What Aspects of Buddhism are Supportive of Greater Environmental Conservation

Buddhism Environmental Conservation

Well for those who are accustomed to and familiar with the Medicine Buddha he sits in the middle of a mandala of a healing universe that is unpolluted and where everything is medicine.  Our environment should be the same according to Buddhism.

All great medical texts from the east commence with a treatise on the need for unpolluted environment for health and wellbeing.

When nature is in harmony all its produce is medicine and our planet becomes a healing biosphere.

When the five elements become imbalanced this gives rise to physical emotional and mental diseases.

The law of cause and effect are relevant for if we pollute the effect is we suffer diseases.

A meditative awareness which can lead to a ‘green wisdom’ such as choosing where your food comes from. Many people do not realise that what you choose to eat and drink is a massive collective globally impacting decision.

This to me is the importance of ‘mindful eating’ – nothing to do with weight loss. Interdependence is where we have to consider the effect our actions and choices have on others.

This reminds me of the Native American speech that is quite famous.

‘Man is not the web of life he is merely a part of it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself’.

The vegetarian side of Buddhist practice in south East Asia as this reduces greenhouse gases as there is no need for rearing beef.

Cattle & Green House Gas Methane

Cattle produce a phenomenal amount of methane which is a green-house gas.   

Keown has an important argument to make on this subject in his book Contemporary Buddhist Ethics where he wrote ‘ in fact, much that masquerades under the label of ecoBuddhism…..turns out to be an uneasy partnership between Spinozism, New Age religiosity and highly selective Buddhism.’¹ 

 If this is the case then this sounds like ‘Consensus Buddhism’ and the field has not been well thought out to create Buddhist theories along the lines of Lovelock’s Gaia principle for example.

So it fails to make theories that in turn could create policies that governments are asked to seriously consider implementing that in turn will benefit the environment. 

References

1.       Contemporary Buddhist Ethics By Damien Keown P 132