Interdependence is at the heart of environmentalism -- and of Christianity and
Buddhism -- and everything else.
PAUL O. INGRAM is Professor of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University and the
author of Wrestling with the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience.
Three years ago on a wet Pacific Northwest morning in November, I stumbled across the
bridge that hangs over the creek in front of my house to fetch the morning paper. A splash
on my right brought me up short: a great blue heron shrouded in ground fog snapping up
salmon fingerlings. It stopped feeding and pinned me to the bridge with a golden-eyed
stare for what seemed like several minutes. I was stunned to silence. Then without sound,
its great wings lifted it up and it glided straight toward me, never taking its eyes from
mine, and, at the last second, dove under the bridge. I turned just in time to see it rise
up on the other side and dissolve into mist. A sudden gust of Arctic air rushing through
Western hemlocks brought me back to my senses, and I retreated to my house with my morning
paper to begin my day.
Whenever I reflect on nature, memories of my encounter with a blue heron haunt my
thoughts like a Chinese hungry ghost. A Lakota friend of mine, who is also a shaman,
thinks the blue heron is my spirit guide. Perhaps. I also think I have encountered what
Loren Eisley once called a "hidden teacher" who has posed for me the central
question of environmental ethics: how should human beings live in harmony with the forces
of nature that nurture all living things inhabiting the Earth? This essay is about what my
hidden teacher, and other more explicit teachers, have taught me about environmental
ethics.
The Ecological Relevance and Ambiguity of Religious World Views
As religious world views distinguish the human species from all other life-forms, so
too does humanity's presence on this planet distinguish the ecology of Earth from other
places in the known universe. As Lawrence E. Sullivan puts it, "Religious life
and Earth's ecology are inextricably linked."(1) This is so because what human
beings believe about nature is the distinctive contribution our human species makes to
Earth's ecology itself. From the point of view of history of religions, the evidence
clearly suggests that religious world views, through myth and ritual, model human
attitudes and relations to nature by transmitting attitudes of mind and habits of practice
to succeeding generations. They do so by engendering fundamental predispositions toward
the world because, by their very nature, religious traditions are all-encompassing for at
least three reasons.
First, religious world views probe behind secondary appearances and focus human
attention and imagination on first-order realities: life at its origins, creativity in its
fullest expression, death and suffering at the root of all existence, the possibility of
renewal and salvation. These are "primordial" ideas, the "revelation of
first things," and as such they have always moved human communities everywhere to
interaction with nature.(2) Second, religious world views are
all-encompassing because as they provide human beings with a view of nature; they
simultaneously generate images of humanity's own position in nature through our capacity
for self-reflection and symbolic thought. Thus as all-encompassing, religious ideas do not
only relate to other ideas as equals for religious human beings, they constitute a
mind-set within which all sorts of ideas commingle in a cosmology. Which means, third,
that religious world views are singular because they draw the natural order into a picture
of the universe that occurs only in the religious imagination.
Of course from the point of view of environmental studies, the risk of religious world
views is that they can, and have, spawned exploitation of nature. Still, religious world
views accomplish something secular world-views do not: by affirming a picture of sacred
realities that can be compared, contrasted, and interrelated with that which is merely
given in ordinary experience, they assert that sense perception and imagination do not
give us the whole truth about existence, that "this isn't all there is." As a
result, a self-conscious relationship with nature is spelled out that specifies humanity's
ideal roles, limits, and responsibilities.
However, the limitations of religious worldviews must also be recognized. The
complexity of today's ecological problems require interlocking contributions from the
natural sciences, economics, politics, health, and public policy. As we struggle with
rethinking humanity's relation with nature, and as we try to contribute to the creation of
a globally relevant environmental ethic, the religious traditions of humanity are a
necessary, but only contributing, part of this multidisciplinary approach. Here also it is
important to reflect on the dark side of religious history and ask how religious
traditions themselves have contributed to the ecological damage human beings have foisted
on this planet. Questions abound. Why have religious traditions everywhere been so late in
their involvement with environmental issues? Have issues of personal salvation
traditionally superseded all other issues? Have divine-human relations been so primary
that all other forms of relatedness are driven to the periphery of consciousness? Has an
anthropocentric bias been at the heart of religious faith and practice wherever it has
existed? Does a search for transcendent realities override commitment to the world? Did
the religious traditions simply surrender their natural theologies to positivist
scientific cosmologies? Have not religious traditions themselves engendered individual and
institutionalized manipulation of power that fosters wars, ignores racial and social
injustice, promotes unjust gender relations, and exploits nature? We should not underplay
this dark side.
Yet an equally realistic evaluation is also necessary. The dark side of religious
history should not automatically invalidate the complex world views and cosmologies of
humanity's religious traditions as conceptual sources for reflecting, in interrelation
with other disciplines, on the structure of a globally relevant environmental ethic.
Consequently, the thesis of this essay is that interdependence is a foundational principle
of environmental ethics, because not only is interdependence emerging as the principle
category within the natural sciences for understanding natural processes, interdependence
is also a fundamental category within the world views of humanity's religious traditions,
in this essay exemplified by Buddhism and Christianity. Substantiating this thesis
requires further reflection on what H. Paul Santmire calls the "ambiguous
ecological promise" of Christian theology.(3) Lewis Lancaster also notes the
existence of ecological ambiguity in the history of Buddhist teaching and practice as
well.(4)
Accordingly, some reflection on the ecological promise of Buddhist and Christian tradition
is in order.
