is a well established scientific fact that where forests are denuded of
trees, rains cease, where trees are planted rains are attracted and the
volume of water received increases with the increase of vegetation”38
Young India, October 15, 1925
GANDHI, THE INDIAN TRADITION, AND DEEP ECOLOGY
Nicholas F. Gier
If our sense of right and wrong had not become blunt,
we would recognize that animals have rights, no less than men.
—M. K. Gandhi[1]
All living beings are now my family.
—M. K. Gandhi[2]
Gandhi made manifest the internal relation between self-realization,
non-violence, and what has sometimes been called biospherical egalitarianism.
—Arne Naess[3]
You should consider who you are, and who nature is.
How could you transcend nature? What you hear, what you eat,
what you see—it’s all Nature. How could you be beyond Nature?
—Parvarti to Shiva, Skanda Purana[4]
In my book The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to Gandhi,[5] I reformulate Gandhi’s ethics of nonviolence from a virtue perspective. I propose that virtue ethics is the best choice for a constructive postmodern social and political philosophy. Gandhi follows postmodernists in dissolving modernist distinctions between the inner/outer, private/public, religion/state, means/ends, rights/duties, and values/facts. Gandhi cannot be allied with the French postmodernists because he does not believe in the decentering and fragmentation of the self, nor is he an anarchist as some commentators have claimed.
I also argue that Gandhi’s virtue ethics is best grounded in Buddhist morality, which several scholars have interpreted from the virtue perspective. Buddhism offers a social-relational self that preserves individual identity and agency but at the same time realizing that this identity is profoundly influenced other people and society as a whole. Buddhist cosmology also affirms identity-in-difference such that parts of the whole do not lose their identity but are organically related in the Dharmakaya. I prefer realist versions of Buddhist philosophy, ones that give reality to individuals and the world in which they live, as more suitable to environmental ethics.
We shall see that there are now environmental activists among Jains, Hindus, and Buddhists, and I applaud this turn from an almost exclusive focus on individual enlightenment to social concerns. As a philosopher I am always looking for the best match between theory and practice, and I find it in Buddhism and the process philosophy that it embraces. Furthermore, I will honor Gandhi’s commitment to the integrity and agency of the individual; his belief was so strong that he failed to see that there was a middle way between individualism on the one hand and dissolution of the self on the other. It is odd that Gandhi did not realize that a social/relational self is the most satisfactory solution to the perennial problem of how individuals relate to their world.
The Chipko Movement and Forest Satyagrihas
The Bishnois of Rajasthan were different: they were hugging trees 600 years before the Chipko activists started protecting forests in Northern India. Following their founder Jambhaji (b. 1451)—said to be an incarnation of Vishnu—the Bishnois protected both animal and plant life, refusing, for example, to use wood until the trees were dead.
The most dramatic confrontation with authorities was the Khejarli Massacre in 1730, in which 367 Bishonis led by a woman Amrita Devi were killed. The group had refused to release their arms from the trees that the Maharaja of Jodhpur needed to fuel for his limestone kilns to build a new palace. Numbering 6 million today the Bishnois still practice their deeply rooted environmental ethic.
It is not known if the Chipko movement in northern Uttar Pradesh (starting in 1973) drew any direct inspiration from the Bishnois. Neither I have learned if a legend about a Maharaja’s desire to fell trees for a fortress in the Himalayan foothills was influenced by the Bishnois. In any case the story is that a young girl Amrita hugged the trees and either lost her life or saved the trees, depending on which version of the legend one follows. What we do know is that the Chipko movement claimed that Gandhi was their main inspiration for their forest satyagraha. The movement has been so successful that aerial surveys show that the forests in that region have recovered even beyond their pre-logging state.
Buddhist farmers give offerings to the souls of insects that they have killed in their harvests or by their use of insecticides. Leaving his palace after forsaking his royal vocation, Prince Siddhartha, on his way to becoming the Buddha, felt deep compassion for living beings killed by the plow. In Buddhist legends there is a story about a Banyan tree that refused to bear fruit after being abused.
The “forest monks” of Thailand now ordain the largest trees as “priests,” which sends a warning to Buddhist timbermen who would want to fell what is now a sacred being. Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village in France is a model ecological community where the “five mindful trainings” are taught. As he states: “The situation on earth has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilizing ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.”[6]
Soka Gakkei International, the world’s largest lay Buddhist organization, has made world peace and environmental protection central to its social programs. The SGI’s Ikeda Center in Boston published a book responding to the first draft of the Earth Charter, and Buddhist critiques of the sort found in this volume were addressed in later versions of the charter. (For example, the phrase “intrinsic value” was deleted.) SGI’s president Daisaku Ikeda states: “A sense of being part of the great all-inclusive life prompts us to reflect on our own place and on how we ought to live. Guarding others’ lives, the ecology and the earth is the same as protecting one’s own life. Consequently, it is the duty of each of us to participate as members of the life community in the evolution of the universe.”[7]
In the first section of this essay, I will argue that the practice of non-violence and care for the earth are civic virtues rather than just private virtues. Gandhi did not speak directly to ecological issues as we now know them, so the second and third sections will discuss two ecologists who were profoundly influenced by Gandhi: Arne Naess (the philosopher who coined the term “deep ecology”) and E. F. Schumacher (the author of Small is Beautiful). The philosophical issues that these two thinkers raise lead us to consider, in the third section, the alleged influences of Vedanta and Jainism.
