The extinction of species, each one a pilgrim of four billion years of evolution, is an irreversible loss. The ending of the lines of so many creatures with whom we have traveled this far is an occasion of profound sorrow and grief. Death can be accepted and to some degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intelligently resisted.
Gary Snyder (1990
1 The Breath of Life
Our common desire to look to earthly things comes from thinking how they will serve us somehow, such as bring us comfort, identity, pleasure, etc. Usually, earthly thinking has to do with material objects, like jobs, money, cars, and houses. Spiritual thinking, on the other hand, focuses on social concerns like love, faith, beauty and origins. In this context, many scholars have ventured general comparisons of Eastern and Western artistic creativity. One suggestion is that Oriental art depicts spirit, while Western art depicts form. Another comparative perspective holds that the West sees and depicts nature in terms of human-made symmetries and superimposed forms. Nature is squeezed to fit ideas of Western culture, while the East accepts an object as is, and presents it for what it is, not what the artist thinks it means. Interpretation is then firmly in the mind of the beholder. Also, the cultural positioning of an object can make it cosmocentric, and therefore spiritual, either because it has been put in a certain place (Fig 1) or because its spiritual content has been explained in words or pictures (Fig 2). A thing of the earth thereby becomes a thing of the spirit. Oriental artists are not interested in a photographic representation of an object.
Fig 1 Things of the spirit: Aldeburgh Parish Church
Fig 2 ‘The father of the goddess Sita ploughs the land to find her as a baby’. The Textile Art Of Kalamkari, Ramayana detail.
Oriental art is cosmocentric. It sees humankind as an integral part of nature interpreting its spirits. Occidental art exalts personality, it is anthropocentric. It is an affinity between man and nature that impressed Oriental artists rather than their contrast, as in the West. To Occidentals, the physical world is an objective reality, to be analyzed, used, mastered. To Orientals, it is a realm of beauty to be admired, but also a sphere of mystery and illusion to be pictured by poets, explained by mythmakers, and mollified by priestly incantations. This contrast between East and West had incalculable influence on their respective arts, as well as on their philosophies and religions.
The Latin spiritus means ‘breath’, which is also true for the related Latin word anima, the Greek psyche, and the Sanskrit atman. The common meaning of these key terms indicates that the original meaning of spirit in many ancient philosophical and religious traditions, in the West as well as in the East, is an awareness of the breath of life. A common practise to achieve a Zen state of mindfulness is to meditate on one’s breathing. Spirituality is usually understood as a way of being that flows from a certain profound experience of reality, which is known as a ‘mystical’, ‘religious’, or ‘spiritual’ experience. This encounter with mystery is often accompanied by a deep sense of awe and wonder together with a feeling of great humility. Scientists, in their systematic observations of natural phenomena, do not consider their experience of reality as ineffable. On the contrary, they attempt to express it in technical language, including mathematics, as precisely as possible. However, the fundamental interconnectedness of all phenomena is a dominant theme also in modern science, and many great scientists have expressed their sense of awe and wonder when faced with the mystery that lies beyond the limits of their theories. Albert Einstein, for one, repeatedly expressed these feelings, as in the following celebrated passage (Einstein, 1949).
“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science… the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature”.
Hinduism, whose adherents make up 15 percent of the global population, is not a single religion comparable to Abrahamic faiths, with a founder and canonical text. It is rather a framework of traditions that can be understood as a network of people joined together with related beliefs and practices rather than a formal religion. Therefore Hinduism and its offshoot Buddhism are general models for introducing spiritual thinking into Western education for conservation. The aim is to encourage individuals to fulfill their own purpose within interconnected fields of existence, respecting all life, minimising harm to other creatures, and existing in appreciative harmony with the natural world.
Spirituality is a perception of reality in a special state of consciousness and the characteristics of this experience is a feeling of belonging to a larger whole, connected with everything, independent of historical and cultural contexts. Also, early on in its development Hinduism recognised the need for humanity to have the opportunity to ‘hear’ the wisdom that is available in the universal field of intelligence for themselves. This means stepping back from the noise and distraction of everyday life for a brief period and ‘tune in’ by engaging the senses and quieting the mind to ‘listen’ to things of the spirit.
Religion is the organized attempt to understand spiritual experience, to interpret it with words and concepts, and to use this interpretation as the source of moral guidelines . It is helpful to be able to experience Hinduism and Buddhism simply as ways of being rather than as doctrines of religious belief. Knowing oneself to be interconnected, day by day, from atoms to galaxies is quite different to accepting anything in ‘Blind faith’.
2 The Hindu Universe
In the Indic worldview every human being by virtue of being alive, and so having access to the world, is born into debt to family, culture and nature. A lifetime duty to repay these debts occurs within a universe seen as an extended family of ‘Mother Earth’, where the self (Atman) exists in relation to powerful spiritual energies and is as one with them. Hindu cosmology describes this universe and its states of matter, how it cycles within time and affects all living entities according to ancient Hindu texts. These cultural and spiritual underpinnings of debt and the duty to repay it extend to environmental stewardship where ecosystem management can be a solid source of cultural strength as well as a benefit to society. One does not have to go too far into indic cosmology to locate such underpinnings, because India’s spiritual heritage can be used to provide new unique ways of valuing, thinking, and acting to nurture respect for nature and be prepared to avert future ecological disasters. What sets Hinduism apart is that it offers a vision of manifest existence in which, from the broadest perspective, there is no separation between the Creator and the created. There is no essential separation between the species Homo sapiens and other species, both plant and animal and indeed between humanity and the universe. At the same time that the Hindu worldview recognizes this unity, it also celebrates, revels, and delights in the expressed diversity of all that we see all around us.
According to Hinduism, the purpose of life is four-fold: to achieve Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha.