* * *
Duncan Ryuken Williams writes:
When one reviews the history of the interface of Buddhism and environmentalism, the
overwhelming tendency has been to define the Buddhist contribution to environmentalism in
terms of the most idealized notion of what Buddhism is. . . What is troubling,
however, is the tendency to define Buddhist ecological worldviews in contradistinction to
other religious traditions, such that the worst actual practices of Christianity and other
traditions are contrasted with the best, most ideal components of Buddhism.(5)
Lancaster agrees and specifically asks whether Buddhism can help us find relevant
principles for developing a contemporary environmental ethic.(6) For Christians engaged in
Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the issue to which Sullivan points also involves:
(1) whether there are resources within classical Christian thought that can be used
as an entry point for ecological discussion with Buddhist thought and practice, and
(2) if so, what these resources are. There is also a methodological issue: how can
Buddhists and Christians avoid the inclination to use contemporary perceptions and
cultural backgrounds as a filter through which we interpret Buddhist and Christian history
for ecologically relevant ideas and practices? Unless we understand the historical
contexts of our contemporary collective perceptions, we risk uncritically ripping
supportive fragments of Buddhist and Christian texts from their historical contexts as we
import them into our own. The end result will be that the full force and power of useful
Buddhist and Christian ecological teachings and practices may be deflected by our
collective unawareness of our perceptions and cultural history.
To cite but one current Buddhist example, Lancaster notes that one of the important
elements of ecological discussion is the role of industry, transnational corporations, and
commerce in all its forms. After all, it is not possible to discuss the cutting of old
growth forests, the pollution of waterways, or toxic emissions into the atmosphere without
discussing capital and mercantile activity. Yet in much of the discussion occurring among
environmentalists, contemporary perceptions of bankers, merchants, and money changers are
summoned forth, and business people and corporate executives are then seen as greedy and
uncaring sources of our contemporary ecological problems. Indeed, much contemporary
ecological discourse takes just this form of attack against business persons.
Lancaster points to a quite different picture in Buddhist history and texts. From its
origins, Buddhist tradition has been a religion of merchants, and the spread of Buddhism
was primarily accomplished by merchants. The Buddha taught kings and secured economic
support for the Samgha from merchant disciples. One of his most important lay-disciples
was the money changer Anathapindika, who gave financial support to the Buddha's monastic
disciples who needed it. Thus Buddhist tradition has a much more positive perception of
merchants than we do in Anglo-American cultural history. Buddhists depended on merchants
and held them in high esteem and directed much of their teaching efforts toward this lay
group. Furthermore, some merchants developed their understanding of the Dharma
sufficiently to allow them to teach and convert. The positive role of the
merchant-layperson in the transmission of Buddhist tradition today is as important as it
was in ancient India. So if contemporary ecological discourse assumes a rejection of this
group, one of the pillars of the Buddhist community will be uncritically excluded from
ecological conversation.
Furthermore, as primarily an urban movement in India, early Buddhist teaching about
nature is ambiguous. This ambiguity can be illustrated by the transmission of the Buddhist
movement from India to China, which promoted opposing Buddhist perceptions of nature. In
the Ganges Valley, Buddhists experienced the forest and its life forms negatively as a
source of pain, danger, and struggle. When Buddhism was transmitted to China, a quite
different, more positive evaluation of nature evolved.
India during the time of the Buddha was essentially composed of "urban islands in
the sea of the forest."(7) In India, the forests were dark
places of suffering and pain (duhkha), a natural environment for ascetic
practices meant to force the monks to confront suffering realistically. This means that
the forest was regarded as a place of training for monks seeking release from rebirth in
the realm of samsaric suffering, the forces of which are so graphically encountered in the
forest, where life must eat other life to survive. In this view, nature and its life forms
are threatening and terrifying. Nature is merely a pedagogical device for exposing the
seeker to the facts of universal suffering and is not, in itself, salvific. Nor did the
forest's life forms -- mammals, birds, insects -- possess intrinsic value in themselves,
but only extrinsic value as they became occasions for the monk's advancement toward
awakening.
By the time Buddhism arrived in China, nature "was beginning to consist of islands
of mountains in a sea of cultivated fields."(8) Mostly because of Taoist
tradition, the sages of China left their cultivated fields for mountains and forests as a
means of renewing their humanity. With the arrival of Buddhism, the Chinese found an
additional way of explaining this close relationship between humanity and nature. Thus one
of the great contributions of Chinese Buddhism was the concept of Buddha nature. The
doctrine that everything embodies the Buddha nature was a revolutionary development in
China. Not only do all persons embody the Buddha nature, but all sentient and non-sentient
things as well -- rocks, streams, lotuses, animals, insects, plants, stars, the moon, the
sun. Accordingly, a person's mind -- as constituted by Buddha nature -- is in
interdependent, non-dual relationship with every part of sentient and insentient nature,
which also possesses the same Buddha nature. Or as Lancaster writes: "With this
introduction of the idea that the mind and natural objects had the same Buddha-nature, the
Chinese had at last an explanation for the power of nature."(9)
The perception that everything embodies the Buddha nature resonates with North American
and European environmental writers. But we need to be mindful that Buddhist teaching
regarding nature is ambiguous because nature is both negatively and positively evaluated.
In looking to Buddhism for support of our ecological views, it is probably to East Asian
Buddhism -- primarily the Buddhism of China, Korea, and Japan -- to which we should look.
In other words, the challenge of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in reflecting on ecological
issues is finding what aspect of Buddhist teaching -- and, as I shall argue, Christian
teaching -- can provide the greatest aid.
