The Ecology of Religions

Today I want to think on the subject of religious ecology, or in other words, the interrelatedness of human ontological structures. Religion, after all, is fundamentally a prescription for how we ought to understand and approach our experienced realities. In its many forms, religion offers a valuable reflection of the human condition and how it strives to construct itself in this world. Yet for all its diversity, I like to believe that there are more important commonalities that underlie the entire spectrum in varying degrees. While exhaustive investigation would exceed a lifetime's ceaseless work, I want to focus most specifically on the religious treatment and characterization of the natural world. Within every faith we find reason for awe and respect, if not careful stewardship of this enigmatic earth. The respective reasons surely differ, but I reckon the critical aspect is that they each find their own way to appreciate the world we have. Nature offers such a central mysterious to us that it cannot be ignored, and a central function of religion thus becomes establishing this relationship.

To begin, it's probably best to start with the most familiar story, Christianity. As the most prevalent faith in the Western world, Christianity carries a great deal of philosophical heft in its doctrines. In the Biblical conception, the earth is the product of God's loving labour. The land and all its creatures stem directly from divine design. Man, forged in God's own image, nonetheless occupies an elevated position within the realm. Animals and natural resources are considered a use of privilege for His beloved children. While holding dominion, this hierarchy was still based upon gratitude and respect rather than the gross exploitation it has devolved into today. This was a mandate for responsible stewardship and management, because it was God's own work that man was dealing with. Not only did domestic species deserve consideration, but wild species were equally worthy. Man could eat from the land and its beasts, yet the Creation retained its sacred character. The Jewish and Islamic faiths being similarly Abrahamic, follow along the same lines.

Furthermore, there is a sense of awe, even fear at the untamed wilderness of the earth; particularly represented by the arid expanses of desert. This establishes a spiritual polarity between the comfort of community and the dangers of isolation, which means to further inspire a love of God as the Protector. The meaning of many parables and the promise of salvation would largely be lost without this duality. Man learns to respect the elements while cherishing the security of the Lord. It is of course inspired by the revernce we inherently feel for that which we do not understand. This places man and nature on two sides of the same coin, but still inextricably linked. Unfortunately in today's world, we find a heavier emphasis of this separation than the aforementioned relationship of man as caretaker to the world's creatures.

Within indigenous cultures (and I used the term as a very loose designation), we tend to find a more integrated approach. I by no means have a comprehensive understanding of any traditional belief system, but I'll chance to stumble my way through some Native American cosmological thought. These pre-European tribes demonstrate mankind's direct subsistence upon and interaction with the land. A connection that is not mitigated by commercialized pathways as we experience it today. Their religions thus represent these terrestrial dependencies more strongly. Oftentimes the tribesman identifies himself within a dynamic bioregion that rises and falls regardless of his presence. He resides in this great house of the world, with the sky as its roof, the rivers as his blood and the wind his spirit. Coyote is the mythical creator, an animal predecessor that began the life of this world. An area that may be empty of humanity is by no means empty of vitality and sacred importance. It still carries the weight of a multitude of souls, worthy of respect. This conceptualization dismantles that Christian dichotomy in favor of an embeddedness within nature. Interaction therein provides the critical characterization of indigenous religions, in whatever regional manifestation. Traditional animism recognizes the essential roles of all beings while allowing them equal ecological standing. Close reliance breeds close respect.

But then we have the material renouncers of the East. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism each advise detachment from the physical, sensory and illusory world. This avoidance is predicated upon an understanding of nature's constant changing. There is nothing eternal to cling to, and all is subject to revision. Even so, there is an undeniable reverence inherent in these religions. Ascetics retreat to the mountains, Zen poets wander homeless, sacred groves are maintained for droves of monks, and Buddhas achieve enlightenment under Banyan trees. A close relationship with the non-human world is instrumental to arriving at transcendental knowledge. Witnessing the inner workings of nature allows one to escape the woefully limited perspective of the suffering human being. There is no disdain or fear of the wild,  nor is there any clinging to its cycles. They see through it as a composition of interrelated connections, absent of any selfhood. Even so, the natural world remains the preferred place to pursue religious devotion because its distance from human trivialities. In more traditional strains of Buddhism, there are even levels of paradise that abound in natural beauty and fertility, indicating their positive status, but these too are only temporary realms that any Buddha may pass through on his journey to full release. Thus for all their detachment, Eastern religions nonetheless contain an admiring affectation towards the unadulterated environment and utilize it to further their spiritual trainings.

