Highlights
“According to tradition, the Buddha was born under a tree, awakened under a tree, taught under a tree, and died under a tree. In early Buddhist art, the Buddha is even represented as a tree. Furthermore, the stock phrases describing the path of meditation begin with the instruction to take oneself to the foot of a tree…”
“Surely, the profound stillness and quietude of meditation under a tree would have evoked in the Buddha and his companions a sense of the aliveness and intelligence of the more-than-human-world, just as it does for many modern persons.”
“The Buddhist doctrine of love … suggests that we are all worthy of love, just not more love than the more-than-human-beings with whom we share this wondrous Earth.”
A transcript with slides of this talk is available here: Love it or Leave it: Buddhist Perspectives on the Natural World.
One Response
Excellent. So clear, and so important. Thank you, Karin.