This may not be as easy as it sounds. David Eckel and Ian Harris question facile
assumptions that Asian, and particularly Buddhist, world views are environmentally
friendly.(10)
They wonder where and why Buddhism came to be seen as ecofriendly in the West, arguing
that this notion is relatively recent and that the term "nature" is itself a
complex and somewhat problematic term in the history of Buddhist philosophy. Alan Sponberg
also observes that there are limits to what he calls "green Buddhism."(11) In
particular, he questions the view that Buddhism advocates a notion of interdependence that
is entirely non-hierarchical and egalitarian, and insists that there is a need to assess
Buddhist tradition more accurately. According to his analysis, classical Buddhist texts
often advocated a hierarchical conception of the human and the natural worlds, which means
that the question is what kind of hierarchical view of natural process is ecologically
appropriate, not the absence of hierarchy in ecologically sound thought.
Buddhist tradition has important ecological motifs that can contribute to the
construction of a contemporary environmental ethic, particularly the principle of
interdependence. Yet classical Buddhist thought may not be as replete with ecofriendly
teachings as is commonly assumed by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist interpreters. Nor, as
H. Paul Santmire argues, is Christian theological tradition ecologically bankrupt, as
portrayed by such writers as Rosemary Radford Ruether, Thomas Sieger Derr, Sallie McFague,
and Gordon Kaufman.(12) The arguments of these writers
can be summarized in one generalization: Christian theology is concerned primarily with
human history -- with the unfolding of the providential story of God and humanity, with
God and history -- not with nature, and therefore is of necessity anthropomorphic in
character and environmentally irrelevant.
That there is truth in this generalization cannot be denied. But as Santmire
convincingly argues, things are not always as they seem in the history of Christian
reflection on nature. He points to the presence of rich resources within Christian
theological tradition which can be identified and appropriated by contemporary
environmentalists. But, he warns, such resources must not only be carefully identified,
they must be separated from the less promising traditions of nature that have dominated
Christian theological history.
Santmire's thesis is that the ambiguity toward nature that runs throughout the history
of Christian thought appears in two intermingling theological motifs, each one of which
originates in Hebraic and New Testament biblical texts.(13) The first, a "spiritual
motif," is predicated on the notion that the human soul rises above nature in order
to ascend to communion and union with God as the soul transforms its original image of
God, damaged at the Fall, into the "likeness" of God.(14) In theologies shaped by this
motif, nature tends to be interpreted or evaluated dualistically in terms of
"spirit" against "nature." Accordingly, the human soul must ascend
toward God by rising above the physicality of nature in order to enter into union or
communion with God, who is thought to be pure spirit. The second "ecological
motif" is predicated on a vision of humanity's rootedness in nature and on the desire
of self-consciously embodied selves to celebrate God's presence in, with, and under the
whole biophysical order as the context in which human life in obedience to God is to be
pursued. In this context, "ecological" points to a system of interdependent
interrelationships between God, humanity, and nature, in which God's plan of redemption
includes both human creatures and the creatures of nature plus the biophysical foundations
of human, animal, and plant life.(15)
Three "root metaphors" cluster around the spiritual and ecological motifs,
according to Santmire, which exercise formative influence on Christian theological
reflection on nature: "ascent," "migration to a good land," and
"fecundity." All three metaphors are mixed throughout Hebraic and New Testament
texts. Furthermore, all three root metaphors occur in theological reflection on nature
throughout Christian history. Whenever theological reflection on nature is guided
primarily by the metaphor of ascent, the spiritual motif emerges. Whenever the metaphor of
fecundity is primary, the ecological motif emerges. The metaphor of migration to a good
land is a "bridge" metaphor that can be mixed with the metaphor of ascent or the
metaphor of fecundity.(16) Accordingly, much depends on the
root metaphors that shape any given theological system.
Santmire illustrates his thesis with an analysis of the history of the spiritual and
ecological motifs in the classical tradition of Christian thought. He begins with
Irenaeus, who thought chiefly in terms of the metaphor of migration to a good land. There
are also signs that the metaphor of fecundity was at work in his thought, especially in
his eschatological visions. Consequently, Irenaeus consistently affirmed the goodness of
nature. For him, nature is tangibly good and ultimately significant, and his thought
celebrates the world, both now and in the age to come. That is, his vision of God's design
begins with creation and concludes with the renewal of all things -- not just human
beings.
In contrast to Irenaeus, Origen's theology is dominated by the nature-denying metaphor
of ascent. His theology of nature assumes a "hierarchy of being" and its
consequent asymmetrical dialect of creation and redemption. Thus for Origen, all things in
the natural order are created good, but nothing in the natural order below the human in
the hierarchy of being is "saved" when God brings the universe to its final
consummation. Nature is nothing but a stage for humanity's ascent back to God, which then
collapses into nothingness once the drama of salvation is completed.(17)
Augustine's thought covers the spectrum of the spiritual and ecological motifs in
Christian reflection on nature. His early thought begins with a Manichaean vision of the
world that is thoroughly dominated by the metaphor of ascent and its subsequent spiritual
motif: nature is degraded as something to be left behind as elected human beings ascend,
by grace accompanied by ascetic self-discipline, upward through the hierarchy of beings
toward "reunion" with God. But as his later thought shifts from the influences
of Manichaeism, the metaphors of fecundity and migration to a good land direct his
reflection, so that his theology of nature becomes thoroughly ecological. Consequently,
Augustine's mature theology winds up celebrating nature more fully than Irenaeus'.
