It is very easy to get the feeling here in our local community that we have reached an impasse on pollution and many other environmental issues. The lines are clearly drawn, and all too often loud name-calling drowns out the little meaningful dialogue that is actually taking place. My purpose tonight is to present some ways of looking at environmental questions that are very old, yet which may represent fresh approaches to many of us. Perhaps some of the ideas can provide new beginnings for meaningful dialogues and perhaps even solutions. The three main ancient traditions that I would like to discuss, albeit very briefly,  are Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.

TAOISM

According to ancient Taoist teachings, our natural state is one of few desires. When our desires are unnaturally increased, psychic and physical imbalance and all kinds of problems result. Yet we all know that our desires are purposely exacerbated by the arts and advertising of our modern civilization. Our economy basically runs on the fuel of 'more is better', a strategy of purposely and systematically trying to push our desires out of their natural tendencies and strengthen them out of all natural proportion. The policy of continuous growth and development, which I see as one of the main reasons why our economy advocates unnatural levels of desire, also makes little sense from a Taoist point of view. Everything in nature has its cycles of coming into being, developing, decaying, disappearing, and then another cycle of birth or coming into being and so forth follows. The only thing in nature I can think of that grows nonstop are cancer cells. Should we then ask the question: Do we have a cancerous economic system? (See Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, pp. 62, 75ff.)

The Taoist classic The Way and Its Power (tao te jing) gives this advice against the artificial exacerbation of our desires:

No lure is greater than to possess what others want,
No disaster greater than not to be content with what one has,
No presage of evil greater than that men should be wanting to get more.
Truly: He who has once known the contentment that comes simply through being  content, will never again be otherwise than contented.
(Way and Its Power, p. 199)

Yet, if we do not exclusively cater to our culture's call for every increasing personal gratification, then where do we find our center? The Taoists suggest that the first step is in awareness of the patterns of nature, both within our own body and mind and in the natural environment that we usually think of as "outside". Nature can be for us a template, a model, a paradigm, an anchor, a beacon.

The nature outside of us can resonate with the natural patterns within and help us to get back in touch with our natural selves. When we destroy our natural environment or make it unavailable for people to tune back into, we destroy one of the most precious healing resources for our civilization-jaded psyches.

Recently, in the same vein the Catholic theologian Thomas Berry stated, "The inner world has to be constantly nourished by the outer world. With what we are doing to the outer world now, we are damaging our psychic structure [bold added] as well as reducing our resources." (Timeless Visions, p. 30).

SOME CONFUCIAN VIEWS

The great inheritor of the Confucian tradition in China, Mencius, who lived in the early 3rd century BC, wrote:
 

The Bull Mountain was once covered with lively trees.  But it is near the capital of a great State. People came with their axes and choppers; they cut the woods down, and the mountain has lost its beauty.  Yet even so, the day air and the night air came to it, rain and dew moistened it till here and there fresh sprouts began to grow.  But soon cattle and sheep came along and browsed on them, and in the end the mountain became gaunt and bare, as it is now.  And seeing it thus gaunt and bare, people imagine that it was woodless from the start.

Now just as the natural state of the mountain was quite different from what now appears, so too in every man (little though they may be apparent) there assuredly were once feelings of decency and kindness; and if these good feeling are no longer there, it is that they have been tampered with, hewn down with axe and bill [a curved tool for pruning and cutting].  As each day dawns, they are assailed anew.  What chance then has our nature, any more that mountain, of keeping  its beauty?  To us, too, comes the air of day, the air of night.  Just at dawn, indeed, we have for a moment, and in a certain degree, a mood in which our promptings and aversions come near to being such as are proper to men [and women!].  But something is sure to happen before the morning is over, by which these better feelings are ruffled or destroyed.  And in the end, when they have been ruffled again and again, the night air is no longer able to preserve them, and soon our feeling are as near as may be to those of beasts and birds; so that anyone might make the same mistake about us as about the mountain, and think that there was never any good in us from the very start. Yet  assuredly our present state of feeling is not what we begin with. Truly
 If rightly tended, no creature but thrives;
 If left untended, no creature but pines away.
Confucius said:
 Hold fast to it and you can keep it,
 Let go, and it will stray.
 For its comings and goings its has no time nor tide;
 No one knows where it will bide.
Surely it was of the [innate and good] feelings that he was speaking."
(Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China)

A Sung Dynasty Confucian scholar Chang Tsai [early 11th cent. AD] wrote:

