This class is an investigation of Buddhist images, symbols, stories, doctrines, ethics, and practices as they relate to understanding the environment and humanity’s role in relation to it. We will examine classical texts as well as modern commentaries. We will consider classic principles evoked by Buddhist teachers, writers, and activists as they address environmental issues, and we will examine how those principles take new forms. Further, this class will invite you to reflect deeply on your own experience of the world and its environmental challenges and your own relationship with the environment. “Know ye the grasses and the trees . . . Then know ye the worms, and the moths, and the different sorts of ants . . . Know ye also the four-footed animals small and great, the serpents, the fish which range in the water, the birds that are borne along on wings and move through the air . . . Know ye the marks that constitute species are theirs, and their species are manifold.” –Sutta-Nipata (early Buddhist text). Advent 2015 (in Buddhist terms: the end of a Lent-like period–which begins at the full moon usually in July and ends at the full moon usually in October—of the year 2555, according to the Thai Buddhist calendar. Not only do the calendars of different religious traditions differ, but the calendars of different traditions within traditions differ–a Japanese Buddhist celebrates overlapping but not exactly similar holidays as a Thai Buddhist, for example. It’s the same for different kinds of Christians, right?)
Texts:
- M.T. Anderson, Feed
- Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft, Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism
- Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self.
- John Stanley David R. Loy, and Gyurme Dorje, A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency
- Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
- Bill McKibben, Hundred Dollar Holiday
- A course pack with a variety of readings in it.
Recommended but not required text:
- Phillip Lopate, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
Journal: Your journal is an essential aspect of your experience of this course. It will help you make this course a vital part of your learning time at Sewanee. Writing intensive; reflection and thinking intensive; informal writing. A large part of your grade will depend on journal entries, and a large part of that grade will be determined simply by length of the journal. In short–it is understood in this class that a good journal is a long journal. Why? Because journal-writing is thinking, and just as a photographer takes thirty pictures for each one that is excellent, you will write many many pages of your thoughts for each thought that is excellent. Pay close attention to handouts on journal-writing; reread them every week or so. Spend a lot of time on your journal. Begin tonight with an informal reflection on what we did in class today and you’ll see guiding questions for your reading on Thursday that can form the base of another journal entry. Begin your PCE (see below). Do a lot of things in your journal. Write, sketch, cartoon… All your journal work will contribute to your writing of the papers for the class. Write the date at the top of each journal entry. (Absolutely required!) You may also want to note where you are when you write it–especially if you’re with your plant companion (see below). Two important aspects of the journal: your Plant Companionship Experiment (PCE) and the Course Experiments (CE’s).
Plant Companionship Experiment (PCE): Over the course of the semester you will spend time (at least one hour each week) with a plant. Sit with (or in or on, but please only if the plant is large enough) your selected plant companion and then reflect on this experience in your journal. So something you will want to do as soon as possible is choose your plant and commit to it. Include in your journal this week a reflection on why you chose that particular plant. Work then to name the species of the plant, describe the general characteristics of the species, and indicate if the plant is a native species to the Cumberland Plateau (where we are here). (Having difficulties? We have a lot of forestry and biology majors who can help. The University also has a forester and an assistant forester and at least one botanist. Who can you call to help you? Call him/her/them! Don’t hesitate–this is a learning place and we all must depend on each other to learn.) If you can, include a history (brief) of the species and the particular plant that would be an interesting entrance into the project. For example, suppose you select a large tree and learn that it is one of our white oaks. You might determine the age of the tree — which may indicate if the tree was on the land before the campus grew around it or if the tree was planted by people on the campus. You will probably want to explore (if it’s possible) the history of that particular plant. We will discuss the project at various points throughout the semester. Possible journal entries for your PCE: drawing the plant, writing a letter to the plant, introducing your plant to a friend of yours and writing reflections on what that was like…The purposes of this experiment are many. Let’s start with this one: The purpose of this experiment is to give you the framework you need to self-consciously cultivate a relationship with an aspect of your natural surroundings and reflect on that relationship in the context of your past relationship with your surroundings and your future relationship with your surroundings. The purpose of this experiment is to call to your attention, repeatedly, your relationship with the natural world. Your PCE (and the journal entries it inspires) is very likely to form the backbone of your final paper for the class.