Dharma is a vital feature of Indian life. In Hinduism it means ‘duty’, ‘virtue’, ‘morality’, and refers to the spiritual power which upholds the universe and society. Dharma, means to act virtuously and righteously throughout one’s life, believing that humankind is born in debt to the Gods for their blessings, debt to parents and teachers, debt to guests, debt to other human beings, and debt to all other living beings. One is obliged to Nature at large, so a person can expect to spend an entire lifetime repaying the debts. This is the essence of Dharma.
The second meaning of life is Artha, which refers to the pursuit of wealth and prosperity. Importantly, one must not step outside moral and ethical grounds of Dharma in order to do so.
The third purpose of life is to seek Kama. Kama means “desire, wish, longing” in Hindu and Buddhist literature. Broadly it refers to any desire, wish, passion, longing, pleasure of the senses, desire for, longing to and after, the aesthetic enjoyment of life, affection, or love.
The fourth meaning of life is Moksha, defined as Enlightenment. Hinduism assumes that most people rely on the guidance of others to make their way in life. This is a sign of self-incurred immaturity and life’s goal is to develop one’s own understanding of the world, a process of mindful self-realisation, known as enlightenment. If done dutifully without expectations, one can liberate oneself from all debts. If dharma is done half-heartedly, or conditionally, one becomes caught in the web of Karma. Karma is not the same as Kama. It is a concept where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions. It is a system of actions and reactions throughout an individual’s reincarnated lives forming an on going cycle of rebirth. Within this cycle Moksha may take an individual just one lifetime to accomplish enlightenment, or it may take several rebirths carrying the burden of debt. However, Moksha is considered the most important meaning of life and offers such rewards as liberation from reincarnation, or unity with the ultimate deified cosmic energy.
In Hinduism, enlightenment is a divine, transcendent experience. Sometimes it is described as a sudden, transformative moment of awakening and other times it is seen as a more gradual process of being liberated from bondage of the mind through creating a personal body of knowledge that unifies the self and the universe. A mind absorbed in sense objects is the cause of bondage, and a mind detached from the sense objects is a liberated selfhood. A close connection between religion, ecology and ethical values embodied in Moksha are understood as a part of one’s duty in life.
From prehistoric times, Hindu thinkers came to believe that the forces controlling the universe emanate from four all powerful spiritual energies. Three of these forces known as the trimurti are responsible for the creation (Brahman), upkeep (Vishnu) and destruction (Shiva) of the world. These three Gods in the Hindu pantheon, when considered together, as a triumvirate, cover the three aspects of the life cycles in Nature, their development, maintenance and dissolution. For Hindus, time and space are organized and conceived of as cyclical, where one era cycles into the next. Hindu mythology defines cycles of cosmic ages from a golden age (kitri yuga) to the dark age (kali yuga). We are currently in a degenerate dark age. When it ends, after several millennia, the universe will be destroyed and Brahma will create it anew. Just as the universe and time is conceived as being cyclical so is the progress of the individual’s selfhood. For Hindus,this is Samsara and the self is bound to the samsaric wheel, which symbolises a continuous cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Hindus believe that the self passes through a cycle of successive lives and its next incarnation is always dependent on how the previous life was lived. During this process the self, as a biochemical continuum, enters into many bodies, assumes many forms and passes through many births and deaths. Selfhood can be traced by its deeds. This concept is summarily described in the following verse of the Bhagavad gita:
“Just as a man discards worn out clothes and puts on new clothes, the soul discards worn out bodies and wears new ones.“
The trimurti are celebrated in meditations as the network of all seamlessly interlocking natural laws creating an order of self maintenance that controls the Universe. A fourth force driving the Hindu universe is Shakti. This is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power, sometimes referred to as ‘The Great Divine Mother‘. On the earthly plane, Shakti most actively manifests through female embodiment and creativity/fertility, though it is also present in males in its potential, unmanifest form (Fig 3).
Fig 3 The Hindu universe superimposed on the scientific model of the life cycle.
In 1970 Allan Sandage, a scientific cosmologist, published a paper entitled ‘Cosmology: A Search for Two Numbers’. Until the 1990’s it was thought that those two numbers would, in fact, predict the ultimate future of our universe. Since 1998 this idea has changed. The first of the two numbers is the Hubble constant H0. It describes the expansion rate of our present universe. The second number is called the deceleration parameter q0. It describes how fast H0 changes in the future. There is now a third mysterious quantity referring to what is now called dark energy.
The big surprise was that ordinary matter (about 4,4 ± 0,4 percent) and the still mysterious cold dark matter (23 ± 4 percent, together add up to only about a quarter of the total energy density; 73 ± 4 percent is made of what is now called dark energy. So if you imagine the universe as a cosmic cappuccino, the coffee stands for dark energy, the milk for dark matter, both of which we know almost nothing about. Only the powdered chocolate would be what we are familiar with, namely ordinary matter made of protons, neutrons, electrons et cetera. Now we know what we don’t know, and this is more than 95 percent of what the universe is made of.
One could say this is equivalent to the arts thinking about Hinduism which brought Shakti into the Hindo pantheon The current scientific model of the universe is structured around the concepts of dark energy and dark matter. Together they present one of the great unsolved mysteries of scientific cosmology. Dark matter works like an attractive force; a kind of cosmic cement that holds the universe together. This is because dark matter does interact with gravity, but it doesn’t reflect, absorb, or emit light. Meanwhile, dark energy is a repulsive force; a sort of anti-gravity that drives the universe’s ever-accelerating expansion. Shakti plays a similar all pervasive role in the Hindu universe where it may be personified as the agent of change.
Shiva, the “Destroyer”, is not an entirely negative force, but one that is expansive in its impact. In Hindu religious philosophy all things must come to a natural end so they can begin anew, and Shiva is the agent that brings about this end so that a new life cycle can begin.