Augustine celebrated the world of the flesh and, under the metaphor of fecundity, tried to
show that all things -- the creatures of nature as well as human beings -- have their own
intrinsic value and necessary place in the created order and are included in God's plans
for redemption.(18)
This indicates, to Santmire, that "Augustine's thought represents the flowering of
the ecological promise of classical Christian theology."(19)
This classical "flowering" of the "ecological promise" of Christian
theology was carried on in the life St. Francis of Assisi. As Santmire summarizes:
Francis' life story represents the flowering of the ecological promise of the classical
Christian ethos. The mind and life of St. Francis are shaped, as Augustine's vision
was, by the metaphor of migration to a good land and the metaphor of fecundity. Francis
climbs the mountain of God's creation in order to stand in universal solidarity with all
God's creatures, both in this world and in the world to come, for which he so passionately
yearns. Then he descends, as he perceived God's love always to be overflowing, in order to
embrace all creatures of God, not only the specially elected and specifically blessed
human creatures. . . And he evidently awaits an eschatological world which he
believes will also be blessed with the fullness of the glory of all God's transfigured
creatures, material and spiritual.(20)
Francis is an isolated figure in medieval theological reflection on nature, where the
dominating metaphor is ascent, as illustrated by the natural theologies of Bonaventure,
Aquinas, and Dante.(21) In the middle ages, an
eschatological vision of God, angels, and the body of redeemed human beings transfixed in
eternal glory are the dominant themes of Christian theological reflection. Once more, we
meet the spiritual motif anchored securely to the metaphor of ascent. Consequently, there
are few signs of the vision of an abundant new earth and new heaven, visions that inspired
the minds of Irenaeus, Augustine, and Francis. Nature and its creatures are left behind as
human souls ascend the hierarchy of being to a union with God that excludes the material
world and nature's creatures.
With Luther and Calvin, a shift occurs from the medieval view of nature. Both rejected
the metaphor of ascent that dominated medieval theology. Both theologies focused on God's
"descent" to God's creation, so that Luther and Calvin found it congenial to
think of nature as "the mask of God" or as "the theater of God's
glory." Accordingly, Luther and Calvin stressed the immanence of the descent of God's
grace throughout nature. As with Irenaeus, Augustine, and Francis, the metaphor of
fecundity is central in the Reformers' thought, especially in Luther's theology. He
envisioned God "creatively pouring himself in, with, and under all things."(22) Luther,
more than Calvin, also had a strong sense of solidarity between human beings and other
creatures, both in this life and in redeemed life with God. In addition, both Luther and
Calvin evince a strong sense of wonder before the mysteries of nature and the conviction
that one day all things will be made new.
But by the time of Kant, Santmire continues, ". . . the
anthropocentric-soteriological center of the Reformers' thought would become, more or
less, the singular point of theological reflection." This means that Luther's
theology of creation in particular was de-emphasized and stripped away by post-Kantian
theologians in favor of "what must be viewed as a more narrow theanthropology."(23) Thus in the
thought of Ritschl the metaphor of ascent asserts itself again as the dominant metaphor in
his notion of "man rising above nature" to commune with God -- the central
notion of his theology. From Ritschl, the metaphor of ascent is inherited by Karl Barth
and Teilhard de Chardin, as well as by Rudolf Bultmann and Emil Brunner.(24)
Barth's theology emphasized the overflowing goodness of God. In this sense, the
metaphor of fecundity is evident in his theology. But Barth also overwhelmed the metaphor
of fecundity with the metaphor of ascent, since his dialect of creation and redemption
portrays the chief end of all things as human salvation.
Likewise for Teilhard, who wrote of spirit rising and unifying itself beyond the
material order through the processes of evolution. For him, the whole process of
evolution, as directed by God's overflowing goodness, is one universal ascent of spirit.
Thus the vast biophysical world is a colossal kind of stage -- or constellation of
evolutionary stages, teleologically ordered -- whose purpose is to produce a final unified
world of pure spirit when creation reaches its final evolutionary stage at what he called
the "Omega point." In his vision of salvation, then, the material order is left
behind in the evolutionary ascent of the spiritual. Thus like Barth, Teilhard interprets
humanity's relation to nature domination.(25)
On the basis of the preceding summary, as well as Santmire's analysis of the functions
of the metaphors of fecundity, migration to a good land, and ascent in biblical images of
nature, it is reasonable to conclude that there exists a two-thousand-year struggle in
Christian theological reflection on nature. Whenever the metaphor of ascent is dominant,
the metaphor of fecundity will be subordinated. Then the overflowing goodness of God will
be viewed as the first stage of God's plan of redemption, whose final goal is the ascent
of spiritual creatures alone to union with God. If, however, the metaphor of migration to
a good land is dominant, the metaphor of fecundity is joined to it and has the effect of
expanding and developing the theme of the earth as a place of blessing for all of earth's
creatures. The presence of both trends in Christian imagination generates either the
spiritual or the ecological motif accordingly. The historical struggle in the history of
Christian theological reflection on nature has been, and still is, the struggle between
the spiritual and the ecological motifs.(26) Yet if contemporary Christian
reflection on nature assumes an ecological reading of the Bible -- as exemplified by
Irenaeus, Augustine, Francis, Luther, and, in the first half of the twentieth century by
Paul Tillich -- new ecological trends of Christian thought will emerge. In fact, Christian
process thought has already emerged as a fully ecological theology of nature.
