BUDDHISM
Buddhism and Ecology: Challenge and Promise
Donald K. Swearer
Harvard University
Introduction
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth (1982) and Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature (1989) addressed three different global environmental problems—toxic contamination of the food chain, the worldwide consequences of nuclear proliferation, and the impact of global warming. These warnings led to major changes in national and international policy: the banning of the widespread use of DDT as a pesticide, the START treaties that negotiated nuclear arms reduction agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Kyoto agreements to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Each utilizes science to advance a public policy agenda. In addition, each shares a similar holistic worldview, namely, that all life-forms are interdependent or, as the 1975 National Academy of Sciences Report stated, our world is a whole “in which any action influencing a single part of the system can be expected to have an effect on all other parts of the system.” The “Religions of the World and Ecology” project brings the rich historical and contemporary resources of the world’s religions into critical dialogue with the global environmental crisis. In particular, it seeks to broaden and deepen the symbolic, conceptual, and practical dimensions of their distinctive holistic worldviews for an understanding of human flourishing, community, the natural environment, and their interactions. The project also seeks to influence both social behavior and public policy by encouraging ongoing collaboration among various interdisciplinary arcs that must be forged if the environmental crisis has any hope of being resolved.1 This paper explores ways in which the Buddhist traditions might contribute to this discussion and to the practice of a more ecologically aware lifestyle.
Buddhism’s Holistic Worldview
Despite significant variations among the different Buddhist traditions that have evolved over its 2,500 year journey throughout Asia and now in the West, Buddhists see the world as conjoined on four levels: existentially, morally, cosmologically, and ontologically. Existentially, Buddhists affirm that all sentient beings share the fundamental conditions of birth, old age, suffering, and death. The existential realization of the universality of suffering lies at the core of the Buddha’s teaching. Insight into the nature of suffering, its cause and its cessation, and the path to the cessation of suffering constitutes the capstone of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience (Mahasacakka Sutta, Majjihma Nikaya) as well as the content of the four noble truths, the Buddha’s first teaching. That the Buddha decides to share this existential insight into the cause and cessation of suffering is regarded by the tradition as an act of universal compassion. Buddhist environmentalists assert that the mindful awareness of the universality of suffering produces compassionate empathy for all forms of life, particularly for all sentient species. They interpret the Dhammapada’s ethical injunction not to do evil but to do good as a moral principle advocating the nonviolent alleviation of suffering, an ideal embodied in the prayer of universal loving-kindness that concludes many Buddhist rituals: “May all beings be free from enmity; may all beings be free from injury; may all beings be free from suffering; may all beings be happy.” Out of a concern for the total living environment, Buddhist environmentalists extend loving-kindness and compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself.
The concepts of karma and rebirth (samsara) integrate the existential sense of a shared common condition of all sentient life-forms with the moral dimension of the Buddhist cosmology. Not unlike the biological sciences, rebirth links human and animal species. Evolution maps commonalities and differences among species on the basis of physical and genetic traits. Rebirth maps them on moral grounds. Every form of sentient life participates in a karmic continuum traditionally divided into three world-levels and a hierarchical taxonomy of five or six life-forms. Although this continuum constitutes a moral hierarchy, differences among life-forms and individuals are relative, not absolute. Traditional Buddhism may privilege humans over animals, animals over hungry ghosts, male gender over the female, monk over laity but all forms of karmically conditioned life-human, animal, divine, demonic—are related within contingent, samsaric time: “In the long course of rebirth there is not one among living beings with form who has not been mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter, or some other relative. Being connected with the process of taking birth, one is kin to all wild and domestic animals, birds, and beings born from the womb” (Lankavatara Sutra).