This conceptualisation of Nature in Hindu philosophy and the collective importance of the three aspects of the trimurti in creating a balance in the Universe, can influence the way we understand Nature and humankind’s place in the modern world. In this context, Vishnu preserves, protects and maintains. We could say, Vishnu makes sure the world is ‘sustainable’. Vishnu is most commonly known through the avatars, Rama and Krishna, but is also said to have taken several forms , from a fish to a boar to human forms, in order to protect Earth when it was most harassed. In the current pursuit of the principle of sustainability, one could say that we are looking to the concept of Vishnu once again in the hope of finding a way of changing human behavior to preserve life and order on the planet. For Hindus, Vishnu is found in every object and force in creation, and some Hindus recognize Vishnu as the divine being from which all order flows. In this sense Vishnu can be positioned at the centre of spiritual education for sustainable development.
So the trimurti manifests itself in many forms, human or animal, and each has its own family, giving the entire Hindu universe a network of natural laws embedded in an energy field called shakti. Shakti is the primordial cosmic energy by which Brahman brought the universe into being and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe under the influence of the trimurti. Shakti, under the control of Brahman, is responsible for creation, as mothers are responsible for birth.
From a religious perspective, Hindus recognise one supreme being, Brahman, who is the cause and foundation of all existence. The deities of the Hindu faith represent different expressions of Brahman which have given rise to four principal sects: Vaishnavism, Saivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. For Vaishnavites, Vishnu is their God. For Saivites, their God is Siva. For Shaktas, the goddess Shakti is supreme. For Smartas, a sect of liberal Hindus, the choice of deity is left to the devotee.
Each denomination has a multitude of guru lineages, religious leaders, priesthoods, sacred literature, monastic communities, schools, pilgrimage centers and tens of thousands of temples. They possess a wealth of art and architecture, philosophy and scholarship. These four sects hold such divergent beliefs that each can be regarded as a complete and independent religion, yet, they share millenia of common heritage supporting culture and belief.
Hindus often choose a single deity to worship as supreme and encompassing other divine forms. The Shaktas, for example, worship the goddess Devi who has her own shakti energy. Shakti can also be an agent of cultural change. In this context, the Hindu tradition also considers women the vessels of shakti. This identification with shakti acknowledges women as the vessels of both creative and destructive power. Some feminists and scholars criticize this identification because they believe it has led society to label women either as saints or sinners, with little room in between. They argue that women, like benevolent goddesses, are expected to exhibit forgiveness, compassion, and tolerance of others’ transgressions. If they conform to this role, patriarchal society accepts them; if they do not, and attempt to exhibit independence and assertiveness, they are considered destructive, disrupting community and family social structures. However, others argue that the idea of shakti should be used to create education/training narratives to empower Indian women as situation leaders to resist patriarchy.
Under the control of Visnu, shakti is often manifested to destroy demonic forces and restore balance. As a widespread vital cosmic force in its own right Shakti takes many forms and names, including ‘mother goddess’, ‘fierce warrior’, and the ‘dark goddess of destruction’. In Hinduism, every god has its own shakti, or energy force. This is one of the reasons why Shakti is worshipped by millions of people throughout India. The energy flow is personified as a goddess, commonly manifested as Lakshmi, Parvati, Sarasvati, Durga, or Kali.
Vaishnavism, Shaivism and Shaktism are the most prevalent Hindu sects; among these, Vaishnavism is the largest. This is cultural ecology on a grand scale. It can be take an example of the application of arts reasoning to explain sustainability (AARTES), and provides a divine knowledge structure within which cosmic forces operate to maintain order in the universe.
The Shaktas are so named because shakti, is the feminine power, capacity, or energy that is behind the universe, without which the male gods would be inert (Fig 4 & 5). Shaktas are not necessarily feminists, and past rulers sought to obtain Shakti for the sake of political dominion. Shaktas may worship shakti as a goddess in her gentle forms, such as Lakshmi, Parvati, and Sarasvati, or in her ferocious manifestations, such as Durga and Kali. As many as ten forms of shakti are worshipped during the festival of Navratri.
There are sophisticated philosophical schools and exotic cults associated with all deities. Followers often worship their favorite in conjunction with one, two or all three of the trimurti.
Fig 4 Representations of Durga and Shakti from circa 200 BC at excavations at Chandraketugarh. Weapons appear like a halo behind her head.
Fig 5 The energising of the Hindu pantheon: Siddhi Lakshmi; Nepal; dated by inscription 1796; pigments on cloth; Rubin Museum of Art.
As a tiny feature of a vast cosmic ecology humankind is not only subject to Shakti, we are part of it. Indeed religion and science come together in time because dark energy which comprises most of the scientific cosmologist’s universe is currently unknowable. In particular, it is what forms the very basis of our body-mind system enabling us to mount a spiritual response to meditate on our surroundings. The spiritual response can be theistic or non-theistic. That is to say one may choose a known deity to meditate on (Shiva, Jesus, Buddha, etc.), or simply focus on the idea of the higher Self. The Higher Self is also known as the Transcendental Self, regarded by some as part of a person’s non-theistic cosmic consciousness, celebrating the network of social laws which turned nature into culture. The Lower Self is the animal-like creature which is deeply rooted in our primate biology. Its main goal is to survive and feel good. The Higher Self is the evolved creature we call ‘sapiens’. It strives for progress and world peace. This is the order that has brought humankind into being.
This order is defined in the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit texts of religious teaching and ideas still revered in Hindu philosophical thought. Their central theme is the relationship between humankind and the gods particularly between Brahman and Atman. Atman is the inner human self, that is to say the emotional and spiritual parts of someone. The texts present a vision of an interconnected universe with a single, unifying principle behind the apparent diversity in the cosmos, any articulation of which is called Brahman. Within this context, the Upanishads teach that Brahman resides in the Atman and is firmly at the core of the human individual.
