By F.L. Lhündrup · Buddha University, France
The awareness of the community of Earthbound destiny between living Nature and the human adventure shall become a major event of our time (…). We must recognize our biological filiation and our ontological filiation; It is the umbilical cord that must be re-established. – Edgar Morin [a]
Heaven and earth, gods and men / Are bound together by a community, / Of friendship and good understanding, / Of wisdom and the spirit of justice, / And therefore, to this universe, / They give, my friend, the name of cosmos, of arrangement, / And not the name of disturbance, nor the name of disarray. – Plato [b]
The mountain you see is not a mountain / The river is no different, / But a single moon cycle shines / On the mountains, the rivers and the Earth. – Wenyi [c]
An intuitive Relationship
Le chemin vers l’avenir passe par le retour aux sources.
In a first approach, we understand: nature in the two senses of the term as the dynamic essence of things and as what belongs to the living; mindfulness as the natural contemplative experience and practice; ecology as the art of living in harmony with nature and the environment. The natural harmony, the spontaneous or intentional aim to preserve this harmony is their common denominator. The ties among the three could be called the “culture of harmony”.
There is a profound philosophy of nature from the earliest traditions of the native peoples, through Greco-Latin [1], Vedic and Chinese antiquity, to contemporary phenomenology [2]. The unity in diversity of these philosophies should be a key resource for education today. In particular, the ancient Chinese philosophy masterfully establishes the continuity of outer and inner Nature and its ethic. Ecology, in the sense of living in harmony with Nature, was integrated into ancient agrarian ways of life. It took on its contemporary name at the beginning of the 20th century, when it became scientific. Ecology reintroduces Nature and the Living into modernity through the notion of ecosystem [3]. As for meditation, mindfulness, it has the same age as humanity. Its philosophy, the contemplative science, is a philosophy of Nature in the sense that it is not dogmatic and does not rely on belief but rather on the experience and intelligence of interdependence from which it deduces and exposes all the metaphysical and existential implications. Its practice and its goal are the liberation of what separates us, through illusorily and painfully, from Nature.
A common source
The ties among nature, mindfulness and ecology are therefore the old story of a clear intuition. So obvious that we too often forget it. The terrifying ecological situation currently forces us to open our eyes, but we have not moved from our initial situation: homo sapiens, more correctly called sapiens-demens (Edgar Morin) has not changed. He walks between heaven and earth. He is born, grows old, falls ill and dies under the sun or in the moon. He understands or ignores, likes or dislikes, invents and destroys, marvels or is terrified. In the jungle of his heart and mind, in the crystalline mountains, the blue deserts and the fertile plains, he seeks more or less the meaning of life and always to escape suffering. He seeks to be happy like all of the living, his companions, in the wild. Ancients or moderns, there is no difference in depth. It is important to realize this, because our dependence on nature has not changed, meditation was relevant millennia ago as it is today, and the loss of ecological living skills is an aberration that has become lethal. In this human adventure that in the noise and fury seeks harmony, fullness and perfection, there is no other way out than to know one’s mind and its nature which is also the source of all that we experience in life. Mind is therefore not a term that refers only to spiritual or philosophical experiences. By the way, the feelings of the heart and the representations of the mind are not separate. Instead of speaking of “mind” we should say “heart-mind” as the Eastern languages [4] do. In other words, the source that commands our cognitive, emotional and physical actions is our heart-mind.
As visionary thinkers say: The Origin lies ahead of us [5], The way to the future goes by turning to the sources [6].
Existential issues
Yet there is a chasm between the spirit and way of life of the ancients and the context and mindset of today. In the face of the apocalyptic ecological crisis, the relationships between the human experience investigated by mindfulness, nature, and ecology have become critical, to say the least. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, recently described the ecological crisis as an existential threat. It raises existential questions. It raises the spectre of death and thus questions our relationship with nature, from our awareness of it to the very foundation of our modern civilization, including domestic and political life. This means that there are a thousand ways – spiritual, philosophical, poetic, scientific – of looking at what links mindfulness, nature and ecology.
