The Five Enemies of Gaia

These are dark days: our once idealistic, once democratic republic, hijacked by a maniacal tycoon, is spiraling down, down, down, into tyranny, plutocracy, chaos, and rancor; we are no longer citizens but mere consumers, our democratic institutions sabotaged by corporate greed and corruption, and our very consciousness colonized day and night by Glomart media and advertising.  In tandem with this incremental and accelerating collapse of our civilization, we watch with dread as Gaia, our global life support system, goes into its final convulsions from a fever induced by excess levels of CO2 from fossil fuels--unprecedented wildfires, massive floods and hurricanes, melting ice caps north and south, collapsing ecosystems and vanishing species, bleached out coral reefs, fished out oceans full of jellyfish, catastrophically declining insect populations--a panoply of biological horror stories from all over the world. Yet our Glomart-corrupted politicians persist in their pig-headed denial, while multinational corporations blindly pursue their profits, served by a bloated military-industrial complex that is secretly engaged in "special operations" sending out murderous drones and spreading endless, asymmetric warfare all over the world in the hallowed name of "national security"--all oblivious to the social and environmental catastrophes they are wreaking everywhere we look.

It all makes peace of mind rather elusive--instead, levels of public anxiety are at an all-time high throughout the world, and many in the younger generations are terminally alienated, finding illusory refuge in drugs, violent movies or video games, gangs, or pornography. What then can we do?

One way of thinking about Buddhist teachings is that they are tools of thought that can be used to train our minds for times like this--whether personally or globally--when things look utterly bleak and all hope seems to have vanished. One such tool is the famous mandala that illustrates the Wheel of Samsara. This mandala is arranged concentrically to illustrate the laws of Karma, or what Buddhists call pratitya samutpada--roughly translated as "codependent origination" or "this is because that is (and vice versa)." This doctrine of codetermination is also fundamental to the systems sciences and Gaia Theory. So it is a point of convergence between Buddhism and Gaia Theory that is well worth exploring further.

At the hub of the mandala are three symbolic beasts--the pig, the rooster, and the snake--signifying, respectively, ignorance, hatred, and desire (or greed). These are the "drivers" of Samsara--the world of delusion in which most of us are trapped. Each issues forth from the mouth of the other in a circle, signifying the codependence of these "three poisons," each giving rise to--or quite literally vomiting up--the other.  Surrounding this is a ring that is light on one side and dark on the other, with human figures swimming up and down, roughly analogous to the "Wheel of Fortune" in western iconography. This depicts our cyclical transmigration though various lifetimes--upwards due to our virtuous deeds, and downward due to our mean or selfish deeds. In the next broad layer, we see images of the Six Samsaric Realms into which we are reborn--the Hell realm, the Hungry Ghosts, the Animals, the Human realm, the Asuras or "jealous gods," and the Devas, or deities.

These are not "places" so much as ego-generated delusions, default states of mind we all tend to inhabit at various times as we go through our lives. In brief, Hell dwellers are driven by fear, hatred, and violence; Animals are driven by sensual desire and anxiety; Hungry Ghosts are plagued by inner thirst, despair, and desolation; Humans (most of us) are capable of rising or falling, based on our choices; Asuras or "jealous gods" are driven by relentless ambition (rather like many university professors, politicians, or businessmen), and Devas can be thought of as analogous to the super-rich, those we all envy for their luxurious and carefree lives but who, like all the rest of us, inhabit the Samsaric realm of consciousness engendered by ignorance, greed, and hatred, and who therefore, as Bob Marley once put it "think they're in Heaven but they're living in Hell." In the outer circle are depicted the 12 links of codependent origination, from ignorance through attachment to birth, old age, and death.

With this model as our backdrop, we can gain much insight into our current plight on our threatened civilization and planet, and--ideally--use this insight to convert our collective despair into equanimity and resolution. So let us begin with the Three Poisons, to which I would add two spin-offs, resulting in the "Five Enemies of Gaia:" Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair.

Ignorance refers, in Buddhist theory, to the root delusion we all share as our birthright--that "I" am an autonomous, persistent entity, separate from "you," from "him and her" and (above all) from "them."  This is a delusion because this "self" is actually no more than a mental construct that enables us to function in a community mediated by language. It has no actual form or substance--if we try to find it in our bodies or our minds, we will soon give up looking. It is what the Romans called a persona, a mask that we fashion from our genetic predispositions and our experience and that we identify with, calling it (appropriately) our "personality."  Yet we grow and change constantly in response to external stimuli and the internal processes of growth and aging. Our memories extend back to early childhood, yet that "I" we remember was vastly smaller than, and different from, the "I" of today.

