Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis by [David R. Loy]
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David R. Loy
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Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis Kindle Edition
by David R. Loy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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How can we respond urgently and effectively to the ecological crisis—and stay sane doing it?
This landmark work is simultaneously a manifesto, a blueprint, a call to action, and a deep comfort for troubling times. David R. Loy masterfully lays out the principles and perspectives of Ecodharma—a Buddhist response to our ecological predicament, introducing a new term for a new development of the Buddhist tradition.
This book emphasizes the three aspects of Ecodharma:
- practicing in the natural world,
- exploring the ecological implications of Buddhist teachings,
- and embodying that understanding in the eco-activism that is needed today.
Within these pages, you’ll discover the powerful ways Buddhism can inspire us to heal the world we share. Offering a compelling framework and practical spiritual resources, Loy outlines the Ecosattva Path, a path of liberation and salvation for all beings and the world itself.
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Length: 220 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled Language: English
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Review
A Best Spiritual Book of 2019--Spirituality & Practice
"Ecodharma lays an invaluable foundation for Buddhist environmental analysis and activism. Anyone concerned about the future of sentient beings and living systems on this planet should read this book."
--Christopher Ives, author of Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage
"David Loy is the most significant and inspiring advocate for the meeting of Eastern wisdom and Western social reform writing today. This book offers a timely and urgently needed voice, based on deep experience in the Zen tradition and on thorough scholarship--and is immensely readable and enjoyable too. A true guiding star in our firmament."
--Henry Shukman, Zen teacher, poet, and author of One Blade of Grass --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
David R. Loy's books include the acclaimed Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution; The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory; The World Is Made of Stories; A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency; and The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons, a finalist for the 2006 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award. He was the Besl Professor of Ethics/Religion and Society at Cincinnati's Xavier University and is qualified as a teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Zen Buddhism.
His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Turning Wheel, Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. He is on the editorial or advisory boards of the journals Cultural Dynamics, Worldviews, Contemporary Buddhism, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and World Fellowship of Buddhists Review. He is also on the advisory boards of Buddhist Global Relief, the Clear View Project, Zen Peacemakers, and the Ernest Becker Foundation. He lives in Boulder, CO --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 1267 KB
Print Length: 220 pages
Publisher: Wisdom Publications (29 January 2019)
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Cynthia Rich
5.0 out of 5 stars A significant contribution
Reviewed in the United States on 16 August 2019
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These days, because of the aging population, there are many books, talks, retreats on a Buddhist approach to being with death. This is perhaps the first of what in five of ten years will be many books, talks, retreats on being with climate catastrophe. Ecodharma is not for the faint of heart but neither are the times we live in.
I am grateful to Loy for this beautiful, deeply thoughtful examination of Buddhism and the planetary emergency. Although he provides an extensive and intensive review of the Heart Sutra and the ways of approaching "form is emptiness/empiness is form", those of us who haven't already explored the dharma of emptiness/nonself could find this a tough read.
For some years it's seems that Western dharma teaching--so beautiful, important, life-transforming in so many ways--was weak on getting students/yogis even started on exploring this central aspect of Buddhism. As reading Ecodharma makes clear, such understanding is critical not only to help us grasp the reality and meaning of our personal deaths (and indeed the delusion of self that is the basic source of our suffering ) but also to grasp the reality and meaning of the "death" of our planet as we've known it. So it could be helpful before delving into this profound and valuable work to at least read or listen to teachers who might prepare the mind, lay a groundwork (e.g. Rodney Smith, Stepping Out of Self-Delusion).
For everyone who has laid a groundwork (to at least, in the old joke, not have a heart attack upon hearing the Heart Sutra), this book is invaluable, deeply thought, providing exactly the necessary wisdom for these times.
To quote Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, quoted in Ecodharma (p. 148):
In Buddhist practice we say congratulations because now is the time we have been practicing for. No more just practicing the dance. We must now dance. And this is not a dress rehearsal.
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Scott Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a deeply important book!
