, ':~rt~- t;;;··~::: ··.:t'>~~h.~.1'~:!~~c... "_·cosp,·_ . r,'-I­~ _o~~~~-?~f~"""S.""ti~~k~~;~t~~:~7~";:'::O-,"-~--

A Publication of Fall, 1989 The Institute for Ecosophical Studies Vol. V, No. 3

BUDDHISM, EGO-SPIRITUALITY AND THE RELIGIONS

We are fortunate in this issue to be able to offer a creative, informative study of Buddhism and its relevance for ecological thought and spirituality. Brian Brown presents us with both a scholarly reading of Buddhist history and sources and an ecospiritual framework for understanding all religions. Religious traditions, claims Dr. Brown, "must be interpreted as the self-articulation of a planetary consciousness, the earth a sacred presence to and of the Absolute" (p. 4).

All religious traditions are called upon today to enter into "a genuinely planetary context ... to discover a common global concern that will creatively sustain future mutual dialogue" (p. 2). The desecration of the earth provides that common concern and raises questions that are fundamental to all traditions. Entering this global situation from the depths of their own traditions will transform and renew the religions' contact with the sacred as well as make them effective agents in redirecting the energies of human civilization.

Guiding Brown's vision is an organic model of an evolving diversity-within­ unity. The various religious traditions, like so many organs, have historically established separate identities but must now, for their own continued vitality, shape a common body. This common life to whose welfare they will contribute and from which they receive a new vitality and meaning must be integral with the earth process. The various traditions must realize that it was the earth process itself that expressed its own spiritual riches in and through them and that now calls them to a new stage of differentiated unity and a new level of spiritual development.

Buddhism, having been involved in a long meditation on "the processes and significance of the phenomenal world", (p. 2) will achieve a new understanding of its own teachings on the interrelatedness and "conditioned-co-production" of all beings, including humans. The human, for Buddhism, has a special role to play in this phenomenal world but not that of manipulator or exploiter. Rather, the human must come to realize itself as that "faculty through which the universe in all its variety is self-disclosed as the cosmic extension of the absolute" and through which the absolute comes to know itself "as the originative source and ultimate nature of that very universe" (p. 7). Dr. Brown's interpretive framework is seen, finally, to owe a lot to Buddhism itself, as well as to Brown's mentor, Thomas Berry.

-- Don St. John

Ii-f,., of the earth's own groping self-identity as BUDDRISl1 AND THE ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE a planetary presence of and to the Absolute. By Brian Brown The earth is a living psychic process; thus the profound subjectivity animating and Up to the present time, one of the most sustaining these more articulately conscious difficult problems to genuine mutual expressions of human religious traditions. understanding in trans-cultural religious Therefore, any insistence by any of the dialogue has been that of context. Each earth's religious traditions on entrenching tradition, while remaining faithful to its itself within the limited context of its own own unique articulation of reality has, at geographic-cultural sphere of influence could the same time, to exercise sensitive care have tragic consequences. against a distorted reception of the other's For, if, in the earlier stages of their equally unique world view. Undoubtedly, it history it was a natural and spontaneous is neither possible nor desirable to assume process of earth development for human the stance of the tabula rasa (the mind as a religious traditions to explicitate their clean slate) and to simply bracket one's own own unique understanding of reality, it is intellectual and spiritual heritage. The now no less natural and much more imperative history of the transmission of ideas from for them to enter the next phase of their one culture to another attests to the growth, in correlation with the evolutionary marvelously creative syntheses which have dynamics of the earth. To assume a evolved from the active translation and genuinely planetary context, albeit from the assimilation of novel thought into a native inner resources of their own unique consciousness. intuitions, will be to discover a common The twentieth century has clearly global concern that will creatively sustain witnessed to a dramatic mutual interest in their future mutual dialogue. This and dialogue among global religious planetary context will allow them to evoke traditions. Enormous strides have been made again from their own distinctive heritages, to distance the age of reciprocal symbolic expressions of and revelatory indifference and/or open hostility among encounters with the sacred, and thus, to adherents of different beliefs. Yet there renew their psychic-spiritual energy. are equally clear indications of popular Finally, to adopt a planetary context will retrenchment in fundamentalistic and represent a faithful response to the organic literal interpretation of and devotion to biosphere that is earth, presently imperiled one's own sectarian persuasion. In the face for want of adequate defense from the very of an increasing secularity and base religious witnesses that should be materialism, the value of such a trend might testifying to its inherent sacrality. be defended with forceful conviction. Undoubtedly one of the crucial factors in Nevertheless, a return to rigid the planet's contemporary degradation by denominationalism threatens us not only with technological profiteering is the failure of a regressive fragmentation in human global human religious traditions to elaborate an discourse, but signals the eclipse of those ecological philosophy, spirituality, and very religious traditions that revert to ethic that would not only forcefully convict such narrow parochialism. such behavior, but would persuasively In the earlier stages of earth history, educate human consciousness against its very the multiple expressions of human conception. spirituality which dramatically determined The . tradition of the Buddha, from its entire cultural patterns, developed and earliest inception to its later highly flourished as effulgent manifestations of sophisticated refinements, demonstrates a the earth's own interiority and as multiple singular concern for the processes and responses to the Mystery that called it into significance of the phenomenal world. The being as one organism. following study will identify and eluc.idate The distinctive doctrines and this continuous pattern of Buddhist scholastic elaborations, ritual enactments reflection out of which emerges an and symbolic representations of these ecological cosmology in which the reality of traditions were the differentiating phases each thing mutually participates in and

Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 2

'f' ')~l depends upon every other thing. The tendencies, volitions, strivings, impulses intuition which creatively sustained the and emotions. Finally, the fifth basic consistent focus for the development of so element is vijnana, or consciousness, as comprehensive a vision across the diversity either pure awareness or the process of of Buddhist thought and practice has been ideation and thought. succinctly phrased in the original Pali In the light of our purpose to term, Peticcasenuppsde , This is often delineate the value of Buddhist thought to translated as "conditioned co-production" or contemporary ecological concerns, two points "dependent origination." But a more literal might be noted thus far. First, there is rendition, "the-together-rising-up-of­ the insistence by the Buddha himself and the things," better conveys the notions that the Abhidharma schools of his followers that appearing and standing forth into being, the existence is a thoroughly contextual existence, of any particular thing is a process: no person or thing is an dynamic collaborative process of many other independent, self-subsisting reality, but things. No thing exists in and of itself, comes into being, persists, and de-ceases as but only as a context of relations, a nexus a given function of other factors. To of factors whose peculiar concatenation understand that life perdures only as a alone determines the origin, perpetuation or complex aggregation of multiple conditions cessation of that thing. A line from the is to indict modern technological-industrial Pali canon, revered by all the schools of pragmatism. The dictum of the Buddha, the Buddhist tradition as an original " ... from the aris ing of this, that statement of the Enlightened Founder arises ... from the ceasing of this, that himself, pithily formulates the fluid ceases ," ass umes a dire cogency when app1ied contingency which is the very nature of the to a mentality entranced by technical power phenomenal world: and heedless f the consequence of its destructive actions in a biosphere where all Imasmim sati idam hatij imassa life-forms are interrelated. uppada idam uppajjatij The second lesson to be drawn is based imasmim asati, idam na hatij on the Buddhist critique of the notion of imassa nirodha, idam nirujjhati. ego as the discrete, self-consistent, This being, that becomes, from the self-individuating and self-directing center arising of this, that arises; this not and end of all human activity. This becoming, that does not become; from supposedly unique and abiding personal the ceasing of this, that ceases. identity is merely a concept superimposed upon what really is only a composite In such a universe, any element is the derivative of those five "heaps. " The combined shape and apparent form of a central issue in the excoriation of the specific number of other elements. Its belief in one's personal autonomy lay in the identity can only be defined as the Buddhist conviction of it as the origin of expressive manifestation or the conditioned all misery and sorrow. representation of those other elements. The The act of accepting one's self as a phenomenal world of persons and things is center of ultimate significance initiates a here interpreted as so many clusters, process of differentiation: identity as this groupings, or literally "heaps" (skandhas) unique "I" is only possible by setting of five basic psycho-physical elements. oneself over and against other persons and Rupa or material form, is the first and things. Once entrenched, the ego identity included the four primary elements of earth, maintains a two-fold momentum vis-a-vis water, fire, and air, as we11 as the five those persons and things from which it sense organs and their respective sense considers itself essentially distinct. On objects. The second is verdana representing the one hand, perpetual self-aggrandizement feelings, while the third, samjna, refers to through the possession of, and control over, all possibilities of perceptual experience. its world becomes a thirst that suffers with The fourth cluster, samskara, includes all every frustration and craves more with every good, bad, or indifferent dispositions, satisfaction. On the other hand, the ego's