The Principle of Interdependence in Buddhism and Christianity
Both Buddhist and Christian tradition preserve resources for confronting the
ideological issues of our time "in, with, and under" non-ecologically relevant
traditions. The principle of interdependence is one such resource. While not as fully
emphasized and developed in Christian theological reflection as it is in Buddhist
teaching, the principle of interdependence has played an important role in Christian
traditions. Thus in ecological forms of Christian theology, nature and all sentient and
insentient entities are embodied forms of God's creative power and care. This implies that
as creatures all things in nature are interdependent. Thus the suffering of any creature
is the suffering of all, and salvation, however this is envisioned, involves the salvation
of all entities in nature. Sentient and insentient beings, in other words, were created in
interdependent interrelation with each other and with God. God's reality as creator is
constituted by God's interrelationships with all sentient and insentient beings at every
moment of space-time; the reality of every sentient and insentient being is constituted by
its interdependent relationship with God and with every other sentient and insentient
being in the universe at every moment of space-time.
In previous publications,(27) I noted that new ecological
models and theoretical explanations of the interdependency of humanity with nature are not
only emerging within the natural sciences,(28) but also in contemporary
feminist theology and process theology in dialogue with Buddhist tradition.(29) A common
theme of these models is that nature is best thought of as an organic, non-dual,
"aesthetic order," wherein life is characterized as an open-ended system of
interdependent relationships expressing itself as process, novelty, and mystery. Living
things do not "enter" into relationship with other entities external to
themselves; living things "find" themselves in interrelationships as the most
fundamental givens of existence. These processes of mutual interrelatedness constitute
what things are and become, from electrons to mountains, from plants to animals to human
beings, and, if one is inspired by Whiteheadian process philosophy, to God. Buddhists
refer to this interdependent net of relationships as pratitya-samuptpada or
"dependent co-origination."
Whitehead's definition of "living body" gives some precision to the idea of
universal interdependent causation. The living body, he writes, "is a region of
nature which is itself the primary field of expression issuing from each of its
parts." This means that those entities that are centers of expression and feeling are
alive, and Whitehead clearly applied this description to both animal and vegetable bodies.
Furthermore, since Whitehead's definition of a living body is an expansion of his
definition of the human and animal body, the distinction between animals and plants is not
a sharp one in his philosophy.(30) Whitehead also contended that
precise definition of the differences between organic and inorganic nature is not
possible. In Modes of Thought, he noted how scientific classifications often
obscure the fact that "different modes of natural existence often shade off into each
other."(31)
He made the same point in Process and Reality: there are no distinct boundaries
in the continuum of nature, and thus no distinct boundaries between living organisms and
inorganic entities.(32)
This point is central to Whiteheadian biologist Charles Birch's and process theologian
John Cobb's definition of "life." They raise the issue of the boundaries between
animate and inanimate in light of the ambiguity of "life" on hypothetical
boundaries.(33)
Viruses are particularly good examples of entities possessing the properties of life and
non-life. Another example is cellular organelles, which reproduce but are incapable of
life independent of the cell that is their environment. The significance of these examples
for the ecological model proposed by Birch and Cobb is that every entity is internally
related to its environment. Human beings are not exceptions to this model, nor, in Cobb's
opinion, is God, who is the chief example of what constitutes life.(34) Buddhist views in this regard
are structurally similar: every entity in nature is internally related to every item in
its environment. While there is no reality in Buddhist thought that corresponds to what
Christian theology names "God," the Buddhist doctrine of interdependent
co-arising and Christian process theology agree that the internal relationships each
"thing" in the universe has with all "things" in the universe mutually
constitute the life of that thing and the life of the universe.(35)
Furthermore, as there is continuity between organic and inorganic in Whiteheadian and
Buddhist thought, so too there is continuity between human and non-human. Whitehead
underscored this continuity by including "higher animals" in his definition of
"living person." Both human beings and animals are living persons characterized
by a dominant occasion of experience which coordinates and unifies the activities of the
plurality of occasions and enduring objects which ceaselessly form persons. Personal order
is linear, serial, object-to-subject inheritance of the past in the present. Personal
order in human beings and in nature is one component of what Whitehead called "the
doctrine of the immanence of the past energizing the present."(36) This linear, one-dimensional
character of personal inheritance from the past is the "vector-structure" of
nature.(37)
A similar picture of nature emerges in Hui-yin (Japanese, Kegon) Buddhist
interpretation of interdependent co-origination symbolized by Indra's jeweled net. In the
heavenly abode of the great Indian god, Indra, there is hung a wonderful net that
stretches out in all directions. The net's clever weaver has strung a single jewel in each
eye, and since the net is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. If we
look at a single jewel, we discover that its polished surface reflects every other jewel.
Not only that, the infinity of jewels reflected in the one we are looking at
simultaneously reflects all the other jewels, so that there occurs an infinite reflecting
process. Contemporary Buddhist ecological reflection is especially fond of this image for
the way it characterizes nature as an infinitely repeating series of dependent
co-originating interrelationships simultaneously occurring among all particular entities.(38)
Experiential apprehension of dependent co-origination arises by means of the practice of
meditation and is part of the content of the intense interior experience of the non-dual
structure of reality that Buddhists name "awakening" (nirvana).
Buddhist meditational experience of nature's interdependent non-duality has parallels
in mystical experiences of "unity" in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.(39) But while
such states are undoubtedly blissful, dwelling in their powerful intensity is also
dangerous. Egoism and subjectivism too often deafen those who have such experiences to the
natural world around them. Imagination too easily spins out ignorant tales and
orthodoxies, too uncritically fancies that the world's winds blow on the self, that leaves
fall at the self's feet for a reason, that people are watching. A mind risks real
ignorance for the sometimes paltry prize of an imagination enriched by such mystical
experience cut off from the particularities of the world. This is why reason must come to
the aid of mystics who experience non-duality to help them avoid what Whitehead called
"the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."(40)
The trick of reason is to get such mystically transformed consciousness to seize the
actual world of particulars, to apprehend them as they are, if only from time to time, as
objectively as possible because nature's particulars are as hard as they are harmonious.