The cure for an old problem
For the moment, we can consider the crucial point from which the problems and solutions unfold. This point is that of duality or the well named: fantasy of separateness. This old problem has continued to grow worsen until the present day. The Judeo-Christian view believed too much in seeing God outside of nature. Then, Cartesians believed it could make man the master and possessor of nature with machine animals. Today, the dominant economic reason, closed in on itself, has produced a predatory and destructive system which is the final stage of our separatist hallucination. The disjunctive thinking that separates what is inseparable and opposes what is complementary has assumed unprecedented proportions. So much so that the unity of Nature and man has become difficult to feel and to conceive. From the very beginning, mindfulness has aimed at reducing and solving the alienation of dualism in the relationship with oneself, others and nature. It is therefore a remedy that is as desirable as it is necessary and life-saving.
A Natural experience
The experience of mindfulness, as far as it can be put into words, is essentially a natural sensory experience and practice. Denys Rinpoché defines it as follows: “Mindfulness is first of all a state of being present in the moment, an open, attentive and empathetic sensory experience, without judgments or self-imposed mental conceptions. The present moment is experienced in its freshness and simplicity, “as it is”. This state of union with the present moment allows the most appropriate response for the situation. It is a state of well-being and freedom” [7].
Opening the senses
Mindfulness is natural in the sense that it is not associated with a belief or ideology. But above all it is natural because it is not artificial, nor is it manufactured or produced by something else. It does not need an observer, let alone an external creator or legislator. On the contrary, the less you intervene the better it is. The experience of mindfulness is the state of our heart and mind embodied and lived in the immediacy of the present, here and now, when untouched by adventitious concepts and conditioning. This state is, like Nature: simple, rich, fertile, luminous, intelligent, supportive, and free from the complications of the conceptual mind. It is experienced in the opening of the senses, the naked sensoriality and raw sensitiveness to which nature invites us. This openness is experienced in the release of the ego’s grasping and in the participatory communion that nature sometimes has the gift to make us feel.
The absence of the dualistic grasping of a separate subject and object, in which the illusion of an autonomous, permanent and independent self is solidified, is the nature of mind, the heart of mindfulness. There are many terms for this experience. In Tibetan, for example, rigpa (vidya) is translated as open presence; rangjung yéshé (jñâna), is translated as natural primordial intelligence. This intelligence is embodied in the flesh and in the senses. It is primary because it is experienced in the first moment before the emergence of conceptions, before the dualistic grasping of the self. It is experienced in the present before re-presentation. This state is innate in each of us. When it is revealed and perfectly accomplished and stable, it is the awakened state of a Buddha.
Nature unveiled
Although it is present and inherent in our Nature, this state of plenitude is veiled by the subject-object duality constitutive of the self and its painful passions. The image to illustrate this situation is that of the sky and the clouds. The vastness of the sky and the clarity bathed in the warm rays of the sun is the nature of our mind and the clouds are the illusions and passions that cover it. Just as the clouds do not affect the purity of the sky, the Nature of the mind is not altered by the overlaid illusions and passions. It remains hidden behind the clouds. The path of mindfulness is then to establish the suitable conditions of body, speech and mind, for the cloud layers to clear themself. The breakthroughs in the clouds and their vanishing reveal the state of the sky in its original nature, our fundamental nature, the fruit of mindfulness.
The sky is empty and non-conceptual, / Cut the root of this conceptual Mind. / Cut the root and relax! [8]
This process of unveiling cognitive and emotional conditioning is as natural as it is magical. It is achieved in the experience of open presence. This is the natural therapeutic power of unconditional presence.
Analogical Relationship
Relationships between mindfulness and nature are organic and analogical. They are organic because we are made of the elements of Nature and mindfulness does not add to what is already there. It frees us from that which separates us from Nature and our Nature. They are analogous because there is a continuity between Nature and Mind. The sky is not = to the mind and clouds are not = to illusion and passions, they are analogous. There are continuities of meaning, correspondences or concordances of form or function from one level to the other. The sky is vast, luminous and unfathomable like the mind. Clouds, white or black, thick or diaphanous, appear and disappear according to the winds, like states of mind according to tendencies and events.