Ecaspirit 5:2 Fall 1989 3 inherent desire for self-perpetuation drives self-subsistent nature of its own, for while it farther from a recognition and acceptance it is unique, that uniqueness is entirely of the organic processes out of which its derived from the planet. This species, so composite nature is derived, by which it is enamored of itself, has forgotten that it is sustained and to which it will return. a peculiar configuration of the earth which A contemporary Buddhist assessment of shaped and sustains it. Forgetting of its human domination and manipulation of the own conditionality accounts, on the one environment rests upon this notion of the hand, for the devastating drive of humanity ego. In its awesome application of rational to dominate, possess, and manipulate the thought to technical expertise, the human natural world. On the other, it is the root collectivity has realized a new level of cause of a malaise pervasive in modern self-differentiation. If on the individual society--an unfocused anxiety, a loss of level the human being identifies itself as enthusiasm, and a general experience of life an autonomous center of self-given reality, as a weary process of woeful struggle--an and thus, as essentially different from all updated social version of the classical others, a more profound alienation has Buddhist concept of duhkha, suffering. With recently taken place on the level of every accomplishment of its applied species. In the process of self-definition, techniques, the human species repudiated the one not only perceives oneself as an organic conditions which had determined its autonomous personality but implicitly as a evolutionary emergence and arrogated an human personality. Today, scientific entrepreneurial stance towards the natural rationale has so informed the modern mind world as an entity essentially distinct from that inherent in every ego image is the itself. This stance allowed for an notion of one I s identity as homo erectus, objectivity which further promoted the homo sapiens, or homo faber (the human as advance of technique, and simultaneously upright, the human as knower, the human as aggravated the alienation that sickens the maker). With each qualification the human modern spirit. species has increasingly determined itself If there be a cogency to this Buddhist as a distinct entity, transcendent to rather diagnosis of contemporary humanity's than shaped by and participating in the estranged disaffection from and despoilation planetary processes of the biosphere. of the planetary environment, its prescribed The Buddhist tradition traced a direct treatment may be no less germane. The causal link between human sorrow and Buddha's antidote to the disease of craving suffering and the failure to recognize desire and the attendant suffering evoked by oneself as a dynamic process of many a belief in the autonomy of the ego was the contributing factors. This analys is is no Noble Eightfold Path. It consisted of right less trenchant when applied to contemporary views, right resolve, right speech, right humanity as a whole. Allured by its conduct, right livelihood, right effort, technological achievements, the human right mindfulness, and right concentration. species has been seduced by its own power of Central to all its aspects and explicit in craft into a belief of self-autonomy. In an three of them (right views, mindfulness, and idealized future it would perceive itself concentration) is the concern for correct and its security as completely independent perception: to see reality as it is. of what it deems the uncertainties of merely One of the most influential scholastic organic processes, capable of subsisting in Buddhist commentaries, exhaustively artificially constructed space colonies or detailing the types and methods of in vast urban centers protected from the meditational praxis through which Buddhists ambiguities of nature by a total control real ized that perceptual goal, is the over them. Vissudhimagga or Path of Purification by the Although indifferent to the insight fifth century monk, Buddhaghosa. From any that it "rises up" with the collaborative perspective, it remains a classic of human effort of the entire biosphere, the human psychology. But viewed from the present species is no independent center unto interest in the development of a Buddhist itself; it has no svabhava or ecological philosophy and spirituality,

Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 4 those teachings which might appear only as electron microscope of molecular biology and exotic and bizarre elements of a foreign the equations of quantum and particle culture, assume a new dimension. physics are recent means through which the Specifically, there are innumerable earth has clarified the exact nature of its references to, and precise instructions for, organicity and extended it to a final meditations on the inevitability and self-identity as one living biosphere, one experience of old age, sickness and death; organism. on the sub-division of the human body into The second message to contemporary 32 parts, each with a specific function and human society which emerges in the earth's relationship to others; meditation on self-understanding through Hinayana Buddhist varieties of physical decomposition and thought and praxis is the earth's cautionary decay; on the minute details of breathing warning of its own fragility. Repeatedly, and eating; and a comprehensive correlation the Buddhist tradition, having exposed the of each of the 32 parts of the body with one composite nature of phenomena, emphasized of the four primary elements of air, earth, its correspondent impermanence. I f things fire and water. are not self-subsisting entities but are Whether the meditation involves the dependently originated and maintained by a macabre concentration upon a bloated and complex of conditions, they are by that very festering corpse or upon the more refined fact liable to disarray and cessation. The attention to the in-flow and out-flow of heedless extinction of flora and fauna at breath, all such exercises share a common the hands of human craving is ample purpose: to see reality as it is. That is, confirmation for the transitory reality that to see it as a realm in which nothing arises is earth. But in the light of and stands forth into being of its own paticcasamutpada (conditioned co-production) power, but whose origin and persistence is a where the being of one is dependent on the function of factors which are themselves being of others, and the termination of one products of other factors. To smash the spells the termination of others, this illusion of a world populated by autonomous revelation of the earth regarding the entities, extraneous and unrelated, the impermanence of all composite organisms, Buddhist tradition relentlessly focused on assumes dread implications that need no the contextual nature of reality, exposing elaboration. the component parts, or the heap of As Buddhism continued to reflect on the relations that alone give a thing its original intuition of paticcasamutpada, it identity. realized in the Mahayana phase of its As indicated above, Buddhism, as all development a more positive and synthetic other religious traditions, must be interpretation of the formula. interpreted as the self-articulation of a Paradoxically, the reductive analysis of the planetary consciousness, the earth as a sensory world into a series of component sacred presence to and of the Absolute. If elements was intended by the Hinayana that be so, then the intensive psychic tradition to induce a profound detachment energy of Hinayana Buddhism assumes new from it. In destroying the illusion of the significance as the self-reflective personal ego, it simultaneously devalued revelation of the earth itself. Through the phenomenal reality as an object of centuries-long sustained attention of the possessive human desire. But having Buddhist community, the earth addresses successfully done so, the Hinayana was itself to the whole of the human population. unable to re-invigorate its world with a While the exact style of its meditations may new, more creative interpretation of it. be totally inappropriate for the modern A brief qualification is in order mentality, the subject of their concern is however, if the Hinayana emphasized a not. The basis for all of them is organic reductive-analytic methodology to achieve process. its goal, there is evidence of a This unremitting concentration on the corresponding affective plane whose central phenomenal world as an organic aggregation intuition would realize its comprehensive of parts, bespeaks the earth I s own initial implications in the later Bodhisattva ideal self-understanding and reality. The

5 Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 of cosmic compassion. I refer to that group left off and continued to ponder the of Hinayana meditations known as the Divine significance and the affective Abidings, Brahmavihara. affective implications of "the together Consisting of loving kindness, rising up of things." But before it would compassion, gladness and equanimity, these reach its most sublime articulation of that meditations testify to an order of mystery, three advances in the areas of coherence and mutual resonance operative Buddhist symbolism and metaphysics would within the very composite texture of contribute fresh insight, thus facilitating phenomena which the Hinayana so thoroughly its final expression.

