Here I provide a summary of Bhikkhu Anālayo’s recent publication Mindfulness Between Early Buddhism and Climate Change. @Sphairos kindly notified the community of this publication a few days ago. Go here and scroll down the page to download a free PDF copy.
I am in gratitude to Bhikkhu Anālayo for gifting us with this most recent book. It is prolific in content (401 total pages). As such, I’ll post two additional entries to this thread to complete the summary within the next few days.
Overall Summary of the Book and Part I (BethL’s first post)
(1) Book’s Purpose
This book follows his earlier book Mindfully Facing Climate Change (Anālayo 2019e). He uses the new book to summarize his most up-to-date thinking on “Defining ‘Early Buddhism’” (Part I) and “Mindfulness” (Part II). Much of this is available in already-released publications but this provides a convenient summary. It also gives him another opportunity to fine-tune his comments on those two topics.
A key concern of my earlier publication had been to ground a concern with climate change in early Buddhist thought, leading me to the perhaps bold claim that “through mindfulness practice the challenge of climate change can become a path to awakening,” and “every step taken along this path can serve to diminish pollution both without and within” (Anālayo 2019e: 157). A central purpose of the first two parts of my present book has been to substantiate the position taken in my earlier book…
(2) Part III looks directly at climate change
…the present third part mainly takes up selected information from a range of different areas connected to climate change.
(3) Part III also introduces the new initiative called GALA
I propose to formulate a way of facing climate challenge with the help of the acronym GALA. Behind this acronym stand the following terms: Global Awareness Local Action. This motto intends to point to a way to face climate change that is in line with the four noble truths, and that relies on mindfulness by combining local action with an orientation provided through awareness of the global challenge.
The purpose of GALA is to inspire, encourage, and foster such self-reliance—by taking mindfulness as the refuge—in the face of the challenges posed by climate change (and related problems). The main idea is to offer a contribution to the range of initiatives and forms of activism that are already in place through mindful engagement based on the ethical orientation provided by the four noble truths, and to facilitate community building locally and via digital means. I am fortunate to have found three colleagues and friends to collaborate with me in this attempt: Rhonda Magee, Rebecca Henderson, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. The four of us share in having been or still being professors in our respective disciplines (my colleagues in law, economics, and medicine respectively), and we also are practitioners dedicated to the cultivation of mindfulness under an overarching framework of growth in the Dharma. The GALA initiative will be part of the environmental efforts undertaken at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
(4) Relevance of Early Buddhism (Part I of book)
It is relevant:
The worldview of early Buddhism reflects several aspects of ancient Indian cosmology. From the viewpoint of the potential of this worldview as a backdrop to facing climate change, a key question would be: Should the traditional religious setting of early Buddhist teachings be considered just irrelevant baggage, better to be dropped as extraneous to contemporary needs? Or could an appreciation of the framework it provides instead be relevant in some form for better understanding the challenges of climate change, and at times perhaps even help reorient attempts to confront it?
Nature of reality:
In the present case, be it Mount Meru or Mount Himālaya, the main point of their employment is to drive home the lack of stability and impermanent nature of even solid, large mountains. The lesson as such, even if expressed in a way that at first sight seems just an outdated myth, is a significant one and deserves to be taken seriously.
No omniscient Buddha:
Hence, adopting a text-historical perspective on the attribution of omniscience to the Buddha is of considerable consequence. Closer study reveals the historical lateness of the idea that the Buddha claimed to be omniscient… The point is only that, when assuming the traditional role of a teacher in the ancient Indian setting, the Buddha is depicted as doing so in an open and flexible manner that left considerable room for personal freedom and uninhibited investigation.
On trying to shoe-horn mythology into climate science:
It would not be doing justice to the oral nature of these texts and the symbolic significance of numbers in the ancient setting if one were to start computations based on a literalist reading, contrasting the time span required for this succession of kings with our knowledge of the evolution of species and the age of this planet.
Ignore rebirth?