Earth Care in Advaita Vedanta and Jainism
It is commonplace to interpret Gandhi in terms of Vedantist philosophy, especially the dominant school of Advaita Vedanta. Gandhi’s several references to a quality-less absolute and two equivocal affirmations of the principle of advaita offer some support for this view. Gandhi declares allegiance to Advaita Vedanta, but he interprets it to mean what Naess’ deep ecology assumes—the unity of nature and humans: “I believe in the rock-bottom doctrine of Advaita and my interpretation of Advaita excludes totally any idea of superiority at any state whatsoever. I believe implicitly that all men are born equal. All . . . have the same soul as any other.”[8] Gandhi extends this unity to “all that lives,”[9] which is a general Indian philosophical truth not just an Advaitin doctrine. For all forms of Vedanta everything in the universe contains atman, and non-violence “is the very nature of atman,” so Gandhian nonviolence is not only ecological, but also cosmic in scope. Gandhi’s pantheism, thoroughly realist in its rejection of the world as an illusion, resacralizes the world, while Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta desacralizes it. As other scholars have argued, Gandhi is more in tune with the neo-Vedanta of Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, and Ramakrishna.[10]
Shankara’s absolute monism—just as some Mahayana versions of this metaphysics—completely undermines the basic moral implications of the law of karma. If there is truly just one soul, one Atman identical to Brahman, then individual moral responsibility is rendered unintelligible. Instead of the Advaitin model of total undifferentiated unity, I propose that Gandhi’s pantheism be interpreted in terms of organic analogies. Organic holism has the distinct advantage over absolute monism in that it maintains the reality of the individual (on the analogue of the integral living cell) while at the same time making collective responsibility intelligible as well.
Indian philosopher Ramashray Roy insists on calling Gandhi an Advaitin, but unwittingly describes Gandhi’s philosophy as an “organismic vision” that involves
the necessity of harmonizing oneself with an ever-enlarging network of relationships . . . . Thus this extended self becomes the ground for sociality. Society then turns out to be a network of extended selves rather than a mechanical aggregate of enclosed selves or an all-consuming totality of a fictional abstraction.[11]
This is an eloquent and precise account of what I mean by the “social-relational self.” (This phrase is not redundant because the Daoist mountain hermit has a relational self but rejects society as unnatural.) Citing Shankara’s writings directly, Lance Nelson shows that the Advaitin imputes no value whatsoever to the natural world and by implication to the social world as well.[12] This is the only logical conclusion of a view that holds that our perception of the rich web of existence is the result of ignorance. Organic holism recognizes the reality of individuals and their complex relations while the Advaitin rejects it as at most only derivative. Nelson concludes that Advaita Vedanta cannot be a satisfactory basis for environmental ethics.
The ultimate implication of Bhargava’s position is a reductio ad absurdum: liberated Jain saints are the only ones who can practice nonviolence, but their isolated lokas are the only places in the universe where such practice has no meaning at all.
Given Bhargava’s position above it is not surprising that he defends the negative formulation of ahi÷sā, as opposed to the Buddha’s (and Gandhi’s) positive formulation that includes not only non-injury but sympathy, love, and compassion as well. Bhargava’s reason is that “if we speak of love, we can [only] think of one form or the other of attachment. . . .”
In a letter to Gandhi, a Jain phrased the difference very aptly: “Whereas your view of ahi÷sā is based on the philosophy of action, that of the Jains is based on that of renunciation of action.”(endnote: 12) Gandhi responded, following the karma yoga of the Bhagavad-gītā, by saying that he had melded renunciation and action into one force. Anticipating the argument of chapter 4, George Kotturan claims that this is the equivalent of Gandhi’s following the Buddha in integrating ahi÷sā “into a comprehensive world-affirming ethic.”(endnote: 13)
For at least three millennia the Jains practiced a profound ecological ethic, but they did not engage in any social or political protests. Gandhi was profoundly influenced by Jainism, an ancient Indian religion whose monks sweep the paths before them so as to not kill any insects. Jain lay people are excused for killing “one sensed” organisms. This makes agriculture acceptable to them, but many have become bankers or merchants instead. The Jain who impacted Gandhi most was a wealthy diamond dealer.
In contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism, where “higher minded” creatures have priority over the lower, the Jains believe in a strict equality of souls. Some Jain texts give even more value to parts of plants such as seeds, sprouts, and blossoms, presumably for their promise of new life.
Gandhi was profoundly influenced by a Jain saint by the name of Raichandcharya with whom he had at one time in-depth correspondence. Compared to Hinduism and Buddhism, where there is a hierarchy of consideration (higher “minded” creatures have priority over the lower), the Jains believe in a strict equality of all souls. For Buddhists trees and plants are exempted from the laws of karma because they have no intentions, but the Jains include them. The Buddha did not prohibit eating of animals for food as long as the killing was done by non-Buddhists. (The Buddha died from poisoned pork that was placed in his begging bowl.) The Nirvana Sutra of the Mahayana tradition (bharmacharya chapter) lists three degrees of killing, and the killing of animals is the least culpable.[13] In a recent book Plant Lives: Borderline Beings in the Indian Tradition Ellison Findly demonstrates that even some Jain texts give more value to parts of plants such as seeds, sprouts, and blossoms.[14] The Jains’ egalitarianism is also qualified by the fact that their laypeople are excused for killing “one sensed” organisms.
This profound ecological vision is a great Jain achievement, but its philosophical foun-dations are problematic. First, every Jain soul is distinct and separate from its body and from every other soul. Indeed, the liberated Jain leaves the material world completely. The contemporary Jain philosopher N. D. Bhargava reaffirms the theory of absolute independence and its relation to non-violence. Bhargava argues that the practice of non-violence is totally unconditional and unrelational, and that its practice is successful only by disengaging from the world of “give and take.” Bhargava contends that Jain saints cannot depend upon the existence of others or the action of others, because nonviolent action is “independent of society.” Bhargava states that “the world of relationship is a world of attachment and aversion. But nonviolence is possible and possible only without interrelationship, because interrelationship is dependent on others and cannot be natural.”[15] Raichandcharya and other Jain leaders realized the Gandhi’s pragmatic and engaged ethics of nonviolence was different from their own world-denying stance.
The fifth section discusses Gandhi’s Vaishnava background, his worship of Rama, and a possible connection to the Tantric tradition. With their attribution of value to nature and the body, some scholars argue that these traditions are the best Hindu options for environmental ethics. In the sixth and final section I argue that Buddhist philosophy offers the best Asian framework for a robust environmental ethics. The Buddhist social-relational self makes mutual interactions with other living beings more intelligible and Buddhist cosmology based on interdependent causality is a holistic view most compatible with the ecological sensibility. Arne Naess submits that we have to reject the “human-in-environment image” of “shallow” ecology “in favor of the relational, total-field image” of deep ecology.[16]
Care for the Earth and Non-Violence as Civic Virtues
Contrary to former Vice-President Dick Cheney and many others who view conservation as a private virtue, Gandhi and Buddhists believe that it is a civic virtue. In another paper I argue that non-violence is a civic virtue and, and especially within a Buddhist perspective, it is not too difficult to demonstrate that we have moral obligations to the earth and its plant and animal inhabitants.
It is significant that the Earth Charter connects the practice of non-violence with and care for the earth. It is obvious that most environmental degradation involves direct violence against other living beings. I prefer the wording of the benchmark draft: “Practice non-violence, recognizing that peace is the wholeness created by harmonious and balanced relationships with oneself, other persons, other life forms, and Earth” (7th principle). The clear implication here is that both the practice of non-violence and earth care are civic virtues.
Calling Gandhi an “ecological yogi” who follows the five yamas and niyamas of the Yoga-Sutra, M. G. Khoshoo states: “We cannot have [an] ecological movement designed to prevent violence against nature unless the principle of non-violence becomes central to the ethos of human culture.”[17] Drawing a more general than usual interpretation of brahamcharya, the fourth yama, Khoshoo proposes that “because the mating instinct in humans is greater than that of the animals, they need to keep their numbers in check, otherwise demand on resources will increase”; and “brahmacharya relates to Brahman (or the Universal Spirit), i.e., to the evolution of godly human beings who would not destroy anything animate or inanimate for personal gain, and thus would not create pollution and ecological degradation.”[18] Generally Gandhi wished to become a brahamacharyi for this reason rather than the desire to limit the size of his family.
One of Gandhi’s most powerful ecological lectures was his scolding of colleague who had collected two many nim leaves to condition his carding-bow: “This is violence. We should pluck the required number of leaves after offering an apology to the tree for doing so. But you broke off the whole twig, which is wasteful and wrong.”[19] One is reminded of the Buddha’s story about the Banyan tree that refused to bear fruit after being abused.[20] Even though theologians (even some evangelicals) have made good attempts to formulate a Christian environmental ethics, Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree and its death (Matt. 21:19) does not fare especially well in comparison with this story from Buddhism.
