What is Loka?
The Loka Initiative is an interdisciplinary, capacity building and outreach platform at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions working on environmental and climate issues.
Loka is housed at the Center for Healthy Minds, and partners across campus with 7 other university institutions; 4W, Center for Interfaith Dialogue, Division of Continuing Studies, Global Health Institute, Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, Office of Sustainability, and Religious Studies.
What is Loka?
Bridging Religion & Science
At its core, Loka begins with the premise that science and religion can be compatible rather than adversarial in their commitment to solve environmental and social problems compassionately and effectively. Therefore, the initiative provides opportunities for faith and Indigenous leaders from all traditions and geographies to collaborate with scientists, academics, policy-makers, business leaders, community leaders and students to develop robust faith-led projects that protect the environment and build climate resilience in their communities.
Through Loka, faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions can access the programs and resources we offer that are necessary to help inspire their communities to solve environmental and climate issues.
Our Vision:
That Inner, Community, and Planetary Resilience are Interdependent; We cannot achieve any one of these goals without working on the other two.
What does “Loka” mean?
"Loka" (लोकः), an ancient Sanskrit term, has many meanings but the most common one refers to our world as the basis for life. The world evoked by “Loka” is a complex and multidimensional one, where environments, species, and dimensions interact to constitute a whole. The term “Loka” can therefore mean a world as large as a planet and also refer to a single individual who constitutes an equally complex and interdependent world. Thus, each Loka or world is one and many worlds, overlapping and embedded within each other. Evocatively, the word Loka also means vision; the act of seeing; that not only beholds a world but can bring it into being.
Our Origin Story
L-R: Dekila Chungyalpa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jonathan Patz, Richie Davidson, Diego Hangartner, Thupten Jinpa, John Dunne, Mathieu Ricard. Dharamsala, India © Mind&Life 2011
How did Loka begin?
The roots of the Loka Initiative lie in Dharamsala, India where in 2011, Dekila Chungyalpa, Richard Davidson, John Dunne, and Jonathan Patz first met while presenting at the Mind and Life “Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence” conference. The Mind and Life conferences are presided by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. During that convening, a dialogue was initiated on how environmental protection efforts and climate action required a bridge to be built between faith leaders and scientists, scholars, policy makers and other experts in the secular world. Dekila had recently launched the Sacred Earth program at WWF, a faith-led conservation initiative working with Buddhists and faith leaders in Asia. At the meeting, His Holiness advised Dekila to work with all religions and across the world. In response, she expanded the WWF Sacred Earth program to successfully work on conservation issues with Catholic, Hindu, Muslim and Evangelical leaders in the Amazon, East Africa, the Himalayas, the Mekong and the United States. In 2014, Dekila was awarded the Yale McCluskey fellowship for her innovative work and spent 3 years at Yale, in dialogue with over 50 faith and Indigenous leaders to design and test the prototype of the Loka Initiative.
L-R fr top: Mike Naparstek, Jordan Rosenblum, Cal De Witt, Ngodup Burkhar, Jonathan Patz, HH Karmapa, Richard Davidson, Isa Dolski, Marty Gustafson, Dekila Chungyalpa, John Dunne.
In August 2018, Dekila Chungyalpa, Richard Davidson, John Dunne, and Jonathan Patz invited His Holiness the 17th Karmapa to visit the University of Wisconsin–Madison and participate in a vision exercise on what an education and capacity building platform for faith and Indigenous leaders could look like. At the gathering, His Holiness said “science needs religious leaders to help convince people that environmental protection is an urgent moral issue and not only an economic or political one. Without science, people lack the knowledge on how to solve environmental or social problems. But if you can add religious support to scientific expertise, you are able to generate greater courage and commitment among people to address these issues. For this reason, science and religion must find ways to work together.” At the end of the meeting, 7 UW-Madison institutions championed the initiative and 8 months later, the Loka Initiative launched.
In April 2019, over 60 faith leaders and culture keepers of Indigenous traditions working on environmental and climate issues, scientists, scholars, poets, artists, and resilience experts came together over a three-day period to design Loka’s vision and to co-create its first set of program priorities. Many of the gathered experts and leaders continue to advise and participate in Loka’s programs today.