From an early Buddhist viewpoint, following the eightfold path of practice does not require accepting rebirth on blind faith. There is sufficient scope for personally taking an agnostic position on the matter. At the same time, however, there is a need to acknowledge the ubiquity of rebirth in early Buddhist discourse for arriving at a proper understanding of the type of teachings reflected in these texts. A central concept in the background of the notion of rebirth is karma, literally “action,” which in its early Buddhist setting stands for the doctrinal affirmation that the ethical quality of the intentions motivating one’s deeds will have repercussions to be experienced sooner or later, in the present or in future lives.
Karma and evolution:
Yet, the early Buddhist teachings on causation in general eschew mono-causality, envisaging whatever happens instead as the result of a network of causes and conditions. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution therefore does not obviate the law of karma. Instead, the law of karma can be visualized as operating within the framework provided by the evolution of species, in the sense that one’s former deeds will influence one’s rebirth among a particular one of the species extant at a particular time. Alternatively, one’s former deeds may result in being reborn in another realm. Another problem comes up in relation to the role of karma as moral responsibility, which also does not function in a unilateral manner in the sense of excluding the possibility of receiving help from others.
Social aspect of morality:
The affirmation of moral responsibility of an individual does not imply that one cannot help others, something that is possible in various ways and therefore not confined to the idea of transferring merit. In fact, to assume that the Buddhist position was that one cannot help others in principle would be contrary to the very essence of Buddhism as a historical institution, which has its starting point in the compassionate decision of the Buddha to teach.
Understanding the nature of awakening:
In a recent monograph study (Anālayo 2023e), I have tried to provide a perspective that covers key passages on the nature of awakening in early Buddhism… from a comparative perspective the idea of four levels of awakening emerges as an integral dimension of early Buddhist thought…
It follows that there is no problem with the notion that already the stream-enterer is endowed with the eightfold path…
Understood in this way, the tendency in the early discourses to highlight such firm confidence, together with solid ethical conduct, reflects the importance accorded to the personal transformation to be expected from the gaining of stream-entry. … The early discourses clearly distinguish between the confidence that results from realizing stream-entry and manifestations of confidence in general, qualifying the former by using specific terminology, here rendered as “experiential confidence.”
Doctrine on self:
An emphasis on the doctrine of not self is not a product of an elitist predilection among scholars; its centrality is quite evident in the early texts. The belief that this centrality is somehow contradicted by the obvious fact that lived forms of Buddhism rely on the notion of an individual subject results from a misunderstanding…
This leaves little room to posit either a compatibility with belief in a self or a restriction of self-notions to identification with the aggregates. Moreover, instructions on the absence of a self are such a recurrent feature of the early discourses that the idea that the Buddha just did not provide a positive or negative answer to this question is not particularly compelling…
In view of the above evidence, it is simply unconvincing to profess that the early Buddhist discourses fail to present a rejection of the existence of a (permanent) self. The agreement among the parallels in the above cases is conclusive evidence for “early Buddhism” in this respect. An attempt to go beyond that and identify some sort of pre-canonical Buddhism that differs substantially from such agreement remains similarly unconvincing.
Doctrine on conditionality:
As the doctrinal counterpart to the teaching on the absence of a self, conditionality in early Buddhist thought has a similarly comprehensive range of applicability. The idea that dependent arising is confined to matters of the mind does not reflect the position of early Buddhist thought accurately…
Even though deeds of course originate in the mind in the form of intentions, their verbal or bodily actualization goes beyond what is purely mental, and such actual deeds form the condition—to be discerned by those who have a vision of “dependent arising”—for becoming a brahmin, instead of birth. Elsewhere the physical body is also qualified as being “dependently arisen,” which thus constitutes another instance of the full Pāli term being applied to what is more than just a matter of the mind…
In sum, it seems fair to conclude that the principle of specific conditionality that informs presentations of dependent arising is of general relevance. This is not to deny that the overarching concern of this early Buddhist teaching is indeed the human predicament and its root causes in the mind. The point is only that its application cannot be confined to the workings of the mind alone…
The basic principle enshrined in this way is hardly a novel discovery. Even animals must be able to recognize certain specific conditions required for their own survival, such as where food can be found or how predators can be avoided. The significantly Buddhist perspective on the matter lies in applying this basic principle to the human predicament in the understanding that the entire gamut of subjective experience is merely the result of conditional relationships, with no permanent entity found anywhere in addition to or apart from these.
End Part I Summary