I think ultimately what we find here (in this altogether too brief investigation) is that religions fundamentally contain a preoccupation with the natural world in deciding how we should engage it. Despite taking very different approaches, most religions arrive at some permutation of spiritual reverence for the worlds both beyond and within them. Care and stewardship are widely advised, suggesting a human attitude that defies categorization into any particular sect. There is an inherent fascination, and really a necessity in establishing our relationship with the non-human aspects of earth. It helps us to understand and define ourselves, representing an indispensible spiritual resource. I think we all need wilderness and connection to natural processes for one reason or another. With this commonality established, I see reasonf for cooperative conservation agendas that transcend faiths to unite human beings on that most basic level. Whether for preserving the Creation, protecting our means of subsistence, or minimizing the suffering of other beings, there is undoubtedly a common interest there. How our world as come to be so damaged today is beyond my understanding. What we need now is to establish a programme for the pan-religious healing of our injured earth. Its obvious that we each cherish it in our own ways once we strip away those shallow differences. Underneath, there is a fundamental human obligation to maintain the ecological connections that we have been blessed with.

The New Americanism

Although I abandoned the United States seven months ago to take up a new national identity on non-nuclear shores, I still have hope for its future. I'm still invested in revitalizing it and steering a fresh course towards social and environmental harmony while rescuing it from the clutches of the military industrial complex and all of those classic villians.  Most of what I write on this blog is in hopes of a better future for the States. I might joke about it with friends, but I haven't simply jumped ship to New Zealand because California was failing to live up to my expectations. The States, and California especially, is pulsing with creative energies simply begging for release into the wider sphere of consciousness. I'm actually quite eager to go back and be a part of the movement I feel coming, the movement I feel a part of. There's more happening on that grassroots revolutionary level than down here in the southern hemisphere. Americans (myself included) are crying out for a more meaningful and interconnected existence than the current model provides.

But don't take it from me. Orion Magazine, an incredibly thought-provoking bimonthly publication has published a two part series entitled "America the Possible."

The articles provide both a summary of everything that is wrong with our beloved country, and a vision for an American future that openly engages those issues. In effect, I see in it a perfect reflection of this blog's agenda. Except written in a more concise and comprehensive fashion.

Check it out:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6681 (part one)

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6810 (part two)

Been reading Gary Snyder lately...

Hawks, hobos, drifters and madmen
Thus run my companions of late
Wiser than you'd at first think
All mumbles, screeches and dirt
The lot of them dissenting
Hostile towards flaccid, limp modernity
All blood, bone and sinew
Pumping and rushing towards an ecstasty
Unknown to settlers, passive folk, liars

Theirs is an unnamed freedom
Floating in the choking mists
Hanging at mind's edges
Transcending focus
Carving souls from the rock and
Watching them drift softly upwards
Any hint of reason eroded
Leaping and playing, not giving
A good god-damn about it
Whether that god be Avalokitesvara
Yahweh, Allah, or an open boxcar
Equally absurd and beautiful

The grass grows thick underfoot
Writhing, rapt in truth.

My Woods

Evening oak,
Rustle a smile for my soft stepping
Careful of Slippery Jack, wayward twigs
And queen ivy's crimson arms.
The snake's hollow rattle an auspicious greeting
While salamanders slip under crystal waters
Fire-bellied and Awakended.

This is my California and
Here I know Peace.
In these woods I am known.

The quail in my heart will die out, with me
Long before the quail of these woods because
Shivering does yet crouch in quiet dark corners
Gray-suited quirrels laugh madly on high
And spiders weave silver dreams over the meadows
Even while my restful slumber spins eternal.

Mind at ease, I breathe well-worn scents
Crushing fragrant brittle leaves, scuffing dirt and roots
Along crusty clay-red trails
Dawn and Dusk

And if I should grow weary,
Legs spent in joyful communion,
I will simply rest my head softly
Next to an eager trunked sapling,
Promising the infinity of earth.

The Answer

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and
not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear the
whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine
beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

-Robinson Jeffers


Junior year of high school I was unassumingly recommended Robinson Jeffers for a poetry project in English. As per the requirements, I did literary analyses on a few poems, as well as a few poetic imitations; including one for this beauty here: The Answer. I was proud of what I came up with; but not brave enough to display it here.

I can't tell you why I chose that particular piece to ape. I probably didn't quite grasp its significance at the time, being a simple-minded teenager. But somehow it felt the most powerful or truthful, even if its meanings were quite beyond me.

But just last week I rediscovered the work of Jeffers. I devoured his dense collection of poems in a matter of days. While some were vaguely familiar, they each took on greater depth and meaning for me. I felt like I understood them now. His words were alive with truth. They just fit so perfectly. And when I turned my attention to The Answer for the first time in probably three years, I discovered a near flawless reflection of the life philosophy that I have come to hold. I was pretty floored.

It is strange to think that perhaps my spiritual and intellectual trajectory was determined all the way back in those adolescent days. Who would have guessed.

Not me.

Let Me Introduce You To...

Beastwars.