This logic of correspondences and symbols is the one by which we communicate constantly. Yet it has been marginalized by rationalist techno-scientific education in favor of linear logic, which, if solidified, is often binary, antagonistic and reductive. The lack of analogical intelligence is a major contributor to the difficulties we have in integrating our connection to Nature in our modern world. Analogical correspondence has the advantage of building bridges between our human experience and that of nature. It brings the living landscape to our experience in language, thought and emotion. We love nature, not only because we are part of it, but also because the treasures of richness and beauty that we perceive outside are analogous to the essential qualities of our heart and mind. Nature inspires participatory sensations of vitality, joy, authenticity, fullness, freedom, etc. These experiences in the natural world actualize those within, in our mind. A meditation or a stay in nature can be experienced as a profound rejuvenation because both bring us closer to the source. Both can put us back in touch with that fundamental goodness, of which the natural order is an expression:
“The fundamental goodness is good because it is unconditional, because it is primordial. It is always already there, in the same way that heaven and earth are always here (…). There is a natural law and order that allows us to survive that is fundamentally good; it is good because it is here, because it works because it is effective” [9].
Fundamental goodness, as brilliantly exposed by the Vidyâdhara Chögyam Trungpa, is a beautiful expression of Nature’s continuity and a precious inspiration for fostering confidence in contemplation. Awakening and stabilizing these qualities of Nature and its basic goodness in our experience is what mindfulness is all about.
Continuity of the five elements
«All appearances are the play of the mind in the transformations of the five elemental principles». [10]
There is a deep, even fundamental continuity between nature and mind well illustrated in the paradigm of the five elements [11]. Earth, water, fire, air and space are constitutive of both the dwelling (Nature, the cosmos, the biosphere) and the dweller (the beings). They are the matrix in which the metamorphosis of the Living unfolds. More than things, the five elements are active dynamic principles present in our experience at every moment. They are present externally but also internally in our physical, psychological and spiritual structure. They form an underlying continuity to all our experiences, external and internal, from the grossest to the most subtle levels of body, energy and spirit.
Well known from ancient medicines, they condition our physical, psychological and spiritual structure. Our internal and external balance depends entirely on them. Their harmony is a factor of physical and psychological health, while their disharmony causes natural disasters and diseases.
The solid stability of earth, the fertile and flowing wisdom of water, the warm clarity of fire, the subtle mobility of air and the openness of space have qualities present in the nature of our mind. The practice of Mindfulness helps us to feel them and to rediscover their richness, as it deconstructs the mental barriers that cut us off from our sensations and separate the outer from the inner. Mindfulness pierces the bubble of the separating ego and melts the walls that separate us from Nature. Mindfulness shows us in sensory experience that we are not subjects in a separate world of objects, but threads woven into the same web of interdependence, communication and solidarity.
Mountain reflects in a dragon fly‘s eye – Kobayashi Issa [12]
We discover that our perceptions are in fact communications between the inside and the outside.
“Our perceptions are the product of the ongoing and dynamic communication between the organism that I am and the vast domain of which I am a part. Perception is the experience of communication between the individual microcosm and the planetary macrocosm” [13].
The occultation of this unity and the communication that depends on it, is still one of the root causes of the ecological disaster. The experience and practice of mindfulness is the means par excellence to regain this unity and communion, not only in an intellectual way but in our personal experience, in our bodily sensations, our sensory perceptions and in the experience of the Nature of our heart and mind.
It seems that it is from this personal transformation that real change can emerge in bringing about a new holistic and ecological culture. This starts with oneself, grows in small communities and could gradually give rise to new structures and institutions that respect humans and nature. This is already happening locally around the world. This culture of harmony brings to life a mental structure with concepts, references, science, philosophy, lifestyle, imagination and myths which, instead of cutting us off from our deep natural experience, connect us to it and encourage us to discover it. It is the source of a virtuous circle that goes from concepts to experience and from experience to concepts.
Towards a culture of Nature
There is an impulse still in human breast to unify and sanctify the total natural world – of which we are. [14]
This culture already exists. European Buddhist Union, Dharma centers in the world, are an eminent part of it, like the one of Buddha University where I am writing this in a wild valley in the Savoyard Alps.
The Dalai Lama [15] is one of the most prominent heralds of this culture of enlightenment. Its roots are nourished by the encounter between East and West. In Europe, the horror of the 14-18 war provoked a moral collapse that prefigured our contemporary collapsologie. In 1919, Paul Valery announced the “crisis of the spirit” in his famous sentence: “We now know that civilizations are mortal”. The wise European intelligentsia then turned to India. René Guénon denounced the crisis of the modern world and revealed the coherence of the primordial tradition. Romain Rolland launched “L’appel de l’Orient” while his “Gandhi” had a considerable success. Some years later, Lanza del Vasto’s “Pilgrimage to the sources” indicated the path to India that will be followed by a part of the youth around the 1968 revolt, while in this same stream, the American counterculture grows with the inspiration of Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen.
