Groping Toward Our Ecozoic Future
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RD: When I started to read your writings, I came across the term
"dysfunctional cosmology"; and something happened inside of me, because it was such an apt phrase for the way in which I'm experiencing the world in which I live.
TB: Well, most peoples have their life patterns and their norms of action, their ideals, their values rooted in some kind of a cosmology.
...It's a story of how things came to be in the beginning, how they came to be as they are, and the direction in which, how humans fit into the cosmology, and then the direction in which human affairs should go....
And as long as the cosmology functions well, there is a
basis for dealing with human situations. But when there is a
disassociation from the cosmology, then the whole basis of
meaning begins to change.
...The larger dimensions of my effort is to establish a capacity to experience the developmental story of the universe as our sacred story, as our sacred cosmology.
RD: The universe is the revelation. In other words, this is a living
Bible that we just have to learn how to read. But we... not only have to learn how to read it, we are part of the Bible itself. We've got to read ourselves.
TB: So what we are having is a new insight into this, and it's
astounding. It's given us this awesome power that we have. And it's the power that we don't know what to do with or how to judge good and evil because we don't understand the story as a sacred story. In other words, we don't understand the earth as a sacred reality, the trees as sacred, the rivers, the mountains....
We live, everything lives in everything else. Every atom lives in every other atom. I think that's one of the wonderful discoveries that we have now from science. But we don't know what to do with it because we don't have this mystique of, to enable us to deal with it. And here's the basic thing. I was dealing with some situations recently and I had to draw up what I call the Pattern of the Emerging Ecozoic Period.
You see we are at the terminal phase of the Cenozoic, the last 65 million years. We're not just passing into another historical period, or another cultural modification, we are changing the chemistry of the planet.
We are changing the biosystems. We're changing the geosystems of the
planet on a scale of hundreds of millions of years. But more specifically, we're terminating the last 65 million years of life development. Now a person would say, "Well, where do we go from here?" To my mind we go from the terminal phase, if we survive it, ... into a really sustainable world.
We will be passing from the terminal Cenozoic into what I call the Ecozoic. And the primary principle of the Ecozoic that we have to learn, I'm saying, is that the universe (and in particular planet Earth) is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
If we don't learn that, nothing is going to work...The universe has to do something about itself. But it has so committed itself to the human mode that, as regards to planet Earth, that it has to function through the human at this stage.
Whereas all this beauty of the universe that we see about us came into being without human consultation, from here on, the universe will never function that way again.
As far as I can tell, the universe will never again function the way it functioned previously in the Cenozoic period, that is the last 65 million years, because during the 65 million years in which wave-on-wave of life expansion took place, humans had nothing to say about it; and it came out so magnificently as the universe that we have about us and the planet earth particularly, of course. But ... in the future, ...(whereas the humans cannot make a blade of grass), there's liable not to be a blade of grass unless humans accept it, protect it and foster it.
Now ...in this period that is emerging, ...even wilderness will, in a sense, have to be a protected wilderness. It will have to be protected so it can function within itself, and it will have to be
protected from humans by humans. And there are occasions when humans will have to be a support system, provide a support system for so many of the animals, for many of the living forms that prior to our times ... made it on their own. Now the ideal should be that we should enable them to be on their own, that we should withdraw the human interference as much as possible and certainly not make it a cultivated wilderness in the sense of a controlled wilderness....
RD: Your focus on history and your appreciation of aesthetic beauty leads you to see the changes that humans are bringing about as somehow (I can't help but feel) somehow a breakdown of the system. It's a transformation but also a breakdown, a loss. A loss....
TB: Well, it's an enormous difficulty, I think; and I think it's one of the reasons for so many of the pathologies that we're into. It's because we have lost our rapport with these governing forces of the planet. And there's a great deal can be done, a great deal of human sympathy that can be developed and all that; but now we are into what I would consider an unworkable industrial plundering society that is at a dead end.