3 The Buddhist Universe
Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion. Non-theism covers a range of both religious and nonreligious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in a God or gods. It is also considered a secular philosophy and a moral educational discipline. Originating in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. Buddhism was founded by the sage Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha). Zen Buddhism is a mixture of Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. It began in China, spread to Korea and Japan, and became very popular in the West from the mid 20th century. The essence of Zen is a route to understand the meaning of life directly, without being misled by logical thought or mystical language.
According to Zen, the attempted control of nature by humankind is at once absurd and useless. The history of Western society and its technology has been the story of humanity’s long struggle to control nature. The Zen master merely says: act and don’t worry about it; what you do may be right or wrong, neither is bad. That is to say, from the universal point of view there is no right and wrong: these are values superimposed by society. The universe makes no distinctions or categories. This raises the delicate question of moral responsibility, but it should be noted that the Zen adept strives to fulfill the “Four Great Vows” in which it is stated: “I vow to save all sentient beings.” Therefore, compassionate conservation management is also part of Zen.
Spiritual experiences through Zen are non-ordinary events at moments when we feel intensely alive. The aliveness felt during such a ‘peak experience’, involves both body and mind. Buddhists refer to this heightened mental alertness as ‘mindfulness’. The central awareness in these spiritual moments is said to be a profound sense of oneness with all, a sense of belonging to the universe as a whole. With respect to science they seem to be ‘eureka moments’.
Indian religions often see space and time as cyclical, such that world-systems come into being, survive for a time, are destroyed and then are remade. In Buddhism this happens naturally without the intervention of gods. Buddhism has no creator god to explain the origin of the universe. Instead, it teaches that everything depends on everything else: present events are caused by past events and become the cause of future events. The physical world as we know it, with all its imperfections and suffering, is the product of what the Buddha, a real person, called dependent origination. The Buddha taught that this was a 12-stage process, a circular chain, not a straight path. Each stage gives rise to the one directly after it.
The Buddhist wheel of life symbolises the endless cycle of human existence and suffering. In the middle of the Wheel are the Three Fires of greed, ignorance and hatred, represented by a rooster, a pig and a snake. These are the cause of all human suffering and are shown linked together, biting each other’s tails, reinforcing each other (Fig 6).
Fig 6 The Buddhist wheel of life
In his book ‘The Universe in a Single Atom’, the Dalai Lama presents Buddhism as an empirical tradition, akin to science. He says “My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science, so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by critical investigation: if scientific analysis were to conclusively demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the claims of science and abandon those claims.”
Buddhists say that well being and happiness come when we realise that our noblest nature as an individual being is interconnectedness. At any one time we can declare that we are humankind existing as the outcome of the flows of materials and energy through a global ecosystem. We are a temporary biochemical microcosm composed of ancestral elements drawn from an environmental macrocosm, swirling through the universe (Fig 7).
Fig 7 A Buddhist autopoietic system of oneness
These elements defined as ‘we’ and ‘non-we’, support a flow of molecules and energy to produce the elemental components of oneness, which in turn, continue to maintain the organized bounded structure that gives rise to these elements. It is not difficult to see how Buddhism is entangled in biological evolution and has become the faith system that is close to scientific thinking about the evolution of life. In the long run the biochemical elements of energy and materials circulate through the human ecosystem as non-we components in other microcosms, such as trees.
According to the World Buddhist University, Buddhism is about how to be at home in the universe structured as a cosmic ecosystem. The original meaning of ecology goes back to the Greeks who saw Earth and the gods and spirits who inhabited it, as the home of humankind. Thus we have Home Economics and Economics referring to activities and transactions in home and governance. Being at home for a Buddhist suggests a requirement for teachings about how our mental conditioning and the delusions of our impermanent self can be let go of, so we can be one, or at home, with the universe. The teachings also portray a total inter-connection with everything. This state of oneness is called Nirvana or Enlightenment.
4 The cosmic ecosystem
Without the workings of some kind of cosmic order, we would neither be nor would anything else in the Universe. Science tells us that the chemical elements of the Universe are all around and within us. They are the basic building materials of our physical selves. The composition of Earth, and the chemistry that governs the Earth and its biology are rooted in these chemical elements, which appeared as the first atoms after the Big Bang (Fig 8).
Fig 8 Origin of the universe according to the ‘Big Bang’ theory
Further, different elements come from a variety of different events. So the elements that make up life itself reflect a variety of chemical events that took place in the universe. For example, the hydrogen found in water and in hydrocarbons was formed in the moments after the Big Bang. Carbon, the basis for all terrestrial life, was formed in small stars. Chemical elements of lower abundance in living organisms but essential to our biology, such as calcium and iron, were formed in large stars. Heavier elements important to our environment, such as gold, were formed in the explosive power of supernovae. The light elements used in our technology were formed via cosmic rays. The solar nebula, from which our solar system was formed, was seeded with these elements, and they were present at Earth’s formation. The existence of all life forms on Earth is connected to these elements, and to their cosmic origin.
Prokaryotes are organisms made up of cells that lack a cell nucleus or any membrane encased organelles. Eukaryotes are organisms made up of cells that possess a membrane-bound nucleus that holds genetic material as well as membrane-bound organelles. Prokaryotic cells are the most primitive cells. They do not have a definite nucleus which includes bacteria and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Their DNA is scattered inside the cytoplasm.
Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. The earliest evidence for life on Earth comes from fossilized mats of cyanobacteria, called stromatolites, in Greenland. They are about 3.7 billion years old. Ancient as their origins are, these bacteria (which are still alive today) are already biologically complex. They have cell walls protecting their protein-producing DNA, so scientists think life must have begun much earlier. In fact, there are hints of life in even more primeval rocks: 4.1-billion-year-old zircons from Western Australia contain high amounts of a form of carbon typically used in biochemical processes.
