The essay I'm posting below was written as the Introduction to a book called Seeing Good Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred, which is a collection of essays and poems on this topic.
The contributors of prose are listed as:
Frithjof Schuon,
Tenzin Gyatso (His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama),
Harry Oldmeadow,
Wendell Berry,
Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
Oren Lyons,
Philip Sherrard,
Hari Prasad Shsastri,
Toshihiko Izutsu,
James Barr,
Kathleen Raine,
Arthur Versluis,
Titus Burkhardt,
Reza Shad-Kazemi,
J.C. Cooper,
Leo Schaya,
John Chryssavgis, and
Lord Northbourne.
The list of poets quoted is:
Angelus Silesius,
Han Shan,
Ortha nan Gaidheal,
Robert Herrick,
Jami,
Tewa,
Hildegard of Bingen,
Basho,
Shabistari,
Eskimo (author unknown),
Alfred Lloyd Tennyson,
Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Keizan,
Yunus Emre,
Wand Wei,
Levi Titzchak of Berditchov,
Nahuatl, and
Zenkei Shibayama.
It looks to be an interesting book. I bought it as a part of the textbooks for a class I had hoped to take at the university (called "Spirit and Nature"), which, unfortunately, I was never able to work into my class schedule. I have begun to read it anyway (now that I have the time to do so), and thought the essay of Introduction worth sharing, so I have transcribed it to post here (please forgive any typos -- it's been spell-checked, but that doesn't always catch typos).
It is my hope that this thread might be a place for sharing other ideas, thoughts, writings, poetry, art -- whatever strikes your fancy -- along the theme of nature and the sacred or spirit. This includes your personal thoughts as well, of course -- a dialogue of sorts along this theme.
All that said, here's the essay:
Spirit and Nature: Walking the Path
Moderator: Super Moderators
Spirit and Nature: Walking the Path
Anchors Aweigh!Introduction: Nature and the Sacred
In an ancient Indian text of Upanishad it is said that the entire existence is imbued by the sacred. From a blade of grass to Mount Everest, all and everything is permeated by the divine. Each and every particular to the totality of the Universe is the home of the Holy Spirit. The god is not outside the world but the world is an embodiment of the divine. There is no separation, no division, no duality and no fragmentation. Everything is connected to everything else and the existence of one is dependent on the existence of the other. Thus, the earth and heaven and the entire cosmos are a seamless whole.
This deep realization of the unity of life and diversity of its manifestation is common to most traditional cultures. The American Indians saw the earth as mother, the sky as father and animals as brothers and sisters. The Aboriginals of Australia looked at the world and saw it as one wonderful dream. The Bushmen of the Kalahari and other tribes of Africa related to the land and to all its creatures as one family.
Tao in China also appreciated the working of the world as an intricate web of life to be handled with humility and care. Buddhists came to the same conclusion, they called it dependent co-arising: clouds rise from the sea, fall on the ground, nurture and nourish life and return to the sea again. This is the sacred cosmic cycle.
The Jains observed the profound truth of life nurturing life: through mutuality we maintain each other, through spirituality we sustain each other, through reciprocity we renew each other. There is a dance between conflict and compassion, between anger and appreciation and between creation and destruction. In the end there is balance and harmony within the big picture of eternal time and infinite space.
This is the perennial wisdom of saints and poets, wise and elder, which has served and nourished all aspects of existence. But at some point in human history hubris entered, particularly with the rise of scientific rationalism, the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. An idea emerged that nature “out there” is a separate object and humans “in here” are endowed to see nature as a resource for the benefit of humankind. It is our right to know the laws of nature and use it, control it and manipulate it to the benefit of humanity. We can take the gifts of nature and own them as ours and then do what we like with them. We are the masters of creation—its forests, rivers, mountains, fishes, fossils, animals, birds, gas, oil, coal, and all. We have dominion over the land and the sky. We can split the atom and walk upon the moon, we can diminish the wild and enslave the animals. There are no limits to our power.
To exercise this power we developed mathematics and measurement. Nature must be measured, quantified and analyzed in order to control it and distill its secrets. How can this be done? The earth was not an empty space. Humans inhabited it. So those who got the notion of controlling nature also had to control people living in nature; and so boats and weapons were developed to occupy the Americas, Australia and Africa. The techniques of trade were developed to colonize Asia. This was the rise of the European project to amass political power and rule the world with the ideology of materialism.
