Transcript Beyond Gary Snyder

Beyond Gary Snyder:
Buddhism's Influence on U.S.
Environmental Literature –
a Feminist Ecocritical Approach
Greta Gaard
The Fifth Tamkang International Conference on Ecological Discourse
“Ecocriticism in Asia: Reorienting Modernity, Reclaiming Nature.”
December 16-18, 2010.
Tamkang University, Tamsui, Taiwan.
Buddhism & U.S. Nature Writing Canon
Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
o
o
o
o
o
Beat poets 1950s -60s
Wilderness poems, essays
Interbeing
Bioregionalism
Ecology as an intellectual,
aesthetic, personal, & spiritual
pursuit
==============
• Deep ecology
• Canon of nature writing
• Mainstream Ecocriticism
Canon Stage #1: Wave #1, McIntosh #1
Canon: links between writer, genre,
philosophy, ecocritical responses
Buddhism, Environmental Literature, &
Ecocritical Perspectives
Lawrence Buell, The Future of
Environmental Criticism (2005)
Peggy McIntosh’s “Stages of
Curricular Revision” (1983)
1.
1.
Womanless history - the standard
straight white elite male canon
2.
Woman in history - the exceptional
and elite women who become tokens
in an otherwise dominant narrative
3.
Woman as a problem, absence, or
anomaly in history -- the
transformative influence of including
women has begun to reshape the
canon and redefine the discipline;
race, class, gender, and sexuality must
now be considered.
4.
Woman AS history--special courses,
texts, seminars, and terminology focus
exclusively on women, queers, writers
of color, working class writers, etc.
5.
History revisioned to include us all
2.
3.
“first wave . . . concerned itself
with conventional nature writing
and conservation-oriented
environmentalism”
“second wave” ecocriticism
“redefines the environment in
terms of the seventeen Principles
of Environmental Justice and
concerns itself with ‘issues of
environmental welfare and
equity’”
“a new third wave of ecocriticism,
which recognizes ethnic and
national particularities and yet
transcends ethnic and national
boundaries . . . explor[ing] all
facets of human experience from
an environmental viewpoint”
(Adamson & Slovic 2009)
Women in Buddhism, Women’s Environmental
Literature, & Feminist Ecocriticism
•
Shoes Outside the Door: Desire,
Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco
Zen Center (Downing 2002)
•
“Conspiracy of Silence: The Problem
of the Male Teacher”, in Turning the
Wheel: American Women Creating
the New Buddhism (Boucher 1993)
•What genres of environmental literature
would U.S. Buddhist women write? What
topics would they write about? What
themes would appear salient?
•How would a feminist ecocritical
approach illuminate these writings?
“While some women are now assuming
leadership roles in Buddhist centers
throughout America, very few of these
women are persons of color.
…As long as this is the case,
Buddhism in America will continue to
mirror the hierarchical and patriarchal
institutions it has maintained
throughout its long history in Asia.
If genuine progress is to be
made, the issues of race, class, gender,
and sexuality need to be addressed
much more seriously than they have
been thus far. Only then will the
tantalizing promises of Buddhist
philosophical notions like selflessness,
interdependence, inclusiveness, and,
ultimately, insight and compassion
become real possibilities.”
--Jan Willis, in Women’s Buddhism,
Buddhism’s Women (2000)
*intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, species, & nature*
Women, Buddhist Environmental
Literature, & Deep Ecology
http://www.joannamacy.net/
• World as Lover, World as Self
(Parallax, 1991); Coming Back
to Life (NSP, 1998)
• Anti-nuclear activism
• Despair & empowerment work
• The Elm Dance
• Council of All Beings
• Shortcomings of the Deep
Ecological self, speaking for
others, no attention to gender
Joanna Macy
Deep ecology,
and the denial of difference
Deep Ecology solves
hyperseparated human
identity and culture/nature
dualisms by erasing
difference, treating nature
as a dimension of self
Three different accounts of
self, all unsatisfactory from
a feminist,environmental
standpoint:
•Indistinguishability
•Expansion of self
•Transcendence of self
Val Plumwood,
Feminism & the
Mastery of Nature
Stephanie Kaza, The Attentive Heart:
Conversations with Trees (Shambhala, 1996)
Goals: an “I-Thou” relationship
with trees, listening / speaking
Assist readers in shifting from
denial/paralyzed inaction, to
“profound moments of … global
interdependence”
“some part of me is tree” (67)
“I had allowed myself to become
dismembered” (125)
“meeting the tree with total presence.