From the outset, all cells are potassium-based and the cytoplasm of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes contains substantially more potassium than sodium, and potassium cations are specifically required for many key cellular processes, including protein synthesis. This distinct ionic composition and requirements have been attributed to the emergence of the first cells in potassium-rich habitats. Different, albeit complementary, scenarios have been proposed for the primordial potassium-rich environments based on experimental data and theoretical considerations. Specifically, building on the observation that potassium prevails over sodium in the vapor of inland geothermal systems, it is argued that the first cells could emerge in the pools and puddles at the periphery of primordial oxygen-free geothermal fields, where the elementary composition of the condensed vapour would resemble the internal milieu of modern cells.
Marine and freshwater environments generally contain more sodium than potassium. Therefore, to invade such environments, while maintaining excess of potassium over sodium in the cytoplasm, primordial cells needed means to extrude sodium ions. The foray into new, sodium-rich habitats was the likely driving force behind the evolution of sodium export pumps (Fig 9) and the increase of membrane tightness. Here we have a scenario that details how the interplay between several, initially independent sodium pumps might have triggered the evolution of sodium-dependent membrane bioenergetics, followed by the separate emergence of the proton-dependent bioenergetics in archaea and bacteria. Biochemical systems have evolved that utilize the sodium/potassium gradient across the cell membranes.
Fig 9 Cell membrane ion pumps
When trying to reconstruct the evolutionary trajectories during early eukaryogenesis, one is struck by clear differences in the developments of two organelles, the mitochondrion and the chloroplast. These are thought to have likely evolved from engulfed prokaryotes that once lived as independent organisms. At some point, a eukaryotic cell engulfed an aerobic prokaryote, which then formed an endosymbiotic relationship with the host eukaryote, gradually developing into a mitochondrion. Eukaryotic cells containing mitochondria then engulfed photosynthetic prokaryotes, which evolved to become specialized chloroplast organelles Fig 10.
Fig 10 evolution of eukaryotes
Oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, forged in the superhot, superdense core of stars. That’s because oxygen can form compounds with nearly every other element on the periodic table. So how did Earth end up with an atmosphere made up of roughly 21 percent oxygen? The answer is tiny organisms known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These microbes conduct photosynthesis: using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.
For some untold eons prior to the evolution of these cyanobacteria, during the Archean eon, more primitive microbes lived on Earth without oxygen i.e. anaerobically. These ancient organisms—and their “extremophile” descendants today—thrived in the absence of oxygen, relying on sulfate for their energy needs. But roughly 2.45 billion years ago, the isotopic ratio of sulfur transformed, indicating that for the first time oxygen was becoming a significant component of Earth’s atmosphere. At roughly the same time (and for eons thereafter), oxidized iron began to appear in ancient soils and bands of iron were deposited on the seafloor, a product of reactions with oxygen in the seawater.
5 Life is like a candle flame
A special aspect of the chemical oneness of life is that all living things are in a biochemical steady state. A burning candle is a chemical steady state (Fig 11). Wax is drawn up into the flame, to match the wax combining with oxygen in the flame. The shape of the flame is maintained. The formation of substances keeps pace with their destruction so that all volumes, concentrations, pressures, and flows remain constant. In biochemistry, a steady state is the maintenance of constant internal concentrations of molecules and ions in the cells and organs of living systems. A continuous flux of mass and energy results in the constant synthesis and breakdown of molecules via chemical reactions of biochemical pathways. Cellular structures are being dismantled every minute and immediately replaced.
Fig 11 A candle flame as a chemical steady state.
The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, asks the question. Where Does a Flame Come From?
“I can say to the flame, “Dear flame, please manifest yourself.” As I strike the match, the flame complies. But I would also like to ask her, “Where have you come from?” The flame would say this: “Dear Thay, I come from nowhere and I go nowhere. When conditions are sufficient, I manifest.” That is the truth of the nature of no coming, no going. Let us practice looking deeply into the nature of the flame of a candle. Is it the same flame as the flame of the match that lit it? Or is it a different flame? If we maintain this flame for one hour, the flame will burn lower on the candle. It may appear to be the same flame, but that is only our perception. In fact there are multitudes of flames suc-ceeding one another in every instant. They give the impres-sion that it is always the same flame, but it is not. The fuel is different, the oxygen is different. The room has changed, and so the conditions are different. Therefore the flame is not exactly the same. It does not take much time for the flame to change because in one second the flame is nourished by the wax and oxygen in the first part of the candle. The next moment, the oxygen and the wax are being burned away and new fuel, new wax and oxygen, are now burning. It is not the same fuel, so it is not the same flame. When the candle becomes shorter, you see that it has consumed this much wax and that much oxygen, so you know that the flame is changing all the time. Just like us, the flame does not remain the same in two con-secutive moments. Looking at just one flame you see already the nature of being neither the same nor different. Underneath our impres-sion of being the same, there is the nature of impermanence. Nothing can remain the same in two consecutive moments. This applies to a human being, a cloud, to everything. If you say that the flame burning on the candle ten minutes ago is the same as the flame you see now, this is not correct. If you say there are one thousand different flames succeeding each other, this is not correct either. The true nature of the flame is the nature of neither the same not different. If we can move through the illusion of same and different, we can change a lot of suffering into joy”.
Thich Nhat Hanh goes further. As you light the match with a Buddhist perspective, we can become aware that the flame does not need to be born. With the right conditions, it only has to manifest for us to see it. When we burn a sheet of paper, it is no longer in the form of paper. If we follow it with mindfulness, the sheet of paper continues in other forms. One of its forms will be smoke.