Gandhi, Arne Naess, and Deep Ecology
Gandhi was like many Indians whom I have come to know: they seem to have little appreciation for wilderness. Twice I hosted Mahendra Kumar, long-time editor of Gandhi Marg, and I was eager to show him the scenic sites of Northern Idaho. Everytime I pointed out some natural beauty he redirected the conversation back to Gandhi or Indian politics. Gandhi appeared to be more concerned about the treatment of domestic animals than those in the wild. When some one brought up the issue of disappearance of wild animals, Gandhi quipped: “Wildlife is decreasing in the jungles but it is increasing in the towns.”[21] Vinay Lal points out that of all the times Gandhi was on the open sea, he never once mentioned the sublime feelings that many Euro-Americans experience.[22]
Although Gandhi rarely speaks to issues directly relating to the environment, scholars have drawn ecological conclusions from works as early as Hind Swaraj, in which Gandhi rejects modern civilization based on cities and technology that destroys people both morally and spiritually. Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess states that Gandhi gave his environmental philosophy a “rock-bottom foundation” with the technique of non-violence and a “belief in the essential oneness of all life.”[23] For Arne Naess “deep ecology” means a radical— as in going to the root (Latin radix) causes—approach to environmental problems. In contrast to instrumental views of nature in which the value of non-human things is determined in terms of human use—a shallow rather than deep approach—Naess assumes that all natural beings have intrinsic value. Things that have intrinsic value are that which are ends in themselves not just merely means to another’s end. Most Euro-American philosophers believe that human beings have intrinsic value, so if there is a conflict between the two beings, Naess maintains that natural resources may be used as means “only where it is necessary to satisfy vital ends.”[24]
With his theory of universal value Naess is essentially proposing an extension of Kant’s Second Categorical Imperative to the natural world. This famous ethical imperative can be best formulated as “always treat persons as ends in themselves rather than just merely means.” The word “merely” is a crucial qualifier, because without it we would be morally prohibited from using the services of doctor, attorney, or accountant. These persons, however, are not just merely means to our ends; we also respect them as persons and they return that respect in their professional services. The classic example of “merely as means” is most instances of using prostitutes for sexual gratification. I say “most” because it is possible that friendship and sufficient respect are involved.
Returning to Naess’ proviso for the use of natural resources as means, we can see that a robust environmental ethics would require that we never use them merely as means to our ends. The native hunter’s respect for an animal killed for subsistence is shown in rituals where the animal’s spirit is propitiated in a sincere manner. The Earth Charter’s calls on everyone to preserve indigenous traditions where reverence for life and rituals for taking it are celebrated (III.12.b). Going out from his palace after forsaking his royal vocation, Siddhartha for the first time felt compassion for living beings killed by the plow. Thai farmers now give offerings to the souls of insects that they have killed in their harvests or by their use of insecticides. Finally, I simply note that Gandhi insisted that an offering be given to nim trees for the harvest of their leaves.
In 1931 Arne Naess launched himself on a thorough study of Gandhi, and much later published Gandhi and the Nuclear Age in 1965 and then Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha in 1974. The quotation above about “power of non-violence” and the “essential oneness of life” is taken from the latter book. Thomas Weber connects this metaphysical statement with the Hindu philosophy Advaita Vedanta and Gandhi’s adherence to it. Naess admits that the “unity of all living beings” is a “very vague and ambiguous phrase,” and this has indeed caused some confusion. In the next section I will suggest that Gandhi is not an Advaitin but a neo-Vedantist, a realist position that gives reality to individuals and the world in which they live. I will also prefer realist versions of Buddhist philosophy as more suitable to environmental ethics.
Schumacher, Craving, and an Aesthetics of Earth Care
Most people do not realize that early editions of E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful had Gandhi’s picture on the front cover, and that M. M. Hoda called Schumacher “a latter-day Gandhi.”[25] Although the book was later called a primer in Buddhist economics (Schumacher himself said it was), it was initially described as an introduction to Gandhian economics. I am gratified that here is yet another confirmation that Gandhi can be explained in terms of Buddhist philosophy. Please note that I am not saying the Gandhi was a Buddhist (he was not), but that his views can be best interpreted from a Buddhist perspective.
Naess proposes that “the moral act glides into a beautiful act,”[26] and I argue for a Gandhian virtue aesthetics in of The Virtue of Non-Violence (chapter 7). (A rule or duty based ethics can make no sense of the moral compliment: “She is a gem of a person.”) Gandhi relates the good and the beautiful quite frequently and profoundly, so is not too difficult to understand why “small is beautiful.” When Gandhi states that “purity of life is the highest and truest art” and that asceticism is “the loftiest manifestation of simple beauty in daily life,”[27] I interpet this as an aesthetic environmental ethics.
