The first idea that was supposed to be common to both Buddhism and deep
ecology was that of the universe as fundamentally holistic, or as an unbroken whole.
Sometimes, this concept of Oneness is closer to notions like Spinoza‘s ‗Nature,‘ or the
Hindu Atman, which Buddhism negates. The Avataṁsaka sūtra speaks about ―totality‖
rather than ‗oneness,‘ and this is interpreted very differently from deep ecology‘s
concept. Here, we read about an infinitely vast system of universes nested within
universes, which is more suggestive of plurality than oneness.
Moreover, deep ecological holism deviates from the Buddhist doctrine of totality
insofar as it conceives of an all-inclusive, uppermost level of reality, and a bottom level
made up of irreducible entities. The Buddhist vision of totality has no corresponding
concepts; rather, there are always an infinite number of universes all the way up, and all
the way down. This suggests that every level of the hierarchy is both a whole in its own
right and a part of another whole, and the very concepts of ‗higher‘ and ‗lower‘ lose some
of their significance. Contrary to parallelist claims, Hua Yen Buddhism does not view the
universe as fundamentally holistic, nor does it conceive of its essential nature as
unbroken wholeness. Buddhist imagery emphasizes, rather, the relativity of ‗wholes‘ and
‗parts,‘ and of ‗one‘ and ‗many‘ and suggests that reality can never be described
exhaustively.
The second alleged convergence between Buddhism and deep ecology was the
priority given to relations over things, an idea that seemed highly reminiscent of
emptiness and dependent co-origination. Relations were said to be fundamental because it
is the connections between things that form those very things as well as forming the
whole, which they make up. Thus relations are defined as internal ones and this
suggested, as many parallelists claim, that nothing can be conceived of independently of
these relations. This proposition was found to be untrue; in our everyday speech and
experience, we do conceive of things as separate and independently from each other all
the time. The problem lies in parallelist thinkers‘ tendency to interpret conventional
statements about interrelations as ultimate truths, which gives rise, as we have seen, to
several contradictions. It was shown that we can either hold relations to be real, and then,
we find ourselves unable to account for difference, or else we can hold difference to be
real and then we are unable to account for relations. The Buddhist doctrine of emptiness
The first idea that was supposed to be common to both Buddhism and deep
ecology was that of the universe as fundamentally holistic, or as an unbroken whole.
Sometimes, this concept of Oneness is closer to notions like Spinoza‘s ‗Nature,‘ or the
Hindu Atman, which Buddhism negates. The Avataṁsaka sūtra speaks about ―totality‖
rather than ‗oneness,‘ and this is interpreted very differently from deep ecology‘s
concept. Here, we read about an infinitely vast system of universes nested within
universes, which is more suggestive of plurality than oneness.
Moreover, deep ecological holism deviates from the Buddhist doctrine of totality
insofar as it conceives of an all-inclusive, uppermost level of reality, and a bottom level
made up of irreducible entities. The Buddhist vision of totality has no corresponding
concepts; rather, there are always an infinite number of universes all the way up, and all
the way down. This suggests that every level of the hierarchy is both a whole in its own
right and a part of another whole, and the very concepts of ‗higher‘ and ‗lower‘ lose some
of their significance. Contrary to parallelist claims, Hua Yen Buddhism does not view the
universe as fundamentally holistic, nor does it conceive of its essential nature as
unbroken wholeness. Buddhist imagery emphasizes, rather, the relativity of ‗wholes‘ and
‗parts,‘ and of ‗one‘ and ‗many‘ and suggests that reality can never be described
exhaustively.
The second alleged convergence between Buddhism and deep ecology was the
priority given to relations over things, an idea that seemed highly reminiscent of
emptiness and dependent co-origination. Relations were said to be fundamental because it
is the connections between things that form those very things as well as forming the
whole, which they make up. Thus relations are defined as internal ones and this
suggested, as many parallelists claim, that nothing can be conceived of independently of
these relations. This proposition was found to be untrue; in our everyday speech and
experience, we do conceive of things as separate and independently from each other all
the time. The problem lies in parallelist thinkers‘ tendency to interpret conventional
statements about interrelations as ultimate truths, which gives rise, as we have seen, to
several contradictions. It was shown that we can either hold relations to be real, and then,
we find ourselves unable to account for difference, or else we can hold difference to be
real and then we are unable to account for relations. The Buddhist doctrine of emptiness
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
![](//thimg.ilovetranslation.com/pic/loading_3.gif?v=b9814dd30c1d7c59_8619)