Gaian Enumerations

 Throughout its history, Buddhists have used enumeration as their most frequent Dharma training technique for young aspirants, whether monks (Bhikkus) or nuns (Bhikkunis) or laypeople.  Hence these aspirants are taught to memorize these, including the Four Noble Truths, the Six Paramitas, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Twelve Links of Codependent Origination (to name a few). And having such enumerations readily at hand, they can practice and internalize the Dharma teachings more easily. 

Over the years since I first embraced the Gaia concept as the epicenter of my worldview (starting in 1981, when I first discovered Lovelock's Gaia theory), I have found myself--without any knowledge or intent--emulating this practice, by organizing my Gaian thinking around just such enumerations, mostly threes and fours. So here are a few of these enumerations that have organized my thinking:

 The Two (antithetical) Worlds: Glomart and Gaia. By "worlds" here, I refer to complex adaptive systems of which we are an integral part, and on which we depend for our survival. Glomart (my own coinage) refers to the money-based Global Market Economy; Gaia refers, of course, to our living planet: the biosphere as structurally coupled with our atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. We utterly depend on both--Glomart for our livelihoods and possessions; Gaia for our very lives. Yet the production rules of Glomart (based on the maximizing logic of money--"More is always better") are fundamentally incompatible with the production rules of Gaia (based on the optimizing logic of living systems--"Enough is Enough.")

The Three Survival Values:  Health, Competence, and Resilience. These are common to all living systems, from bacteria to human beings to whole nations and Gaia herself. Health is internal homeostasis; Competence is ability to thrive within a stable, predictable niche; Resilience is ability to adapt to unpredictable changes in one's niche.

The Three Levels of Identity: Self, Community, and Planet. From these, coupled with the Three Survival Values, we may derive the Gaian Categorical Imperative: Make every decision based on what promotes the health, competence, and resilience of ourselves, our communities, and our planet. Any benefit to a subsystem (self or community) which is detrimental to its larger support system (community or planet) is ultimately self-destructive.

Garrison Keillor's Generic Daily Agenda: Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. These can also be seen as a good way to enhance our own health, competence, and resilience.

The Three Aspects of Dharma:  Principle, Precept, and Practice. That is, the Principle of codependent origination; the Precept of universal compassion; and the Practice of meditation.

The Three Injunctions of Meditation: Breathe, Observe, Let Go. These form the foundation of any meditative practice. 

The Four Aspects of Gaia: Myth, Model, Metaphor, and Movement. These pertain, respectively, to Gaia as apprehended in the subjective, objective, cultural, and social domains.

The Three Core Ethics of Permaculture: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share.  There are variants of the third, of course; it does not mean "redistribution of wealth" (which scares a lot of people) but rather, it means "reinvesting the surplus back into Earth Care and People Care."

My own Three Permaculture injunctions: Grow Gardens, Grow Community, Grow Awareness. Each of these enhances the other: By growing gardens and sharing food and techniques, we grow community; by doing both, we grow awareness of our embeddedness in, and dependence on, Gaia.

My Four Gaian Life Goals: Learn Gaia; Teach Gaia; Heal Gaia, Create Gaia. These, of course, are self-evident. They encourage us to keep learning all we can about our embeddedness in Gaia, to teach what we know to others, to heal our threatened biosphere in whatever ways are necessary, and to create a human culture that is symbiotic with, rather than parasitic upon, Gaia.