They're a Kiwi band from the nation's capital, Wellington. While I had heard the name once or twice on the internet, I had never much taken notice of the band. That is until I chanced upon a gig poster, saturated in skulls and black ink, advertising for that very November evening in Palmerston North. I decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity. And I'm sure glad I didn't.

At first put off by the dingy pub vibes and the meager crowd, I managed to suffer through the opening acts with optimism. Admittedly, Bloodspry for Politics, despite their unimaginative moniker, cranked out some decent approximations of Cryptic Slaughter tunes.

Nonetheless, when Beastwars took the stage around 11pm, the atmosphere shifted palpably towards something near humble reverence. It was about to begin.



What followed was an hour of trance-like riff worship and inspired delivery. It was if I could do nothing but bang my head to every song. It was unbelievably contagious. Vocalist Matt Hyde appeared to have left his earthly body; eyes rolled back, head to the sky, beseeching the crowd with wild gestures. He was rapt. I was rapt. I didn't want it to end.

Walking out the front doors after the show that night, I felt as though ripped from a pleasant reverie. I wanted to remain among the pummelling riffs and the pervasive sense of mysticism. Even if my ears were ringing and I felt like I could faint from exhaustion. None of this dull, tepid reality.

That Beastwars gig, for me at least, felt like some sort of cathartic spiritual quest. I truly underestimated the power of their music and the force of their delivery. That's how we do shit in NZ.

Get lost in it.




http://beastwars.bandcamp.com/

Man and Crisis

Lately I've been reading Man and Crisis by the Spanish liberal philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset. In it I've found a few interesting ideas with implications for human ecology.

To begin with, let's suppose that every man is caught in an existential plight, struggling to orient himself within his unsolicited circumstances. The main focus of his life is simply to survive in this strange, incomprehensible world. This means experiencing, testing and determining which ideas we can rely on: will that chair remain solid if I sit upon it, or will it dissolve into nothingess? Humans go through this fundamental and necessary process of forging a functional reality, so that we may continue to live. Each man and woman is charged with the construction of their own convictions, because we are ultimately individual agents and cannot transmit the right to live onto our fellow. Even by surrendering to the will and whim of another, we still choose that such is the mechanism we will make our decisions by.

In order to aid ourselves in the fabrication of effective realities, man has arrived at culture; the accumulation of thoughts and opinions held by those who preceded us or our contemporaries. This cultural knowledge reduces the pressure on the individual to industriously build up his understandings through firsthand experience and internal consideration. He can now let others do it for him.

The net result, however, is a society of men who take their ideas on the good words of others, and often do not care to test them out personally. For instance, it can be said that much of science is characterized by a certain kind of faith equal to that of religious conviction. Have you ever seen the electrons transferred between the sodium and chloride atoms of your table salt? I sure haven't. Of course, being a science major, I'm clearly not here to deny its practicality or the suitability of its theories. The point simply remains that that it is a system largely taken on faith by those outside of the scientific community.

Continuing on though. By Ortega y Gasset's defintion, man is in crisis when he cannot locate or differentiate his own personal beliefs and ideas amidst the myriad offered by the culture of others. He is only at peace when he is in agreement within himself. As evidenced by history, man must occasionally shake off his amassed culture in order to reconnect with what is in his own mind. The Renaissance, for example, was the action of escaping Christianity to embrace the immediacy of human reason.

My conceit then is that mankind today is staggeringly encumbered by his own culture. The proliferation of information has in effect alienated the individual to a greater distance from his own tried and true realities. We live in a world governed not by our own conscious opinions and decisions, but by the ideas of mass society. These are the faceless ideas that cannot be attributed to any one person, because they were not generated in such fashion. Man trades in his own beliefs for those of the fickle and unnamed 'people' with whom he identifies.

Yet as mentioned, there inevitably comes a time to divest ourselves of these sedimentary conventions. Like depositions of silt, they weigh down on us from many sources; assumptions, suppositions, dogma and the like.

It is clear that our world today is in crisis. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction, regarding nearly every facet of our modern lives. We crave social justice, gender equality, and corporate responsibility. We crave a closer connection to the natural world, away from the industrialization that has come between us. Or at least some of us do. But all together we crave to be at home within ourselves. And according to Ortega y Gasset, this is a natural human cycle.

The challenge thus becomes one of choosing the best solution to our specific crisis. It's the chance to replace the underpinnings of our society and our culture with something more ecologically sensitive; perhaps that holistic worldview I posted about recently. That's the link in all of this. Man has come to a historical point in its progression, and now the stage is set to decide how we will move on from our alienated relationship with the land and with ourselves. Capitalist culture has weighed down on us long enough. Now is the time to stand on our own two feet and decide was is the truth of our surroundings, of our interactions therein. Of our human ecology.