Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology, Edited by Allan Hunt Badiner

(265 pp., Parallax Press, 1990)

Dharma Gaia is indeed a harvest, and a seasonable one. Buddhism and ecology have in recent years had much to say to each other. Allan Badiner has done us all a service in collecting these dialogues. Through such points of view as feminism, deep ecology, Native American shamanism, and dharma, a common world view emerges in which the interdependence of all beings is the theme, with the inseparability of human beings and the natural environment an urgent variation.

It’s clear from this diversity that we’ve moved from a monocrop mentality (either Eastern or Western, mysticism or science, quietistic or activistic) to a wild and orderly ecosystem of the mind/heart. The very language found in these pages—Dharma Gaia (Dharma, from the Sanscrit for Buddhist teaching; Gaia, the Greek Earth Goddess), ecocentricity, Green Buddhism, biospirituality—bespeak the emergence of a world view that looks beyond traditional categories.

And it’s about time! If anyone’s still waiting for Buddhism to come to the West, listen up: it’s happening.

As co-reviewers, we agreed early on in our readings in Dharma Gaia to abandon all pretense of covering the whole. In our two reviews below, each of us followed his own idiosyncratic interests in this wild and orderly world of viewpoints, meanwhile keeping one eye on his own environment. Different readers will find different connections. Find yours.

Continue reading:

RECYCLING TRASH INTO HAIKU by Patrick McMahon

A SENSE OF PLACE by Reed Hamilton

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From the Fall 1990 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 7, No. 1)

Text © 1990–2022 by Patrick McMahon & Reed Hamilton

Ecology, Engaged Buddhism, Literature

Reed Hamilton is a builder/editor/environmental activist in Nevada City, California where he practices with the Ring of Bone Zendo.

Patrick McMahon has been a contributor to Inquiring Mind since 1997, writing on literature, East and West, and whether and whither the twain meet. As a member of a sangha that includes two cats and as an occasional peripatetic monk, he persists with his training as a Zen Buddhist layperson in Oakland, California, at the Persimmon Tree Zendo, an affiliate of Ring of Bone Zendo. He is presently participating in an oral history project exploring how Bodhidharma came to the Northwest.

Reed Hamilton is a builder/editor/environmental activist in Nevada City, California where he practices with the Ring of Bone Zendo.