Let me say this, to my mind, at this order of magnitude, the
industrial society, industrialization can be done once; it cannot be
maintained, nor can it ever be done again. ... Three reasons:
The first reason is the psychic energy. When we put all this up, we were fascinated with the bright side of things. We saw only the benefits. We didn't see the disadvantages.
The second thing is the finances. We couldn't begin to build the New York subway system now. We and roads are breaking up faster than we can repair them. We've taken on ourselves an enormous burden. Right now, the whole industrial world is bankrupt: our cities, the nations of the world, ... the third world, ... the first world. ...We can't do anything now because we are (look at our three trillion dollar debt) ... going faster up to four trillion dollars... I can remember when in 1928 the national debt was eight billion dollars.
...The third reason why it can't be maintained or can't be done again is the diminishment of natural resources. So we have to immediately begin changing because the oil is going to be going. Everything we do now is dependent on our oil. Our food, our clothing, our instruments, our transportation, everything....Well, to my mind we have to first recognize that we are at an impasse and that we can't cure this by more technology in the sense of genetic engineering, refinement of computers and all this.
All these instrumentalities are not going to, to assist.
RD: The Technozoic age isn't going to work.
TB: It's not going to work. Now we need to go into an Ecozoic; and the primary principle of that is that we accept life on the conditions that life is granted us. And life is granted us ... on certain conditions, that we have to learn to accept certain difficulties of life, like for ourselves, we have to first strengthen the inner world. In the Asian world, and you've been rather much into the Asian world, and particularly India, they deal with life by strengthening the inner world not by conquering the outer world, primarily. We try to deal with life by conquering the outer world and the inner world is weakened. Now we have to begin to recover some sense of dealing with life by ... an inner adaptation to life rather than a controlling of life. ... This is going to be imposed upon us....
The basic biological law is that every life system ... has opposed life system or conditions that limit each life system so that no one life system or group of life systems should overwhelm the others. But our technologies enable us to transcend that situation. We are not subject to being limit, we have to self limit. So the basic principle has to be self limiting as regards use of resources, as regards habitat, as regards resources, habitat and population.... America particularly has to begin to limit consumption.
TB: Well, the question ... is whether it's going to happen creatively or destructively. It is going to happen ... Is it going to bring a corresponding total devastation? A large amount of the devastation is unavoidable now. We can't avoid a population now of ten billion people. There's no way we can avoid that. But if we are already consuming 40% of the gross earth product, humans, if we double that and begin to take 60,70, 80%, then the whole biosystems of the planet will cease to function effectively, and it will be a kind of a collapse, a biological collapse.
TB: ....There is this: A lot of wonderful things have happened in the last several years, the last three or four years. I was much darker ten years ago than I am now...........
RD: Okay. What kind of things are giving you some hope...
TB: Well, pervasive consciousness....In politics nothing is going to work anymore unless it claims to be environmentally oriented....... The whole ecological disaster is beginning to dawn upon people. Now children are learning this now, elementary school. I'm in contact with a lot of schools or elementary schools and when the kids get hold of this, they do things..... a person has to feel the challenge of it and young people particularly need to feel the challenge of it in a creative way. Something like the "Chitco Movement" where those women went out and stopped the coating of the trees and they realized that their destiny and the destiny of the trees go together. And there is just a fantastic number of people everywhere now..... and in the commercial world, ... just about everything has to be recognized, whether clothing has to be ecologically made, everything, food. So beginnings have been made. Maybe it's one percent, but beginnings are of that nature. But what we need are visions of direction, comprehensive directions in which to go. That's what's important.
As soon as we begin to understand the universe in its sacred
dimension, then we develop a sense of reverence and concern and identity and sympathies and the compassionate.............there are two ultimate categories for me. One is creativity and the other is celebration. The universe I consider - in its vast extent in space and in its transformations in time - is a single multiform celebratory event. And ... the role of the human is to enter into that celebratory process in a special mode of conscious self-awareness.
RD: And with that mode, one is a celebratory participant, which you are in your moment-to-moment living.... And that allows you to be peaceful even in the presence of the way in which the human mind has done it's work thus far. You said there were two, there was the celebration, and what is the other one?