analyzed. The object of this group of In his Mu1amadhyamakakarika J meditations is "the breaking down of the "Fundamentals on the Middle Way," Nagarjuna barriers" which hatred, resentment, envy, (c. 150-250) laid the seminal foundations indifference, greed, and cruelty erect for all the future schools of Mahayana between oneself and other beings. In the Buddhism and presented human intellectual 52nd verse of the ninth chapter of his text, history with one of its major classics. Buddhaghosa indicates the universal Noting in his first chapter that the supreme extensions and idealized ramifications of teaching of the Buddha was that of those four virtues. They transform oneself pratityasamutpada (now in its Sanskrit even while being actively projected towards form), he assumes that as the basic point of and efficaciously pervading all beings, of reference and the touchstone for his every category in all directions, throughout reasoning throughout the following the cosmos. Thus, while Hinayana analysis twenty-six chapters. With an incisive exhaustively revealed and emphasized the logic, he reveals the untenability of any composite nature of phenomenal reality, it invidiously polarizing position which would simultaneously demonstrated a vital assert one extreme viewpoint against its connexity and ideal reciprocity contained opposite. What concerns us here is his within it: extension of earlier Hinayana analysis which had reduced phenomena to groupings of the Mayall beings [in all directions] five elementary constituents: matter, be free from enmity, affliction and feelings, perceptions, impulses and anxiety and live happily. Mayall consciousness. breathing things ... May all Nagarjuna merely applied the logic of creatures ... May all persons May all dependent origination to demonstrate that who have a personality May all not even these elemental sksndbes were women May all men ... May all Noble ultimate; they too were without independent Ones Mayall not Noble Ones ...Mayall reality; they too were products of multiple deities ...Mayall human beings ... May contributing factors. While not strikingly all those in states of loss ... be free apparent at first, such a deduction had from enmity, affliction and anxiety, crucial ramifications. According to the and live happily. Hinayana, there were five basic "building blocks," and "the together rising up of Although explicit to it, such a view things" was circumscribed to them. In other was not sufficiently fostered, and Hinayana words, it was their innumerable combinations thought eventually entertained a belief in a which lent shape and consistency to the reality of ultimate value, a Nirvana totally phenomenal world, which was said to rise up transcendent to an earthly existence of through them. However, the five skendhes conditional processes, referred to as were irreducible and thus not subject to the Samsara. law of pratityasamutpada. All other things This cleft between Nirvana and Samsara, were conditionally originated by them, but between an unconditional nominal reality and as ultimate facts, they subsisted as the world of finite contingent phenomena, independent entities. Nagarjuna exposed the became the axis for a new development in logical inconsistency of such a position, Buddhist history and for the final emergence clearly implicating the contingent status of of its ecological cosmology. Mahayana the skandhas themselves. But if things could reflection picked up where Hinayana analysis 6 Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 no longer be traced to just five elements to Samsara is nothing essentially explain their existence, how and what different from nirvana. Nirvana is sustained their rising up? sustained? nothing essentially different from Nagarjuna's inference was as clear as his samsara. The realm of nirvana is the logic was acute. The universe comes into realm of samsara. Between the two, being and persists as a totality in which also, there is not the slightest each and every thing in it mutually difference whatsoever. conditions and depends upon every other thing. The entire universe rises up through Never before nor since has such a the mutual influence and active straightforward equivalence been made participation of all its parts. While this between the infinite and the finite. Its was not made explicit by Nagarjuna himself, role in the development of a Buddhist it was a critical advance in the theory of ecological philosophy and spirituality is pratityasamutpada, extending its paramount. The forthright assertion of the implications and expanding the Hinayana earth's sacrality as fully coincident with concern with organic processes to a the Absolute is a singular refutation of logically grounded appreciation of the those religious traditions that have phenomenal universe as one integral organic surrendered the same earth to the savageries reality. of technological exploitation as a mere Now, inherent to the principle of footstool of the Almighty. universal mutuality, of everything dependent Complementing this insight of buddhist on every other thing, is the principle of logic was a correspondent symbolization of correlativity. Not only is the physical the universe as an embryonic reality, the appearance and abiding presence of a thing Tathagatagarbha, maturing to a full dependently constituted by a universe of awareness of itself as the Absolute Reality other things, but its intrinsic value and or the Cosmic Body of the Buddha, the meaningful significance is likewise bestowed Dharmakaya. Having asserted the identity of relative to them. Therefore, to speak of a nirvana and samsara through rational transcendent reality without reference to analysis, the Mahayana tradition assumed the the mundane is meaningless, to refer to an imagery of an organic growth process to infinite without regard to what its finite explain the inherent coherence between the is an empty statement. Each polarity two, despite an only apparent disparity. collapses since the two terms are The representation of the universe as a correlative to and derivative from each self-emerging, and self-awakening other. They are dependently originated with interdependent totality, not only allowed each other. Nagarjuna seized upon the for the possibility of different levels or Hinayana dichotomy between nirvana and stages of insight in that self-recognitive ssmsere . To oppose the former, as a state process, but further consolidated the value of unconditional, transcendent reality, to of the universe not only as an organic the latter, as the sphere of contingent whole, but as an integral consciousness. finite existence, is to posit a This last point was metaphysically contradiction. The notion of nirvana as an grounded and elaborated upon by the Absolute, independent of and different from Vi jrumevadin or "Consciousness Only" school samsara as the realm of the phenomenal of the Mahayana tradition. While the theory universe, is a logical absurdity. Since of pratityasamutpada was central to its nirvana is inconceivable without samsara, systematic presentation, its interpretation since its very notion is conditioned by and was peculiarly nuanced by a thorough-going relative to it, then, according to the logic idealism. Abbreviated to its barest form, of pratityasamutpada, the Absolute "rises up the school argued the existence of only one with" and finds value in the phenomenal reality: consciousness. In its absolute universe. Nagarjuna presses their logical mode, it was referred to as Alayavijnana or identity even further when he states in the "Storehouse Consciousness." Out of it the twenty-fifth chapter of his treatise: sensible shapes and features of the

