By Finnegan Schick, Yale Daily News, Wednesday April 8th, 2015.

Speaking to a sold-out Woolsey Hall on Tuesday, Buddhist leader His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje decried the degradation of the environment and encouraged environmental activism rooted in a spiritual connection to nature.

Addressing Yale students, faculty and the local community through a Tibetan translator, the Karmapa recounted his personal journey with environmentalism, citing early experiences with “living systems” in the mountains of Tibet. The Karmapa, who heads the oldest of four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, is believed by Buddhists in the Karma Kagyu school to be the 17th re-embodiment of the original Buddhist teacher, Chubb Fellowship Director and Timothy Dwight College Master Jeffrey Brenzel ’75 said during the talk.

“In order to understand the necessity of environmental protection, we need to understand how connected we are to one another and to our environment,” the Karmapa said during the talk. “If you look at the situation, there is absolutely no reason not to support environmental activism.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Listen to the speech in entirety here.