Recently I’ve been unwell and housebound, hardly even watching the world go by. But there came a day when I could go out again, a day that was blessed with sun. It seemed bright and new. I was almost blinded by its luminous presence on a white tree-patterned wall. I had entered late fall, a season with both autumnal and winter features.
The sun shone on trees in Gloucester City Park which retained some of their foliage, but in an end-of-season way that signals austere changes to come. Leaves showed a fragile, lingering beauty, prior to their necessary descent.
The Brunswick Gardens, sitting under a clear blue sky, were home to trees where the leaves had already fallen, leaving the branches as patterns of quiescent arboreal bones. The leaves were on the lawn. Other, managed, flora continued to flourish.
In visual and tactile ways, after an indoor confinement, the neighbourhood was full of reward for me. But I felt cold, and it was indeed the coldest it’s been for many many months. I could not stay out for long. But I had encountered a moment in the year, of interbeing, of living presence – where the wheel is visibly and palpably turning. I was glad to be there, however briefly, available for a nurturing and healing experience.
Highly recommended. Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World Is More Than Human (1) is about the many beings we humans have actively ‘unseen’ and the consequences of our human-centric lens. Author Erik Jampa Andersson describes his book as a diagnostic exploration of the roots of the climate crisis, itself an extreme consequence of a much wider malaise. Whereas the common view of ‘saving the planet’ tends to be one of ‘guarding the storehouse’, a better focus would be on ‘supporting the welfare of living beings’.
Andersson has a background in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan medicine. In the manner of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, and of his medical training, he divides his book into four parts: Diagnosis, Causes and Conditions, Prognosis, Treatment.
Diagnosis concerns “our ecological disease”. Andersson reminds us of what the climate crisis is, how far it has been allowed to go, and the “fanciful stories” with which we have soothed our fears: “full of human exceptionalism, divine protection, techno-fixes and post-apocalyptic salvation”. For Andersson, the foundational root cause is “the sundering of human and non-human beings, and our perceptual separation from ‘Nature’. He refers to “the poison of anthropocentricity”. He reviews the evidence for plant and fungal sentience and awareness as well as that of the animal kingdom. He concludes that Nature is not a place, but “a tightly knit community of interconnected beings, some seen, many unseen, all engaged in their own affairs and with their own experience of reality”. He describes this relational approach to the living world as “what most scholars now call ‘animism’ … neither a religion nor a system of belief, but a paradigm of more-than-human relationship”. He sees this stance toward the world as “our natural state”.
Causes and Conditions A mini-ice age some 13,000 years ago interrupted an early agricultural period in some places and prompted a series of innovations. The domestication of the horse was especially significant. Andersson sees a move away from our ‘natural state’ beginning at this time. But it is not fully evident to us until the age of written philosophy and scripture. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle declare a hierarchy of sentience from plants up to animals and then humans at the top, uniquely endowed with a rational soul. In the Hebrew book of Genesis, God gives dominion over the Earth and its animals to man for his use. In the Western Christianity of the 13th century CE, Thomas Aquinas says that Christians have no duty of charity to non-humans because they are resources, not persons. In the 17th century CE, early in the West European led colonial era, Descartes holds public vivisections of dogs and other animals declaring that they are soulless automata and that their apparent distress is meaningless. In the mid 19th century CE, Darwin restores other beings as our ancestors and cousins, but but without much sense of kinship or empathy.
Prognosis Here Andersson introduces two concepts from Tibetan medicine: ‘provocation’ and ‘spirit illness’. The provocation of other sentient beings is a health risk. He discusses the origins of the recent Covid-19 pandemic in these terms, as human become ever more invasive of our remaining wild spaces. In cases of deforestation, pollution, and any disruption of air, water, soil and trees, there is a price to pay for the wounding of other spirits, whether seen by the eye, seen through a microscope and normally unseen but recognised by tradition. (‘Supernatural’ is an unhelpful word here – everyone is part of nature). In Tibetan tradition, the cultivation of a clear mind is highly prized and works within human psychology, but not for disruptive events like these. There is a need to make amends. Rituals are held in sensitive and damaged places. The damage caused in these circumstances and the resultant chronic collective disease can only be addressed by learning how to care for eachother, non-human beings and the planet itself.
Treatment Using the Buddhist 8-fold path as a structure, Andersson recommends ‘cultivating care’ over a system of rules and regulations aimed at a ‘sustainability’ which tries to restore the old status quo. We cultivate care of the Earth, one another and non-human beings. Hence: 1 right view is a return to our ‘natural state’, as described under Diagnosis; 2 right intention describes commitment to a path of rewilding and regeneration; 3 right speech is the use of “life-affirming language” (e.g. using ‘they’ as an alternative to ‘it’ for non-human beings); 4 right action is causing as little harm as possible to other beings; 5 right livelihood means adopting principles of authentic sustainability and non-exploitation; 6 right diligence is based on “the durability of the heart-felt ethic; 7 right mindfulness means “paying attention to nature’s vitality”; 8 right concentration involves imaging a new future with “authentic myth-making”.