This has lasted for the past 500 years and even now it continues to dominate the earth in the name of economic growth, progress, development, technological innovation, scientific inventions, globalization, free market and ever rising living standards.
However, there is a backlash from nature. The threat of climate change and global warming is causing deep unease across the world. The decrease of human health and increase of AIDS, cancer, obesity and other diseases have already started to take their toll. Stress, anxiety, social breakdown and crime are defeating the political administrations across the world. Terrorism, regional conflicts, wars, and general insecurity are becoming a crippling preoccupation of policy makers, business leaders and armed forces.
Is this the dream of the founders of the American Dream, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution? Where is the joy of life which one can enjoy when one is not busy with making money and feeling anxious?
The experiment to create a religion of materialism has clearly failed. The fundamental human need to be happy has not been met. In spite of all the gadgets of comforts, conveniences and gratifications, humanity is not at ease with itself. An increasing number of people are asking the question, “what is it all about and what is it all for?”
Now we are at a turning point. We are faced with a choice: either we can continue to follow along the same path and live in the illusion of perpetual economic growth, remaining addicted to our gadgets, pursuing genetics, robotics and nanotechnology and ultimately reach the abyss; or we can turn toward sacred ecology, the path of values, ethics and aesthetics.
If we can make the second choice then we need to follow some principles, which can help us along the way. The Jains have three guidelines:
Satish Kumar
Editor of Resurgence and
Programme Director of Schumacher College,
Devon, U.K.
SATISH KUMAR was born in Rajasthan in India in 1936. When he was only nine years old, he renounced the world and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from his path by an inner voice at the age of eighteen, he became a campaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a renewed India and a peaceful world into reality. In 1973 he settled in England, taking over the editorship of Resurgence magazine, and has been the Editor ever since. He is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in Britain. In 1991, Schumacher College, a residential international center for the study of ecological and spiritual values, was founded, of which he is the Director of Programmes. He is the author of Path Without Destination (William Morrow, 2000) and You Are Therefore I Am (Green Books, 2002).
CITATION: Kumar, Satish, “Introduction: Nature and the Sacred,” Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred, ed. Barry McDonald (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, Inc., 2003), xxi-xxiv.
In an ancient Indian text of Upanishad it is said that the entire existence is imbued by the sacred. From a blade of grass to Mount Everest, all and everything is permeated by the divine. Each and every particular to the totality of the Universe is the home of the Holy Spirit. The god is not outside the world but the world is an embodiment of the divine. There is no separation, no division, no duality and no fragmentation. Everything is connected to everything else and the existence of one is dependent on the existence of the other. Thus, the earth and heaven and the entire cosmos are a seamless whole.
This deep realization of the unity of life and diversity of its manifestation is common to most traditional cultures. The American Indians saw the earth as mother, the sky as father and animals as brothers and sisters. The Aboriginals of Australia looked at the world and saw it as one wonderful dream. The Bushmen of the Kalahari and other tribes of Africa related to the land and to all its creatures as one family.
Tao in China also appreciated the working of the world as an intricate web of life to be handled with humility and care. Buddhists came to the same conclusion, they called it dependent co-arising: clouds rise from the sea, fall on the ground, nurture and nourish life and return to the sea again. This is the sacred cosmic cycle.
The Jains observed the profound truth of life nurturing life: through mutuality we maintain each other, through spirituality we sustain each other, through reciprocity we renew each other. There is a dance between conflict and compassion, between anger and appreciation and between creation and destruction. In the end there is balance and harmony within the big picture of eternal time and infinite space.
This is the perennial wisdom of saints and poets, wise and elder, which has served and nourished all aspects of existence. But at some point in human history hubris entered, particularly with the rise of scientific rationalism, the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. An idea emerged that nature “out there” is a separate object and humans “in here” are endowed to see nature as a resource for the benefit of humankind. It is our right to know the laws of nature and use it, control it and manipulate it to the benefit of humanity. We can take the gifts of nature and own them as ours and then do what we like with them. We are the masters of creation—its forests, rivers, mountains, fishes, fossils, animals, birds, gas, oil, coal, and all. We have dominion over the land and the sky. We can split the atom and walk upon the moon, we can diminish the wild and enslave the animals. There are no limits to our power.
