Gaian Triads

Numbered lists, particularly in threes, fours, and fives, have long been used as mnemonic devices to help transmit spiritual teachings through the generations. There are obvious reasons for this; we learn best by organizing information into symmetrical patterns. And so we have, in Buddhism, many numeric schemes--the Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Six Paramitas, the Four Brahma-Viharas, the Three Dharma Seals, the Twelve Links of Codependent Origination, the Five Skandhas, and so forth. All these numeric schemes help practitioners to reinforce their understanding of, and grounding in, the Dharma.

In my own life, I seem to have been endowed with the mission to propagate Gaian Buddhism, the wonderful synthesis of Buddhist Practice and Gaianity, or global ecological awareness and commitment, that has been initiated by masters such as Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama, and propagated by an array of eminent Gaians, such as Joanna Macy, Elizabeth Roberts, Gary Snyder, and (closer to home) my own friends and role models, John Croft in Australia, Chris Maser in Oregon, Dick and Pat Richardson in Texas, Evan Eisenberg in New York, Ian Prattis in Canada, and Martin Ogle in Virginia.

And so my own Gaian thinking and teaching has come to be organized around similar numeric patterns, particularly triads and tetrads. So here is a partial list of the triads and tetrads that have become the "strange attractors" in my own thinking:

1. Eat, Survive, Reproduce.

This triad of verbs I originally took from a cartoon I saw (I forget where) that showed a series of creatures in an ascending evolutionary sequence--a paramecium, a fish, a salamander, a dinosaur, a mastodon, and an ape--all with thought-bubbles saying "Eat, Survive, Reproduce."

The last frame showed an early human, but he was looking perplexed, and his thought-bubble was "What am I supposed to do?"

The implicit answer, of course, was the same as the above:--"Eat, Survive, Reproduce." So this first, foundational triad reminds us, from the start, of our kinship with all the rest of life--that our basic agenda, however clever and complex we have become, is the same as that of every other living being. From this common agenda we share with all life, we may logically derive all the others.

2. Health, Competence, and Adaptive Flexibility. This triad describes the basic survival values of all living beings, and can be logically derived from the above three injunctions.

• Health is internal homeostasis, maintained by the influx of matter/energy from Gaia through food, water, and breath, the elimination of waste, and the autoregulation of these processes. It is, of course, the prerequisite of the others.
• Competence is, quite literally, the ability to compete--that is, the ability to function effectively within a given, generally predictable niche, whether ecological or sociocultural. For a rabbit, competence consists of alertness to potential predators and the ability to find a safe hiding place for her babies; for a feline, competence is the ability to stalk prey effectively and all this entails. And of course for any human job or profession, competence is the ability to deliver the goods for which you are being paid, as well as or better than your competitors do. Competence, then, depends on specialized skills adapted to a given, relatively stable environment.
• Adaptive Flexibility refers, conversely, to the generalized ability to adapt to unpredictable changes in one's environment. In the natural world, as in the social world, there tends to be a trade-off between competence and adaptive flexibility: the more highly specialized we become, the less able we are to adapt when the conditions we mastered through specialization change too quickly or dramatically. Evolutionary history is littered with extinct organisms who were admirably specialized for one environmental niche, once that niche changed. Those organisms that have survived the longest, conversely, tend to be those that are highly adaptive and flexible. This is why, for example, coyotes far outnumber wolves, in the dramatically changed environment induced by human civilization. Wolves were highly competent within their native niche, as running social predators in wide-open northern woodlands and prairies. But coyotes--solitary, devious, and diversified in diet--have been able to thrive much more effectively on the fringes of the civilized world, despite the relentless efforts by farmers and ranchers to exterminate them.
• Self, Community, Planet. With this triad, we move into the exclusively human realm, in the present generation, as members of a species which, through language and culture, has come to dominate the entire planet, and whose numbers and resource consumption now directly threaten the survival of that planet as a habitat for life, human or otherwise. This triad specifies our shared obligation in this altered world we have inherited, creating what I like to call a new, Gaian Categorical Imperative: To assume responsibility, in every decision we make, for the health, competence and adaptive flexibility of ourselves, our community, and our planet simultaneously.
• Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. This wonderful triad, which I have borrowed from Garrison Keillor, specifies the means to the end implied by the above Gaian Categorical Imperative. It is a good, generic daily agenda, and as such forms the centerpiece of my Dharma Gaia Mantra: Breathe, Observe, Let Go; Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch; Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create. Note also the correspondence in these triads:

1. Eat - Health - Self - Be Well
2. Survive - Competence - Community - Do Good Work
3. Reproduce - Adaptive Flexibility - Planet - Keep in Touch.

• Good Buy, Good Work, Good Will. This triad translates Garrison Keillor's generic daily agenda into the language of Gaian social engagement. It can be unpacked as follows:

1. Good Buy means to assume responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of the money we spend--to think of each dollar we spend as a "vote" for all of the processes that went into the product we have bought. Some general guidelines for "Good Buy" therefore include, whenever possible, buying locally produced food and other items, buying organically grown food, investing in renewable energy such as solar and wind, and deliberately boycotting corporations whose profits derive from damaging Gaia or exploiting workers. In general, the food that is best for our bodies--local, organic, nutrient-rich--is also best for our communities (in that it creates local employment and promotes local agriculture) and is therefore best for Gaia as well (in that it involves redirecting our money away from Glomart and all the agribusiness firms like Monsanto that profit from destroying our topsoil and genetic diversity.)
2. Good Work means to assume responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of our livelihood. In general terms, this means avoiding livelihoods that increase the net level of suffering for Gaia and her creatures, and embracing livelihoods that promote the health, competence, and adaptive flexibility of ourselves, our communities, and Gaia. In general, such work involves learning Gaia, teaching Gaia, healing Gaia, and creating Gaia.
3. Good Will means to "keep in touch"--to assume responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of our own mental attitudes, our behavior toward others, and every other choice we make.

Considered thus, these triads link up very nicely, forming an arc of associations between the basic survival needs of every organism (Eat, Survive, Reproduce) right through the engaged Dharma practice of individual humans to promote our health, competence, and adaptive flexibility (Breathe, Observe, Let Go, Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch) to the ongoing Gaian praxis of planetary healing: Good Buy, Good Work, Good Will.