**6. Dharmic religions**

In general, Buddhism is frequently considered to be among the most environmentally friendly of all religions because of its belief in the fundamental equality of all sentient beings through the processes of birth, aging and death. Among the Dharmic religions, however, both Buddhism and Jainism are secular to the extent that they do not accept the reality of a Supreme Creator. But while there are exceptions (Theravada Buddhism, Patañjali's Sankhya-Yoga, Ramanuja's Qualified Non-Dualist and Madhva's Dualist expressions of Hinduism), the predominant theme for Dharmic religion is the non-reality or *māyā* of phenomenal existence. A supreme personal god as Ishvara or Vishnu is accepted by some Hindu branches of belief, but the concept of an absolute Brahman as the impersonal and sole reality beneath the illusion of the physical (preeminently articulated by Shankara's *advaita* school of Vedānta) becomes the gnostic goal of *moksha*, release or escape from separate/individual existence and the cycle of reincarnation. Buddhist theology is a variation of this with *nirvana* comprising essentially the same thing. The implicit consequences for maintaining the well-being and ecology of the planet become at best then a secondary and temporary consideration. Detachment from the world allows and even might encourage a disregard for the environmental future of the earth. As with Abrahamic spirituality, there persists with the Hindu manifestations of dharmic understanding a hierarchical evaluation. Typically, in contrast to the 'simply mundane human concerns or ordinary religious aspirations … "

*[the] spiritual tradition of India, not only Vedic but also non-Vedic, have [sic.] a strong basis in mantra, and use it to help us decondition the mind and move beyond limiting concepts, as well as to each* higher *truths.*

Hindutva-proponent David Frawley also speaks of the modern Western mindset as being obsessed with the *lower* energy centres in the human being.<sup>26</sup> Here again, the physical dimensions of reality are considered to be inferior to the transcendental.

Nevertheless, Hindu vegetarianism, its veneration of the cow and its practice of *ahimsa* ('non-injury to others') are derivatives of its inherent pantheist belief that stresses the unifying sacredness of all things. This respect and avoidance of violence would appear to counter the value relativity that otherwise results when 'right and wrong are decided according to the categories of social rank, kinship, and stages of life'. <sup>27</sup> Consequently, within Hinduism as with most religious persuasions there exist unresolved paradoxes and contradictions that ultimately tend to leave moral behaviour and ecological effort to individual decision rather than to any clear mandate that concerns protecting and restoring the priorities of the ecological and the possibility of transforming the Holocene or more specifically the Anthropocene when considered as beginning in the mid-twentieth century into a Symbiocene in which 'almost every element of culture, agriculture, economy, habitat and technology will be seamlessly re-integrated back into earthly symbiotic life'. 28

<sup>26</sup> Frawley [26] [my italics].

<sup>27</sup> Miller [27].

<sup>28</sup> Albrecht [28].

It is, however, with the Jain tradition from which Hinduism appears to have inherited the notion and practice of *ahimsa* that the claim is made that 'the Jain approach to ecological responsibility offers the best hope for resolution'. 29

*Many Jains are now working to extend the principle of non-violence … not just for the liberation of the individual soul, but for the very survival of life on the planet.<sup>30</sup>*

With its emphasis on respect and compassion for *all* forms of life, Jainism presents a doctrine that, despite its materialistic atheism, is fully open to an aesthetic sociality that remains commensurate with modern scientific thought. Jaina logic itself is understood as related to modern science and scientific thinking.<sup>31</sup>

### **7. Pagan religions**

In many respects, the underlying response to nature within most pagan religions is similar to that felt and undertaken by those of a secular persuasion. The chief difference between the religiosities of those practices that conform to these two ideal types, the pagan and the secular, is the entertainment of belief in and pursuit of enchantment by the former and the avoidance of the thaumaturgical by the latter. If there is a supreme being in paganism, it is the earth itself, the Goddess, the immediate manifestation or embodiment of the entire matter-energy continuum, nature herself/itself. Consequently, despite the claims for both Buddhism and Jainism, the pagan religions emerge as among the foremost if not *the* foremost orientation/s championing the natural ecological balance of our planet. This does not eliminate harm to nature that has occurred by pagan peoples such as the severe deforestation of North America by Native Americans before the arrival of European colonialists. And imperial expansion and destruction have occurred by pre-Christian pagan cultures as well (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Alexander the Great, Rome, the Nahuatl and Quechua civilisations of the New World, etc.)

Much paganism incorporates the notion of the otherworld (whether Summerland, the Elysian Fields, the Western Isles, the land of fairy, the domain of the gods), but its otherworld is never posited as a denial of this world but instead as one that is intimately infused with or within it. Pagan religions rival Christianity in their wide range of diversity. Overall, it is a difficult religiosity to describe both simply and yet in an encompassing manner. Nevertheless, the ideal towards which these orientations point may be presented as in the following:

*Paganism is an affirmation of interactive and polymorphic sacred relationship by individual or community with the tangible, sentient and nonempirical.<sup>32</sup>*

If the conjunction 'and' in this definition is replaced by that of 'and/or', this allows such more gnostic Platonic and Neo-Platonic forms also to be recognised as pagan. But paganisms in their more telluric, as distinct from gnostic, expressions are understood

<sup>29</sup> Young ([11], p. 171).

<sup>30</sup> Oxtoby and Segal [29].

<sup>31</sup> Mardia [30].

<sup>32</sup> York [3].

#### *Religion and the Environmental Crisis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104002*

as an endorsement of relationship between physical and supernatural realities as well as human (and possibly other forms of) consciousness. Some paganisms may accept the supernatural as only approachable through metaphor (religious icons and symbols), or some may also entertain that the supernatural appears and is accessible through the miraculous. But along with their supernaturalism or proclivity for the non-empirical, humanism and naturism are equally weighted. In other words, even if paganism or particular pagan identities may exalt the special or the numinously distinguishable over the whole, or the theistic or even polytheistic over the pantheistic, the divine or sacred is found ubiquitously. Paganism, therefore, allows the divine to manifest in and as the material, whatever else it may also be. Importantly, however, paganism eschews any true hierarchy between the temporal and permanent, between the physical and spiritual or between this-world and the otherworld. In paganism, all realms of being and possibly non-being are understood to partake in a partnership or colloquium that is to be recognised as functioning between potential equals. Moreover, through the consideration that all is related and interrelated, animals and other human beings are deemed to be worthy of respect and reverence.

Today's renaissance of contemporary paganism would virtually appear to be a reflex of the growing awareness of global imbalance and climate change. Urban lifestyles and consumeristic insulation from the natural world both depend on an uncontrolled corporate capitalism that has been judged as mindless in relation to industrial waste and toxic pollution. For the pleasure-and-comfort seeking pagan, pursuit of the sanctity of nature becomes central to his/her non-world-rejecting spirituality.

*The cultivation of an eco-awareness and geo-sensitivity are paramount to any viable pagan ethos. … In a word, caring for Mother Nature and maintaining a symbiotic bond with her that is healthy and mindful of all that may violate her unique and precious balance constitute a pagan ethical imperative that is central to all further endeavor.<sup>33</sup>*

This is not to say that paganism has all the answers but only that its mindfulness of the fragility of natural ecosystems and of the need to preserve biodiversity is central to its religious understanding—an awareness that pagan spirituality aspires to promote among human consciousness globally.