Course Experiments (CE’s): You will choose to engage in at least FOUR of the six possible experiments designed to help you imagine how Buddhists are inclined to experience and consider the world. (These experiments are described in the syllabus below.) To get the most from these experiments, you will reflect upon them at length in your journal. Indeed, these experiments should receive considerable attention in your journal. You will be able to relate the experiments to the readings we are doing at the time and the readings before then. Reflecting on these experiments and how they change your view of the world will help you understand Buddhism and the environment better.
Introduction to the class: OUR WORLD?
Getting started: a dystopian view and beginning to write…. Lamott’s Bird by Bird, introduction (pp. xi-xxxi), and Anderson’s Feed 1-72 (parts 1 and 2) (Because this book is fun to read and interesting and compelling, some of you will want to read ahead, to finish the book early. DON’T READ AHEAD!!!! You will neither enjoy nor benefit as much from the class discussion and from the book if you read ahead.) Please take notes as you read and read always with these questions in mind: the author is describing a DYSTOPIA, an unpleasant world of the future that he imagines is one that naturally comes about due to how we live in the world today.
* What exactly is happening in the novel? What’s the plot? Who are the important characters?
* What are the unpleasantnesses of this world of the future? (What’s the dys of this dystopia?)
* What are the features/problems of today’s world that the author seems to think will bring about this world of the future?
* What other things interest you about the book so far?
Please come to class with these things:
1) a list of page numbers of parts of the reading you found most interesting or that you think might help you as you consider this book and brief topic descriptions for each. (This is a journal entry.) Examples:
“p. 4 first mention of “feeds”, these seem to be….” or “p. 39 history of feeds, as far as the narrator knows” or “p. X, I really like it when this narrator talks about….”
2) at least one reflection pondering the above italicized questions (This is a journal entry.)
3) your first journal entry related to the PCE. (This is another journal entry.)
(So, just by doing these specific assignments, you will have three journal entries by class time on Thursday.)
4) your orientation survey if you did not turn it in on Tuesday
Feed 73-203 (part 3) [Please continue the assignments above for the rest of the book–write as many journal entries as you like and don’t forget your PCE, at least one hour a week with your plant and reflect on that in your journal.]; Feed 205-300 (part 4); Lamott, “Getting Started” and “Short Assignments” (pp. 3-20); [Don’t forget to write in your journal and keep up with your PCE.]
SOME BUDDHISM BASICS
The Buddha’s life; Mitchell chapter 1 (Handout from professor); [What notes can you take to ensure you understand the material? what writing will help you enliven the material? what questions do you have? –all of these are good journal possibilities.] [Remember: three journal entries a week is a minimum–what will you write your journal entries on for these readings? and keep up with your PCE and journal entries on that. Also: I will give you a handout to help you write journal entries related to your own eco-autobiography.]
Course Experiment #1: Refraining from false speech. One of the Buddhist precepts is to refrain from false speech. It is interpreted in many ways. For this experiment, determine how you will interpret it (and write down, specifically, how you interpret it!) and try on this precept for a week beginning in class today. You may choose to avoid telling any lies, avoid engaging in harmful speech, avoid useless chatter and gossip. A modern Buddhist monk interprets this precept in this way: “Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.” Be sure to write a journal entry about your experiment.
FILM VIEWING: The Life of the Buddha 51 minutes
“Called a religion, a philosophy, and a science of mind, Buddhism is the way for hundreds of millions throughout the world. Who was the historical Prince Siddhartha, and where did he undergo the events that shaped his perceptions of the human condition? This remarkably accessible program dramatizes the life of the one who, beneath a tree at Bodh Gaya, transcended life’s misfortunes and sufferings and became known, forevermore, as Buddha. Scholars, researchers, and monastics provide illuminating insights into Siddhartha/Buddha’s experiences, his teachings, and the rapid spread of Buddhism after his death. A BBCW Production.”