The smoke from the piece of paper rises and will join one or two of the clouds already existing in the sky. It is now participating in a cloud. Tomorrow, next month, there will be rain and a drop of water can fall on your forehead. That drop of water is your sheet of paper. Another form the paper takes on is ash. You can give the ash back to the soil. When it is returned to the soil, the earth becomes a continuation of the sheet of paper. Maybe next year you will see the continuation of the paper in a tiny flower or a blade of grass. That is the afterlife of a sheet of paper. During the process of being burned, the piece of paper also became heat. That heat penetrates into our bodies, even if you are not very close to the flame. Now you carry the sheet of paper in you. The heat penetrates deeply into the cosmos. You can measure the effects of that heat even in distant planets and stars. They then become a manifestation, a continuation of the little sheet of paper. We cannot know how far the sheet of paper will go. Scientists say that if you clap your hands it may have an impact on a distant star. What is happening with us can affect a galaxy far away. And the galaxy far away can affect us. Everything is under the influence of everything else. Nothing is lost from the universe.
Arti Worship is one of the main Hindu flame-centred ceremonies. During worship, celebrants cup their hands over the flame and then over their heads and the head of companions.. Breathing in, and sharing the fundamental energies of the universe affirms humankind’s oneness with each other and with Nature.
6 Adaptive Buddhism
One day, after growing up, marrying and having a child, The Buddha, alias Prince Siddhartha Gautama, went outside the royal enclosure where he lived for the first time. There he saw old man, a sick man, a corpse and a wandering holy man. These encounters are called the ‘Four Sights of Buddhism’, and Siddhartha came to understand that sickness, age, and death were the inevitable fate of human beings; seemingly a fate no-one could avoid . The holy man appeared happy in the midst of the suffering where he was looking to discover the truth about human existence. It is this fourth Sight which awakens Prince Gautama to possibilities for humanity to escape suffering. From that point, in human history Siddhartha knew that his own life path would be to seek the truth about why humankind faces poverty, old age, disease and death and what can be done to end suffering. The Four Noble Truths comprise the prescription of Buddha’s teachings, though they leave much left unexplained. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.
The Fourth Noble truth charts the method for attaining the end of suffering, which is accepted by Buddhists as the Noble Eightfold Path. In Buddhism, the path is meant as a guideline, to be considered, to be contemplated, and to be taken on when, and only when, each step is fully accepted as part of the life you seek. Buddhism never asks for blind faith, it seeks to promote learning as a process of self-discovery. The eightfold path, although referred to as steps on a path, is not meant as a sequential learning process, but as eight aspects of life, all of which are to be integrated in everyday life. The eightfold path is Right Understanding, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Thus a lifestyle can be created to move closer to the Buddhist targets of self education. The eightfold path is at the heart of the middle way, which turns from extremes, and encourages us to seek the simple approach.
So, the teachings of the man Siddhartha Gautama are aimed solely at liberating sentient beings from suffering. This project is now the fundamental goal of what is called the ‘international community’ for everyone to live sustainably. The global perspective of human suffering in the 21st century views humankind as inhabiting two environments. One is Earth’s Sun-driven ecosystem, of microbes, plants and animals, of soils, atmosphere and waters, which preceded human evolution by billions of years and of which humans are now an integral and dominant part. The other environment is the culture-driven planetary ecosystem, which comprises the social institutions, artifacts and myths that humankind builds for itself, using tools, machines and mythological thinking.
Thus, science and dreams fashion an environment obedient to human purpose and direction. This sentiment begins the 1972 report entitled ‘Only One Earth’, produced by an international collaboration of scientific and intellectual leaders from fifty-eight countries. It’s standpoint is that we are simply one kind of being amongst many other life forms participating in a greater community of life and sharing a benign environment. Yet, humanity has created for itself, through labour and ingenuity, another more alien environment, namely an exploitative cultural ecology that is becoming more and more toxic to planet Earth adding to human suffering through injustice, poverty and ill health ( Fig 12).
Despite the increasing technology and knowledge at our command, we are more susceptible to depression, and other conflicts of mind inflicted on us by societal, personal and economic problems of our own creation. The negativity surrounding us gives way to numerous psychological problems. Peace of mind is essential for human beings to realise the importance of life and let go of the negativity that overshadows our thoughts and deprives us of the happiness that we are capable of.
Fig 12 The ills of Mother Nature
Humanity now requires 1,5 Earths to satisfy its wants. This gives rise to a paradoxical conception of Homo sapiens who, on the one hand, together with the rest of creation, is part of nature, completely subject to its ecological laws. On the other hand, in his social capacity as knower and actor, humankind is composed of rational beings that transcend nature in the sense and are actually the authors of the cultural laws that are applied to Earth’s ecosystems to control their needs and wants. But the social processes and institutions that currently promote and create the cultural ecosystem are at odds with the biophysical processes that sustain the wider community of life.
Spiritual values are thought to be behind our feelings of planetary connectedness which drive nature conservation to care for and protect wildlife so that it can persist with future generations. Humanity now depends upon cultural rules to integrate with the greater community of life for ecological survival, applying cultural rules to relieve this planetary suffering through openness and kindness. The objective is to work towards protecting others from mental and physical pain whilst bringing humanity’s demands on Earth within the planet’s capacity for regeneration.
Much of our life is dictated by our needs and wants. Buddha’s message has always been that it is time to take a step back and realize that excessive consumption is not delivering on its promise to provide happiness and fulfillment. Consumption is necessary, but excessive consumption is not, and life can be better lived by intentionally rejecting it. We must never believe that we have learned enough to live a good life. Learning is a lifelong goal. To adapt these basic teachings of Siddhartha Gautama to the present we need look no further than the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goals. These goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for humankind. They address the global challenges faced by secular Buddhism, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice.
Stephen Batchelor, a former Buddhist monk, describes himself as an itinerant preacher of secular Buddhism. He believes we have to release Siddhartha Gautama, from the elaborate theological and institutional structures built upon his teachings by generations of fallible monastic memories built up by his followers in Tibet, Korea and South-east Asia. Each of those inward looking agrarian cultures adapted the Buddha’s teaching to fit their own times and circumstances. In our modern world we need an imaginative adaptation of Buddhism that offers a philosophy, ethic, psychology and way of life that embraces all aspects of the current planetary crisis without the need to appeal to any supernatural order of being. Batchelor sees the aim of Buddhist practice to be the moment-to-moment flourishing of human life within the ethical framework of the eightfold path of Buddhism here on Earth. Addressing this modern synthesis the Dalai Lama has said “Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist, use it to be a better whatever you already are.” Thus, Siddhartha Gautama, becomes a figurehead of education for conservation representing the whole of humankind.