Nature's non-dual interdependence is also an impersonally operating aesthetic system
wherein all life forms eat other life forms to be alive, wherein human beings are the most
efficient killers that have evolved on this planet. Indeed, life is as painful, deadly,
and impersonally terminal for all living things as it is beautiful and nurturing. The Blue
Heron that visited the creek running in front of my house was a presence that revealed
nature's non-dual harmony to me. But from the Blue Heron's perspective, I was a potential
predator, and the fish in the creek certainly didn't find its presence especially
uplifting. Furthermore, one of the primary characteristics of human interaction with
nature is the untold suffering our species imposes on other life forms over and beyond our
need for survival. It's rough out there. Living things are food for other living things,
and there are no exceptions. Or as Buddhists tell it, existence is as sorrowful as it is
beautiful; or as Christians tell it, existence is as fallen into sin as it is good. It's
all very confusing. Like Annie Dillard, "I alternate between thinking of planet Earth
as a home and a garden and as a hard wilderness of exile in which we are all sojourners, a
place of silence and mirages, where even the Earth itself seems a sojourner in airless
space, a wet ball flung by no one across nowhere."(41)
Given the reality of the organic harmonies of nature that are interdependent with the
hard particular facts of nature, how then should we live? By what ethical principles
should human beings interact with the environment that is the context of all life? What is
the character of a life-centered environmental ethic conceived in awareness of the mutual
relatedness and interdependency of all things and events at every moment of space-time?
How does living in accord with such principles contribute to what John Cobb calls
"the liberation of life"? Norman Myers, who is a consultant to the World Council
of Churches and a conservation biologist, notes a frightening fact: of the million species
that share this planet, the Earth is likely to lose at least one-quarter, and possibly
one-third to one-half within the next century. Such a loss "will represent the
biggest setback to the planetary complement of species since the first flickering of life
almost four billion years ago."(42) Furthermore, this loss will not
be caused by natural climatic or geophysical disasters, but by a single species, Homo
sapiens -- us, the species that, as far as anyone knows, is this universe looking at
itself.
If humanity does have the power to destroy itself and other life forms, is it possible
to think that humanity possesses sufficient power to prevent world-wide destruction of
itself and other life forms? We have the power to destroy life; do we have the power to
creatively sustain life? Much depends on the meaning of "power." Power
understood as sovereignty over the earth, given to humanity by a transcendent deity
possessing absolute sovereignty, has proven counter-productive. Traditionally assuming the
metaphor of ascent, mainline Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought grant such power only
to God, with human beings exercising derived power over nature given by God. But this
"monarchical" model, as Sallie McFague calls it, has three flaws.(43)
First, God is portrayed as worldless and the world as godless; the world is empty of
God's presence because it is too lowly to be the abode of God. Time and space are a
yawning void empty of God's presence; the places we love on the earth as well as the
limitless space of the universe are without God, for God is a totally other creator-king
upon whose power everything is dependent. God's power as creator extends over everything
in the universe at every moment of space-tine, of course, but God's being does not. God
relates to the universe externally, not internally; God is not part of the universe, but
essentially different and apart, since, according to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
traditions, there is nothing in nature to which we can liken God.
Second, while it is true that traditional Jewish, Christian, and Islamic models of God
portray God as a benevolent ruler of the universe, God's benevolence usually extends only
to human beings. In this model, God has very little concern for the cosmos, for the
non-human world. Nature is simply blank in terms of what lies beyond the human sphere.
Third, in this model God is not only distant from the world and relates primarily to
human beings, God also controls the universe through a combination of domination and
benevolence. God's action is on the world, not in the world. Thus while it is simplistic,
for example, to blame the Christian tradition for the current ecological crisis, this
model nevertheless supports attitudes of external control over the natural world in
imitation of God's external relation to nature.(44) In cruder popular Christian
views of God's power as dominance, for example, God is a king who fights on the side of
"his" chosen ones to bring their enemies down; nature is one of these enemies.
In more refined views of the same model, God is the father who will not let his children
suffer; nature is created under God's control. From the vantage point of environmental
ethics, the first view supports exploitation of nature as an instrumental means created to
serve humanity's and God's purposes. The second view supports escapism; nature is good,
but now exists in a state of sin; whatever liberation nature might experience must be
created by God and is of secondary importance to the liberation God has planned for some
of humanity.
An ecological world-view contradicts models of power as dominance because it
presupposes the metaphor of fecundity. Furthermore, if the human species is now directing
the course of its own evolution along with the non-human species inhabiting this planet --
because we are so intrinsically and extrinsically interdependent -- our choice is to
accept this power, but not as dominance and control. Accordingly, the environmental
ethical principles for which I will argue rest on notions of power that are relational. In
Christian process thought and Christian feminist theologies of nature, for example, God's
power is understood through the metaphor of "loving" persuasion that recognizes
and empowers the freedom of all things and events in space-time as God "lures"
all individuals, human and non-human, to realize their own creative potential. The guiding
metaphor here is the earth's fecundity as the created intention of God.
Likewise, Buddhist metaphors of power stress the power of cooperative co-origination
and mutual co-creation in the becoming of all things and events in space time.
Consequently, "enlightened compassion" -- intense, interior awareness of the
interdependency of all things and events to such a degree that the suffering of any
"sentient being" is experienced as one's own suffering -- ideally guides
Buddhist interaction with nature.
