Faith and Nature

I’m reading Gary Snyder’s book Back on the Fire, which is a thought provoking collection of essays, I was particularly struck by the following from pages 34-35.

Gift economy? That might be another perspective on the meaning of ecology. We are living in the midst of a great potluck at which we are all the invited guests. And we are also eventually the meal. The Ainu, when they had venison for dinner, sang songs aloud to the deer spirits who were hanging about waiting for the performance. The deer visit human beings so that they might hear some songs. In Buddhist spiritual ecology, the first thing to give up is your ego- The ancient Vedic philosophers said that the gods like sacrifices, but of all sacrifices that which they most appreciate is your ego. This critical little point is the foundation of yogic and Buddhist askesis. Dogen famously said, “We study the self to forget the self. When you forget the self you become one with the ten thousand things.” (There is only one offering that is greater than the ego, and that is “enlightenment” itself.)

The being who has offered up her enlightenment is called a Bod-hisattva. In some of the Polynesian societies the Big Person, the most respected and powerful figure in the village, was the one who had nothing—whatever gift came to him or her was promptly given away again. This is the real heart of a gift economy, an economy that would save, not devour, the world. Gandhi once said, “For greed, all of nature is insufficient.” Art takes nothing from the world; it is a gift and an exchange. It leaves the world nourished.

“Ripples on the surface of the water— were silver salmon passing under—different
from the ripples caused by breezes”

A scudding plume on the wave—
a humpback whale is
breaking out in air up
gulping herring
—Nature not a book, but a performance, a high old culture

Ever-fresh events
scraped out, rubbed out, and used, used, again—
the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass—

The vast wild
the house, alone.
The little house in the wild,
the wild in the house. Both forgotten.

No nature

Both together, one big empty house.