Nature -- Religious aspects |
Ecotheology |
Nature -- Religious interpretations |
Eco-theology |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
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Searching... Bridgewater Public Library | 202.12 ARMSTRONG 2022 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | 202.12 ARMSTRONG | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Seekonk Public Library | 202.12 ARMSTRONG | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Somerset Public Library | 201.77 ARM 2022 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From one of the most original thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world, a profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature--and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life.
"Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change.... But Armstrong's book is both more personal and more profound. Its urgent message is that hearts and minds need to change if we are to once more learn to revere our beautiful and fragile planet." -- The Guardian
Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear, to awe, to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred.
In this short but deeply powerful book, the best-selling historian of religion Karen Armstrong re-sacralizes nature for modern times. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world's religious traditions, she vividly describes nature's central place in spirituality across the centuries. In bringing this age-old wisdom to life, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature's potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Religion historian Armstrong (The Lost Art of Scripture) delivers a searching, spiritual take on climate change. Lamenting humanity's alienation from nature, she contends that if humans are to survive a warming planet, "we have to change not only our lifestyle but our whole belief system." To that end, she explores how a variety of faith traditions conceptualize humankind's relationship with nature, observing that some pre-Christian cultures saw nature as "animate" and viewed humans as an integral part of it. Armstrong delves into Chinese religious traditions, noting that they have no creation stories and refrain from giving humans a privileged place in the world, unlike the Old Testament's depiction of Adam as the master of creation. The ancient Indian religion of Jainism, she writes, holds that animals, plants, rocks, air, fire, and water all have souls and are entitled to the same courtesy and respect as people, and she encourages readers to embrace the faith's "profound empathy" for one's surroundings. The illuminating examinations of a broad array of religious traditions are thought-provoking and have the power to change the way readers see the world and humanity's place within it. Eye-opening and wide-ranging, this original take on climate change edifies. (Sept.)
Guardian Review
In Laurence Sterne's 1759 novel Tristram Shandy, the hero describes how his good-natured uncle Toby is plagued by a particularly large and annoying fly which "buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner time". Eventually he manages to catch the offending insect, but instead of killing it, he releases it out of the window. "Why should I hurt thee?" he says. "This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me." The novel's hero is a child at the time, but this "lesson of universal good-will" leaves an abiding impression on him, setting, as he put it "my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation". Karen Armstrong cites this act of kindness at the end of a chapter exploring the crucial role played by the ancient concept of ahimsa in Indian spiritual traditions. Meaning "harmlessness", it prohibits any kind of injury to others and was one of the core principles that aspirants in yoga had to observe. But ahimsa was taken most seriously by the Jains, whose religious tradition was founded by Vardhamana Jnatiputra in the fifth century BC. He taught that it was not only humans who had a jiva (soul), but also every animal, plant and rock, as well as water, fire and air. It followed that all these things should be treated with the same courtesy and respect that we would wish to receive. This radical empathy meant that Jains avoided killing any insect or plant, and twice a day they asked for forgiveness for any creature they might have inadvertently injured or destroyed: "May all creatures pardon me. May I have friendship with all creatures and enmity toward none." For Armstrong, the concept of ahimsa is one of many examples of how ancient spiritual traditions can teach us how to regain a sense of the sacredness of nature. This matters because, as she argues, the future of our species may now depend on cultivating a Jain-like awareness of the terrible damage and harm we are inflicting on the other inhabitants of planet Earth. Armstrong was once a nun living in a convent entirely cut off from the outside world, without news or television. She and her peers were informed exceptionally of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, "but our superiors forgot to tell us when it was over, so we spent three weeks waiting anxiously for Armageddon". It was around that time that she also discovered the works of the Romantic poets - Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats - writers who also mourned humanity's "broken relationship with nature". Today, Armstrong says, the "fearful reality" of the climate crisis shows that "we have to change not only our lifestyle but our whole belief system". We need to learn from the Romantics and from the spiritual traditions of the Axial Age (900-200BC), which gave birth to Confucianism and Taoism in China as well as Hinduism and Buddhism in India, how to treat nature with reverence: "We have never wholly surpassed the profound insights of this time." Armstrong has written a rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity that comes from a lifetime spent studying religious thought. Each chapter explores ideas and practices that were fundamental to the way people experienced nature in the past, and shows how they can help us forge a new bond with the world around us. According to Armstrong, "recycling and political protests are not enough". As well as these things, we need a completely new worldview. Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change, explaining the impacts on our world and the measures we need to take to avert catastrophe. But Armstrong's book is both more personal and more profound. Its urgent message is that hearts and minds need to change if we are to once more learn to revere our beautiful and fragile planet, and to stop polluting it. For this to happen we need to reconnect with the myths and even the rituals of ancient spiritual traditions that have the power to awaken our primal emotional bonds to nature and reveal our "utter dependence" on it. A vital part of this process is to regain what Armstrong calls a "silent receptiveness" to the natural world. The Romantic poets understood this instinctively. But today, when we are all plugged into our smartphones, "the sounds of nature have retreated". For Taoists, such as Laozi in the fourth century BC, the intense contemplation of nature - "quiet sitting" - was the way to free yourself from your ego and to tune into the sacred animating force flowing through all of creation. People in many parts of the world developed a concept similar to this "sacred reality", one very different from the "analytical worldview" that emerged in the west, which separates the material from the spiritual and emphasises nature as "a commodity that must be exploited". This Taoist notion of "quiet sitting" resembles Wordsworth's idea of "a wise passiveness". To practise it, as Wordsworth wrote in Tintern Abbey, is to cultivate a "blessed mood", when "with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things." For Armstrong this is the key to unlocking a closer relationship with creation and ultimately preventing the impending climate catastrophe. Spending a few minutes each day quietly absorbing the sights and sounds of nature can help remind us that we are part of the world around us and depend on it, as a child depends on its mother.
