Buddhist View of Nature

In Buddhism, nature is both seemingly irrelevant and of the greatest import. This paradox arises because Buddhist scripture rarely mentions nature directly in terms of its role in Buddhist philosophy. However, once one begins Buddhist practice, nature’s importance, its immediate relevancy and vitality and relationship to one’s practice is uncovered.

The Indian religious tradition historically praised the practice of leaving the distractions of city life by going forth into the wilderness to deepen one’s spiritual training. The Buddha himself renounced his guaranteed life of luxury and comfort as a prince—and eventual king—to go forth into the wilderness to find the answer to a single question: “How can we rid ourselves of suffering?”¹

The Buddha’s awakening to the true nature of his existence came as he sat resolute through the night, under a starlit sky, meditating beneath the boughs of the Bodhi tree. During each successive watch of the night (which was likely calculated through observation of the heavens, not through the Buddha wearing a Timex :) ), he attained deeper levels of awakening that culminated with the rising of the morning star in full-blown Awakening. His mind was awakened, enlightened, to his true nature and to the true nature of all things. Additionally, near the end of this marathon meditation, the future Buddha conquered Mara, the personification of fear, greed, and hatred, and in doing so, reached down and touched the Earth, declaring that with the Earth as his witness, he had overcome those three poisons.

What does this say about nature? Nothing pedagogically. But if we look closely at these myths, the natural world was key in the Buddha’s awakening. He renounced his worldly life and pursued the life of a wandering monk, at home everywhere because he was not at home anywhere. The watches of the night framed his stages of awakening, culminating in the rising of the morning star. Mother Earth acted as his witness. The Bodhi tree symbolized his axis mundi—the immovable point of his universe, like the cross in Christianity or the altar within the circle, at the intersection of the Four Quarters, where Fire, Air, Water, and Earth meet.

In his forty years of teaching after his awakening, he continually returned to nature as a primary source of wisdom and practice. Just like Thoreau experienced at Walden pond, a life away from the excessive energy of the city creates a space of simplicity, of calm, that is necessary to penetrate the delusions we hold about the world and ourselves. That’s not to say that one cannot practice Buddhism as a householder. Rather, it simply shows us that simplifying our lives as much as we are capable within the constraints of our responsibilities is a good practice to undertake.

There’s a famous story that forms the source of Zen philosophy in which the Buddha silently held aloft a lotus flower in front of an audience of 1,200 monks who had come to hear his teachings. By this most simple of acts, one monk in the audience, Mahakashyapa, was fully awakened. Some of the other monks present were probably not in a place where they could benefit much from such direct teaching, and others likely gained some measure of wisdom. But the key here is that the calm, silent simplicity of seeing a flower in bloom contains all the wisdom in the universe.

We can also look at nature in terms of Buddhism’s teachings on compassion and peace. In the third chapter the Way of the Bodhisattva, Shantideva writes:

Thus, for every single thing that lives,
In number like the boundless reaches of the sky,
May I be their sustenance and nourishment
Until they pass beyond the bounds of suffering.²

It is our vow, our practice, as Buddhists, to attain awakening not for ourselves, but for the benefit of all beings. This practice contains the seeds for the development of skillful qualities such as compassion, love, devotion, energy, and generosity. But more importantly for our purposes here, it exemplifies the inherent equality of all sentient beings: I see a dog, a raven, a cheetah, a jellyfish, as inherently no different from a human.

They are all living, sentient beings, and it is my wish that none should suffer. This is not some naive thought that we can, or should, prevent gazelle from suffering in the jaws of the predatory cheetah (because, truly, to prevent that would cause the cheetah to suffer eventual starvation). Rather, we see nature as it is. Life flourishes on earth due to its diversity and the adaptability of genetics under the pressures of natural selection. The predator-prey model plays a major role in this process. However, still we feel sorrow when seeing a great lion extinguish the life of a zebra to feed his pride, or a leopard kitten perish because his mother was unable to kill enough to feed him. We accept that this is the means by which species survive, and we see all beings as inherently equal, requiring our compassion, love, and respect.

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¹ The Buddhist definition of suffering is something I plan on posting here later this week. Stay tuned!

²Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night, Dalai Lama. 1994.


*This article was posted by Mike of Unknowing Mind while he was a guest blogger here. When I switched over to the new Blogger system on 9/12/06, the byline was changed by Blogger. I want to give credit where credit is due.