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One of the important voices in the academic field of religion and ecology Mary Evelyn Tucker made a declaration in 2003 that “the environmental crisis calls the religions of the world to respond by finding their voice in the larger Earth community. In so doing, the religions are now entering their ecological phase”. A careful examination of Jewish and Buddhist environmental sources and activism suggest that Mary Evelyn Tucker’s declaration could be right.
Buddhism and Judaism proffer several varieties of ideas which can contribute to the development of an environmental philosophy. Jewish philosophy, especially Jewish ethics begins with the certaincommandments that are obligatory upon all practicingJews. In Judaism, philosophical significance arises out of the processes of real daily activities. There is the idea of general injunction against the principle of baltashchit (wanton destruction), stewardship, obligations to animals, and theenvironmental regulations in the human community. Also, the multiplicity of Jewish traditions can add to current debates in environmental philosophy regarding both the theoretical justification of the moral deliberation of the natural non-human world and the practical environment policies. Judaism completely separates Godandhumanity from the natural or physical world. In Judaism, God is transcendent. The human life is chieflycharacterized by the life of reason and mind which is in this way comparable to God and therefore distinct from the natural processes of the physical world. Nature i.e. the physical world can be used by God and humanity, which He created in His image, to serve His or our interests, but nature has no value in itself. Thus, Judaism recommends a radical anthropocentrism in which nature is viewed merely as a resource for the satisfaction of human interests, wants, and needs. (Jamieson 2001, p. 6&7)
The Jewish environmental philosophy suggests that any contemplation of the natural or physical world, be it the tree or the ploughed field. It must be condemned in the harshest of terms if it in anyway interferes with the Torah. This is due to the fact that the Torah asserts that the meaning of our being on earth is to study the word of God, and should one interrupts this study to ponder about the opulence of the physical or natural world, then one has abandoned one’s essential humanity. Jeremy Benstein (1995), however explained that what the Jewish religion teaches is that one should respect nature and praise it as part of the divine creation but one’s study must not be interrupted in the course of these praises and respects, for studying the Torah is of more importance than praising God’s creation (153-7). Rabbi Yosefhayyim Caro (1800-95) explains that full credit should be given to the natural world as an expression of God’s creation but explains further that whoever studies the natural world alone has taken an inadequate path to the truth of God due to the fact that we can be mistaken in our study of nature whereas the study of the revealed word of God in the Torah has more certainty of leading towards the truth. Bensteins argues that that the real error is the dichotomizing of nature study and the Torah, for we need to do both. Yes if in order to relate to the natural environment you have to cease your learning, then your soul is in great danger. Another critical view of the Jewish tradition is related to Genesis 1: 28 in which God is quoted to have commanded humanity to subdue the earth. The verse goes thus:
“And God blessed them (i.e., Adam and Eve); and said unto them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1: 28).
There is therefore hardly any discussion of the Jewish religious foundations of environmental attitudes and the environmental crisis that does not make a reference to this verse. What has been suggested in the text of this verse is that the human race owns the earth and every available non-human living being in nature are merely means for the growth (“be fruitful and multiply”) of humanity. This idea of stewardship of the natural world denotes that the Bible endorses humans’ domination of nature for his own personal interest. However, this freedom of action, ownership, and human dominion is clearly limited in Judaism. One of such limitations can be seen in Genesis 1: 29 which restricts human to a only a vegetarian diet, the verse goes thus:
“ And God said: ‘Behold, i have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed – to you shall it be for food’” (Genesis 1: 29).
This verse thus places a restriction which limits human ownership and control over the living creatures in nature. Thus, the Torah has placed a limit on the right of human to subdue and use nature; therefore, humanity is not free to dominate the planet. According to the explanation given by Sforno, the power of humanity to use natural resources is recognized but is limited to only actions of domestication and self-defense. He asserts that in Judaism, dominion does not mean unrestricted domination. That is, humanity is the steward of the natural world but not its owner. (Jamieson 2001)
Buddhism being a major world religion has a long history of responding to human needs. The understanding of Buddhists about nature has always been based on a wide range of teachings, social views, and texts. The religion of Buddhism was basically a world-denying religion in its earliest stages in which existence was conceived of as having the characteristics of suffering, insubstantiality, and impermanence and the goal of the devotee was thought of as outside the world. The general belief among the early Buddhist is therefore that the best thing one could do is to turn one’s back on the world, in order to escape it. This way of thinking can be seen in the Buddha’s celebrated first sermon where the four noble truths were outlined. In this sermon Buddha’s inherent satisfactoriness of conditioned things and of the paths which lead away fom the suffering associated with this world. In one sentence, the early Buddhist texts fail in every systematic ways to develop a coherent world picture. Aside from its occasional information snippet, the Pali canon of Thevada Buddhism which is the earliest collection of available Buddhist scripture is well known for its lack of cosmological lore. However, about a thousand years after the death of the Buddha things changed as several prominent Buddhist commentators surfaced and seem to fully understand the need for a more fully worked cosmology than those present in the canon itself. (Roger 2006)
With the rise of religion and ecology movements Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars have made investigations into their various traditions to bring out the relevant teachings that would be helpful in the environmental awareness cultivation. A relatively new phenomenon that has been developed which reflects the scale of the environment crisis around the world is called “Green Buddhism”. This development has made some certain teachers and writers to bring up new interpretation of the Buddhist teachings. Gary Snyder is among the earliest voices of Buddhist environmentalism in NorthAmerica who shed light on the connections betweenecological thinking and Buddhist practice. Gary Snyder was a poet and a student of Zen, who after studying Zen in Japan cultivated it into his poetry much of which was set in the mountains of the western United States. Several activists urging better protection for forests in the US handed out one of his more lighthearted pieces which he entitled “Smokey the Bear Sutra”. However, in the 1990s interests in Buddhist views on the environment increased via conferences, journals, and books.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Buddhist environmental movement increased exponentially, Buddhist centres became well established in the west, and Buddhist leaders were explicitly addressing the eco-crisis and incorporating ecological awareness into their teachings. A good example of the environmental activism carried out by one these Buddhist centers occurred in New York after the congress passed the Clean Water Act. The New York Department of Conservation was challenged by the Zen Mountain Monastery over a forest protection and a beaver dam. Also, in North California, the Green Gulch Zen Center worked out water-use agreement with the national park and the neighboring farmers. Jewish environmental activism is much more common in Great Britain and the USA than it is in Israel. For about twenty years or thereabouts, the American Jewish community has been working on how to systematically address environmental issues which led to the establishment of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) in the year 1993, the COEJL has about thirty participating organizations from a wide range of American Jewish community. Another good example of Jewish environmental activism is that of the project organized by Hazon, a non-profit organization, which organized a “Jewish diverse group of riders” to cycle to Washington D.C., from Seattle to raise environmental awareness in Jewish and other faith communities. (Savage 2000 pg 15)
Reference
Aubrey Rose, ed., Judaism and Ecology (London: Cassell, 1992), pp. 114-115; and Ellen Bernstein, ed., Ecology and the Jewish Spirit: Where Nature and the Sacred Meet (Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998).
Nigel Savage, "Looking Beyond Communal Rhythms," Sh'ma,September 2000, p. 15.
Dale Jamieson, ed. Judaism. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Malden, Mass Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
Roger G., ed., The Greening of Buddhism. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Oxford University Press, 2006.
