5 Key Teachings: SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

TRANSCRIPT:

So I have to thank Susan Cain for turning me onto Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, who edited this anthology, Spiritual Ecology. It has essays from Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, Richard Rohr, Wendell Berry—both spiritual leaders and environmental leaders. And it first came out a couple of decades ago, but it’s as prescient and pressing as ever and just full of relaly beautiful insights about our relationship to the planet, and recognizign that we are all nature, in short. And this is such a subtle shift. This is from an essay by Satish Kumar: “When we practice humility and gratitude we are able ot learn much from nature. But we in the anthropocentric, modern civilization learn about nature. There is a great deal of difference between learning ‘from’ nature and learning ‘about’ nature. When we learn ‘about’ nature she becomes an object of study, leading to the exploitation of her.” I think that’s such an important and subtle shift—I love moments like that, but there are just so many in this book. Every essay is its own unique perspective and full of gems. Highly recommend.

You can listen to my podcast episode with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee here.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a world that honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift.” —Albert Einstein

5 KEY TEACHINGS:

1. “The world is not a problem to solve,” writes Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: We need to understand that we are part of nature, not separate from it.

He elaborates: “When our Western monotheistic culture suppressed the many gods and goddesses of creation, cut down the sacred groves and banished God to heaven, we began a cycle that has left us with a world destitute of the sacred, in a way unthinkable to any indigenous people. The natural world and the people who carry its wisdom know that the created world and all of its many inhabitants are sacred and belong together. Our separation from the natural world may have given us the fruits of technology and science, but it has left us bereft of any instinctual connection to the spiritual dimension of life—the connection between our soul and the soul of the world, the knowing that we are all part of one living, spiritual being.”

2. Thomas Berry explains that by “developing” the planet, we have left her barren.