The "Nature" of Buddhism: A Survey of Relevant Literature and Themes

Abstract

This paper is a review of the scholarly conversation relating Buddhism to environmental issues, primarily in the United States. Topics of particular concern include important scholarly benchmarks in the field, and the nature of Buddhist ethics. Also considered are the relationships between Buddhism and other schools of thought that have been important in thinking about nature and the environment. In particular I focus on Deep Ecology and related philosophies, Buddhism and Christianity in Process thought, and the relationship between Buddhism and the natural sciences. I outline current practices performed worldwide by people who self-identify as Buddhists that clearly demonstrate environmental consciousness, sometimes actively participating in environmental movements in efforts to resist globalization and, often, Westernization. In the end, this survey perspective illustrates that there is no monolithic Buddhist tradition, but rather a substantial number of adapted (and adapting) Buddhisms.

College Student Attitudes to ward Buddhism and Islam

“…Are these not qualities that are valued generally in American society? Johnston (2006) reviewed Buddhism and noted that it had much to contribute in the way of positive ecological concerns and participation in environmental movements. While these concerns have ancient roots within traditional forms of Buddhism, American Buddhists, like the beat poet Gary Snyder, have given voice to a Buddhist tradition that features an "environmental ethic" at its core (Strain, 1999 (Prebish & Keown, 2006).…”

Political ecology and Buddhism: an ambivalent relationship

“…The (Western) New Age movement and orientalism also coincide historically with the more recent origins of Buddhist environmentalism, for which, according to the theory of karma (every action is ontologically linked to its consequences), the solution to the ecological crisis will arise out of the sense of responsibility in relation to the world of which human beings are a part. This environmentalism is particularly well established in North America, starting quietly in the early twentieth century and fully emerging in the 1950s and 60s to become a theoretical field in its own right in the 1980s and 90s (Johnston ). Since then, Buddhism has been involved in ecological initiatives in both Asia and the West, through a twin movement that is, on the one hand, secular, located in a civil society that directly challenges governance and the management of the relationship between human beings and the environment, and, on the other, religious, leading monastic orders to abandon their usual (normative) withdrawal from the world to take part in action to conserve and preserve nature.…”

“…Arising out of debates that have been current in intellectual circles for over fifty years (Johnston ), this opposition, however attractive in its apparent clarity, nonetheless involves a set of background presuppositions that are integral to the orientalism that has coloured portrayals of the religions and cultures of Asia in the Western imagination for centuries, and through which the West maintains the illusion of its own identity. For it remains to be seen whether this ecological awareness has really been intrinsic to Buddhism since its foundation (in the fifth century BC), or whether, conversely, its late emergence is related to its alignment with the ideological standards of the modern world, themselves initially forged in the crucible of the Western industrial societies.…”

The Conflicting Relationships of Sherpas to Nature

“…In the Western context, Buddhism has become the archetype of the postmodern ideology, and even-to a certain extent-of deep ecology (Johnston 2006). In these Himalayan Highlands, Buddhist practices are nevertheless limited to protective attitudes towards nature: they ban killing animals and destroying vegetation, and promote a certain kind of conservationat least for elements with a semchen (i.e.…”