In his paper “Theopoetic Justice: Towards an Ecology of Living Together” process theologian Roland Faber applies Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy to ecology and ethics. Finding no rule-based ethics in Whitehead, he defines ethics as the “art of livng together.” He continues: “Poetics addresses living together as living in the middle of impermanence, . . . which invites an ecological opening.”[28] Not only do Whitehead and the Buddha agree on process rather than substance, but in my book I argue that Gandhi joins Whitehead and East Asian Buddhists in an aesthetics of virtue.
The Gandhi’s ecological concerns are best summed up in the famous line that the “earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.”[29] Not only Gandhi’s ashrams but those all over India are models for sustainability and a commitment to simple spiritual lives that take little from nature. A Buddhist explanation of Gandhi’s statement would focus on the distinction between ordinary desires and cravings. The former are desires that can be, under normal circumstances, fulfilled, such as the need for sufficient water, food, shelter, and sociality. While the monk takes vows of celibacy, the lay Buddhist can fulfill normal sexual desires in the context of marriage. Cravings, however, are desired that cannot be fulfilled or desires associated with addictions. These are cravings for abundant wealth, frequent sexual conquests, maximal political power, and an unquenchable desire to control land and the animals that live upon it. Significantly enough, the Buddha thought that one of the most pernicious and deep-seated craving was for knowledge about questions that “do not tend to edification.” “Craving for views” and defending the resultant dogmas have caused just as much violence and environmental damage as other uncontrollable desires.
Gandhi’s Vaishnava Background and Tantric Philosophy
In Purifying the Earthly Body of God, edited by Lance Nelson, several contributors write about how the Tantric and Vaishnava traditions lend themselves to strong ecological interprettations.[30] I will touch briefly on the latter and focus the discussion on the former. Though adhering to different sects Gandhi’s parents were worshippers of Vishnu, but the young Gandhi did not seem to have any sound knowledge of his parents’ beliefs. Indeed, it was only in England that he finally read the Bhagavad-gita in English translation. The mature Gandh’s devotional life centered around singing Hindu songs and calling on the name of Rama (the ramanama). Gandhi connects the chanting of Rama’s name with “an alchemy [that] can trans-form the body” that leads to “the conservation of vital energy,”[31] which is explicit Tantric phrasing.
In his book My Days with Gandhi N. K. Bose does mention in passing that Gandhi’s techniques are “reminiscent of the Tantras,”[32] and Gandhi himself said that he read the books on Tantra written by Sir John Woodroffe.[33] For Gandhi the virtues of patience, self-control, and courage were absolutely essential to defeat the temptation to retaliate and respond with violence. Gandhi made it clear that each of these virtues were found most often in women. Gandhi once said that he wanted to convert the woman’s capacity for “self-sacrifice and suffering into shakti-power.”[34] In Gandhi’s first radio address to the nation he commented that it was made possible by shakti.
As the embodiment of shakti the Hindu Goddess is at the center of Hindu Tantric practices, and a number of authors have argued that with its emphasis on the body and natural elements as means of liberation, Tantricism is good vehicle for Asian ecological philosophy. My favorite critique of the yogi who devalues nature is found in the following exchange between Shiva and Parvarti, who reminds him of her skakti power embodied in nature: “You should consider who you are, and who nature is. How could you transcend nature? What you hear, what you eat, what you see–it’s all nature. How could you be beyond nature?”[35] Here is a clear statement of the reality and value of nature and everything in it.
The women around Gandhi were amazed how comfortable they felt in his presence and how much of a woman he had become to them. His orphaned grandniece Manu considered Gandhi as her new mother, and she simply could not understand all the controversy surrounding their sleeping together. Of the 16 women closely associated with Gandhi, nine slept shared his bed. There is no evidence, especially since the ashram sleeping arrangements were totally open, that Gandhi had any sexual relations with any of them. In my article “Was Gandhi a Tantric?”[36] I discuss this issue in depth, and I conclude that Gandhi is a unique hybrid between right-handed Tantrics, who are forbidden to have intimate contact with the opposite sex; and left-handed Tantrics, who do in fact have ritual sexual intercourse with their yoginis.