Concerning 8 above, Andersson has been profoundly moved by the work of J. R. R. Tolkien from his later childhood onwards. As a result, he developed a high valuation of authentic myth-making and enchantment. In this realm, the non-human is essential. Tolkien had his own life-changing moment of enchantment when, as a student, he first read the Old English words: Eala earendel engla beorhtast, ofer middangeard monnum sended. (Hail Earendel brightest of angels, above the middle-earth sent unto men). Of this evocation of Venus arising as the morning star, in the old language, Tolkien later wrote: “there was something very remote and strange and beautiful about these words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English”. For Andersson, authentic myth and authentic science work together in support of a redemptive animist vision. By contrast, the form of discourse to worry about is ‘fallacy’ – a complete dissociation from the truth. Andersson again quotes Tolkien: “if men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts and evidence) then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible) Fantasy will perish and become morbid delusion”. For Andersson, this too has become a symptom of our current ecological disease, making the need for honest and healthy communication all the more urgent.
For me, Andersson has made a valuable addition to a growing literature about the current crisis, whose most alarming symptom is climate breakdown. He goes to the root of the problem, offering a clear and coherent view about how to stand in the face of it. It is a well-researched, well-crafted and compassionate contribution to the genre.
(1) Erik Jampa Andersson Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World is More Than Human Carlsbad, CA & New York City; London; Sydney; New Delhi: Hay House, 2023
I attach a links to conversations between the author and Andrew Harvey below. It adds considerably to what I can present in a review:
From the modern animist perspective of his Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World Is More Than Human, Erik Jampa Andersson looks at what we owe to our canine friends.
“In our own evolution as a species, non-humans have often played crucial roles. Plants and animals weren’t always just our food and possessions – they were are mentors, companions, even our ancestors.
“There’s one non-human, in particular, whose profound impact on our human story warrants far more recognition … They were descended from the beasts of legend – formidable hunters who commanded vast swathes of land with ferocious might. In many of our myths and legends, they were immortalized as guardians of the underworld and crucial intermediaries between the human and non-human domains. Before we had ever tamed a horse, milked a cow, or sown a field of grain, we had befriended a dog.
“… It’s believed that humans and wolves were gradually drawn together during the perilously harsh conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum [20,000+ years ago: JN]. As our paths began to cross more and more frequently in our pursuit of mutual prey, what likely started as a timid sharing of spoils led to an unusual sense of kinship between the two predators. Wolves were drawn into the warmth of human encampments, and ultimately made themselves quite at home at the foot of our beds. They offered us vital protection, companionship, and a natural ‘security alarm’ in a wild and dangerous world, while we provided them with warmth, food, and evidently also emotional satisfaction.
“Studies of canine intelligence have repeatedly attested to dogs’ advanced capacity for memory, social cognition, inferential learning, and even comprehension (and possible use) of human language. But beyond their clear intelligence, what deserves significantly more attention is the very real impact dogs have had on our own evolutionary trajectory.
“Unlike predators who prefer to prey on weaker animals, wolves thrived as persistence hunters, successfully felling giant mammals by stalking them to exhaustion in well-organized packs. As territorial animals, they also went to the great trouble of staking out their own tribal domains, maintaining a distinctly pastoral lifestyle in complex social groups.
“Such practices were wholly foreign to early humans and other simians, but by the time our ancestors found their footing in the Eurasian wilderness, they had become rather formidable and territorial pack hunters themselves. Researchers suggest that these novel human behaviours were at least partially influenced by our burgeoning relationship with canines, who introduced us to their world, taught us their hunting tricks, and afforded us peace of mind by protecting our settlements against less amiable foes.
“The domestication of dogs was one of the key forces that led to the development of fully modern humans, impacting our relationship with one another and the world at large for many millennia to come”.
(1) Erik Jampa Andersson Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World is More Than Human Carlsbad, CA & New York City; London; Sydney; New Delhi: Hay House, 2023
From: In Such Hard Times: the Poetry of Wei Ying-wu Red Pine (Translator) Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009
Wei Ying-wu was a poet of the later 8th. century CE, as we count time. It was a period when the later-remembered-as-glorious T’ang dynasty had begun to unravel (a hesitant centre, Mongol incursions, Warlordism at home). Translator Red Pine says that “Wei lived his life wondering what went wrong”, giving a melancholy tinge to many of his poems. He was distantly related to the Imperial family, a scholar in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions who spent many years as a state official without much enjoying it. This poem was written in 785 – in England, the time of the Venerable Bede and eight years before the Viking sack of the monastery at Lindisfarne.
In the background of this poem is a traditional story about a fisherman who traces peach petals upstream and discovers them coming from a hidden world where people live in peace. But after returning to his village to tell others, the fisherman is unable to find the way there again.
Contemplative Inquiry 