The Ecology of Tantra: Why Yogis Eat Carrots Rather Than Cows
From Tarka Vol. 3, On Ecology
To live a life according to the wisdom of ecology is the most urgent task for humanity today. What can the philosophy of yoga contribute to this critical challenge? How can we develop an environmental ethics according to yogic principles? What would a sustainable ethics based on yoga look like?
Mind in Nature
For science, viruses represent the smallest accumulation and diversity of molecules which is recognized as “life.” Maybe in the near future, when more advanced techniques are employed, we will recognize the sentience of smaller aggregations of molecules. For now, viruses personify the boundary between life and non-life according to science.
According to the so-called Santiago theory, developed by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, the process of cognition is intimately linked to the process of life. Hence, the brain is not necessary for the mind to exist. A worm, or a tree, has no brain but has a mind. The simplest forms of life are capable of perception and thus cognition. For the spiritual sages of India, it is impossible to draw a final line between animate and inanimate beings. According to yoga philosophy, there is “purusha or consciousness” even in the so-called inanimate world of rocks. This type of “consciousness” is dormant, as if asleep, because there is no nervous system in rocks.
Indigenous peoples also experience a kind of spirit or consciousness in the cosmos. In the international best-seller, The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Thompkins and Christopher Bird report that, when killing a tree, some indigenous tribes have a heart-to-heart conversation with the tree. In no uncertain terms would they let the tree know what was going to happen, and finally they would ask for forgiveness for having to commit this unfortunate act of violence.
In the same book, they also documented scientific experiments on plants with a modified lie detector. The instrument would register when a plant’s leaves were cut or burnt. Not only that, when a plant “understood” it was going to be killed, it went into a state of shock or “numbness.” Thus, the scientists explained, possibly preventing it from undue suffering, which again may explain the “warnings” given to trees by some Native peoples.
Such laboratory tests may sound outrageous to materialists, but not to the ancient, animist peoples from all over the world, nor to Indian yogis or Westerns mystics. They have for long informed us that we do not live in a dead and meaningless universe. But unfortunately, nature cannot always express its grief when it is damaged or destroyed. To protect it, we must therefore conserve and properly utilize our natural resources.
If nature — earth, trees, and water — truly experience a form of existential pain or grief, at least when destroyed and polluted, our conservation efforts and our ecological outlook must first and foremost acknowledge this innate suffering. And by acknowledging it, nature becomes part of us. To paraphrase noted psychologist James Hillman — one of the innovators in the new field of eco-psychology — our mind is enlarged to include nature; the world becomes us. And if we destroy that world, out of ignorance or greed, we destroy a part of ourselves. As the Tantric yogi, Abhinavagupta, suggested in one of his texts, the Tantraloka, that the world, as seen from the state of a spiritually enlightened mind, is an expression of our own deep self.