Heaven is my father and earth is my mother, and even such a small being as I finds an intimate place in their midst.  Therefore, that which fills the universe [i.e., spiritual energy or ch'i] I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I regard as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions."
(Chang Tsai, "Western Inscription", in "The Continuity of Being" by Wei-ming Tu; also Source Book In Chinese Philosophy by W.T. Chan, p. 497)

This idea of forming one body with the universe is predicated on the assumption that, since all modalities of being are made of ch'i[the primal spiritual energy of the universe], all things cosmologically share the same consanguinity with us and are thus our companions.  This vision enabled an original thinker of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Ken (1483-1540), to remark that if [in our spiritual birth] we came into being through transformation (hua-sheng), then heaven and earth are our father and mother to us; if [in our physical birth] we came into being through reproduction (hsing-sheng), then our father and mother are heaven and earth to us.  The image of the human that emerges here, far from being lord of creation, is the filial son and daughter of the universe. Filial piety connotes a profound feeling, an all-pervasive care for the world around us." (Tu Wei-ming. "The Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature." On Nature. Leroy S. Rouner, ed. Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol. 6. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, p. 76)

BUDDHISM

Those Confucian ideas that I have just mentioned bring to mind an ancient Buddhist teaching that the earth is a great enlightened being, a great Bodhisattva, who gives us a place to live on her body, to grow and to walk the path to enlightenment. This being, the earth, is our mother. She gives birth to us, nourishes us, and it is to her that we return at death. We owe her the same kind of love and respect that we should have for our human mothers.  The earth is the mother of all the beings that live upon her. Since all of those beings have the same mother as we do, they are all our own brothers and sisters.  We should cherish and respect them as we should the brothers and sisters of our own human nuclear family.

In March 1989, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, Chan Patriarch and founder of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, visited Pendle Hill, a Quaker center in Pennsylvania. When he was there, he was asked the question: "How do we protect our ecology and the global environment?" He replied,

People should model themselves after the earth.  The earth produces the myriad things: animals, plants, and the teeming creatures.  The earth [sometimes interpreted as the principle of vital energy], on the other hand, models itself after heaven [sometimes interpreted as the principle of spiritual energy].  It is said, 'Heaven covers me from above, while the earth sustains me from below.' A section of the ozone layer has been destroyed in Antarctica and there has been incredible radiation all around that area.  That is  a case of humans destroying the ecological equilibrium and the protective function of heaven and earth.

Heaven goes on to model itself after nature. Here the meaning of 'nature' is the intrinsic truth that underlies all phenomena.  As the  eternal life-force, it neither increases nor decreases.  You could call it the Buddha-nature, which is found equally and pervasively among all living beings.  It is not the case that Buddhas are intrinsically higher than living beings.  Rather, it is a question of whether one has wisdom or not.  The Buddha has returned to the source and recovered his original nature; living beings are covered over by desire and so have lost touch with their original wisdom.  The ultimate way to rescue the environment," said the Master, "is to return to a state of innocence and truth, and not to engage in fighting, selfishness, avarice, and deceit.

At the time of his enlightenment the Buddha said:

How amazing! How amazing! How amazing! All living beings have the potential to become fully awakened. Only their polluted minds and their attachments keep them from doing so.

Some of you may be thinking: If this was the case at the time of the Buddha, over 2,500 years ago, when problems of pollution were relatively small, why are the problems now so immense? Some of the reasons are obvious, and some are more difficult to get at.

One of the obvious reasons is the population explosion. Think--the population explosion itself is a sign of severe disturbance and alienation from the natural patterns of our own minds and the world. Remember the ancient Taoist teaching that the natural state is one of few desires. Of course the problem of population is extremely complicated, but when we find complication and confusion, we need to return to basic principles.

Another important reason, which is perhaps not as obvious, has to do with causation and responsibility. Jesus’ saying, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," is also a succinct statement about the workings of cause and effect, or karma, as it is known in the Buddhist tradition.  Buddhism emphasizes that our verbal and physical behavior is the outcome of our intentions--subtle or not-so-subtle mental habits, desires, and ideas.  If my intentions are good and pure, my behavior will be good and pure.  If I am motivated by a turbid mind, filled with selfish desires, greed, hatred, and violence, then my speech and actions will accord with what is in my mind.  We do tend to see the world and its living beings through the tinted and distorted lenses of our own minds.  Turbid and defiled minds lead to turbid and defiled actions, that destroy and pollute the planet that is mother and home to us all.

WHAT SOLUTIONS ARE THERE?

How then can we all work together to insure the continued health and vitality of our mother the earth to clean up our own nest? If I am motivated by a mind that is clear and pure, a mind filled with selfless loving-compassion, a mind at peace with itself and the world, then my speech and actions will naturally, and without special effort or intention on my part, promote the vitality of the earth and its ecosystems.