Kirkus Review
The renowned scholar of comparative religions explores how we can use religion to meet global challenges. Armstrong taps into her encyclopedic knowledge to offer a way forward for a hurting world. Though the author primarily addresses environmental concerns, she delves deeper to investigate how the world's religions have treated the entirety of what is beyond the self. The author examines the ways in which faith traditions are grounded in an understanding and appreciation for the natural world, but the moral lessons involved are broader and more consequential. First, however, Armstrong seeks to convince readers to view nature through nonmodern eyes. "Unlike in our modern environmental discourse," she writes, "nature was presented and experienced imaginatively and aesthetically rather than scientifically, and this involved the emotions and the body." In numerous ancient cultures, religious ceremonies "not only expressed a deep anxiety about the sustainability of our world but made great demands on participants, who were expected not just to honor the divine in nature but also to reform themselves." Throughout the book, the author reminds readers of one of the fundamental differences between modern perceptions of nature as something separate and that of ancient cultures, which sought a close unity with the created world. Tying together dramatic creation tales, complex moral systems, and scriptural musings on the natural world, Armstrong argues for gratitude, mutual caregiving, and stewardship of resources, among other practices, to help bring us closer to our environment and, ultimately, to each other. "We simply need to recognize the sacrality of everything around us and observe how the myriad things tirelessly support one another," she writes. This concept of interconnectedness permeates many faith traditions as well as this text. While not one of Armstrong's most original or brilliant works, this book still is worth contemplating and discussing, and it serves as a fitting companion to the author's earlier work, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Thought-provoking wisdom regarding the natural world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 Mythos and Logos A great deal of environmental discussion is scientific: we constantly hear about emissions, particles, pollution levels and the ozone layer. This provides us with essential information and we have become familiar with the terminology. But it does not move us emotionally. Today we tend to use the term "myth" rather vaguely to mean something that is not true. When we hear of gods walking on the earth, a dead man striding out of his tomb or a sea parting to release an enslaved people, we dismiss these tales as "only myths." But in the past, "myth" meant something entirely different. For most of human history, there were two ways of thinking, speaking and acquiring knowledge about the world: mythos and logos.1 Both were essential to comprehending reality: they were not in opposition to one another but complementary modes of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence. Mythos was concerned with what was considered timeless. It looked both back to the origins of life and culture and inward to the deepest levels of human experience. It was concerned with meaning not practical affairs. Humans are meaning-seeking creatures. If our lives lack significance, we fall very easily into despair, and it was mythos that introduced people to deeper truths, making sense of their moribund and precarious lives by directing their attention to the eternal and universal. As far as we know, cats do not agonise about the feline condition, worry about the plight of cats in other parts of the world, or try to see life from a different perspective. But from a very early period humans felt compelled to devise stories that enabled them to place their lives in a different setting and give them a conviction that--against all the depressing evidence to the contrary--life had some meaning and value. A myth is an event which, in some sense, happened once, but which also happens all the time. Mythology points beyond the chaotic flux of historical events to what is timeless in human life, helping us to glimpse the stable core of reality. It is also rooted in what we call the unconscious mind. Myths are an ancient form of psychology. When people told tales of heroes descending into the underworld, struggling through labyrinths or fighting with monsters, they were bringing to light fears and desires from the obscure regions of the subconscious mind, which is not accessible by purely logical investigation but has a profound effect on our experience and behaviour. Myth could not be conveyed by rational proof; its insights were intuitive, like those of art and poetry. What's more, myth became a reality only when it was embodied in rituals and ceremonies, enabling participants to apprehend the deeper currents of life. Myth and ritual were so inseparable that it is a matter of scholarly debate which came first. Without spiritual practice, the mythical story would make no sense--in rather the same way as a musical score remains opaque to most of us until it is interpreted instrumentally. We are far more conversant today with logos, which is quite different from mythical thinking.2 Unlike mythos, logos corresponds to objective facts. Logos is wholly pragmatic: it is the rational mode of thought that enables human beings to function. It is the basis of our modern society. We use our logical powers when we want to make something happen, to achieve something or to persuade others to adopt a particular opinion. Where myth looks back to origins, logos forges ahead, develops new insights and invents something fresh. It also, for good and ill, helps us to achieve greater control over the natural environment. But logos, like mythos, has limitations. It cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. It cannot assuage our sorrow. It can unveil wonderful new facts about the physical universe and make things work more efficiently, but it cannot explain the meaning of life. From a very early period, Homo sapiens understood this instinctively. He used logos to develop new weapons and hunting skills; and he turned to myth, with its accompanying rituals, to reconcile him to the inevitable pain and grief that might otherwise overwhelm him. Before the modern period, both mythos and logos were regarded as essential, but by the eighteenth century the people of Europe and America had achieved such astonishing success in science and technology that they began to discount myth as false and primitive. Society was no longer wholly dependent on a surplus of agricultural produce--like all previous civilisations--but relied increasingly on technological resources and the constant reinvestment of capital. This freed modern society from many of the constraints of traditional culture, whose agrarian base had always been precarious. The long process of modernisation took some three centuries and involved profound changes: industrialisation, the British agricultural revolution, the political reform of society and an intellectual "enlightenment" that dismissed myth as futile and outmoded. Yet while our demythologised world may be comfortable for those of us fortunate enough to live in First World countries, it has not become the earthly paradise predicted by Francis Bacon and other Enlightenment philosophers. We must disabuse ourselves of the fallacy that myth is untrue or represents an inferior mode of thought. We may be unable to return wholesale to a premodern sensibility, but we can acquire a more nuanced understanding of the myths of our ancestors because they still have something to teach us. And of course, we continue to create our own myths, even if we don't describe them as such. The twentieth century saw the emergence of some very destructive myths that ended in massacre and genocide. We cannot counter these bad myths with reason alone because undiluted logos cannot deal with deep-rooted fears, desires and neuroses. We need good myths that help us to identify with our fellow human beings, and not just with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need good myths that help us to realise the importance of compassion, which challenges and transcends our solipsistic and tribal egocentricity. And, crucially, we need good myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, because unless there is a spiritual revolution that challenges the destructiveness of our technological genius, we will not save our planet. The great myths of the past presented the natural world as imbued with sacrality. But--I repeat--a myth makes no sense unless it is translated into practical action. Myths were not just cautionary tales: they had to be put into practice and were therefore always accompanied by ritual. Ritual, like myth, is often misunderstood in our pragmatic world; in the early modern period, it was rejected even by religious people as outdated superstition. Yet ritual ceremonies were indispensable to premodern religion, and they never were wholly spiritual affairs but involved the body and, through the body, the emotions. Neurophysicists tell us that, without being consciously aware of it, we receive and transmit important information through our senses, physical movements and gestures.3 Carefully crafted rituals making use of emotive music, dance and drama can dramatically bring a mythical event of the distant past into the present. If devised with sufficient skill, they can also yield an aesthetic ecstasy that enables participants to "stand outside" their mundane selves for a moment. By acting out a ritual role with skill and concentration, we can leave the self behind and, paradoxically, achieve self-enhancement. Through the arts we experience a more intense form of being and feel part of something larger, more momentous and complete.4 Only if myth is translated into action do we discover its relevance and meaning. Many of our ancestors' myths that we shall consider in this book taught them how to revere the natural environment. Unlike in our modern environmental discourse, nature was presented and experienced imaginatively and aesthetically rather than scientifically, and this involved the emotions and the body. In the next chapter, we shall see that different cultures across the world saw nature as imbued with the sacred in remarkably similar ways. Perhaps this perspective is built into the structure of the human mind. But the religious ceremonies were not just aesthetic exercises: they demanded practical commitment and response. We shall see that these rituals were hard work. They were time-consuming and demanding; they involved, quite literally, sacrifice. They not only expressed a deep anxiety about the sustainability of our world but made great demands on participants, who were expected not just to honour the divine in nature but also to reform themselves--to transcend their egos and reach out to all their fellow human beings. If today we have come to realise that devotion to the planet requires devotion to everything and everybody on it, then this is a perception that dates back to the very beginning of humanity. Excerpted from Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World by Karen Armstrong All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
Introduction | p. 3 |
1 Mythos and Logos | p. 20 |
2 Sacred Nature | p. 29 |
3 The Holiness of Nature | p. 54 |
4 Our Broken World | p. 69 |
5 Sacrifice | p. 80 |
6 Kenosis | p. 89 |
7 Gratitude | p. 102 |
8 The Golden Rule | p. 119 |
9 Ahimsa | p. 136 |
10 Concentric Circles | p. 146 |
Epilogue | p. 161 |
Acknowledgements | p. 173 |
Notes | p. 175 |
Select Bibliography | p. 189 |
Index | p. 197 |