By Loden Nyima // Published September 2020; updated December 2021 & March 2022 I wrote this article from a friend’s spare room in Longmont, Colorado, back in September of 2020. I was evacuated from my home at Drala Mountain Center (DMC) due to the largest wildfire in Colorado history, which later burned portions of the land at DMC. The day of writing, I spoke by phone with a friend in California—a conversation delayed by days due to blackouts they were having in relation to record heat waves and millions of acres of fire. Afterwards, I prepared notes for a class I was teaching online due to a pandemic which has now killed over 560,000* Americans, hospitalized several of my friends, and is preventing live gatherings in shrine rooms. Our national news is filled with violence and political strife. This was life in 2020, another day in America. Cosmic Context We’re living in what’s known as a kaliyuga or a dark age in Buddhism. These are times in which the mass amalgamations of many years of …