Ecological traditions of Christian theology -- as described by Santmire -- and
contemporary process thought, in dialogue with Buddhist tradition in conjunction with
current scientific-ecological notions, provide resources for revisioning a life-centered
environmental ethic as the practice of "loving/compassionate wisdom." By
"love" I mean affective, passionate concern for the welfare of all living
beings, while "compassion" refers to the interior experience of conscious
empathy for the suffering of all living things that accompanies the "wisdom" of
non-duality that reveals that we are mutually interrelated and interdependent with
everything that exists. Thus love as "concern and action on behalf of the welfare of
all living beings" is grounded in the active practice of compassionate wisdom, while
compassionate wisdom is the motivating force energizing the practice of love toward all
living beings. Loving/compassionate wisdom are interdependent.
The first question for an ethic based on the principle of loving/compassionate wisdom
is: why should we work to save species now in danger of extinction and work to preserve as
much biological diversity as possible? Because, among other reasons, it is in our and
their self-interest to do so, since we are as mutually implicated in their lives as they
are in ours. Through their genetic constituents, species of animals and plants are natural
resources. For example, in the interests of agriculture, medicine, and industry, human
beings may need to draw upon a variety of species for support, just as we have in the
past. We may rely on genetic diversity for our survival in ways that are uniquely human,
but such reliance mirrors the fact that all species of life survive because of genetic
diversity in the plurality of life forms. However, self-interest is not the only reason
for spending time on preserving biological diversity. In addition to the instrumental
value plants and animals have for our species, all species of life have their own
intrinsic value -- for themselves. In a mutually interdependent world, all life forms have
intrinsic value.
An environmental ethic of loving/compassionate wisdom thus requires respect and
affirmation of the intrinsic value of all living things: the value that each and every
living thing has in and for itself. There is nothing new in this affirmation. The
intention of every life-centered ethic is to revere life. So while the application of an
ethic of loving/compassionate wisdom will recognize the need to balance considerations of
the intrinsic value all life forms have for themselves with their extrinsic value for us,
the practice of loving/compassionate wisdom starts with recognizing that all things have
value in their own right.(45)
Accordingly, if all life, human and non-human, has both intrinsic and extrinsic value
in a universe of dynamic, processive, mutual interdependency and interrelationships, then
the pain of one species is the pain of all; the welfare of one species is the welfare of
all; and the life of all species is the life of each. Or as Jesus is reported to have
said, God's compassionate care extends even to sparrows; or as Mahayana Buddhists say,
there are no fully enlightened Buddhas until every blade of grass is enlightened. We are
all in this together.
If and when we experientially apprehend, by whatever means, the organic interdependency
of nature, our relation to the natural order suddenly changes. We become, in Buddhist
language, "compassionate," not from altruism that sees the suffering of another
life form as different from one's own, but through recognition that the suffering of
others, in part, is one's own since, in part, the other is an element of one's
own selfhood. But, in Christian language, as faith without works is dead, so too is
compassionate wisdom without love -- the active affirmation of the right to life of all
forms expressed through caring application of compassionate wisdom in daily interaction
with all life forms, including those life forms upon whom we rely for food.
Interacting with nature in accordance with the principle of loving/compassionate wisdom
will not be easy. For example, how should the economic needs of loggers and other
forestry-related industries in the Pacific Northwest be balanced against environmentalist
concerns to maintain remaining old growth forests and endangered animals like the Northern
Spotted Owl and plants like the Pacific Ewe? Since the corporate greed of the timber
interests in this region of the United States has for over a hundred years depleted both
old and second growth forests through unwise environmental practices and greedy economic
policies, the needs of forest ecosystems must be preserved even if this means the loss of
timber-related jobs. No logging in old growth forests should be permitted, not only to
preserve endangered species, but the forest ecosystem that nourishes all forest life forms
-- deer, elk, salmon, eagles, great blue herons, Douglas firs, Western Hemlocks, Pacific
Ewe (whose bark may provide medicine for the treatment of some forms of cancer), and human
beings. This decision will cause suffering to those whose economic livelihood lies in
timber related occupations, but human suffering in this instance is short-term. Human
beings are the most adaptable species inhibiting this planet; we can learn other trades,
find other ways to make a living. But over-harvesting forest lands kills the life of
forest ecosystems. This is long-term damage and suffering that also damages
human life.
The pollution of the Earth's atmosphere provides another example. Air quality must be
protected at all costs. In part, this means overcoming our collective addiction to the
automobile. Until we do so, we must force automobile manufactures to maintain high
emission-control standards and build more efficient engines that consume less gasoline. In
part, this means forbidding the emission of industrial waste into the atmosphere and the
earth's waterways. In part, this means finding alternative sources of energy to replace
fossil fuels and nuclear-generated power. In part, this means placing and enforcing strict
controls on urban development by insisting that all development plans, road building,
industrial expansion, mass transportation construction, and technological expansion cause
minimal environmental damage. The burden of proof must rest on our species to demonstrate
that our needs and the needs of the environment and other life forms the environment
supports are in harmony.
Living by loving/compassionate wisdom will require harsh medicine. Sometimes,
successful treatment of a disease is necessarily painful. Willingness to swallow our
collective medicine will require some profound consciousness raising, but we have the
resources. Luckily for us, some scientists, poets, artists, philosophers, and theologians
have a habit of waking us up, grabbing us by the collar and saying, "Will you please
pay attention! You wouldn't think something so completely there, so completely busy, as
life would be so easy to overlook." Diane Ackerman has a suggestion about how to
raise our collective environmental consciousness in a way that might energize the practice
of loving/compassionate wisdom. Over twenty years ago, American lunar astronauts saw an
earthrise from the surface of the moon. It knocked them senseless.
