@abundance.tribe's BiWeekly Question: Is Deep Ecological Awareness Spiritual Awareness?

This is my response to @abundance.tribe's biweekly question which was to reflect on the following quote:

“Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness” RESPOND!

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I guess in order to answer this one has to first consider what 'deep ecological awareness' and 'spirituality' are!

What is deep ecological awareness?

This isn’t such an easy question to answer as there are so many versions of what ‘deep ecology’ looks like, including hundreds, if not thousands of traditional ways of life in which peoples live closely with nature, feeling as if they are part of a web of life, and I guess for many of these peoples such an awareness is a spiritual awareness in the most profound sense of the phrase, even if they wouldn't call it 'spiritual'.

However, for most of us following along with @abundance.tribe 'deep ecological awareness' probably means one of the new age incarnations of deep ecology which might include any variety of beliefs pick and mixed from paganism, shamanism, fairy lore, taoism and so on.

I think at a base minimum level deep ecological awareness at the very least needs to involve a feeling of interconnectedness with the web of life and a feeling that one should interfere as little as possible with natural ecosystems, and a sense that rather one should adapt to them and live one’s life in a low-impact way as possible.

In practice this will probably mean going a long way beyond reducing one’s consumption, doing more recycling and adopting alternative energy sources so one can reduce one’s ecological footprint (though it could well include all of those).

A deep ecological awareness will probably, in practice, involve leading a radical lifestyle by mainstream standards: extreme minimal consumption, reliance on local networks for one’s sustenance and some kind of ‘working with nature’ - in the communing sense rather than the ‘permaculture’ sense, although it might well include the later too.

Of course as with so many ‘fringe ideas’ deep ecology is fraught with divisions, so this is just a rough guideline that comes to mind.

What is spirituality?

This is easier for me to answer as I've 'found' Buddhism - for me spirituality means being on a path towards self-transcendence - in the Buddhist sense of the word this means trying to daily refine one’s practice of each aspect of the noble eightfold path.

So is Deep Ecological Awareness Spiritual Awareness>?

Well, Aspect 4 of the Noble Eight Fold Path: Right Action emphasises the importance of non-harming other living beings and certainly vegetarianism is part of this, and it's not too large a step to move from vegetarianism to veganism to eco-systems well-being.

Further, aspect 1: right understanding involves being aware of no-I - the fact that the self is an illusion, and that one is joined with everything else - in a kind of web of life sense of the word.

HOWEVER, in some ways the Buddhist world view could be said to go beyond the Earth and this particular ecosystem - it's the universe we're part of, not just the planet.

But I think in the meantime, for most of us mortals who haven't spent 10 years in a monastery and reached 'the base of infinite space' developing a sense of deep ecological care easily fits in with Buddhist ethics and so can be regarded as Spiritual, for sure!

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Loved your response @revisesociology, at the core I believe it is to see our self as a part of the whole. So yes very much intertwined. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this xxxx

Cheers!

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