This delusion is entirely natural--we share it with all other living organisms, from bacteria up to ourselves--simply because in order to function, all biological systems must surround themselves with a permeable membrane that separates "outside" events from "inside" processing of those events. This deeply rooted concept we have of ourselves as separate entities no doubt developed from these biological roots--our need to protect our body-mind systems from the world--only the "world" today includes, and is dominated by, language and other abstractions such as money--not just by predators, rivals, poisons, or diseases.

This basic underlying ignorance of our true nature--as temporary moire patterns in an ongoing flow of matter, energy, and information (like waves in the ocean or pixels dancing on a screen)--inevitably engenders the two other poisons: greed or attachment, and hatred or aversion. We crave, or become attached to, people, places, things, or concepts (mental formations) that enhance our self-image or satisfy our (temporary) desires, but this craving is never satisfied; we hate and fear all those who threaten, not only our physical well-being, but also our ego concept--our assiduously cultivated sense of our own value and importance.

As the Tibetan mandala above shows, these three emotional states--ignorance (i.e. the delusion of separateness), greed (attachment) and hatred (aversion) ceaselessly give rise to each other at the core of our self-consciousness. We crave things, people, and power to reinforce our self-importance, our "me-ness." But this craving can never be satisfied--more is always better. And it is always haunted by fear of loss--of our money, our possessions, our power over others--and so we objectify these threats by our hatred of, and violence toward others. Our "me-ness" gives rise to meanness. (Donald Trump is, of course, the avatar of Samsara--the very personification of all-consuming ignorance, greed, and hatred).

These "three poisons" at the core of our ego-construct, as the Tibetans aptly call them, also give rise to two toxic spinoffs--denial and despair. Denial is simply the refusal to acknowledge blatantly obvious realities that directly threaten our power and our samsaric worldview--the structure of mental formations we erect to validate our greed and hatred. There are many forms of denial, but by far the most insidious--the one that makes it an "enemy of Gaia" along with ignorance, greed, and hatred--is denial of climate change: the refusal, by an entire, empowered political subculture (the US Republican Party and the corporate elite whom they serve) to acknowledge the obvious, well-attested reality that our fossil-fuel-based global economy is destroying our planet and imperiling all future generations.

One might even say that with Trump, ignorance, greed, hatred, and denial have become the main platform of the Republican party, as they set forth (with vehement hatred) to dismantle democracy, enrich the super-rich yet further, impoverish the poor and destitute, assert patriarchal dominance over women, and dehumanize immigrants and ethnic or religious minorities. And all this has given rise, within a broad swath of the American public and throughout the world, to the Fifth Enemy: Despair.

Despair is not an external enemy--it is the enemy within. But it likewise arises from, and in turn engenders, ignorance, greed, and hatred.  And we see, in popular culture and in the constant chatter of the Internet, a virtual epidemic of despair spreading among younger generations, in direct response to the entrenched greed and hatred of their elders. In its most corrosive form, despair engenders mindless and indiscriminate violence--hence the crazed gun nuts who mow down innocent people in crowds, schools, concerts, movie theatres, and even churches. And when despair mixes with political hatred, we get terrorism (for a terrorist is nothing but a revolutionary without hope). When it mixes with greed, we get the murderous drug cartels of Central America or street gangs of our inner cities. We see it also in the rising suicide rates of teenagers, for if there is no hope for the future, why live?

So what can we do about the Five Enemies of Gaia--Ignorance, Greed, Hatred, Denial, and Despair?

The first thing to recognize is that these enemies are not people, not "others"--not even the corporate elite nor  the belligerent right-wing neofascists that people on "my side" love to hate. All these "enemies" can be also found within our own consciousness, as well as being so clearly manifested in Trump and his clueless devotees.  When we meet hate with hate or violence with violence, hatred and violence proliferate, becoming ever more deadly.

The Buddhist solution to all of the above begins with the simple act of breathing, observing, and letting go. As we gradually learn (through conscious breathing) to simply observe, rather than either indulging or repressing, our thoughts and feelings, we simultaneously develop the capacity to let go of our toxic emotions, our addictive cravings, our fears and anxieties--and to simply abide in the present moment.  From this foundation of calm abiding and insight, we are then able to cultivate empathy for others--even ignorant right-wing fascists (without justifying their behavior)--and thus to develop genuine, unfeigned compassion--for ourselves, for those closest to us, for everyone else, and for all living beings.  We can then make that baseline compassion the foundation of our everyday behavior, rather than our greedy. angry, or anxious obsessions. In this way, we cultivate the ability to be well, do good work, and keep in touch on a daily basis, and to consecrate our lives to learning Gaia, teaching Gaia, healing Gaia, and creating Gaia.