Barbara Lepani

Writer, Creative Producer and Cultural Animateur.

As a cultural and social animateur my focus is on ‘making things happen’ through community and organisational activation. I am co-editor of ARTBytes, the electronic newsletter of the Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network (BMCAN) and the editor of its Wild Mountain Collective Blog at www.wildmountaincollective.com.au. In 2021 I have become involved with Resilient Blue Mountains, acting as the artistic director of the opening ceremony for its Festival of Resilience which, due to the NSW COVID lockdown has been postponed till 2022.

I have recently independently published on amazon kindle and in paperback my two manuscripts on which I have worked for the last several years: ‘Call of the Dakini: A Memoir of Life Lived’, and ‘Tulkus, Tertons, Turmoil: East Tibet 1855-1955’. Both pull together my professional life as a sociologist of science and technology studies in the government, non government and university sectors, my work with Tjilpi Bob Randall, an Aboriginal elder of Central Australia, on his book, Songman (2003), and my life as a student-practitioner of Tibet’s Vajrayana Buddhism since 1985, including undertaking a three year retreat in this wisdom knowledge between 2006 and 2009 under the spiritual guidance of Sogyal Rinpoche. My two books also draw on my times with the Fifth Amnyi Trulchung Rinpoche in New Zealand and a journey with him to Tibet in 2004.

My ‘getting of wisdom’ journey has led me to a deep interest in the role of epistemology in shaping our world view and all that flows from it: challenging the global hegemony of the Western knowledge system through embracing insights from Vajrayana Buddhism and First Nations Knowledge systems, and working with a global network of collaborators, such as Regenerative Songlines Australia, who are mapping a multidisciplinary philosophy of ‘regenerative living’ as the zeitgeist we need to create a revolution in consciousness to meet the challenges facing our world. Humanity is caught in the crosshairs of climate change and global pandemics and ensuing geo-political instability. This marks the end of the era of ‘white privilege’ and ‘economism’: the idea of Progress as technology fuelled growth built on debt driven conspicuous consumerism.

Replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy, while keeping the system of white privilege and economism in place, is no longer viable. Our world is screaming for a new zeitgeist as our children shudder in fear and anxiety at the world we have created.