Basic Buddhist Concepts: the three characteristics, the five aggregates, rebirth…
Mitchell chapter 2, first half (pp. 33 – 45)
[Wondering what to write in your journal? if you’d like to, respond to this quotation: “Shopping is a core activity in sustaining a culture of denial” –Judith Simmer-Brown, Buddhist and professor of Buddhist Studies.]
More Basic Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path
Mitchell chapter 2, second half (pp. 45 – 64)
Don’t forget to write a journal entry….what do you think of meditation?
In class we will view The Story of Stuff (with Annie Leonard). NOTE: Leonard’s film is strident and not at all aiming at some kind of “neutral” (if such a thing exists) view. Please be aware of that and watch the film with an aware, open and critical mind.
Course Experiment #1: Refraining from false speech ends at this time. Be sure to write a journal entry about your experiment.
Course Experiment #2: Refraining from buying. For one week beginning after class today, refrain from buying anything (besides medicine and supplies that are absolutely necessary to you as a student). Not in stores, not from catalogs, nor from the internet. Is someone having a birthday or other special day? What can you do or give to recognize and celebrate that without buying something? You want to buy a song or an album? Instead of buying it, reflect on how you feel NOT buying it. If you fail and end up buying things, make sure you write down exactly what you bought, how much it cost and why you bought it. Since you have already paid to eat at McClurg every day, can you eat there for the entire week, not buying food at restaurants and such? BEGIN your experiment with a reflection on what you think will be challenging about this experiment (write this reflection TODAY). Reflect on what this experiment has to do with your study of Buddhism and the environment and the readings we’ve done so far. (Note: taking a candy bar from a friend and saying “I’ll pay you back next week” is buying something!) Be sure to write at least two journal entries about your experiment (one will be at the beginning, one at the end).
Extra Credit FILM VIEWING: 5:50 p.m. Blind Spot: Peak Oil and the Coming Global Crisis 54 minutes
A documentary from Blind Spot about the current oil and energy crisis. It explores the subject of Peak Oil and its implications for the future of civilization. Includes interviews with sociologist William R. Catton, evolutionary biologist Jason Bradford, environmental analyst Lester Brown, NASA’s James Hansen, author Bill McKibben, and others.
Tanha, cubed: Looking back on Feed, with new understandings informed by Buddhism….
Blackboard: Pema Chodron’s “How We Get Hooked”
Blackboard: Pracha Hutanuwatr and Jane Rasbash’s “No River Bigger than Tanha”
Lamott, “School Lunches”
How’s your journal going? Be sure to write in it frequently, enjoy the kind of concentration writing in it can give you.
THINKING WITH BUDDHISM ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
Course pack: David Loy’s “The Religion of the Market” and Course pack: Loy and Goodhew, “Consuming Time”
These are challenging readings—give yourself the time you need to do them well and take notes on them in your journal!
[How’s your PCE going? Have you made an entry in your journal about it lately? Do!]
Course Experiment #2: Refraining from buying ends on this day. Be sure to write a journal entry about your experiment.
Course Experiment #3: Meditation. For the next three weeks, meditate for at least 20 minutes, three times a week. Keep a log in your journal that indicates the date and time that you meditated. Further, do what you can to write reflections on how that affects you and how that relates to Buddhism and the environment in your journal. You will be instructed in a variety of meditation techniques–some of which are standard for relaxation classes and the like. While with the other experiments some failure is presumed, failure is not acceptable in this experiment! Three times a week, twenty minutes each time. (Do you already regularly meditate? Perhaps you can switch to a particular kind of meditation for these three weeks–) Some local support for Christian and Buddhist meditation practices exist, and I strongly urge you to go to one of these at least twice so you can get some help with this challenging discipline: There are two Christian centering prayer groups— one meets on Mondays, 7 pm, at Otey Parish (in downtown Sewanee right across the street from the elementary school), and one meets Tuesdays at 3:30 p.m., at St. Mary’s Sewanee (about 3 miles away from campus). Depending on your interest, I strongly recommend attending such supportive group sessions during your experiment.
