Praxis Ecology Course

The thinking behind it

Why Praxis Ecology

Most intentional communities collapse after a couple of years, most religious communities succeed over centuries. Could we find the middle way to get what works in religious communities while still having some agency with our personal life? Could we benefit from the deep listening of contemplation while leaving our life connected to web information?

This is the exploration of the Praxis way of living, inspired by both zen monachism and lay spiritual communities.

The situation

Every ending carries the seeds of its transformation

Even if we do not yet fully feel it, others — many humans and non-human animals, vegetal and mineral worlds — have been experiencing it for a long time. The effects of the old world culture built on separation are gradually permeating and overwhelming us.

Individualist western culture has been essential to a certain kind of human development. But it has reached its limits. Its expression — extractive, polarized, and self-centered — has contributed to a world shaped by scarcity and violence, where, together, we are slowly eroding the very conditions that sustain life in this world.

Every system carries within it both its limits and the seeds of its transformation. These cycles follow a rhythm: what can no longer hold gives way, not only in collapse but in opening — making space for something new to emerge.

In this sense, what we are experiencing is both an ending and a beginning — a threshold where we can bear witness to the emergence of new forms within the structures of the old — the seeds of a Second Renaissance.

Where we begin

A new way of acting emerges from bearing witness, not from solving. We can practice this posture in conscious communities, in secular monasteries.

Praxis Ecology begins on this ground. We carry individualist habits, not only in thought but in action and feeling — so we cannot simply think our way into a new way of living. Instead, we begin where we are:

• →We sit with the trouble.
• →We stay with what is here, as it is.
• →We organize around it, as we are.

From there, another way of relating can emerge — not from aspiration alone, but from interactions. We approach the world through daily collective movement, and in that shared life our ways of feeling and acting transform naturally.

Rather than thinking our way through community building, this proposition is grounded in a different way of relating — one that reshapes how we connect with one another. It involves an ongoing oscillation between self-expression and collective service — an interplay that expands our sense of self and allows new ways of thinking to emerge. This is both a praxis that responds to uncertainty, and one that has the capacity to rewrite its narrative through the joy of being alive together.

Not a method — a living structure

A fluid framework — a direction from which creativity can emerge

Praxis Ecology is not a model to apply, nor a step-by-step method to follow. It is a structure — a resilient container that supports collective life amid uncertainty and change.

In the spirit of a Second Renaissance — where profound shifts in how we think, feel, and act are both necessary and possible — this structure, grounded in zen tradition, helps groups to sit with what is here rather than constantly react, fix, or escape, and creates enough stability to foster belonging, respond to scarcity with peace, and cultivate response rather than reaction.

This is a direction. From it, each group is invited to integrate their own creativity — adapting to the different subcultures they're coming from, such as metamodernism, contemplative activism, secular buddhism, ecospirituality, deep ecology, and inner transition. You will be able to design your own secular monastery through a fluid framework that gives just enough shape to allow something genuinely alive to emerge.

Through simple, repeated forms — shared rhythms, roles, and daily practices — the group begins to move together. In that movement, something changes. Not because we solve everything, but because we are engaged in the dance of uncertainty together through daily rhythm and contact.

Why this matters

We know we need to expand from personal to transpersonal self to adapt to the new conditions of our world. We feel the limits of individualism and look at community as a direction. At the same time, attempts to build collective ways of living often struggle with:

Praxis Ecology approaches this differently. Instead of starting from ideals, it starts from reality.

Transformation is not treated as a goal to achieve, but as something that emerges when the conditions are there to activate it.

What this course is — and is not