TB: The creation, the creativity and the celebration.
RD: Well, in a celebratory act, every moment is a creative act, isn't it? The whole thing is creative, there's no stopping of creation. You don't stop.
TB: Yeah. The creative is the most important. That's why the geneticist Dubchompsky (Theodore Dubchompsky) did so much. He's written some beautiful things on this, the evolutionary process. And as regards as it being either determined or random, he says, "It's neither; it's creative." And creativity is, it's like a person making a poem. You don't know what it is until it ... hits you .... It's like a melody. I describe it as a melody. We grope toward these issues. That's why Tellihard's word, "groping" as the expression of the emergent process. We grope toward the creativity. We're groping toward what I would call the Ecozoic Period.
And what we need ... is some help with that groping....we do need to help them enter into this because it's just urgent. And that's why, there's a new movement, now...... We don't know what to do exactly, but I think we are being guided even at this moment, toward a creative response to what has already taken place that can bring about a lot of healing and can bring about a new and brilliant phase that will be available for future generations.....
What has happened?
What can be done?
A town is centered around the work at a chemical plant in town. All the men now work there, after the economic collapse in the local economy. They at the plant are dumping dangerous chemical waste into the river which runs through the town. These chemicals are making the people ill, especially the town's children who must stay home from school, which is itself in danger of economic collapse. The men's wives are the children's mothers and are picketing around the plant where their husbands work.
Edited Excerpts from His Holiness The Dalai Lama in his dialogue with Ram Dass, Fall 1990, India Edited by Skip Robinson "The One and the Four"
Introduction
Genuine compassion has no limit and extends toward all sentient beings, including your enemy, even when it seems that person is creating the problem.
Human beings (and other sentient beings) want happiness, freedom from suffering. You and they have every right to overcome suffering, just like me.
After all, what is the purpose of the practice of Dharma? Not just the belief that there is something sacred.
You see, we want happiness. We want pleasure, joy. We have the right. Now how to achieve that?
And we do not want suffering, pain. How to overcome that?
Deepening
Love, compassion, affection are often very conditioned, very much a mixture, compassion mixed with desire, attachment. This is something close to me. If this is my friend, closeness develops. One aspect is desire, attachment, a kind of compassion that is so unstable. As soon as that person creates some negative attitude, your compassion completely changes. You develop negative feelings. The same may be true for the other person. The other person operates on the basis of that person's personal rights and concern for that person's feeling, irrespective of that other person's attitude toward your self.
Compassion is something genuine when it is not simply the passive feeling of pity or sympathy, but rather genuine concern with a sense of responsibility to do something --that kind of compassion.
I believe I can change my own attitude, my own mental thinking. Reason and logic show our potential ability to change. I think, from Buddhism's viewpoint, this kind of change is the proper way.
And spiritual system and tradition can teach us the way. Ultimately whether you encounter a negative or positive phenomenon, you can find the real source within, not outside. Things are within.
With the impulse to achieve joy, to overcome suffering and pain, we can see the change, the transformation in our own mental attitude.
Perhaps a basic law or something is that we have the feeling of "I". That's all right; nothing wrong. On that basis, we have the impulse, you see, to be happy. That's all absolutely right!
Now, "matter" and "mind" are both very much relevant to happinesss and joy and the like. Usually people are very much concerned about external forces. Those matters which create positives for us, we take care of, while those which create pain, we push away.
Similarly, when we talk "mind", it is not simple, solid. Mind is not just one thing. When we talk mind there are several hundred types of mind, several thousands of different thoughts. Now among them are some minds and thoughts that are very useful for us, such as compassion and calm and these things. Very useful. These thoughts give us almost new life and freshness, calm and fearlessness, sincerity. All these positive things develop with this certain mind.
Negative thoughts such as fear, anger, ignorance, and jealousy create or develop negative and unhappy states. So, therefore, just as we do with external matters, we make distinctions. Certain things are useful for us; certain things are not. In this matter, outer and inner work alike.