Guest speaker to class
Complete draft of first paper is due for draft workshop and discussion Note: If you have no completed draft on that date it means the best grade your final paper can make is a “C.”
First Essay due
THERAVADA RESOURCES AND REFLECTIONS
Dharma Rain 21 – 30
Lamott’s “Polaroids,” “Character,” “Plot,” “Dialogue,” “Set Design” (pp.39-19) NOTE: four of these five chapters (excepting “Polaroids” and not pages 49-52, about narrator) are specifically about writing fiction, which is not what you are writing in this class. But the techniques of writing fiction are indeed used in writing person essays and literary nonfiction, so just read these chapters keeping that in mind.
Blackboard: “What is a Personal Essay” and “Writing a Beginning or Lead”
MAHAYANA PHILOSOPHY, HOLY BEINGS, and DEBATE
Course pack: Harvey chapters 5 (“Mahayana Philosophy”) and 6 (“Mahayana Holy Beings”)
Course pack: Heisig et al., “Original Enlightenment Debates” and “Dogen”
(Total readings in course pack for this day are pp. 79 – 112)
MAHAYANA SOURCES AND REFLECTIONS
Dharma Rain pp. 14 – 20, 30 – 76, 78 (“Rain”), 441, 445 – 47, and 471 – 74
Blackboard: “Adding Humor”
Course experiment #3: Meditation ends at class time. Be sure to write a journal entry about your experiment.
CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST INTERPRETATIONS AND RESPONSES, cont’d.
Dharma Rain 79- 91 and 105 -124
Blackboard: “How to Write an Ending”
Joanna Macy’s World As Lover, World As Self, part 1 (chapters 1 – 5)
Lamott “False Starts” and “Plot Treatment” (pp. 80-92)
Be sure to write at least one journal reflection on the Macy readings, as always!
Climate Change
A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency Introduction, Parts 1 and 2 (pp. 3-73)
EVENING Extra Credit FILM VIEWING: film on global warming
Climate Change
A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency parts 3 and 4
Be sure to take time in your journal to reflect not only on the readings but also on the idea of aspirational prayers in general and in these particular cases as responses to climate change.
Course Experiment #4: Sentient Beings. For one week, avoid eating sentient beings and make note whenever you use goods that are made of sentient beings. (While not all Buddhists are vegetarians by any means, there is certainly textual support for not eating sentient beings and there is great respect for those who don’t.) Your experiment starts after class today and lasting one week: avoid eating dead sentient beings, go vegetarian. Reflect on this experiment (as always) in your journal. You may fail sometimes–reflect on that! (Already vegetarian? Consider going vegan for the week or doing some other experiment that will introduce questions about your relationships with sentient beings.) You might want to take this time to learn where soy milk is available in McClurg and trying it a few times if you don’t know what it’s like already!
Be sure to write two journal entries about your experiment—one at the beginning about exactly what you will be doing and how you will be doing it and what challenges you expect to face. One at the end about what actually happened and what you learned.
Climate change
A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency part 5, 6, and Afterward (finish book)
As we conclude our attention to climate change this week, what do you want to write in your journal about it, about your feelings and thoughts about it?
RECOMMENDED FILMS. If you are less informed or uninformed about the challenges of depending on the industrial food system, please take the time to educate yourself! If enough people want a group viewing of a film, I can set that up.
King Corn (92 minutes) “In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat– and how we farm.”
Food, Inc. (92 minutes) “Explores the U.S. commercial food industry, examining corporate control of supply and market. The film seeks to demonstrate how the incentive for corporate profit can overwhelm consumer health needs, as well as the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and the environment. Reveals various details of food ingredients and additives, and how contemporary mass production methods of food affects U.S. culture.”
