Guardian: Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth

[GliderGuider]

From Thich Nhat Hanh's lips come the words of my own heart.

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth



Thay believes we need to move beyond talking about the environment, as this leads people to experience themselves and Earth as two separate entities and to see the planet in terms only of what it can do for them.

Change is possible only if there is a recognition that people and planet are ultimately one and the same.

"In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.

Rather than placing a price tag of our forests and coral reefs, Thay says change will happen on a fundamental level only if we fall back in love with the planet: "The Earth cannot be described either by the notion of matter or mind, which are just ideas, two faces of the same reality. That pine tree is not just matter as it possesses a sense of knowing. A dust particle is not just matter since each of its atoms has intelligence and is a living reality."
This is where my center lies these days. Change your heart and your mind will follow; change your heart and mind, and your behaviour cannot help but follow.

[drokhole]

1. Thank you. This is related, and worth a listen - Alan Watts: Man in Nature

[felix_numinous]

2. This was always my (main) beef with predominant religions

--that they place man above nature (with women and animals below). I think the idea of dominion -over- the Earth, instead of being stewards -of- the Earth, is dominant religions' greatest and most destructive teaching. isn't it this disease of the human ego that separates us from our natural selves and the planet, that can be healed by opening our hearts?
I love this post, thank you.

[GliderGuider]

3. Mine too.

You'd probably also find a lot to agree with in Charles Eisenstein's book The Ascent of Humanity.

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]The myth of technological utopia is uncannily congruent to the religious doctrine of Heaven, with technology as our savior. Thanks to the god Technology, we will leave behind all vestiges of mortality and enter a realm without toil or travail and beyond death and pain. Omnipotent, technology will repair the mess we have made of this world; it will cure all our social, medical, and environmental ills, just as we escape the consequences of our sins of this life when we ascend to Heaven.

When we separate ourselves from nature as we have done with technology, when we replace interdependency with "security" and trust with control, we separate ourselves as well from part of ourselves. Nature, internal and external, is not a gratuitous though practically necessary other, but an inseparable part of ourselves. To attempt its separation creates a wound no less severe than to rip off an arm or a leg. Indeed, more severe. Under the delusion of the discrete and separate self, we see our relationships as extrinsic to who we are on the deepest level; we see relationships as associations of discrete individuals. But in fact, our relationships—with other people and all life—define who we are, and by impoverishing these relationships we diminish ourselves. We are our relationships.
In terms of truly understanding this message, "Ascent" remains one of the most important books I've read.

[felix_numinous]

4. Thank you!

I am going to read this online book--it looks fascinating.

[felix_numinous]

5. I just came back here to thank you again

The Ascent of Humanity is really blowing my little mind today I love it!!

[GliderGuider]

6. I'm glad you like it! I kind of thought you would.

Eisenstein is presenting at a conference called "The Economics of Happiness" in Berkeley in three weeks, and I've decided to go. I want to meet the man behind that book in person.

I wrote an article about my reaction to it on my web site: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Separation_Revolution.html

[felix_numinous]

8. You have a very cool website too

I am so happy when I have such rich things to read --I am savoring this book, it is very well written, and I am so glad that there are people in this world (and in this country) that are expressing such important ideas. I hope you have fun in Berkeley--there should be many interesting people there!

[GliderGuider]

9. I'm happy to hear that.

There's nothing like being on a voyage of discovery through a deep sea of ideas!

[ellisonz]

7. K & R