7 Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989

l' empirical universe and the individual human horizon for the self-disclosure of the real consciousnesses which perceive that universe in the totality of its relations. The are actively and continuously projected. school of Hua-yen indicated the scope and Persons and things "rise up together with" intricacies of those relations, and one another, are mutually influenced and represents the final phase in the present conditioned by each other and share a development of a Buddhist ecology. fundamental dependence upon the ultimate In his Treatise on the Golden Lion, the "storehouse consciousness" from which they seventh century Chinese patriarch, Fa-tsang co-originate and through which they (643-712) cryptically enumerated the "Six co-exist. While it is the primordial source Characters" which together express the and grounding principle of phenomenal central intuition of the school. These existence, the Alayavijnana is itself six--universality, specialty, similarity, circumscribed by it and, in a most direct diversity, integration and way, is dependent upon human consciousness. differentiation--apply to every existent For it is only through human perception that particularity. While preserving their the Absolute contemplates the richness of individual unique identities, they reveal its own self-manifesting diversity and comes both the reciprocal disposability of each to to a full self-understanding in and as the all the others and to the dynamics of their totality of its universal contours and forms. mutual coherence as one universe. While Transposed to an ecological Fa-tsang employed one of the golden lions perspective, the human assumes its proper that adorned the imperial palace where he dimension, and undoubtedly it is originally lectured to exemplify these laws pre-eminent, but not because of any of differentiating identity, it is fitting self-derived innate superiority as erectus, in the light of our topic to call forth the sapiens, or faber. Its distinction rests earth itself as their living exemplar. not in any physical, rational or Through the character of universality, technological prowess over the universe, but every element of the planet, from the on its being the faculty through which the molecules and the atoms of its fiery center universe in all its variety is to the animate communities of its flora and self-disclosed as the cosmic extension of fauna is viewed as one organic biosphere, the Absolute. In that same process the itself a member in the innumerable galaxies Absolute realizes its most determinate and which constitute the cosmos. Under the concrete self-awareness as the originative aspect of speciality, each biospheric source and ultimate nature of that very element assumes its own proper dimension as universe. In such a cosmology, the value of contributing a peculiar function; an the human is its being the psychic individual energy to the common life-throb coincidence of the phenomenal as Absolute, of the whole. Yet, this very uniqueness of the Absolute as phenomenal. In the each points to a similarity. Different with experience of enlightenment, human respect to function, every element shares consciousness is the median realization in with every other a final denomination as one which each knows itself as the inherent of the countless organs of one earth body. modality of the other. Slightly nuancing the aspect of speciality, While the type of perception that has the fact that every element is made given rise to the technological inimitable by all the others establishes a consciousness of the present age is the new level of diversity. That each member of single vision of pragmatic intentionality, the biosphere makes a uniquely unrepeatable Buddhism fostered a multiple-perspectival contribution to the health of the whole awareness of reality as "the together rising earth, again evokes the haunting up" of the Absolute and the mutual implications of the Buddha's original phrase interdependencies of the phenomenal. Rather " ...this not becoming, that does not become; than the constricted focus of applying means from the ceasing of this, that ceases." To to self-willed ends, and the intrusive the technological mentality, confident in manipulation of persons and things to attain its ability to compensate for any loss in those purposes, Buddhism assumed for human the natural environment by its own consciousness a universal context and open