Ecofeminists such as Ariel Salleh criticize Naess’ deep ecology because it embodies a masculinist view of self, society, and nature. While Naess has been attacked for alleged misanthropic assumptions—i.e., the earth is more important than human beings—this criticism is much more valid for Earth Firsters rather than Naess. (Recall that Naess believed that human beings could use natural resources for “vital needs.”) Salleh contends that Naess’ environment ethics reflects the position of the “self-estranged male reaching for the original androgynous natural unity within himself.”[37] Salleh predicts that the “deep ecology movement will not truly happen until men are brave enough to rediscover and to love the woman inside themselves.”[38]
Initially, it would seem that Gandhi escapes this criticism, because the testimony of the women closest to him evidently proves that Gandhi was not estranged from the “woman within,” and that female power is at the root of his ethics of nonviolence. Closer consideration might lead us to qualify such a conclusion. In the Tantric interchange between Shiva and his shakti, the Goddess (be it Kali or Parvati) is dominant over a passive Shiva. Gandhi is always dominant in his relations with his female associates, and it is not uncharitable to conclude that in his demand for intimate contact, Gandhi is exercising male power in an abusive way rather than following the spiritual practice that he claims his sexual experiments were. In an extremely candid confession, Gandhi admits that at the Sevagram ashram (9 years before sleeping with Manu) he had made a grave mistake in his intimate relations with the women there: "I feel my action was impelled by vanity and jealousy. If my experiment was dangerous, I should not have undertaken it. . . . My experiment was a violation of the establishment norms of brahmacharya." Certainly not to Gandhi’s credit, he resumed the experiments shortly afterward.
A Buddhist Environment Ethics
Returning to Arne Naess’ claim that both humans and natural things have intrinsic value, all Buddhist schools of which I am aware would reject this concept. The Buddha taught that no individual thing—including human beings—has a permanent nature or value. This is the reason why Buddhism is one of the first—or least the first most clearly developed—process philosophies. In my readings I find that Buddhists would rather frame the human-nature relationship in terms of moral responsibility among interdependent beings rather than respect for innate their value.
It is significant that the phrase “intrinsic value” was deleted from the final version of the Earth Charter. A number of contributors to the volume Buddhist Perspective on the Earth Charter objected to this phrase in the benchmark draft, and I am certain that they would be uneasy about the claim “inherent dignity of human beings” that still remains in the document. Buddhists do hold that the human incarnation is the only means by which beings are liberated, but it is not because of some inherent human nature.
Naess maintains that in addition to learning about the unity of all things from Gandhi, he also “made manifest the internal relation between self-realization, non-violence, and what has sometimes been called biospherical egalitarianism.”[39] It is important to understand what self-realization means in the context of environmental ethics. Does it mean that we realize that there are no individual selves at all, as in Advaita Vedanta, or does it mean that real individual selves are actually not at home in their bodies or in the world, as the Jains believe? The Buddha’s Middle Way appears to resolve these two extremes of annihilation of the self and the self as permanent substance.
Before I explain this solution, let me discuss two striking images in the Indian tradition that are frequently used to explain the self-world relationship. The first image is the Mirror of Dharma by which–in some Mahayanist schools–we see our true selves, which are identical Buddha natures grounded in the Dharmakaya—the cosmic body of the Buddha. For a Buddhism that respects the individual reality of the self and things in the world, I would rather see my own individual self and all the things that relate to my world in my own Mirror of Dharma. In this way I can try to be made mindful of what I need to do to make all those relations right and good. It will certainly not be the same set of specific imperatives for any other person.
The second famous image is the chain of pearls of Indra, each pearl reflecting, as does each piece of a hologram, the same identical self and world. This same idea is expressed in the prism analogy. White light, symbolizing the Dharmakaya or Atman-Brahman, is refracted through a prism to produce a rainbow of colors—reflecting the rich diversity of the myriad things in the cosmos. The prism itself refers to ignorance of the real ground of all beings, and when the prism of ignorance is taken away, we have nothing but the undifferentiated white light of true reality.
Keeping Gandhi’s affirmation of the individual foremost in mind and his own use of a refracted light analogy,[40] I prefer a revised prism analogy. I propose that, instead of one prism standing for ignorance, there are as many prisms as there are individuals. Each would refract the white light of the reality and each would produce a fully differentiated world, one in which each individual is preserved in her/his own variety and differences. In order to make the prism selves unique we would conceive of them as flawed slightly so that the world refracted is relatively different for every single self. And even though the prism selves can turn to the true reality for mystical union, they still, as Gandhi insists, preserve their individuality as they return to the fully differentiated and real world.
I believe that the Buddha never intended that his no-self (anatman) doctrine meant that there were no selves at all. Rather, it is clear that he was only rejecting the individual permanent Jain self and the Hindu Atman. A positive way to express nonsubstantiality is to describe the Buddhist self as “functional.” In fact, each of the skandhas should be seen as functions rather than entities. As David Kalupahana states: “Rupa or material form accounts for the function of identification; vedana or feeling and samjna or perception represent the function of experience, emotive as well as cognitive; sanskara or disposition stands for the function of individuation; vijnana or consciousness explains the function of continuity in experience.”[41] Both Kalupahana and Peter Harvey describe the Buddhist self as a psychophysical unity in process and interrelation. According to Harvey, the Buddha never rejected the existence of a life-principle (jiva), which “is not a separate part of a person, but is a process which occurs when certain conditions are present. . . .”[42] These processes are real and not illusory.