Regarding individualism, you can think about yourself as a unique person (i.e. be self conscious). You also know you can be aware to think clearly and objectively about yourself in a wider scheme of things through reflection on your surroundings (i.e. be self-aware). Self-awareness becomes self-reliance when you recognize from social feedback the things you are not good at, and that you have the confidence to empower others to do these things. Thereby you become so exceptionally adept at the basics of what you are good at that this skill becomes your power base.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. One of the most significant influences on Emerson’s transcendental ideals was Buddhism. Although there is evidence of Emerson studying Indian Buddhism, many of his philosophies seem to parallel with the school of Zen Buddhism. In his essay, “Self Reliance,” Emerson defined the ‘sole purpose of being’ as the want for people to avoid conformity. Emerson believed that in order for you to truly be yourself, you have to follow your own conscience and concentrate on doing what you are good at. Essentially, his message is do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society’s norm. In “Self-Reliance” Emerson defines this individualism as a profound and unshakeable trust in one’s own intuitions. Embracing this view of individualism, he asserts, can revolutionize society, not through a sweeping mass movement, but through the educational transformation of one life at a time and through the creation of leaders capable of greatness. Self-reliant leadership is synonymous with knowing which questions to ask yourself and having the courage to answer them and act. Situational leadership (Fig 13) is the practical outcome of self-reliant leadership. It is based on the premise that there is no best style of leadership, and it all depends on the situation. What is now called situational leadership represents adaptive Buddhism in action.
Fig 13 Situational leadership
The situational leader evaluates their team or organization by simply asking about the current situation of the organization. Leaders understand their strengths and short-comings and how those traits affect their ability to create willing followers. They need to have a steadfast passion for serving others, and that requires putting others first and they need to be out front trailblazers who believe in leading by example to develop followers who have initiative, persistence and determination
7 Discovering by looking
Conservation seeks the sustainable use of Earth by humankind for activities such as urbanisation, hunting, logging, and mining, while protecting nature from human exploitation. How do we create a common educational ground that promotes the sharing of resources equitably, between people and nature? The educational problem is that we don’t see the world “as is,” but only as our minds organize it for us. In this connection, humanism has emerged as a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives and the planetary ecosystem. In humanism, democracy and ethics stand for the building of a more humane society based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. In this respect we need look no further than Buddhism to provide a moral spiritual compass and enrich a humanist pedagogy. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality. So the two ‘isms’, humanism and classical Buddhism, occupy common ground. Buddhism is different from other faith traditions in that it is not centered on the relationship between humans and a personal creator God. It has a strong educational tradition with a secular pedagogy that focuses on personal spiritual development. To many, humanistic Buddhism is a way of life summed up as adopting moral leadership; being aware of one’s thoughts and actions; and developing wisdom, compassion and understanding in one’s dealings with other people and other life forms.
The three general truths of Buddhism that are applicable to managing a sustainable culture within the global ecosystem by situational leadership are are;
Actions have consequences.
The consequences will affect the doer of the action at some future time.
Impermanence permeates all aspects of life.
An understanding of impermanence motivates Buddhists to improve their quality of life to achieve enlightenment.
Everything that seems to be outside you is actually part of you.
This is the principle of oneness through cosmic interconnectedness and ecological, interdependence on one to another;
Cultural ecology is the ideational link between the Sun-driven and culture-driven worlds and provides the educational framework of spiritual values and arts thinking to underpin the creative ecological management of planet Earth.
From a Buddhist perspective creativity can be enhanced by the development of an open non-discriminatory mode of awareness (mindfulness) and a disinterested attention to most of what arises in the meditating mind (a non-centred awareness). In this way, the creative stream of human awareness can flow unimpeded until it stops before a burst of interested attention. An important feature of mindfulness is ‘discovering by looking’. This occurs when humans draw attention to certain visual information for more scrupulous analysis but discard other visual information. Understanding what we have seen and selected comes from our imagination which sparks new ideas and helps us visualize ourselves achieving that next goal. We depend on the interaction between seeing and imagining every day (Fig 14).
Fig 14 Discovering by looking
Buddhists say that well being and happiness come when we realise that our noblest nature as an individual being is grounded in cosmic interconnectedness and interdependence. At any one time we can declare that we are humankind existing as the outcome of the flows of materials and energy through a cosmic ecosystem. Indeed, Buddhism situates humankind in a dynamic biochemical equilibrium with all other kinds of life which are microcosms composed of ancestral elements drawn from a common environmental macrocosm.
Everything in existence has certain qualities that are uniquely its own, and can be described as its “oneness.” Oneness arises from the common building blocks of all life, at all levels of chemistry, cell biology and physiology (Fig 15).
Fig 15 Oneness as a combination of inscapes and instress (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
8 Outsidedness Inside
Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient spiritual philosophies and one of its broadest, based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India. It is the philosophical foundation of Hinduism; but while Hinduism includes aspects of Indian culture, Vedanta is universal in its application and is equally relevant to all countries, all cultures, and all religious backgrounds. This makes Vedanta a ubiquitous platform for thinking about how to live in harmony with Nature.
In 2012, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, called for a debate between scientists, philosophers and theologians to find common ground between science and religion over how the universe began. Explanations found in the texts of the world’s spiritual traditions are admittedly not exhaustive in the details referring to the origin of the universe. But they do outline key concepts which are important to the philosophy for spiritual development that they present. The Vedic cosmology of ancient India is incredibly rich and has many points of tangency with modern cosmology, which may help in the construction of that common ground between science and religion that CERN is seeking.
