Dharma Gaia??

What is Dharma?

DHARMA is the Sanskrit word that is variously translated as "truth" or "sacred duty," but the root of the word is the verb *Dha which means "to adhere." So Dharma can be broadly defined as "That to which we adhere." In ancient Hindu cultures, the word referred specifically to the "sacred duties" incumbent upon each caste of citizens--priests, warrior/aristocrats, merchants, and skilled laborers. But in its later evolution, with the rise of Buddhism, Dharma came to be synonymous with the teachings of the Buddha, who defined it in accordance with the "Three Dharma Seals"--litmus tests, as it were, for the truth inherent in anyone's teachings:

Impermanence--the truth that everything in our phenomenal experience is subject to change through time. It can be summarized as "Everything changes, and nothing lasts."

Interbeing--the truth of prattita samutpata, or reciprocal causality: that everything mutually arises with, and is interrelated with, everything else--that without everything in the universe, there could not be anything in the universe. It can be summarized as "This is because that is."

Oneness--the transcendent truth, which Buddhists refer to as Nirvana (literally meaning "extinction")--that multiplicity itself is an illusion--that there is no separate self at all. It can be succinctly summarized in the refrain from the Upanishads: "That art thou."

These three Dharma seals stand in a direct logical relationship, but each, in turn, requires greater effort to understand, much less realize. One could summarize this relationship as follows:

(1) Everything changes and nothing lasts (Impermanence).
(2) The above is true because everything arises from its interactions with everything else, and these interactions are themselves impermanent. (Interbeing).
(3) The above being true, it follows that nothing is really separate from anything else. (Oneness).

This, then, is at heart, what the Buddha meant by "Dharma"--the truth that is not subject to refutation, and that is affirmed by every wisdom tradition on the planet--including modern science. The First Dharma Seal--impermanence--corresponds to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Entropy; The Second Dharma Seal--interbeing--corresponds to the First Law of Thermodynamics--the Law of Conservation of Matter/Energy. And the Third Dharma Seal has been validated by modern Quantum Physics and String Theory, and by Bell's Theorem in particular--that "separate particles" are ultimately a delusion, an artifact of observation methods.

So the Dharma is that which is true, whether we believe it or not. For this reason, Buddhist thinkers came to perceive the world of their observations and experience as the Dharmakaya--the Body of Dharma.

What is Gaia?

In 1990, acting on the suggestion of Vietnamese Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Allen Hunt Badiner edited an anthology of writings that related Buddhist practice to environmentalism, and chose for his anthology the title Dharma Gaia (Parallax Press, 1990) as a bilingual pun on the Buddhist concept of Dharmakaya. This title spoke deeply to me, because it seemed, in one phrase, to encapsulate the fundamental reality which Western Civilization has abandoned, to our collective peril, in its relentless pursuit of More Stuff: that we live on a finite, irreplaceable, and uniquely life-supporting planet, Gaia, where--as Martin Luther King put it, "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

So what is Gaia, and why not simply call it "Earth" or "The World"?

GAIA is the ancient Greek name for the primordial Earth goddess, and provides the root (ge) of all the Greek-derived words that refer to the Earth—geology, geometry, geode, and the name George, originally meaning “farmer” or “earth-worker” (ge + ourgos ) In recent years, the mythic name Gaia has been brought back from archeological obscurity and given new life by certain renegade scientists. In the late 1960s, at the suggestion of his neighbor, novelist William Golding, British biochemist James Lovelock adopted Gaia as a suitable name for his revolutionary new theory of biogenic global homeostasis. In a nutshell, Lovelock suggested that, far from being mere passengers on a planet that happened to be suitable for living things, the biota collectively and interactively sustain the far-from-equilibrium thermal, atmospheric, and geochemical conditions that, in turn, sustain life. Since 1970, when Lovelock published his first book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, the name Gaia has gained widespread currency as a metaphor for our new ecological understanding of life on Earth as a fully integrated, self-sustaining, but perishable system of which we are a part, rather than merely as a “resource” with no value until it is transformed into commodities. It thus has come to refer, not only to an ancient Greek myth and a scientific model named after the myth, but also to a metaphor based on the model, and a worldwide cultural movement based on that metaphor.

This Dharma Gaia blog, then, is a place for myself and anyone else out there in Cyberspace who shares these interests in the interface of spirituality and ecological awareness to chat about, and share information about, anything that relates to this nexus--anything, that is, that perceives the healing of mind, body, and spirit as inseparable from the corresponding healing of self, community, and planet. Welcome to the Discussion!