In Buddhism, for instance, neither the body nor the mind has inherent reality: both are constantly changing, and the reality of each depends on the reality of the other. The distinction is, at best, an occasionally convenient way to approach a particular situation, not something to make a big deal about. That is one reason why, as we have seen, Buddhism’s distinction between humans and nature is much less charged, and can even be dismissed completely. Any suggestion of superiority (“dominion”) over nature would be taken as a manifestation of precisely the kind of self-consciousness and selfishness that Buddhism is designed to eradicate.
However, another kind of dualism permeated Buddhism, one perhaps less pronounced in certain forms of Buddhism in theory, but that was widespread throughout the Buddhist world in practice. This was the dualism between samsara, the world of desire, frustration, and illusion, and nirvana, that of enlightenment. Even though the Mahayana school (which emerged about three centuries after the Buddha’s death and came to prominence in China, Tibet, and Japan) theoretically denied any categorical distinction between the two, its extensive system of monasteries focused attention on a life of spiritual self-absorption and detachment from the wider world. Involvement with social issues—and thus necessarily with the ecological consequences of human social actions—was extremely hard to come by in most Buddhist traditions. In this way, Buddhism is representative of Hinduism and Taoism (though not Confucianism) as well as the mirror image of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These Western traditions are much more committed to the relationship between religion and social justice, but also more committed to an anthropocentric theology. In the East, the distinctions between humans and nature are much less rigid and pronounced, but connections between religion and social justice—the prophetic call so essential to the West—are more muted.
That is why contemporary Buddhist concern with ecology arises as an aspect of “engaged Buddhism,” which, says founder Thich Nhat Hanh, includes a sense of the essential interconnections between the individual Buddhist and social institutions. When engaged Buddhism emerged from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, its concerns with social life were often rejected by traditional monks as being peripheral to monastic discipline. The battle of Buddhist ecotheologians is not with their religion’s theology of nature, but with its deep-seated social quietism. Like the soul-body dualism of Christianity and its idea that true fulfillment lies in a heavenly realm, traditional Buddhism’s pursuit of Enlightenment led away from awareness of the actual condition of all the beings with whom Buddhism claimed each person was interrelated.
Kohgiluyeh va Boyer Ahmad Province: Different Perspective of Nature