The best statement of the Buddha that brings self, society, and nature together is “They who know causation know the Dharma.”[43] Let us unpack the meaning of this pithy proposition. The word Dharma can be translated as moments of reality, truth, or moral law. The word Dharma fuses the worlds of facts and values. In early Buddhist ontology the term was used to describe basic moments of reality, an anticipation of the quanta of energy of contemporary physics. Dharmas in this sense are not substantial things, but interrelated and interdependent events and processes.
Those who know their own causal web of existence know the truth (i.e., the true facts of their lives) and they will know what to do. As David Kalupahana states: “Thus, for the Buddha, truth values are not distinguishable from moral values or ethical values; both are values that participate in nature”; and this means that Dharma consists in moral and physical principles derived “from the functioning of all dharma,” as basic constituents of existence.[44] Here is an ontology that supports an ethics that integrate moral and ecological values. In its rejection of the fact/value distinction it is also a form of deconstructive postmodernism inspired by Whitehead’s philosophy.
The Sanskrit word translated as “causality” is pratityasumutpada, which means “codependent arising.” Padmasiri de Silva draws an ecological meaning from this term, so that those who know causality know “the way things are”—“the natural way.”[45] As E. F. Schumacher states: “If human vices such as greed or envy are systematically cultivated, the is nothing less than the collapse of inteligence. A man driven by greed loses the power of seeing things as they really are.”[46] The Buddhist virtue of compassion (karuna) is based on the interrelatedness of all life, and this was the fundamental moral discovery of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. The Buddha realized that compassion and sympathy can have no meaning if the Jain soul and the Vedantist Atman are, as these schools hold, independent substances. In developing the virtues of mindfulness, compassion, and non-attachment one realizes see that harming other living beings and taking more than what one needs is not the right way to live.
The Buddha=s famous motto “Those who know causation know the Dharma” sometimes has a provocative addition: “Those who know the Dharma know me.” This conclusion appears to undermine the thesis that we are essentially our own standard for determining the Dharma. In Mahayana schools that deify the Buddha one is faced with the possibility that the Buddha becomes the absolute standard for value in the same way that God is in Christian ethics. The fact that this additional phrase appears in Pali texts as well as later Sanskrit texts indicates that there may be an alternative reading to “knowing me.”
It would not necessarily be an act of hubris for the Buddha to claim, especially in the context of the Indian acceptance of knowledge of past lives, that he knows the Dharma better than anyone heretofore. One need only compare the moral knowledge that mindful people learn from trial and error in one life to a vastly expanded fount of moral lessons one could learn from thousands of past lives. Therefore, we can see the Buddha as a paragon of virtue without at all deifying him, and Aknowing me@ could be interpreted as an invitation for us to find our own middle way in the same way that Confucius offered the ancient sage kings as models of virtue. As Mahayanist Shucihi Yamamoto explains: “The ultimate purpose of the practice of Buddhism is to attain Buddhahood, which in modern terms means to become as ideal a human being as that of a Buddha.”[47]
Gandhi’s “experiments with truth” are methologically analogous to individual reflections in the Mirror of Dharma and the testing of truth by sensitive attention to one’s personal history. Gandhi was acutely aware that knowing causation would allow him to know the Dharma for him. The truths we discover by means of this Buddhist formula will be very personal truths, moral and spiritual truths that are, as Aristotle says of moral virtues, “relative to us.” For example, he real-ized that most males could not undergo the risky experiment of sleeping with young women as a way to test one’s chastity. As we have seen, even Gandhi admitted that this was an experiment that might fail.
For a robust environment ethic that synthesizes the wisdom of Asian and Euro-America, we must always balance visions of holistic unity from the East with a focus on individual agency and integrity. Without the former there can be no reason to value nature, and without the latter there would be no basis for environmental activism. This is yet another example of the Buddha’s Middle Way.
[1]M. K. Gandhi, “Harijans and Pigs,” Harijan 3 (April 13, 1935).
[2]Quoted in Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India.
[3]Quoted in Thomas Weber, “Arne Naess and Gandhi,” Gandhi Marg 32:1 (April-June, 2010), p. 93. I’m indebted to Weber for this reference and several others as well as good insights.
[4]The Kedarakhanda of the Skanda Purana, 1.1.20.15-26. This is Wendy Doniger’s translation in “The Scrapbook of Undeserved Salvation: the Kedarakhand of the Skanda Purana” in Purura Perennis, ed., Wendy Doniger (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 78.
[5]N. F. Gier, The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to Gandhi (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004).
