Peace with the Earth: Animism and Contemplative ways

In this paper I problematize the modern everyday ontology that categorically separates the animate from the inanimate, showing that such separation has ethical implications that are environmentally devastating. I propose a turn to an animistic ontology and epistemology. Acknowledging the challenge of such turn, I suggest contemplative practices as a way to aid this turn. I engage a variety of literature and resources from Daoism, Buddhism, Appelbaum’s work, neuroscientific findings to support my exploration of the connection between animistic perception and contemplative ways

Reclaiming our Moral Agency through Healing: A Call to Moral, Social, Environmental Activists

This paper makes the case that environmental education needs to be taken up as a moral educa- tion to the extent that we see the connection between harm and destruction in the environment and harm and destruction within human individuals and their relationship, and proceeds to show this connection by introducing the key notion of human alienation and its psychological factors of wounding, dissociation or split, self and other oppression and exploitation, all of which result in compromised moral agency. To this end, the paper further makes the case that we need to replace the culture of alienation with a culture of healing and reclamation of fundamental humanity manifest as compassion and wisdom, and presents an ideal of moral agency that would emerge when all parts and dimensions of one’s being——body–mind–heart– energetics——are aligned, attuned and integrated, having healed from the body–mind split, mind–heart split, body–spirit split and mind–matter split. Concepts and imagery borrowed from Asian philosophies, such as Buddhism and Daoism, are offered as illustrative resources for the project of reclaiming uncompromised moral agency and its manifestation through compassion and wisdom. These concepts include hungry ghosts, bodhicitta, sunyata and wu-wei

Beyond the Educated Mind: Towards a Pedagogy of Mindfulness

Faced with increasing social and environmental disintegration worldwide, and moreover, a seeming inability to respond adequately to the exigency, I problematize the intellectualist bias and resulting disembodiment in our educational practice. I argue that this bias contributes to the problem at two levels: lack of intrinsic valuing of the world; and inability to translate knowledge into action. I then propose the practice of mindfulness as a tool with which we can recover our ability to value the world intrinsically and to embody knowledge

The three I’s for ethics as an everyday activity: Integration, intrinsic valuing, and intersubjectivity

In addressing the theme of ethics as an everyday activity. this essay makes acase for the primacy of preventive ethics over interventional ethics.Preventive ethics aims at creating a condition of viability and wellbeing forall members of the earth community. an ethical ideal that follows from thethesis that alllife~phenomena are interconnected and interpenetrating. Bysharp contrast, interventional ethics .functions to redress the alreadyaccrued harm and damage that results from not paying attention, on aneveryday basis, to the community members\u27 bio~social~psychic conditions ofwellbeing. This essay suggests three interlinked practices for preventiveethics. First, we must integrate the mind/body, self/other, and subject/object.Second, we must learn to value the world intrinsically, as we do in aestheticappreciation. Third, we must cultivate the art of intersubjectivity in order tocounter the prevailing habit of objectifying the other

Decentering the ego-self and releasing of the care-consciousness

This paper explores ways of cultivating an extraordinarily expansive caring consciousness for an extraordinarily challenging time such as ours.  This is not the first time humans have faced the challenge of caring. But now the scope and urgency of the challenge have changed. Morality bas always been centrally about extending care-consciousness beyond the narrow confines of the individual self to the other, be it the family, clan, village, or nation. We are now challenged to extend care-consciousness to the whole of the biosphere and to the whole of humanity as a constituent part of it.  Also, unlike before, we do not have the luxury of evading this challenge for the same reason that we could not afford to let a critically wounded person lose more blood. In both cases, intensive care is a must.  My argument proceeds in two stages: first, I analyze the conditions that afford caring, and then I examine one "experiment" in caring consciousness, that of the Buddhist theory and practice of caring. I select this example because it illustrates clearly the conditions of care-consciousness that I analyze in the first part of the paper