Anthropologists tell us that in virtually all traditional cultures, a cosmology is what gives its members their fundamental sense of where they come from, who they are, and what their personal role in life’s larger picture might be. Cosmology is whatever picture of the universe a culture agrees on. Scientific cosmology is the study of the universe through astronomy and physics. However, cosmology also has a significant cultural impact. People construct anthropological cosmologies i.e. notions about the way the world works, drawing in scientific theories in order to construct models for activities in disciplines, such as politics and psychology. In addition, the arts (literature, film and painting, for example) comment on cosmological ideas and use them to develop plot lines and content. Buddhism is a cultural cosmology which has its modern expression in the writings of the Buddhist monk, Zen Master and global spiritual leader, Thich Nhat Hanh. His cosmology comes close to making a seamless connection between scientific and cultural ideas about the cosmos.
Life within the cosmos depends on two processes: the passage of an encoded molecule from parents to offspring to explain heritable characteristics, and the spontaneous emergence of self-organized order. Emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. If you were some hypothetical observer who met only one human, you would never infer the global economy from that meeting. However, put enough people together, and these systems start to form, as economies, religions, states, nations, etc. The complex emerges from the simple.
The Hindu cosmology is the oldest description of the universe and its states of matter and effects on living entities according to Hindu spiritual texts. The Vedas are a collection of these sacred texts gathered in four fundamental collections (Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva- Veda). These preserve the millenary religious wisdom of the Aryans, a population settled in north-western India around the 20th century BC. The oldest part, the Rigveda Samhita, dates back to an age between 1500 and 1200 BC. These are hymns, poems, mantras, and mythological tales written in Vedic Sanskrit. Despite being counted among the oldest texts of mankind, these present extremely interesting concepts for physicists and mathematicians.
The Upanishads are late Vedic Sanskrit texts of religious teachings and ideas still revered in Hinduism. The Upanishads provide a conception of reality and a universe based on observation and reasoning to elucidate its natural laws. According to the Advaita Vedanta God is the totality of all natural laws and the perfect interplay inherent in them. In this context The Indian Advaita Vedanta calls this natural order Ishvara and for a person of faith or no faith, Ishvara is God.
To meditate means to be invited on a journey of looking deeply in order to touch our true nature and to recognize that nothing is lost. Because of this we can overcome fear. Non-fear is the greatest gift of meditation. With it we can overcome grief and our sorrow. Only nothing can come from nothing. Something cannot come from nothing and nothing cannot come from some-thing. If something is already there, it does not need to be born. The moment of birth is only a moment of continuation. You can be perceived as a baby the day of your so-called birth and everyone thinks of you as now existing. But you already existed before that day. To die in our notion of death means that from some-thing you suddenly become nothing. From someone.
9 Routines
The Dalai Lama was once asked, ‘If you had only one word to describe the secret of happiness, and of living a fulfilling life, what would that word be?’ Without hesitating the Dalai Lama replied, “Routines.” A routine is something that we do regularly, without questioning. Once established, routines require little effort, tracking, or decision making. By definition they become a consistent part of our lives. Viewed this way, routines reduce stress and help our lives move more smoothly.
There’s a motto in the Japanese tea ceremony: Ichigo ichie, which means “one time, one encounter.” The ceremony began as a Zen Buddhist routine practice that came to Japan from China. Though all the intricate movements of the tea ceremony are prescribed by tradition, they are never quite the same. For the Japanese, each moment is unrepeatable and special in its own right. Each moment in the ever-repeated pattern is, by virtue of the repetition, always new; whatever comes around again in the great cycle of things is always fresh. It is important therefore to explore the spiritual value of repetition and routine in one’s domestic and professional lives.
Zen is about managing an everyday routine working steadily to a planned schedule to achieve a definite outcome. Adopt the Zen proverb: “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” Single-task, don’t multitask. Focus solely on that one thing you are doing and do it slowly and deliberately. Take time, move slowly and focus on the task completely. Stay with this task until it is completed, before moving on to the next thing. Make sure you don’t have an endless task list each day, have goals you can complete that day and complete them fully with care. Leave space between tasks in case one takes longer than expected. Manage your schedule so that you can achieve this. For example, the Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh, says, “If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.”
“What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future -and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.” As an old Asian proverb goes, “The careful foot can tread anywhere.”
The Zen of ecological management is sticking to a routine logic of looking and acting (Fig 16). First decide on the feature to be managed, then define its condition by measuring one of its attributes and decide whether the condition is favourable i.e. it falls within the limits set by the management plan. If the condition is unfavourable i.e. its condition falls outside the set limits, select a factor that can be manipulated to bring it into a favourable condition. This Zen routine involves a sequence of the following three steps of mindfulness
1 Choose a feature of the ecosystem that is to be conserved (e.g. a plant or animal) and a factor in the environment that affects it (e.g. a predator). Manipulate the factor and measure an attribute of the feature ( a performance indicator) to see what effect your manipulation of the factor has produced.
2 If the feature is not in a favourable condition continue to manipulate the factor until the condition of the feature becomes favourable.
3 Then, keep the condition of the feature under surveillance, manipulating the factor, or a new factor, if the feature becomes unfavourable.
This is the routine of a management cycle. The routine is the same whether the feature is in a national nature reserve, a domestic garden or a plant pot. The logic is also the basis of any kind of management system at the operational level.
www.culturalecology.info/
Fig 16 A Zen routine for conservation management
Each moment of daily life is an opportunity to capture the present moment. Gathas are short Zen verses that we can recite during daily activities to help us grasp the present moment in mindfulness. The following is a gatha for maintaining an ecosystem.
I know that I do not have
A separate self.
By maintaining this ecological feature
In a favourable state
So my being is also maintained
In a more favourable condition.