Archive for the ‘We are of the World’ Category
Anil Gupta does TED
If you still are not familiar with TED talks, you might want to visit the link and just sample a few of the talks. You will soon be enthralled by them. Their slogan is “Ideas worth spreading,” and they are just that. So listen, reflect, and spread onward. Anil Gupta is a Business professor who started the Honey Bee Network to support grassroots innovators who are rich in knowledge but poor in resources. He has definitely taken the concept of connecting “those who most need jobs with the jobs that most need doing” to new heights, or rather new depths.
Ashes to Ashes
One of my favorite classes thus far in my college education has been a sociology course that I am taking this (final 
) semester at BC, called Black and Green. The heart of the course focuses on Environmental Racism and the Black Community. Over the span of the semester we have delved into the experience of different environmentally oppressed groups, their relationship to the earth and the policies and social rituals that keep them oppressed. More than anything, I have been left wondering one question. Where has our soul gone?
Where has our appreciation gone for that which is sacred in all of us? How can we learn from those who were here before us, the Native Americans, and other groups who seem to be so in tune with the earth? How do I reclaim that which white mainstream society has robbed me of– my soul? And how can I ensure my children are not deprived of theirs?
Throughout the semester, we have been working on creating our own monologues centered around a contemporary symbol of environmentalism. It has been truly an amazing experience getting to hear each person perfrom their story in class and to see each from such an inspiringly personal light.
We each have our own stories. A favorite poem of mine reads, “Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head.” All experience is unique. I think to share our stories with one another is more than just a beautiful thing. It is healing, awakening, loving, and knowing. While my monologue is still a work in progress, I thought I would share it as it stands with you, anonymous reader. Don’t worry, the journey is only about 8 minutes, but I hope you enjoy 
Ashes To Ashes
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” a phrase I have become accustomed to hearing at funeral services, comes from the Book of Common Prayer. The original text states, “till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return.” We have no trouble memorizing the words but yet their meaning often takes lifetimes to understand. When we die, we will return to nothing more than the energy we give back to the earth.
The discussion of burial versus cremation is one that has gone on for centuries. Because of the lack of physical space it requires and the fact that cremated remains are not a health or environmental risk, cremation has slowly made its way into environmental discussions as a green alternative to burial.
But moving beyond space, we cannot delve into an environmental discussion without addressing the significance of the soul and its meanings to different kinds of People.. The Roman Catholic Church’s discouragement of cremation stemmed mainly from the idea that the body, as the instrument through which the sacraments are received, is itself a sacramental, holy object. In the Catholic Church, ashes are the sign of the corruption of the human body, and thus inadequately represent the character of ‘sleeping’ awaiting the resurrection.
In other cultures however such as in India, open-air cremation is a common practice. Both Hinduism and Buddhism mandate cremation. In these religions, the body is seen as an instrument to carry the soul. According to Hindu philosophy the human body is a combination of five basic natural elements: fire, water, air, earth and sky. When we die, fire (in the form of cremation) is used to complete the fifth element by returning the body, our living form, to its original state of creation. According to Hindu traditions, the reasons for preferring to destroy the corpse by fire, over burying it, is to motivate a sense of detachment into the freshly disembodied spirit. This detachment from all that is physical is an essential component in passing into the next life. Hindus believe that the cremation ceremony is not just a disposal of the body, but also the actual union of the soul with the universal spirit.
I found many relations to this belief in a union of soul and universal spirit in a found poem, entitled “Last Talk with Jim Hardwick.” In the poem, the author speaks of the conservation of the soul through the transfer of our energy after death.
Last Talk with Jim Hardwick
A “found” poem
When I die I will live again.
By nature I am a conserver.
I have found Nature
To be a conserver, too.
Nothing is wasted
Or permanently lost
In Nature. Things change their form,
But they do not cease
to exist. After
I leave this world
I do not believe I am through.
God would be a bigger fool
Then even a man
If He did not conserve
The human soul,
Which seems to be
The most important thing
He has yet done in the universe.
When you get your grip
On the last rung of the ladder
And look over the wall
As I am now doing,
You don’t need their proofs:
You see.
You know
You will not die.
Growing up white, middle class and Catholic, I always felt a certain falsity in my religious roots. Sunday school and Sunday Church filled me with feelings of obligation and guilt. The language used in my teachings was abstract and foreign. A language I could not identify with. It personified my spirituality as God. Portraits of Him told me he was a white male, and my teachings never suggested otherwise. When it came to death, like the male dominated, patriarchal society, Christianity told me my eternal soul belonged in a box.
It was not until I heard the teachings of Buddhism at a spiritual retreat that I stumbled upon my spirituality. Buddhism teaches that through the practice of detachment, we reach the ultimate nature of our physical form, being light and emptiness within the light. The literal meaning of enlightenment is the state of attaining spiritual knowledge or insight. Through meditation, I felt lightness and simultaneously an energy connecting me to the air around me. I felt my breath expand, and in that moment my energy was not confined to the limits of my body, but was free to harmonize with the air and thus the earth. I understood the reason behind the connection of my soul to a universal spirit. Buddhism helped me find a way out of this box that society had put me in.
Us educated people; we are well versed on the benefits of whole foods and the virtuousness of social justice. The mainstream environmental movement talks about conserving trees, endangered species and natural resources, but we neglect the conservation of that which is most important, the soul. We are so busy micromanaging the environmental movement that we fail to see the big picture. It is the soul that seeds the roots from which these virtues grow. It is our soul that keeps us going and working for the environment even when hopeful signs are hard to see. Through Buddhism I have seen this different form of conservation of the soul, one that allows my spirit and mind to extend beyond confines.
Where people are buried they have an attachment to the land, restricting them to their worldly situation and circumstances. Their resting place maintains a hierarchy to which they are bound by the land even through death. We decorate our loved ones in coffins as if to preserve something in them. We burry them with loved possessions as if worried they might get lonely without them. Do we have to carry our obsession with consumerism with us even to the grave? We have cultivated a fascination with materialism that we can not let go of, so much so that we can not imagine a life outside our own body.
Like our materialist society, environmentalists focus on what you as an individual can buy to make you closer to nature, a shirt, a water bottle, a car, but I realize now that until we conserve our immaterial soul and let go of our material fixations, even in death, we will still be piling up the waste and taking up too much space.
Like the author of the poem, I have often felt unknown, both to myself and to others. The history of mainstream culture has deprived me of a connection with nature. But I am a conserver, and I have found nature to be a conserver too. Traces of my roots and my life reach further than any town limits or cemetery stonewalls. My soul needs no resting place. It will continue on to live and breathe in the absence of my body, which has only been a vessel. You can’t cover my spirit with foundation, eye shadow and lipstick. It may hide death in my face, but it won’t beautify my spirit.I can not be confined, not by religion, not by my race, not by my class. I will not be put in a box, not in life, and not in death.
