According to Reuters Reports December 2022, One million species are on the brink of extinction. Researchers Say We’re in a Sixth Mass Extinction. This Time, Humans Are the Culprit。In an 2017 article, professor, Gerardo Ceballos, National Autonomous University of Mexico wrote: “What we’ve lost in 100 years would have been lost in 10,000 years in normal times.” Standford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich said, “Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth’s biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched.”
How humanity related to the nature and to the consciousness of the cosmos has been a myth during and after industralization. This misunderstood was the underneath culprit that caused the two World Wars in the 20th centure. Countries competed on nature resources and markets. Mentality of dominance and life death competition override the rational mind and the deeper intutive wisdom that we are in this all together.
Dr. Alberto Villoldo is a fascinating blend of medical anthropologist and practicing shaman—having explored, practiced and taught these ideas for decades. Alberto walks us the healing wisdom at the nexus of ancient shamanic wisdom and modern science. In an interview on his book One Spirit Medicine, he talked about our gut brain, our second brain and why it is so important. He said, ” … we are dealing with situations today that shamans never had to deal with in the past. We have over seventy thousand toxic chemicals that we’ve produced. We have been exposed to antibiotics, to pesticides. We have been exposed to toxins the indigenous people never had to deal with before. …. so today the first thing we need to do is begin to detoxify. The primary way is first keeping pathogens out which is what out gut does. If you have a balanced gut micro flora, you are 90% way there. This is our gut brain, the second brain. ”
“We have over hundred million neurons that are in the gut that are regulate the entire process of taking the outside world and making it you. When you eat a piece of broccoli, you’ve got to turn that piece into you, and this is what the micro flora does. We are in effect colony organism. Humans have about 25,000 genes, but a grain of rice as over 80,000. A flatworm has 75,000 genes. Natgure experimented with humans by making us a colony organism. We hijacked the genetic machinery of over six hundred species of bacteria that live within us and there are ninety percent of who we are. They turn the outside world into us and they are the ones that eighty-five percent of our immune system which is the gut. Today our gut is so out of balance because of our diet primarily, and because of what we (modern people) have been exposed to.”
Dr. Villoldo also said the DNA of ourside substances out numbers our DNA ten to one. Yes, ten to one is the relationship between kind of what we consider “us” verus foreign substances. Alberto explains that the key to optimum health is to revise the unconscious programming and limited beliefs that have been driving us, thereby updating our neural networks to support healing and transformation. One of the mondern predicament – a disease-care system, and the allopathy medicine model recognizes thousands of ailments and myriad remedies. The shamans of old, on the other hand, discovered One Spirit Medicine—a healthcare system that identifies only one ailment and one cure (our immune system). This same one cure is the paradigram shift required of our modern day mentality to instill a deeply ingrained sense of oneness with Nature and with Cosmic consciousness.
One Spirit Medicine is part of a new wellness model that doesn’t rely on medication to fix physical problems or mood imbalances. Unlike many pharmaceutical and over-the-counter remedies, the medicine of the shamans carries no side effects or warnings written in fine print. It will not cause dependency. You will not have to beg your physician to write a prescription for it, or argue with your pharmacist over whether or not your prescription renewal has been approved. At the heart of One Spirit Medicine is an age-old practice called the vision quest, a carefully choreographed encounter with nature and the invisible world. Through fasting and meditation, a vision quest awakens the body’s self-repair and regeneration systems and reconnects us to Spirit and our own deepest purpose.
This very issed has been expounded clearly in Buddhism Diamond Sutra – Deep Ecology, Looking Deeply into Our Oneness with Nature. Another sutra on the same emphasis is Platform Sutra which contains the autobiography of a pivotal figure in Zen history and some of the most profound passages of Zen literature. The Grandmaster Hui-Neng (638–713) was the sixth patriarch of Zen in China, but is often regarded as the true father of the Zen tradition. He was a poor, illiterate woodcutter who is said to have attained enlightenment upon hearing a recitation of the Diamond Sutra. Together, these two scriptures present the central teaching of the Zen Buddhist tradition and are essential reading for all students of Buddhism.
The Sixth Patriarch invites us to the Platform Sutra, in both Chapter 4 of the main text (entitled “Stabilization and Insight”) and in his Commentary on the Diamond Sutra （《金剛經解義》— 六祖惠能大师）, to inquire into the nature of what he calls the “Four Images”, which are: a self (“me”), a personality (“my” traits), a being (“my” body-mind), and a life (“my” life).
The Four Images are four fundamental bases of identification, which the mind can use to generate a dualistic sense of separate identity, although Hui-Neng uses the term “attachment” instead of identification. The insight that stabilizes and places our perception into righteous orientation. The Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism recommends cultivating disidentification or the relaxation of clinging (“detachment”) with each， because that is the ultimate reality.
- (1) the image of a self – being an isolated, separate, independent entity, cutoff from the universe and marked by an emphasis on “me” and “my.”
- (2) the image of a person – the idea of being a certain kind of “someone,” defined by specific personality traits and personal qualities that define, say, “Adam as a person.”
- (3) the image of a being – the idea of being a separate being, a being among many other separate beings, basically, a body or a body-mind.
- (4) the image of of a liver of a life – the idea of being defined by “my” life, the lifespan from birth to death of a particular organism. More specifically, it’s the image of being a ‘someone’ who owns this life, who claims it as “mine.”
Master Thick Nhat Hanh’s article: The First Precept: Reverence for Life illustrates in modern terms the important Buddhism teaching: We humans are made entirely of non-human elements, such as plants, minerals, earth, clouds, and sunshine. For our practice to be deep and true, we must include the ecosystem. If the environment is destroyed, humans will be destroyed, too. Protecting human life is not possible without also protecting the lives of animals, plants, and minerals. The Diamond Sutra teaches us that it is impossible to distinguish between sentient and non-sentient beings. This is one of many ancient Buddhist texts that teach deep ecology.
Another long thesis on Engaged Buddhist Practice and Ecological Ethics Challenges and Reformulations written Charles Strain, takes up three challenges and argumens that Buddhism “Eco-constructivists” perform a midrash on the Buddhist tradition that is geared towards praxis; it offers forms of practice that are hardly ethically vacuous.
