The “Jewel Net of Indra,” the classic Buddhist image for universal interdependence, depicts a net of infinite size covered in jewels, each one of which reflects all the others. This image signals the reality of inter-dependence that gives the lie to the idea that I can be taken care of while everything around me gets trashed. “Strictly speaking, delusion begins when man thinks he is separable from his world or his environment, when he wants only some kind of private ‘peace of mind.’ ” This basic teaching indicates why the attachment to individualism is for Buddhism a cardinal “sin,” which in Buddhist terms means a fundamental misunderstanding that produces fundamental unhappiness. The insight can easily be adapted to ecological practices that presume that the fate of people can be separated from the fate of their environment.
The rejection of individualism goes hand in hand with Buddhism’s critical treatment of desires to possess, own, or consume. In Buddhist terms, such desires are the very centerpiece of human misery. Thinking constantly about “I, me, and mine” not only reflects a delusory idea of separateness, but leads to great suffering. It is only when we renounce our desire to control the world and detach from our desires rather than compulsively try to satisfy them that lasting contentment is possible. This elementary aspect of Buddhist theology is thus a direct negation of the consumerist compulsions of twenty-first-century market society.
Finally, there is basic Buddhist moral teaching, which typically stresses nonviolence and a wide-ranging compassion that wishes an end to the misery of all beings. Buddhist morality is, at least in general intention, at odds with the destruction of ecosystems. Although the abstract goal of universal happiness may be just a little daunting as a practical goal, it nevertheless can serve as a basic orientation when relating to nature as well as to other people.
These features of Buddhism make a form of mystical and emotional engagement with the natural world easy for many Buddhists.35 Not surprisingly, then, there are numerous places where Buddhists confer a kind of essential spiritual status on nature, talking of—and to—it in terms similar to human communication. Myoe, a twelfth-century Japanese monk, wrote a letter to an island, asking after its health and offering his respects. He wrote that “since the nature of physical form is identical to wisdom, there is nothing that is not enlightened. . . . The underlying principle of the universe is identical to the world of ordinary beings.” In thirteenth-century Buddhist monk Dogen’s famous “River and Mountain” sutra, we find this surprising declaration: “The mountains and rivers of this moment are the actualization of the way of the ancient Buddha’s. Each, abiding in its own phenomenal expression, realizes completeness.... Because they have been the self since before form arose, they are liberated and realized.... Blue Mountains are neither sentient nor insentient. You are neither sentient nor insentient. At this moment, you cannot doubt the Blue Mountains walking.” In other examples, we find the numerous and widely read moral instructions of the “Jataka” tales of the earlier lives of the Buddha in which he either took the form of an animal or sacrificed his own life to defend the lives of animals.
Religious Consciousness and Its Role in Ecological Redemption