[6]Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have—A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology.
[7]Daisaku Ikeda, The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra
[8]Gandhi, Young India 6 (September 25, 1924), p. 313.
[9]Gandhi, Harijan 12 (February 15, 1948), p. 33.
[10]See, for example, Glyn Richards, “Gandhi’s Concept of Truth and the Advaita Tradition,” Religious Studies 22:1 (March, 1986), pp. 1-14.
[11]Ramashray Roy, Soundings in Political Philosophy (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1984), p. 14.
[12]Lance E. Nelson, “Reverence for Nature or the Irrelevance of Nature? Advaita Ved~nta and Ecological Concern,” Journal of Dharma 16:3 (July-September, 1991), p. 299.
[13]Cited in Shuichi Yamamoto, “Envornmental Ethics in Mahayana Buddhism,” The Journal of Oriental Philosophy 12 (2002), p. 144.
[14]Ellison Banks Findly, Plant Lives: Borderline Beings in Indian Traditions (Delhi: Motilal Banarisidas, 2008), p.
[15]N. D. Bhargava, “Some Chief Characteristics of the Jain Concept of Non-Violence” in The Contribution of Jainism to Indian Culture, ed. R. C. Diviveda (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass , 1975), p. 124.
[16] Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement” in The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology, eds. Alan Drenmgson and Yuichi Inoue (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1995), p. 3.
[17]M. G. Kohoshoo, An Apostle of Applied Human Ecology (New Delhi: Tata Energy Research Institute, 1995), p. 3.
[18]Ibid., p. 2.
[19]Kaka Kalekar, Anecdotes from Bapu’s Life, p. 31. I’m indebted to Vinay Lal for this reference (“Too Deep for Deep Ecology: Gandhi and the Ecological Vision of Life” in Hinduism and Ecology, eds., Chapple K. Chapple and Mary E. Tucker [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000]) , p. 204.
[20]Anguttara Nikaya, Gradual Sayings, vol. 3, p. 262.
[21]Quoted in Khoshoo, p. 18.
[22]Lal, p. 184.
[23]Arne Naess, Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha (Olso: Universitetsforlag, 1974), pp.
[24]Arne Naess and George Sessions, “Platform Principles of the Deep Ecology Movement” in Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salty Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1985), p. 69.
[25]Quoted in Thomas Weber, “Gandhi, Deep Ecology, Peace Research, and Buddhist,” Journal of Peace Research 36:3 (May, 1999), p. 356.
[26]Naess, “Beautiful Action: Its Function in the Ecological Crisis” Environmental Values vol. 2.
[27]Gandhi, Young India 6 (November 20, 1924), p. 386.
[28]Roland Faber, “Theopoetic Justice: Towards an Ecology of Living Together,” Inaugural Address on being appointed to the Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr. Chair in Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology.
[29]Naess, Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha, p.
[30]Lance E. Nelson, ed., Purifying the Earthly Body of God (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998).
[31]Gandhi, Harijan (June 29, 1947), p. 212.
[32]Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1974), p. 2.
[33]Nair Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 2nd ed., 1966), vol. 1, bk. 2, p. 229.
[34]Pyarelal, p. 214.
[35]The Kedarakhanda of the Skanda Purana, 1.1.20.15-26.
[36]N. F. Gier, “Was Gandhi a Tantric?”Gandhi Marg 29:1 (April-June, 2007), pp. 21-36.
[37]Ariel Kay Salleh, “Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection”, Environmental Ethics 6: 4 (Winter 1984), p. 341.
[38]Ibid., p. 345.
[39]Quoted in Thomas Weber, “Arne Naess and Gandhi,” Gandhi Marg 32:1 (April-June, 2010), p. 93.
[40]“What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction” (quoted in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, vol. 2, p. 784).
[41]David Kalupahana, The Principles of Buddhist Psychology, pp. 20-21. Kalupahana’s Pali has been changed to Sanskrit. In a recent study of the earliest Pali texts John W. M. Krummel offers his own functionalist interpretation: “The Buddha’s middle way [between substantialism and annihilationism] was truly a path rather than a stance, praxis rather than theoria” (“Praxis of the Middle: Self and No-Self in Early Buddhism,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45:4 [December, 2005], pp. 517-535).
[42]Peter Harvey, “The Mind-Body Relationship in Pali Buddhism,” Asian Philosophy 3:1 (1993), p. 31.
[43]Majjhima-nikaya I.190-1, quoted in Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), p. 64.
[44]Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy . . . , p. 63; Ethics in Early Buddhism, p. 44.
[45]Padmsiri de Silva, Environmental Philosophy and Ethics in Buddhism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 41.
[46]E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, p. 27.
[47]Yamamoto, “Environmental Ethics in Mahayana Buddhism,” p. 137.