8 Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 artificial manipulations, this assertion of Haine Meditations the singular enrichment of each to the whole is a glaring indictment. The fifth I character of integration defines each A tiny pine tr_ grows next to an old stone element of the planet as an active covered with moss, overshadowed by elder tr_s draped tending-towards and leaning-upon all other in _t gr~ strands of hair. Hho, in this busy elements. They. "together rise up" and world, knows of this little gr~ creature? And what maintain the one biosphere through their would such knowing add to its dignity, its sheer mutual, simultaneous collaboration which is facticity? But in its truthfulness, its realness, in possible precisely because each element its being ...... at it is and not another--in this it reacts spontaneously out of its own expresses and fulfills the way of God. Billions of particular frame of reference within the y_rs and trillions of events went into the shaping whole. This differentiated context out of of this particular pine tr_ in this particular place and within which each element contributes to at this particular time. Far frOlll being nothing. in the biosphere is the sixth characteristic of being itself. it is everything. That truly is only phenomena. This position again questions no-thing ...... ich is unconnected wi th the incredibly the contemporary disregard for regional intricate ~ of meaning that is everything. integrity as the source of a variegated Here and now, surrounded by pine, rock, ocea" richness for the physical and psychic health and mist. one touches again the fU'ldamental truths of the planet in the face of the rapidly that sustain and endure. Each of us, too, is meant assimilative homogeneity of artificially to be ourselves and not another. One coslllic mothe!" contrived technological environments. has pressed upon her WOlIIb to birth you and me: By attributing these six baptized in this blood/water. supported by thi~ characteristics to every individual element bone/stone, nurtured by this flesh/earth. He havlO within the biosphere Hua Yen would encourage ~ived a secret name ...... ispered by her breath. To the modern mentality to pierce the myopic gro., into this name. to becOlIIe this word, is not to stare of the one-tract vision of purposive be no-thing. no maHer what the world thinks, but £$ consciousness that sees things only as to become everything: pine. rock. ocean and air. means to specified ends. A reality in which things interrelate with things and II contribute to the emergence of a planetary The bay shillllllers under the full IIIOOn and in body which is sacred as the manifesting gestures of .xtravagant bliss spills its i_Hed presence to and of the Absolute, such a t ....sur. again and again onto the shor.. Th& reality is infinitely more complex and its sleeping ocean in its restl.ss tossing knows not the contemplation infinitely more transfiguring lover who mov.s its dr.allls, who stirs its depths. Hhc, than any mere manipulatory process could excit.s its _tness. ever imagine. Awakened wi thin, the heart f••ls the nameles!' Presence that slips the mind's _t concepts anO dances in its depths. Hi.rophany of IIIOOn and s.a, holding within and without in hushed tension until Brian Brown, Ph.D., L.L.D., teaches in the the opening wIwn the soul's debris is washed in wav.~ Religious Studies Department of Iona of mercy and Iove, Reborn, it scr.allls and gasps for College, New Rochelle, New York. He is also air. a member of the New York State Bar The wide fringes of the bay move outward in a Association narrowing path toward a distant unity. So the universe IIIOV.S through coslllic time, carrying its shi_ring forms. So h.nan history shi_rs with hierophani.s as it ~s its way. So .ach moment shi_rs with eternality. So every face. every tr_. ev.ry IIIOUntain shi_rs.

Don st. John SMan's Island Haine

Ecospirit 5:2 Fall 1989 9 The Institute for Ecosophical Studies

Board of Directors Editors: Paul Larson Don St. John Paul Larson, Treasurer Scott Madden Logo: Rudy Hilt Mim Noordam Jean Pearson Annie Prince Typing: Carol Newell Don St. John, Exec. Director Harry Newman, ex-officio The Institute for Ecosophical Studies is an educational non-profit organization located at but independent from Moravian College.

Ecospirit was aided by a grant from the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges.

INSTITUTE FOR ECOSOPHICAL STUDIES Nonprofit Org. c/o Donald P. St. John, Ph.D. U.S. Postage Moravian College P A I D Bethlehem, PA 18018 Bethlehem PA Permit 11 267

.. ;\