We should send regularly scheduled shuttles to the moon filled with artists and
naturalists, photographers and painters, to see what they saw, "who will then turn
their mirrors upon ourselves and show us Earth as a single planet, a single organism
that's buoyant, fragile, blooming, buzzing, full of spectacle, full of fascinating human
beings, something to cherish. Learning our full address may not end all wars or solve all
problems, but it will enrich our sense of wonder." It will remind us that the human
context is not tight as a noose, but as large as the universe we have the privilege to
inhabit. It will change our sense of what a neighbor is. It will persuade us that we are
citizens of the planet, earth's "joy riders and caretakers," who would do well
to work on the planet's problems together.(46)
Seeing the earth this way, we would also understand how empty the world would be
without animal sounds and without us: horses galloping across meadows; ravens sounding
like they're choking on tree bark; bull elk bugling in the mating season; the ping of
night hawks; the music of crickets; the electric whine of female mosquitoes; the Morse
code of red-headed wood peckers; the joyful laughter of human beings.
Notes
1. [Back to
text] Lawrence E. Sullivan, "Preface," in Buddhism and
Ecology, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams (Cambridge: Harvard
University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1997), xi.
3. [Back to
text] H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological
Promise of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 8.
4. [Back to
text] Lewis Lancaster, "Buddhism and Ecology: Collective Cultural
Perceptions," in Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds,
ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams, (Cambridge: Harvard University Center
for the Study of World Religions, 1997), 3-18.
5. [Back to
text] Duncan Ryuken Williams, "Animal Liberation, Death, and the
State," in ibid., 156-57.
6. [Back to
text] Lancaster, "Buddhism and Ecology: Collective Cultural
Perceptions," in ibid., 5-6.
10. [Back to
text] See David Eckel, "Is There a Buddhist Philosophy of Nature?" in
ibid., 327-49, and Ian Harris, "Buddhism and the Discourse of Environmental Concern:
Some Methodological Problems Considered," in ibid., 377-402.
11. [Back to
text] Alan Sponburg, "Green Buddhism and the Hierarchy of Compassion,"
in ibid., 351-76.
12. [Back to
text] See Rosemary Radford Ruether, Liberation Theology: Human Hope
Confronts Christian History and American Power (New York: Paulist Press, 1972),
115-22; Thomas Sieger Derr, "Religion's Responsibility for the Ecological Crisis: An
Argument Run Amok," Worldview 18 (January 1975): 39-45; Sallie McFague, Models
of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987),
chapters 1-3; and Gordon Kaufman, "The Concept of Nature: A Problem for
Theology," Harvard Theological Review ): 337-66.
13. [Back to
text] Santmire, The Travail of Nature, 8-9.
14. [Back to
text] The theological source for this idea in Christian mystical theology is
Augustine. See Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism (New York:
Crossroads, 1972), 243-44. The goal of Christian mystical practice is to transform the
soul's "image" of God into the "likeness" of God." At creation,
God endowed all human beings with God's image and likeness. But God's likeness and image
were separated at the Fall by Adam and Eve's original sin. So the mystical path was
understood as a kind of ascent to reunite the image of God and the likeness of God
separated at the Fall. Being "like" God means experiencing the world as God
experiences the world and loving the world accordingly the way God love it.
15. [Back to
text] Santmire, The Travail of Nature, chapter 10.
27. [Back to
text] See my Wrestling With the Ox: A Theology of Religious Experience
(New York: Continuum, 1997), chapter 5 and "The Jeweled Net of Nature," Process
Studies 22 (Fall 1993): 134-48.
28. [Back to
text] See E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1954); Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); and two recent studies by Kenneth Boulding, The
World as A Total System (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1981) and Ecodynamics
(Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1982).
29. [Back to
text] See Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear
Age; Charles Burch and John B. Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life
(Denton, Tex.: Environmental Ethics Books, 1990); and two studies by Jay B. McDaniel,
Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life (Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989) and Earth, Sky, Gods, and Mortals: Developing an
Ecological Spirituality (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990).
30. [Back to
text] Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan,
1938), 31-34.
35. [Back to
text] For a thorough study of the worldviews underlying Buddhist, Taoist,
Indian, and Japanese concepts of nature, see Callicott and Ames, eds., Nature in Asian
Traditions of Thought (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989).
36. [Back to
text] Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan,
1933), 188.
37. [Back to
text] Stephanie Kaza thinks that "the vector structure of nature" of
Whitehead's philosophy might correspond to the Buddhist doctrine of the Law of Karma. See
her "A Response to Paul Ingram," Process Studies 22 (Fall
1993): 147.
38. [Back to
text] See Francis H. Cook, "The Jewel Net of Indra," in Nature
in Asian Traditions of Thought, ed. Callicott and Ames, 213-29.
39. [Back to
text] Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, eds., Mystical Union in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue (New York: Continuum, 1996); and Paul
Mommaers and Jan van Bragt, eds., Mysticism: Buddhist and Christian (New York:
Crossroad, 1995).
40. [Back to
text] Whitehead, Process and Reality, 7-8, 93-94.
41. [Back to
text] Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harpers and
Row, 1982), 150.
42. [Back to
text] Norman Myers, "The Environmental Crisis: How Big, How
Important?" Report and Back Papers of the Working Group, GDR (Geneva: WCC
Publications, 1986), 101, cited by McDaniel, Of God and Pelicans, 5.
44. [Back to
text] See Paul O. Ingram, "The Jeweled Net of Nature," Process
Studies 22: (Fall 1993): 134-35.
45. [Back to
text] Jay McDaniel makes this point eloquently from the perspective of Christian
process theology in Of Gods and Pelicans, 52-53.
46. [Back to
text] Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Random
House, 1990), 285.
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