Reviewed in the United States on 10 June 2019
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I have been a Zen practitioner for 40 years now and for over 8 years I regularly wrote articles on climate change and other environmental issues for an environmental publication. David Loy has taken great care in writing his book Ecodharma and I believe that it is of pivotal importance to we Zen practitioners. It is no longer enough for us to diligently practice our zazen with a sangha and study with a credible Zen teacher, while more or less ignoring the climate emergency that increasingly surrounds and engulfs us. In light of all this, Loy is on track in urging us to seriously reconsider what our bodhisattva vows truly mean and what our practice as a whole requires of us.
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Douglas I. Wallace
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for this time of crisis
Reviewed in the United States on 12 May 2020
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In a world accelerating toward catastrophe (climate change, pollution, extinction, and now pandemic), what are we to do about it? David Loy has written an extraordinary work that both challenges and redefines the Buddhist path to meet these global threats. With piercing insight, he argues that the historical emphasis on individual liberation simply isn’t enough; we must reimagine and act toward a collective awakening if we are to survive, along with our countless fellow creatures. Readers versed in Buddhist thought will have easier access to "Ecodharma", but it has deep rewards for those who resonate with Loy’s diagnosis of our moment in history.
In Loy’s view, the “Axial Age” traditions (including Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Vedanta, and the Abrahamic religions) all share a “cosmological dualism”. This posits that there is another, better world beyond this one to which we can aspire if we adhere to the practices and beliefs within the tradition. Not only does this belief devalue the Earth as a mere backdrop for individual salvation, it perversely supports unbridled resource exploitation precisely because this world is of incidental importance. Go forth and multiply, have dominion over the earth and all its creatures… and our global crash is what ensues.
Loy suggests that “Buddhism is not just what the Buddha said, but what he began.” In this way, he honors the many forms and expressions that Buddhism has taken as it migrated to different cultures across the globe and over millennia. In an especially incisive critique, he observes a new twist on the solitary renunciate who rejects the world to secure his own salvation: modern-day meditation practices are often narrowly deployed to help people cope better with the demands of daily life. And for those who have benefited from mindfulness or other stress reduction methods, there is no doubt that they can bring inner peace. But if the remedy stops there, it has simply privatized the costs of pervasive social ills. In other words, it’s simply not enough to help the individual adapt to a world that is crying out for a deeper, systemic cure.
It’s impossible to describe here the many gems of insight that Loy offers us, but one example is his fresh take on the five precepts that many Buddhist practitioners adopt. Along with not killing, lying, stealing, or cheating sexually, there is abstention from intoxicants that cloud the mind. Within this he includes consumerism, which has addicted humanity like no other drug, and left behind the wreckage of resource depletion across the world. We are all (not equally) complicit in this crime, but he makes it clear that it’s time for a collective change.
Fortunately, the book is not just a litany of disasters, however well described. The Buddhist tradition already has in place an answer to these shortcomings – the way of the bodhisattva. Traditionally, the bodhisattva makes a vow to delay his or her enlightenment to liberate all beings. What Loy brings to this ideal is a recognition that the Earth is quite literally our mother, and that the fate of ourselves and all creatures are inseparable from hers. He builds on extensive quotes from Joanna Macy, Thich Nhat Hahn, Thomas Berry, and many others to make his case for a profound shift to collective awakening. Finally, he identifies a number of potential political and social actions to this end.
While the entire volume demonstrates his broad mastery of Buddhist thought, Loy is anything but a doctrinaire Buddhist. He not only cites many sources of perennial wisdom, but recognizes that the “eco-sattvas” the world desperately needs are appearing already from a multitude of cultures and traditions. Anyone who recognizes the spiritual dimension of our human challenge will benefit enormously from reading this superlative work.
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Garry Claridge
5.0 out of 5 stars What not to do, but how to do it!
Reviewed in the United States on 14 March 2019
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Good discussion to lay out the basics and questions for an emerging Ecodharma.
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