It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing. --Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Looking again and again at that which cannot be looked at,
Unseeable reality is seen just as it is.
--Karmapa Rangjung Dorje, Mahamudra Aspiration Prayer
The first of these statements describes the apparent death wish of industrial civilization, while the second describes the deep meditative experience of a 13th century Buddhist master. We in the Ecobuddhism project understand the present as an historical period of existential and spiritual crisis, when such apparent opposites have something crucial to say to each other.
The Rise and Fall of Western Enlightenment
The "enlightenment" recognized by mainstream Western culture was a cultural shift in the 17th century -- from religious belief to trust in mechanistic science and secular humanism. Since then we have understood nature and ourselves to be machine-like. The industrial growth society is a product of that Cartesian worldview. Over the last 60 years, the fetish of limitless economic growth has driven us faster and further than ever before. This is a society that cannot stop to ask sincerely where it is going.
At the end of the hottest decade on record, we are surrounded by unprecedented droughts, floods, crop losses and technological accidents. The mainstream media, still peddling "classical" economics, ignores either climate science or clean energy as legitimate subjects of interest. It fails to join up the dots for people on the most important issue of our time: the survival of life on Earth. Scientific findings and warnings are relentlessly subverted by fossil fuel corporations, who spend many millions of dollars to manufacture doubt about global warming, distort the democratic process and safeguard the very energy infrastructure that caused the crisis. It is beginning to look as if western enlightenment has run its course -- that it will fail to prevent the collapse of civilization.
A Great Awakening
In the 20th century the Western world became aware of another type of enlightenment, the "great awakening" of the Buddha. Starting with one person, its sustainability became evident in methods of training, wisdom and trans-cultural influence that have endured for 2,500 years. Many men and women across a variety of cultures have used this path and experienced their own awakening. Might they be able to help us overcome our collective malaise in the face of ecological chaos?
The Buddha had a deeply felt understanding of limits. Happiness, he found, isn't gained by trying to satisfy all our desires. In fact, a minimalist approach to possessions positively enhances long-term contentment. Meditation can sustain the process of personal transformation. The practitioner uncovers a deep interdependence between the self, the other and the context.
And Now?
The Buddha developed a culture of awakening from self-centered conditioning. But we are living in the midst of social-engineering technologies that persuade us to base our identity on consumption. My consumer-self is dogged by dissatisfaction, so I spend more and more to resolve the conditioned anxiety. And I will resist the truth of ecological crisis because consumption has compelling psychological meaning for me.
If Buddhist meditation is to have comprehensive relevance now, it must be able to cut through such social conditioning. And that must take place in a context that is vastly different from the Indian Bronze Age, when the Buddha first set forth his noble path to awakening.
If I hold beliefs that conflict with each other, I will experience "cognitive dissonance" -- a subliminal anxiety resulting from inconsistency. I could try to eliminate this by changing one of the beliefs. I might resort to denial or find someone else to blame. If my meditation can't show up these dysfunctional habits of mind for what they are, it could create what Joanna Macy calls "premature equanimity."
But the great windstorms, fires, droughts, floods and snowstorms of the last decade will not cease to impose a radically new world on us. This is why the eminent Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Every Buddhist practitioner should be a protector of the environment. We have the power to decide the destiny of our planet. If we awaken to our true situation, there will be a change in our collective consciousness."
A Sustaining Myth
Resource depletion, ecological disasters, over-population and climate chaos are indicators of spiritual as well as ecological collapse. They demonstrate also how much we need a story that renews our love for the mystery of the Earth -- a story that can integrate the world's wisdom traditions with the sciences of cosmology and evolution. Thomas Berry pointed out that the universe itself is our new sacred story. Everything in the universe had a common origin in the mysterious Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. We ourselves are participants in its awesome physical and spiritual dimensions, which are an authentic source of joy, celebration and support.