In the midst of suffering, how does one strengthen the determination to struggle within the mind? Developing determination, desire, awareness all can give rise to different mental thoughts very relevant in deepening our happiness. In dealing with these different mental events or mental thoughts, how can we reduce the negative mental thoughts? How can we increase the positive thoughts? We can seek and find determination and method. From the Buddhist point of view, sometimes faith is useful; but mainly it is reason.
Emptiness
Realize the emptiness, ultimate nature as emptiness. Once you do this, you can explore and dismiss the ignorance, the false mental attitudes which are just the opposite of ultimate nature emptiness. Things exist interdependently. Observe our grasping, grasping ignorance. Then you may realize that wrong conception is the key source of all the negative emotion.
Because the key source, key factor of the negative emotion is that it is just a wrong conception, you can remove it. You can let it go.
Therefore, while you develop deeper awareness about emptiness ("shunyata"), you can, at the same time, feel stronger. Then you can let negative things fade.
Do you see? You have an alternative after all. Once you realize the emptiness residing in the ultimate nature of mind, the negative thoughts loosen and can fall away. As the negative falls away, the mind purifies. That mental state is salvation. Once you have some knowledge, some feeling about that emptiness, then you can see it is possibile for you to achieve that.
The one and the four
Among the individual different mental dispositions and mental attitudes, some people accept, I think, deeper values about human beings, spiritual values. The word "spiritual" means more when seen as "dharma", compassionate life and work through which to awaken. Some accept God or some other alternative way of long-term benefit. In that condition, someone who accepts God serves humanity as a means of serving God. That way (karma yoga, bhakti yoga) gives you energy.
Some others, although they do not really accept God, believe in Bodhisattvas or something like that. They too have deep values about human life, do they not?
Still others are people who have no belief at all and think mainly about the self. How may we approach these people? This is more difficult.
Here is my main interest: Today, more than five billion human beings live on this planet. Among these five billion, I believe hardly a billion are genuine believers. We look at the other four billion. They are a majority. The future world is much dependent on these four billion. Now, you see, we must think together about how to approach those in the majority.
I believe that those four billion human beings have basically already been trained about the value of compassion, the value of human affection, through their mothers and fathers and some of their closest friends. In deep nature there is the potential to develop compassion, because they are human. I believe that we human beings, no matter how negative or cruel, have potential to develop enough human affection. This is because we ourselves, all of us, come to being, come to exist on that basis, on the basis of human affection.
In preparing to consider this challenge, I believe it extremely important to realize one's own potential. Sometimes people forget about inner potential in seeking the external. Once we fail with externals, we may become discouraged, depressed. We need to realize our own inner resources. Then, basically, I believe human nature frees more compassion. We become prepared.
The individual's human nature in the human community is as a social animal. Fundamentally, we can see that one individual human being, even if very healthy and powerful, does not matter more than another human being, who may be lonely and in dire need. If we leave such suffering beings remain without being touched by compassion, how can the human community survive? I believe compassion is at the heart of human nature. We can discover that such Nature Law is very powerful and can lead us home.
When we look at small insects, such as bees, we can see their nature is as social animals. They have very good sense of responsibility. Community feeling is very strong there. Apparently, they have no religion and no constitution. Nothing. But because of their nature, they develop some kind of genuine sense of responsibility. In human beings, we can explore that basic nature properly. We can learn modern economic structures and sustain a good environment. We can deepen our relation with fellow human beings, with fellow human brothers and sisters.
Our own internal deepening along with our deepening relationship with nature can show us nature's laws, don't you think? We can further develop our mental attitudes directly according to nature's own laws, as we grow to understand them, according to the beauty of nature's own basic system.
Then I think we can explain and introduce to humanity's other four billion a right way to live with one's neighbor, with one's own nature, in order to gain one's own interest, one's own better future, happiness in the future.
When you act within this sphere of human affection, this is not just something sacred, not just a religious matter: This is something within your own interest, your own happiness, your own future.
Copyright c 1992 Hanuman Foundation