The chain saw brings us to the point
of intimacy . . . “ (172)
Wave 1/McIntosh 2: Women Nature Writers, Wilderness, Deep Ecology
Barbara Gates, Already Home:
A Topography of Spirit and Place (2003)
• Cofounder & editor of
Inquiring Mind
• Running (escaping what’s
here & now)
• Stopping (here & now is all
we’ve got
• Looking (inhabiting the
uninhabitable
• Seeing (letting go of hope)
• Settling (before /beneath)
• Already home
Canon Stage: Wave #2, McIntosh #2
Women, Buddhist Environmental Literature,
Ecofeminism & Environmental Justice
Jeanne DuPrau, The
Earth House (1992)
• American Library Assn. Stonewall
Book Award (1993)
• Lambda Literary Award (1992)
• Sylvia & female narrator build an
earth house on community land
purchased by their female Zen
teacher
• House-building as opportunity for
Zen practice, ways of relating to
mind-chatter, aversion & grasping
• Sylvia’s cancer returns; narrator’s
Zen mind helps her through grief
The Nature of Home:
Taking Root in a Place
(2007)
“ Immersed in this river, I no longer need to be a
container, no longer need to hold on to my
separate little vase full of energy. The energy
surrounds me. My heart has broken open and is
bathing in the Mississippi. I let go of the
expectation that the pieces will be joined, that
the unbroken vase is the best shape for my
heart” (195)
Essays addressing
• Colonization’s legacy in shaping place, identity,
community
• Violence against nature, women as resources
• Oil pipelines, parks, & oppression of
erotic/nature
• Thoreau cabin, the idea of “living in the woods”,
and a sustainable ecological economics
• Home & homelessness
• Grief, loss, & re/membering via relationship to
place
Melody Ermachild Chavis, Altars in the Street: A
Courageous Memoir of Community & Spiritual
Awakening (Harmony, 1997)
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Socially-engaged Zen practice living in
Lorin with drugs, gunfire, sex work,
robbery, alcoholism, homelessness,
San Quentin mindfulness
“Hungry Ghosts” interbeing and noself (68)
Compassion practice, death,
community gardening, “strong
roots”
“Day of the Dead” (Ch. 20)
The wisdom of letting go
Women of Color & Engaged Buddhism
bell hooks
regular contributor
to Shambhala Sun.
Mushim IkedaNash, teacher
at San
Francisco Zen
Center. Editor
of BPF’s
Turning Wheel.
Alice Walker, We Are The
Ones We Have Been
Waiting For: Inner Light in a
Time of Darkness (2006)
Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats (1999),
All Over Creation (2004)
• Ordained as a Zen priest 25 June 2010
• Teaches Mindfulness &
Writing in Bellingham and
at Hedgebrook
•Animal Food Production
•Sustainability
•Globalization
•Race & hybridity
•Gender
•Media democracy
•Family formations
•Sexual and reproductive justice
http://www.ruthozeki.com/archives/794
“Interbeing, you could say, is the underlying theme of My Year of
Meats, and certainly influences Creation as well. …I discovered the dharma
through writing, rather than using writing to explicate the Buddhist
principles…. In 1997, when I was writing Meats, I still was quite new to
Buddhism. Maybe it was a co-evolution.” (e-mail, 12/10/2010)
Jan Willis, Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University
Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist, One Woman’s Spiritual Journey
(2008)
“…convert-Buddhism in
America is largely a white,
& upper middle-class affair.
…two essential
requirements for doing a
Buddhist retreat here:
money and leisure time.
Most working-class people
and many people of color
do not have a great
quantity of either.”
“the Dharma is for everyone . . . Though we people of color have a sort of
head start, given the prominence of Buddhism’s discussions of suffering.”
–Jan Willis, “Dharma Has No Color,” in Dharma, Color, & Culture
•Being Black: Zen and
the Art of Living with
Fearlessness and
Grace (Viking)
•(Editor) Framing
Deep Change: Essays
on Transformative
Social Change
•Founder of the New
Dharma Meditation Center
for Urban Peace in
Oakland, CA, a training
center for engaging
individual, community and
social transformation as
spiritual practice.
Angel Kyodo Williams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvmJGYQNXY
Being Black & hip-hop CD
Dharma, Color, and
Culture (2004)
“When speaking of the history of
Western Buddhism in general—
and its presence in the United
States, in particular—it is
imperative that the point of
origin not be located in a white,
European American context.
The story of how the Dharma
reached the shores of the
United States is embedded in
the history of immigrants of
color.”
Chinese were actually the first
Buddhists to reach America…
•Hui Shan & monks in 4th c.e.
•immigrants of 1860s.
Nature as Body, Bodies as Nature
“the assault upon the natural
environment today is but an
extension of the assault upon
black women’s bodies in the
nineteenth century” when
“slave-owner consciousness”
prevailed, and “black women
(and black men) were ‘viewed
as beasts, as cattle, as articles
for sale.’”
--Delores Williams, “Sin, Nature and
Black Women’s Bodies”
Women’s Buddhist Environmental Texts
• Thematic progression in
standpoint , & writers:
• Deep ecology (nonfeminist)
• Feminist, Environmental
Justice
• From elite locations
(race, class, sexuality) to
• Diverse race, class,
sexuality, ethnicity
• Usual Narrative Genres
• Creative nonfiction,
Fiction, Biography,
Science fiction
• New genres / narrative
structures
– Reflective essays &
memoir
– Dharma talks
– Hip-hop, music, video
Feminist Buddhist Ecocriticism
Uncovering root causes of suffering, &
Path to the cessation of suffering
– Waking up, present moment attention, listening
– Turning toward suffering
– Dropping the narrative of Self-ing
– Uncovering dependent 0rigination in social &
environmental injustices, and
…Acting to end suffering for
all sentient beings