Undoubtedly, there is a profound challenge to self-realization in the midst of ecological crisis. The process may require us to pass through what Macy calls "uncertainty and positive disintegration" -- experiences that stretch, ground and strengthen meditation. If, on all levels, we look "again and again at that which cannot be looked at," we can nourish our capacity to respond fearlessly and appropriately to the big picture. We can take refuge in the Sacred Universe process.
John Stanley and David Loy: Why the Buddha Touched the Earth
Your statement about the national security state is aptly put. Too much sacrifice and for what?
Thank you,
This Mythos has to serve four functions: 1) mystical or revelatory; 2) cosmological (in tune with contemporary physics & cosmology); 3) social, or providing for a sense of social order; and 4) psychological, or providing a centering influence for the psyche of humankind. Just such a Mythology is, right now, in the final stages of preparation before being released -- first as either a 2-part book, or as two volumes under one overarching title....then in workshops, lectures, participation in the "great debates" about Creation, Evolution, intelligent design, and so forth. Answers to questions like "Does the Universe really emerge from nothing?" will be definitively presented in a highly plausible context.
A living, breathing Myth does not compete with any religion; it only competes with itself, in order to be the best it can possibly be. Watch for it!
These divine thought-streams -- because they are mystically-based rather than deity-based -- actually do serve to undergird the various conceptions of the different traditions. Mysticism -- no matter whether Catholic, Taoist, Buddhist, Jewish, Native American, etc -- essentially agrees, across this wide swath, that our world of manifest thought, feeling, and all activity rests in, or abides in, an unmanifest Ground of Being. This is simply a divine Stillness which provides for all Movement, all vibrational Energy, and the evolutionary unfoldment of the entire Cosmos. This Stillness of Being expresses the Highest Nature of Deity -- the pure Essence of God or the Godhead.
This Universe is a vibrational Creation, yet it is supported & enabled by the non-vibrational Stillness: pure Spirit.
Faved.
Gassho.
-Miller Lite
-- Mila Repa
But do not move with it as darkness.
Darkness is light,
Do not see it as light.
Light and darkness are not one, not two,
Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking."
-from The Harmony of Relative and Absolute.
in the mid 1970's when the application of Patanjali's yoga sutras within the TM program was found to be successful for the individual and found to produce reduced crime less accidents etc in the community [ extended maharishi effect measured in sociological research ] the Maharishi explained this phenoma as being a world government of the age of enlightenment.
relative to the destructive or polluting aspects of modern science due to it being a fragmented approach and very partial knowledge of natural law [ even misuse and violation of natural law as in GMOs ] the Maharishi in global press conferences from 2002 to 2006 cautioned even warned about experiments and asked the president of mum.edu to write a letter to all university presidents asking them to stop lab experiments
1.Matthew 6:22
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
Matthew 6:21-23 (in Context) Matthew 6 (Whole Chapter)
2.Luke 11:34
The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
it involves a living process. LIFE is that which exists prior to the big bang that LIFE sprouts; the hollowness of the banyan seed becomes the physical universe according to its internal blueprint [information theory] the VEDA
[hollowness is like Nirvana ]
VEDA is contained in ATMA , the Self , the big Self : immortal field of pure unbounded consciousness which the maharishi and John hagelin calls equal to einstein's cognition of a unified field
the unified field , pre-existent to the universe and existing now in the transcendental field , is mathematically delineated in Hagelin's E8XE8 heterotic superstring field theory
unified field is non-Abelian, it is self-interacting; this property of self interaction or self referral makes the unified field of modern quantum physics [and chemistry and physiology] a field of consciousness, called ATMA in the ancient vedic knowledge
nature, natural law, will of god ,constitution of the universe {Rik Veda} , Maharishi considers to be equal entities
"NOW is a feature of every time that accomplishes anything now is the now of tomorrow now of next year, of next geeneration ,next galaxy": maahrishi in a press conference
"next galaxy" may mean that human beings "migrate" from galaxy to galaxy as suitable planets become available. Krishna "there never was a time when you, I, these persons did not exist"
Christ "before the beginning I am"
I would not be a 40 year Christian Raja Yogi of Parmahansa Yogandanda if not for this greatest of scrifices.