American Meat (85 minutes) This documentary chronicles the grassroots revolution in sustainable farming. “Directed by New York City filmmaker Graham Meriwether, the movie explains how America arrived at its current industrial meat system, and shows you the feedlots and confinement houses, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. The film examines the debate over whether small-scale sustainable farming can ever produce enough food to feed America. The film also features both farmers who run confinement operations and raise their animals outside without the use of antibiotics. Meriwether and his team spent four years traveling across the country interviewing farmers, taking care to provide a balanced look at the economic and environmental issues facing them today.”
Food and eating
Dharma Rain 340-52, 446-453, 465-7
Be sure to reflect in your journal about these readings—you eat every day. Do these readings make you think differently about this practice that literally makes/recreates you every day?
Course Experiment #4: Revering Sentient Beings ends at class time. Be sure to write a journal entry about your experiment.
Course Experiment #5: Refraining from ingesting intoxicants, the fifth precept. This precept, as all of them, is interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Determine how you will interpret it and keep it for a week. One Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, interprets the precept thus: “Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, for family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society and future by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.” Be sure to write two journal entries about your experiment—the first outlines exactly how you interpret this experiment (what you are really going to try to do) and what challenges you expect to face, and the last reflects on what happened and what you experienced and learned.
Complete draft of second paper is due for workshop and discussion
Second paper due. This paper will be used to assess the meeting of the general education requirement Learning Objective #3.
Globalization, Population, and Development
Dharma Rain 161 – 90
Blackboard: Rita Gross’s article on population
Course Experiment #5: Refraining from ingesting intoxicants ends at classtime.
Macy Part 2, chapters 6-12
Remember to reflect in your journal on these readings. What do you think of Macy’s ideas? How are they important? What if some of her ideas were enacted?
No class as professor is at the American Academy of Religion annual conference
No class: Thanksgiving
Macy, part 3
Course Pack: Darlington’s “The Good Buddha and the Fierce Spirits: Protecting the Northern Thai Forest” (course pack pp. 113 -129)
Even though this is heavy reading, still take the time to write in your journal…what were the most interesting parts of the reading for you and what did they make you think of? Allow your journal to be a peaceful time of contemplation for you.
Course Experiment #6: Calming the fires, reflecting on nature. For one week, avoid watching television, movies, and reading anything for mere titillation/pleasure. Avoid spending time on Facebook and surfing the internet. Avoid exposing yourself to advertisements. (Shun billboards!) Set aside Twitter and other electronic social media. Can you set down your cell phone for the week? (Just set an outgoing message on your e-mail and voice-mail and take a little e-vacation?) Instead, do things you think the Buddhist thinkers you’re reading would have you do. BEGIN the experiment with a journal entry that describes exactly what you are going to avoid and what you are going to do instead. Also write about how doing this experiment will challenge you—what will be difficult about it? At the end of the experiment, reflect on all the many different aspects of this experiment and how it relates to Buddhism and the environment in your journal. (If you fail at times and indulge in watching a TV show or something, reflect on those failures!)
Dharma Rain 307-12, 312-18, 332-34, 335-39
Also, from Part Seven of Dharma Rain: “Bodhisattva vows” (p. 443), “Invocation for Earth Relief” (p. 444, and a dharani is like a mantra, a pneumonic device that captures the meaning of a particular passage), “Ecological Precepts” (p. 445) and “Verses for Environmental Practice” (pp. 471-73)
Recommended film viewing: Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia (23 minutes) “Unbeknownst to many, ‘recycling’ electronic waste often means that the material is shipped to Asia, where it causes major environmental, health, and occupational hazards.”
Hundred Dollar Holiday—it’s a long essay in book form–
Course pack: David Bubna-Litic’s “Buddhism Returns to the Market-place” (course pack pp. 131-160)
Course Experiment #6: Calming the fires, reflecting on nature ends at classtime. Be sure to write a journal entry on your experiment.
NOTE: both papers and journals are to be submitted in certain ways. The journals especially will require time and attention to prepare them for submission—a particular cover page is required, and entries must be counted and recorded according to when they were written. Make sure to allow time at this busy time for this process.