Nirvana, the Buddhist highest good, offers the promise of transforming karm
พระพุทธศาสนาพระพุทธศาสนาและนิเวศวิทยา: ความท้าทายและสัญญาโดนัลด์เค Swearerมหาวิทยาลัยฮาร์วาร์ดแนะนำราเชลคาร์สันเงียบสปริง (1962), Jonathan Schell ชะตาของโลก (ปี 1982) และตั๋ว McKibben สิ้นสุดของธรรมชาติ (1989) ได้รับการจัดการสามต่าง ๆ ปัญหาสิ่งแวดล้อมโลกซึ่งปนเปื้อนพิษของห่วงโซ่อาหาร ผลของการงอกนิวเคลียร์ทั่วโลก และผลกระทบของภาวะโลกร้อน คำเตือนเหล่านี้นำไปสู่การเปลี่ยนแปลงที่สำคัญในนโยบายแห่งชาติ และนานาชาติ: ห้าม DDT ใช้แพร่หลายเป็นแมลง สนธิสัญญาเริ่มต้นที่เจรจานิวเคลียร์อาร์มลดข้อตกลงระหว่างสหรัฐอเมริกาและสหภาพโซเวียต และข้อตกลงของเกียวโตเพื่อลดการปล่อยก๊าซคาร์บอนไดออกไซด์ แต่ละใช้วิทยาศาสตร์ก้าวหน้าวาระนโยบายสาธารณะ นอกจากนี้ แต่ละหุ้นคล้ายองค์รวมโลกทัศน์ของ คือ ที่ชีวิตแบบฟอร์มจัด หรือ เป็น 1975 ชาติสถาบันของวิทยาศาสตร์รายงานระบุ โลกของเรามีทั้ง "การดำเนินการใด ๆ ที่มีอิทธิพลต่อส่วนเดียวของระบบสามารถคาดหวังยังมีในส่วนอื่น ๆ ของระบบ" โครงการ "ศาสนาของเดอะเวิลด์และนิเวศวิทยา" นำอุดมไปด้วยประวัติศาสตร์ และสมัยทรัพยากรของโลกศาสนาเป็นบทสนทนาสำคัญกับวิกฤตสิ่งแวดล้อม โดยเฉพาะ ก็พยายามที่จะขยาย และขนาดสัญลักษณ์ แนวคิด และการปฏิบัติของ worldviews แบบองค์รวมความโดดเด่นในความเข้าใจของมนุษย์เฟื่องฟู ชุมชน สิ่งแวดล้อมธรรมชาติ และการโต้ตอบอย่างลึกซึ้ง โครงการพยายามจะมีอิทธิพลต่อพฤติกรรมทางสังคมและนโยบายสาธารณะ โดยความร่วมมืออย่างต่อเนื่องรอบระหว่างเส้นโค้งอาศัยต่าง ๆ ที่ต้องปลอมถ้าวิกฤตสิ่งแวดล้อมมีความหวังใด ๆ ที่ resolved.1 กระดาษนี้สำรวจวิธีที่อาจทำให้ประเพณีชาวพุทธ การสนทนานี้ และแบบฝึกหัดของชีวิตอย่างมากทราบโลกทัศน์ขององค์รวมของศาสนาพุทธDespite significant variations among the different Buddhist traditions that have evolved over its 2,500 year journey throughout Asia and now in the West, Buddhists see the world as conjoined on four levels: existentially, morally, cosmologically, and ontologically. Existentially, Buddhists affirm that all sentient beings share the fundamental conditions of birth, old age, suffering, and death. The existential realization of the universality of suffering lies at the core of the Buddha’s teaching. Insight into the nature of suffering, its cause and its cessation, and the path to the cessation of suffering constitutes the capstone of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience (Mahasacakka Sutta, Majjihma Nikaya) as well as the content of the four noble truths, the Buddha’s first teaching. That the Buddha decides to share this existential insight into the cause and cessation of suffering is regarded by the tradition as an act of universal compassion. Buddhist environmentalists assert that the mindful awareness of the universality of suffering produces compassionate empathy for all forms of life, particularly for all sentient species. They interpret the Dhammapada’s ethical injunction not to do evil but to do good as a moral principle advocating the nonviolent alleviation of suffering, an ideal embodied in the prayer of universal loving-kindness that concludes many Buddhist rituals: “May all beings be free from enmity; may all beings be free from injury; may all beings be free from suffering; may all beings be happy.” Out of a concern for the total living environment, Buddhist environmentalists extend loving-kindness and compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself.The concepts of karma and rebirth (samsara) integrate the existential sense of a shared common condition of all sentient life-forms with the moral dimension of the Buddhist cosmology. Not unlike the biological sciences, rebirth links human and animal species. Evolution maps commonalities and differences among species on the basis of physical and genetic traits. Rebirth maps them on moral grounds. Every form of sentient life participates in a karmic continuum traditionally divided into three world-levels and a hierarchical taxonomy of five or six life-forms. Although this continuum constitutes a moral hierarchy, differences among life-forms and individuals are relative, not absolute. Traditional Buddhism may privilege humans over animals, animals over hungry ghosts, male gender over the female, monk over laity but all forms of karmically conditioned life-human, animal, divine, demonic—are related within contingent, samsaric time: “In the long course of rebirth there is not one among living beings with form who has not been mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter, or some other relative. Being connected with the process of taking birth, one is kin to all wild and domestic animals, birds, and beings born from the womb” (Lankavatara Sutra).Nirvana, the Buddhist highest good, offers the promise of transforming karm
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