As early as the interwar period, the emergence of new scientific paradigms led to a holistic view of the universe that converges with ancient traditions, notably Buddhism. In the 1960s and 70s, the contemplative science of Dharma is echoed in the new scientific interpretation of living systems as for example presented by Fritjof Capra in “The Web of Life”. In 1995, the final declaration of the Tokyo symposium organized by UNESCO, bringing together a group of great scientists from all over the world, states that: “Scientists have rediscovered the holistic nature of the universe… Our message is thus in line with the teachings of Mahâyâna Buddhism” [16].
These convergences were further deepened in the field of cognitive sciences with the work of Francisco Varela, his seminal book, “Embodied mind” and the activities of the Mind and life Institute. The fundamental scientific research promoted by the Mind and Life Institute on the positive effects of meditation on the human mind and body, combined with the related research on the medical applications of mindfulness by John Kabat Zinn, has made meditation a scientifically validated and socially accepted practice worldwide. These are just a few examples, to which we can add the emergence of radical biomimetism as presented by the French eco-engineer Gauthier Chapelle in “The living as a model” [17] and the philosophy of the living explore by the French Philosopher Batiste Morizot in “Rekindle the embers of the living” [18]. Both highlight the unity of life in contemporary terms and encourage us, as Leonardo de Vinci did, to take our lessons from Nature again.
From a social point of view, many experiences tend to embody this culture of harmony. In Europe, we should note the Ecovillage network and in France the remarkable rise of the Oasis, ecologically resilient and socially integrated place to live.
The awareness of our dependence on independence, i.e., the fundamental relationship with the ecosystem, leads us to reject our view of world-object and the insular man. This is the only way to understand the truth of non-Western philosophies – Asian and African – to reconcile ourselves with them and to arrive at a universal worldview. [19]
Recent research
Mindfulness combined with the contemplative science of Dharma, if not misused, is one of the fundamental foundations of this culture of harmony. Its positive effects on the body, mind and social relationships are well known to science. Its influence on our relationship with the environment is undeniable, since it affects the source of the ecological problem, i.e., the human mind. Many studies on the subject already exist [20]. They are in addition to those showing how much the simple contact with nature is essential to human balance, for those who doubt it. It is interesting to note that the beneficial effects of immersion in nature on the brain, forest baths (shinrin-yoku) and other mud baths, converge, in some sense, with those of meditation, notably on stress, sleep, concentration and mental health.
The virtues of marriage
To conclude, we can say that Nature in its different aspects and mindfulness practice enrich and fertilize each other. On the one hand, mindfulness meditation is beneficial to the environment through its influence on our state of mind, our mentality and therefore on our way of life. On the other hand, contact with nature orients our mind toward its essential roots, inspires and strengthens mental, psychological and physical health.
Moreover, their association remedies two pitfalls that threaten us: an illusory technological ecology and a superficial mindfulness, both of which are bogged down if not recuperated by techno-scientific materialism and consumerism. The first pitfall is the one faced by the standard ecology. Puzzle with existential questions, it is insufficient and powerless. The second pitfall concerns the worldwide development of mindfulness which, if reduced to a quest for cosmetic ‘well-being’, would lose its meaning in the shadow of a soon-to-be unlivable planet.
Questioned by the first hurdle, ecology can reconnect with the role of mind in our relation to environmental issues and acknowledge the unity of Nature and interdependence already well highlighted by systemic sciences. It is only a short step from there to drawing all the spiritual and material consequences of interdependence and the right way to live within.
Faced with the second pitfall, contemporary mindfulness practice, by opening up to Nature and ecology, could more explicitly integrate the teaching on interdependence and reintroduce the Nature of mind into its horizon, if it had ever been lost. Meditation, properly understood, would then be the source of a spirituality and ethics of Nature. In short, the marriage of mind and ecology gives rise to an approach to meditation that is resourced in Nature in both senses of the term, and to an ecology that adds to the outer Transition a concrete and accessible means for everyone to participate in the necessary inner Transition based on personal transformation.
