he said, having zero net impact on the environment." More>>

• "A Year Without Toilet Paper"
• Trashed in The New Yorker as a stunt

Oldest Person in the World Dies

(Reuters) 115 year old Gertrude Baines passed away today in Los Angeles. This leaves the oldest [documented] person in the world living in Japan. He's 114. Story (AP photo).

• Taiwan ex-president Chen given life term for corruption