• the Zen mindfulness practices demonstrated in the rest of the paper depend on one assumption
  • that the scientific narrative employed are within the salience landscape of the reader
• if they are not aligned to these narratives (ie, if they are religious fundamentalists) then these practices will fail to be effective
• this suggests that we may need to appeal to an even more fundamental human quality that IS shared by all of us, the creation of narratives

• interdependence and unity of all things was fundamental to both
  • the practice of Zen and
  • the science of ecology

• ecology
• Zen
• interdependency and unity are fundamental to both Zen and ecology
• both share a common nondualistic view of the fundamental identity of subject and surrounding
• a bison cannot be understood in isolation from the prairie
  • understanding requires studying the bison-prairie unit

• "The very study of ecology is the elaboration of Zen's nondualistic thinking".

author

• David Barish

comment

• adjacency
  • indyweb treats words and ideas as empty,
    • that is, they are selfless, and have no meaning except in relation to all other words / ideas

• ecology
• Indra's net of jewels -translation
• of Indra's Net story
• “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra,
  • there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer
  • in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.
• In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities,
  • the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net,
  • and since the net itself is infinite in dimension,
    • the jewels are infinite in number.
• There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude,
  • a wonderful sight to behold.
• If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it,
  • we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
• Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels,
  • so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring"
  • Author
    • Cook, F. H. (1977). Hua‐Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. [Google Scholar]

• connected and
• constantly changing.

• ecology and
• evolution.

• but they rather result from an unwillingness to take the needed action.

I present mindfulness and meditative aspects of Zen practice that provide the deeper “knowing,” or awareness that we need to inspire action on these problems.

comment

• emptiness is interdependency and change
• in Deep Humanity praxis, it is equivalent to
  • human INTERbeing and
  • human INTERbeCOMing

• Zen and deep evolution: The optical delusion of separation

• Fred W. Allendorf

• 2018

Source

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6099813/

Abstract

• The Buddha taught that everything is connected and constantly changing.

• We are living in a time of unprecedented rates of extinction.

• However, the problems underlying extinction generally do not result from a lack of scientific understanding, -but they rather result from an unwillingness to take the needed action.
• I present mindfulness and meditative aspects of Zen practice
  • that provide the deeper “knowing,” or awareness that we need to inspire action on these problems.