However, one heritage of our modern scientific and technological world has been a widespread breakdown of awareness of the consequences of our actions. If the causal pathways of our actions are very long, complicated and obscure, then it is very difficult for us to take proper responsibility for the consequences of our actions. this, I think, is another major cause of our environmental problems.

In the ancient world, for the most part, people could see clearly the consequences of their own environmental actions. In the modern world, the astute use of our own senses is often not enough. For example, we cannot see ozone. Or when we use paper, do we see or even think about the trees or the dioxin and other chemicals that are used in the paper-making process and then are dumped into our waterways? Or when someone buys a Big Mac, they do not see what is happening when the cow is grazing, what it is eating, where the manure ends up, and of course they do not directly participate in, or even see, the killing of the cow. Many little children do not even know that beef and milk come from cows. Their knowledge of the causal chain stops with what they personally see and experience: the plastic packages in the supermarket. For them beef and milk come from MacDonalds and the supermarket. Therefore, in the modern world we have to realize that paying attention to the consequences of our actions is going to take a new kind of special effort.

In conclusion I would like to suggest that in tackling pollution and other environmental problems, both locally and globally, we can benefit from some of the ancient ideas I have presented. In particular there are three notions that deserve our special attention:

1) We should pay special attention to the state of our own minds and our own intentions. Even if we feel that our cause is noble, if we act out of anger and without fundamental respect for everyone involved, we are only making matters worse. And, of course, violent actin only begets more violence.

2) We should act out of knowledge of the causal consequences of our actions, no matter how obscure and complicated the causal interrelationships might be, and no matter how long term the effects might be. In our daily activities and in our jobs, we have to make a concerted effort to educate ourselves, our children and our communities about the environmental consequences of our actions and to take responsibility for them. We cannot in good faith shift responsibility to future generations. One result of this kind of analysis may be the simplifying of our lifestyles.

3) We should increase our awareness of our fundamental and causal interrelationship with all life on the planet and have profound respect for our mother earth and profound respect also for all the older children of mother earth, for all our brothers and sister both human and non-human.

I firmly believe that, if we can emphasize these three approaches, both through own example and in the education of our children, then we can really begin to make some headway, not only in overcoming pollution and environmental degradation, but in revitalizing and stopping the fragmentation of our communities, and in finding real satisfaction and meaning in our own lives.

APPENDIX: ANCIENT POLLUTION PROBLEMS

Although the problems of pollution are now much more extreme than they have ever been before, the problems themselves are not new.

When we led simpler more natural lives, when there were many fewer human beings upon the globe, the impact of human life was light. Food, clothes, implements, shelter were all made from natural substances and even though the garbage mound was at the front door, it quickly composted and disappeared. What did not disappear left diggings for archaeologists, but took little space on the planet and made little impact on the rest of the world.

With the advent of urban life came deforestation and air and water pollution. Already in the days of Socrates, Plato, and Mencius we have word of some of the developing problems.

In ancient Greece Plato decried the incredible environmental damage that had been done to the Attic peninsula:

And, just as happens in small islands, what now remains compare with what then existed is like the skeleton of a rich man, all the fat and soft earth have wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land ...[is] left." ( quoted in Yi-fu Tuan "Discrepancies between Environmental Attitude and Behavior: Examples from Europe and China", p. 179)

"But in those days [when] the damage had not taken place, the hills had high crests, the rocky plain of Phelleus was covered with rich soil, and the mountains were covered by thick woods, of which there are some traces today.  For some mountains which today will only support bees produced not so long ago trees which when cut provided roof beams for huge buildings whose roofs are still standing.  And there were a lot of tall cultivated trees which bore unlimited quantities of fodder for beasts.  The soil benefitted from an annual rainfall which did not run to waste from the bare earth as it does today, but was absorbed in large quantities and stored in retentive layers of clay, so that what was drunk down by the higher regions flowed downwards into the valleys and appeared everywhere in a multitude of rivers and springs.  And the shrines which still survive at these former springs are proof of the truth of our present account of the country. (Lee, tr. Critias, p. 132)

By 1285 London had a smog problem arising from the burning of soft coal. (Lynn White, Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis")

Even before T'ang times, the ancient pines of the mountains of Shan-tung had been reduced to carbon, and now the busy brushes of the vast T'ang bureaucracy were rapidly bringing baldness to the T'a-hang Mountains between Shansi and Hopei. (E.H. Schafer. "The Conservation of Nature under the T'ang Dynasty." Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient V (1962), p. 299-300)