To exercise this power we developed mathematics and measurement. Nature must be measured, quantified and analyzed in order to control it and distill its secrets. How can this be done? The earth was not an empty space. Humans inhabited it. So those who got the notion of controlling nature also had to control people living in nature; and so boats and weapons were developed to occupy the Americas, Australia and Africa. The techniques of trade were developed to colonize Asia. This was the rise of the European project to amass political power and rule the world with the ideology of materialism.
This has lasted for the past 500 years and even now it continues to dominate the earth in the name of economic growth, progress, development, technological innovation, scientific inventions, globalization, free market and ever rising living standards.
However, there is a backlash from nature. The threat of climate change and global warming is causing deep unease across the world. The decrease of human health and increase of AIDS, cancer, obesity and other diseases have already started to take their toll. Stress, anxiety, social breakdown and crime are defeating the political administrations across the world. Terrorism, regional conflicts, wars, and general insecurity are becoming a crippling preoccupation of policy makers, business leaders and armed forces.
Is this the dream of the founders of the American Dream, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution? Where is the joy of life which one can enjoy when one is not busy with making money and feeling anxious?
The experiment to create a religion of materialism has clearly failed. The fundamental human need to be happy has not been met. In spite of all the gadgets of comforts, conveniences and gratifications, humanity is not at ease with itself. An increasing number of people are asking the question, “what is it all about and what is it all for?”
Now we are at a turning point. We are faced with a choice: either we can continue to follow along the same path and live in the illusion of perpetual economic growth, remaining addicted to our gadgets, pursuing genetics, robotics and nanotechnology and ultimately reach the abyss; or we can turn toward sacred ecology, the path of values, ethics and aesthetics.
If we can make the second choice then we need to follow some principles, which can help us along the way. The Jains have three guidelines:
- 1. Reverence. The materialistic worldview looks at nature and values in terms of its usefulness to humans. In reverential ecology we see the intrinsic value of nature. A tree is good not just because it provides oxygen to humans and wood for furniture or fire (and therefore we take care of it), but a tree is good in itself, irrespective of its market value or human usefulness. A profound reverence for all life is essential for sustainability, for human survival, for mental serenity and for spiritual fulfillment. When we have deep reverence in our hearts we do least harm to others and we develop a non-violent way of relating to the world.
2. Restraint. The notion of perpetual economic growth knows no limits. We will clear forests, and turn them into prairies, we will sweep the deepest parts of the ocean to get our fish, we will eliminate all wild life to build our cities and accommodate our cars. If the resources of this planet earth are not enough we will conquer the Moon and occupy Mars. This is a recipe for ruin. We need to learn the principle of restraint, and celebrate the joy of simplicity. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “there is enough in the world for everybody’s need but not enough for anyone’s greed.”
3. Replenishment. The current mode of our living necessitates the idea of take, make and throw away. This linear thinking has permeated all aspects of our lives. The landfills are full of rubbish, and waste has become the curse of modern civilization. We need to learn from nature. In nature there is no waste. Decaying material replenishes new growth. So we need to move away from our own obsession with the quantity of materials and possessions in our homes and towards quality of life. The beauty of reusing, repairing and recycling should be a joy in itself.
Satish Kumar
Editor of Resurgence and
Programme Director of Schumacher College,
Devon, U.K.
SATISH KUMAR was born in Rajasthan in India in 1936. When he was only nine years old, he renounced the world and joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from his path by an inner voice at the age of eighteen, he became a campaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a renewed India and a peaceful world into reality. In 1973 he settled in England, taking over the editorship of Resurgence magazine, and has been the Editor ever since. He is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in Britain. In 1991, Schumacher College, a residential international center for the study of ecological and spiritual values, was founded, of which he is the Director of Programmes. He is the author of Path Without Destination (William Morrow, 2000) and You Are Therefore I Am (Green Books, 2002).
CITATION: Kumar, Satish, “Introduction: Nature and the Sacred,” Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred, ed. Barry McDonald (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, Inc., 2003), xxi-xxiv.
Anchors Aweigh!