F.L. Lhündrup, lhundroup@rimay.net, Buddha University, France
Notes
[a] Edgar Morin, Changeons de voie, les leçons du Coronavirus, Denoël 2020. [b] Platon, Gorgias, 507 e – 508 a. [c] Wenyi (885-958): A full load of Moonlight, Chinese Chan Buddhist poems, trad. Mary M.Y. Fung and David Lunde, Musical stones culture Ltd, 2014, p 57. [1] Voir notamment: Pierre Hadot, Le voile d’Isis, essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de Nature, Folio, essais, 2008. [2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La Nature, Cours du Collège de France (1956-1960), Seuil 2021: It seeks to rediscover this fundamental link that unites us with nature in order to approach our senses from its own phenomenality, and not from the restricted perspective of our mental categories. See also: the article by Claire Petitmengin: S’ancrer dans l’expérience vécue comme acte de résistance – Le rôle de la recherche et de la pratique micro-phénoménologiques dans les problèmes écologiques cruciaux que notre société rencontre. [3] Edgar Morin, Écologiser l’homme, Lemieux éditeur, 2016. [4] In Chinese xin, in Sanskrit citta, in Tibetan sems… the terms generally translated into western language as mind or esprit actually designate both the heart and the mind and refer to our overall cognitive and affective experience. Our human experience is both conceptual and sensitive, reasonable and affective, intellectual and emotional. Therefore, a more appropriate translation of these essential words would be heart-mind. [5] Martin Heidegger. [6] Edgar Morin, Leçons d’un siècle de vie, Denoël, 2021. [7] Denys Rinpoché, Le grand livre de la Pleine présence, Albin Michel, 2019. [8] Sangye Tönpa, in Nicole Riggs, Like an illusion, Lives of the Shangpa Masters, Dharma clouds, 2001, p 9. [9] Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala, The sacred path of the warrior. [10] V. Kalu, La Voie du Bouddha, Le Bois d’Orion, p 108. [11] Sur la continuité des cinq éléments, voir: Kalu Rinpoché, La voie du Bouddha, Le Bois d’Orion 2018, en anglais «Luminous Mind», Wisdom Publications 1993. [12] Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828). [13] David Abram, Spell of the sensuous, perception and language in a more than human world, Pantheon Books, 1996. [14] Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature, Hampton Press, 2002. [15] Voir notamment la vision du Dalaï Lama dans son ouvrage écrit avec Sofia Stril-Rever, Nouvelle réalité, l’âge de la responsabilité universelle, Les Arènes 2016. [16] Colloque de Tokyo, La mutation du futur, Albin Michel, 1996. [17] Le vivant comme modèle, pour un biomimétisme radical, Albin Michel, 2020. [18] Baptiste Morizot, Raviver les braises du vivant, Actes Sud, 2020. [19] Edgar Morin, L’an I de l’ère écologique, Taillandier 2007. [20] Voir par exemple: Dorthe Djernis, Inger Lerstrup, Dorthe Poulsen, Ulrika Stigsdotter, Jesper Dahlgaard and Mia O’Toole: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Nature-Based Mindfulness: Effects of Moving Mindfulness Training into an Outdoor Natural Setting; Sonja M. Geiger, Siegmar Otto, and Ulf Schrader: Mindfully Green and Healthy: An Indirect Path from Mindfulness to Ecological Behavior; Travis N. Ray, Nicole Jarret, Scott A Franz, Scott M Picket: Nature Enhanced Meditation: Effects on Mindfulness, Connectedness to Nature, and Pro-Environmental Behavior; Jian Wang, Liuna Geng, P. Wesley Schultz, and Kexin Zhou: Mindfulness Increases the Belief in Climate Change: The Mediating Role of Connectedness with Nature.
About the author
Frédéric la Combe (Lama Lhündroup): Dharma instructor and mindfulness facilitator, translator, graduate of a master’s degree in Chinese, after having lived several years in China, he made a three-year retreat in the Tibetan tradition under the guidance of Denys Rinpoche. He has been working in the service of the Buddha’s teachings and the Buddha University for the past twenty years. Organizer of numerous inter-tradition meetings in a humanist vision of unity in diversity, he is interested in the meeting of the Buddha’s wisdom with our life today, particularly in the fields of deep ecology and others.
This article first appeared in EBU Magazine #10 – Ecodharma (Spring 2023). Download the full issue as PDF or browse all issues.