Boundless Life
By Jeff Wilson | He/Him/His | Toronto Buddhist Church
“This Tathagata pervades the countless worlds; it fills the hearts and minds of the ocean of all beings. Thus, plants, trees, and land all attain Buddhahood.”
-Shinran, Notes on Essentials of Faith Alone
Used by Rev. Castro's EcoSangha movement within the Buddhist Churches of America
Jodo Shinshu temples have been discussing environmental issues since at least 1970, when the BCA’s Pacific Seminar featured a workshop on “Buddhism and Ecology.” Today we have temples with solar panels, sanghas that recycle and use non-disposable chopsticks, youth that engage in beach clean-ups, and Sunday services devoted to Earth Day and education about environmental challenges. Even so, the inherently ecological messages of the Pure Land sutras and wider Buddhist tradition aren’t fully appreciated yet by many practitioners.
Shinran’s writings abound with natural metaphors: the ocean of the Vow, the buddha-ground, the Dharma-rain, Amida’s light, the clouds of delusion, the dawn of shinjin, the forests of blind passion, the garden of birth and death. This reliance on imagery and concepts from the living world was natural for him since he drew his inspiration from the Pure Land sutras, which describe the world from the perspective of nirvana, purified of the mental defilements that cause us to relate to everything in a self-centered way.
Something one can notice right away when reading the Pure Land sutras is how people and the surrounding environment aren’t separated from one another. The people are features of the Pure Land, just like the beautiful trees and soothing pools of water. They aren’t visitors from somewhere else: they are part of what makes the Pure Land such a wonderful environment. It’s the same with our ordinary world, but we fail to conceptualize things properly due to our delusions. We divide things into “humans” and “the natural environment,” which is already wrong. We aren’t visitors or trespassers. We’re part of the Earth, just as the bodhisattvas are part of the Pure Land. The concept of untrammeled Nature, with only animals and plants, water and soil, is a myth about a place that has never existed. It originated in urban romanticism that imagined an escape from the toil and crowding of cities, and colonial arrogance that failed to see how the “New World” was fully populated by a vast array of Indigenous people. In actuality, people have been present in every biome, nurturing forests and gardens, hunting animals, fishing, altering migration and feeding patterns, carrying out controlled burns, and otherwise affecting the living things around them, from the Arctic North to the Amazon rainforests to the surfaces of the great oceans, and everywhere else.
Given the complexity of the climate crisis and other challenges, some environmentalists fall into a trap of thinking of humanity as a disease that destroys the body of the Earth. They imagine that everything would be better if human beings went extinct, the sooner the better. That’s a problematic mentality because it separates us from the natural world, and that separation is where our problems arise from in the first place. Truthfully, we are of Nature and have a right to be here on the Earth. It is where we belong: the Earth would be sick without us. But we also need to stop making the Earth sick through our ignorant, greedy behavior. We need to wake up to our inner togetherness with other living things so that we take our proper place as one part of the sangha of Boundless Life (a translation of the name “Amida”).
In the Pure Land, the people, birds, trees, waters, and buildings all exist in complete harmony, contributing to its peace and beauty and supporting one another in the process of waking up. We need to return to that natural state of harmony for our own good and for the health of the animals, plants, waters, and soil of this Earth of which we are all a part. What’s needed isn’t an absence of humans, but the presence of balance, respect, and love. I found an encouraging example recently at the Winnipeg Jodo Shinshu temple. Last Fall they held a ceremony to induct an elm tree outside the temple as a member of the sangha. They recognized that it was part of their community just as the people are, and honored it by receiving it into their midst. They did it again with another tree in partnership with a local Christian church as part of an inter-faith effort: thus their Pure Land Buddhist teachings are nurturing not only themselves but helping others to reclaim their place in the pure and interconnected world where we are meant to be.
Another encouraging sign is the EcoSangha movement, founded by BCA minister Rev. Donald Castro, with major organizational support from lay leader Karen Akahoshi. For years they’ve been helping their sanghas and other temples to nurture a greater ecological consciousness through education and greening the practices of their congregations. One of the most interesting aspects of this Buddhist ecological ministry is Rev. Castro’s teaching of a special form of naikan. Naikan is a popular form of psychotherapy pioneered in Japan, based on Jodo Shinshu Buddhist insights. In the form that Rev. Castro teaches, the practitioner (and, by inference, the sangha) reflects on three important questions each day:
What have I done today for Mother Earth?
What have I done today to Mother Earth?
What has Mother Earth done today for me?
Meditating on these questions naturally deepens our awareness and helps us uncover the ways in which our relationships within this sangha of Boundless Life are in and out of balance. From that awareness arises stronger commitment to fulfill our responsibilities and practice a lifestyle of harmony and gratitude. That’s something we can carry out by making our temples a reflection of the Pure Land, and working with others beyond the temple to reshape society in more sustainable and respectful ways.
So, what have you done today for Mother Earth? What have you done today to Mother Earth?
What has Mother Earth done today for you, and what will you each do tomorrow?
