Beyond Gary Snyder: Buddhism's Influence on U.S. Environmental Literature –

a Feminist Ecocritical Approach

Greta GaardThe Fifth Tamkang International Conference on Ecological Discourse

“Ecocriticism in Asia: Reorienting Modernity, Reclaiming Nature.” December 16-18, 2010.

Tamkang University, Tamsui, Taiwan.

Buddhism & U.S. Nature Writing Canon

Gary Snyder (b. 1930)

o Beat poets 1950s -60so Wilderness poems, essayso Interbeingo Bioregionalismo Ecology as an intellectual,

aesthetic, personal, & spiritual pursuit

==============• Deep ecology• Canon of nature writing• Mainstream Ecocriticism

Canon: links between writer, genre, philosophy, ecocritical responses

Canon Stage #1: Wave #1, McIntosh #1

Buddhism, Environmental Literature, & Ecocritical Perspectives

Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism (2005)1. “first wave . . . concerned itself

with conventional nature writing and conservation-oriented environmentalism”

2. “second wave” ecocriticism “redefines the environment in terms of the seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice and concerns itself with ‘issues of environmental welfare and equity’”

3. “a new third wave of ecocriticism, which recognizes ethnic and national particularities and yet transcends ethnic and national boundaries . . . explor[ing] all facets of human experience from an environmental viewpoint” (Adamson & Slovic 2009)

Peggy McIntosh’s “Stages of Curricular Revision” (1983)1. Womanless history - the standard

straight white elite male canon

2. Woman in history - the exceptional and elite women who become tokens in an otherwise dominant narrative

3. Woman as a problem, absence, or anomaly in history -- the transformative influence of including women has begun to reshape the canon and redefine the discipline; race, class, gender, and sexuality must now be considered.

4. Woman AS history--special courses, texts, seminars, and terminology focus exclusively on women, queers, writers of color, working class writers, etc.

5. History revisioned to include us all

Women in Buddhism, Women’s Environmental Literature, & Feminist Ecocriticism

• Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (Downing 2002)

• “Conspiracy of Silence: The Problem of the Male Teacher”, in Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism (Boucher 1993)

“While some women are now assuming leadership roles in Buddhist centers throughout America, very few of these women are persons of color. …As long as this is the case, Buddhism in America will continue to mirror the hierarchical and patriarchal institutions it has maintained throughout its long history in Asia.

If genuine progress is to be made, the issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality need to be addressed much more seriously than they have been thus far. Only then will the tantalizing promises of Buddhist philosophical notions like selflessness, interdependence, inclusiveness, and, ultimately, insight and compassion become real possibilities.”

--Jan Willis, in Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women (2000)

*intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, species, & nature*

•What genres of environmental literature would U.S. Buddhist women write? What topics would they write about? What themes would appear salient?

•How would a feminist ecocritical approach illuminate these writings?

Women, Buddhist Environmental Literature, & Deep Ecology

• World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax, 1991); Coming Back to Life (NSP, 1998)

• Anti-nuclear activism• Despair & empowerment work• The Elm Dance• Council of All Beings• Shortcomings of the Deep

Ecological self, speaking for others, no attention to gender

Joanna Macyhttp://www.joannamacy.net/

Deep ecology, and the denial of difference

Val Plumwood, Feminism & the Mastery of Nature

Deep Ecology solves hyperseparated human identity and culture/nature dualisms by erasing difference, treating nature as a dimension of self

Three different accounts of self, all unsatisfactory from a feminist,environmental standpoint:•Indistinguishability•Expansion of self•Transcendence of self

Stephanie Kaza, The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees (Shambhala, 1996)

Goals: an “I-Thou” relationship with trees, listening / speaking

Assist readers in shifting from denial/paralyzed inaction, to “profound moments of … global interdependence”

“some part of me is tree” (67)“I had allowed myself to become

dismembered” (125)“meeting the tree with total presence.

The chain saw brings us to the point of intimacy . . . “ (172)

Wave 1/McIntosh 2: Women Nature Writers, Wilderness, Deep Ecology

Barbara Gates, Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place (2003)

• Cofounder & editor of Inquiring Mind

• Running (escaping what’s here & now)

• Stopping (here & now is all we’ve got

• Looking (inhabiting the uninhabitable

• Seeing (letting go of hope)• Settling (before /beneath)• Already home Canon Stage: Wave #2, McIntosh #2

Jeanne DuPrau, The Earth House (1992)

• American Library Assn. Stonewall Book Award (1993)

• Lambda Literary Award (1992)• Sylvia & female narrator build an

earth house on community land purchased by their female Zen teacher

• House-building as opportunity for Zen practice, ways of relating to mind-chatter, aversion & grasping

• Sylvia’s cancer returns; narrator’s Zen mind helps her through grief

Women, Buddhist Environmental Literature, Ecofeminism & Environmental Justice

The Nature of Home: Taking Root in a Place (2007)

“ Immersed in this river, I no longer need to be a container, no longer need to hold on to my separate little vase full of energy. The energy surrounds me. My heart has broken open and is bathing in the Mississippi. I let go of the expectation that the pieces will be joined, that the unbroken vase is the best shape for my heart” (195)

Essays addressing• Colonization’s legacy in shaping place, identity,

community• Violence against nature, women as resources• Oil pipelines, parks, & oppression of

erotic/nature• Thoreau cabin, the idea of “living in the woods”,

and a sustainable ecological economics • Home & homelessness• Grief, loss, & re/membering via relationship to

place

Melody Ermachild Chavis, Altars in the Street: A Courageous Memoir of Community & Spiritual

Awakening (Harmony, 1997)

Socially-engaged Zen practice living in Lorin with drugs, gunfire, sex work, robbery, alcoholism, homelessness, San Quentin mindfulness

“Hungry Ghosts” interbeing and no-self (68)

Compassion practice, death, community gardening, “strong roots”

“Day of the Dead” (Ch. 20)The wisdom of letting goBuddhist Peace Fellowship

Women of Color & Engaged Buddhism

bell hooksregular contributor to Shambhala Sun.

Alice Walker, We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness (2006)

Mushim Ikeda-Nash, teacher at San Francisco Zen Center. Editor of BPF’s Turning Wheel.

Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats (1999), All Over Creation (2004)

• Ordained as a Zen priest - 25 June 2010

• Teaches Mindfulness & Writing in Bellingham and at Hedgebrook

•Animal Food Production•Sustainability•Globalization •Race & hybridity•Gender •Media democracy•Family formations•Sexual and reproductive justicehttp://www.ruthozeki.com/archives/794

“Interbeing, you could say, is the underlying theme of My Year of Meats, and certainly influences Creation as well. …I discovered the dharma through writing, rather than using writing to explicate the Buddhist principles…. In 1997, when I was writing Meats, I still was quite new to Buddhism. Maybe it was a co-evolution.” (e-mail, 12/10/2010)

Jan Willis, Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan UniversityDreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist, One Woman’s Spiritual Journey (2008)

“…convert-Buddhism in America is largely a white, & upper middle-class affair. …two essential requirements for doing a Buddhist retreat here: money and leisure time. Most working-class people and many people of color do not have a great quantity of either.”

“the Dharma is for everyone . . . Though we people of color have a sort of head start, given the prominence of Buddhism’s discussions of suffering.”

–Jan Willis, “Dharma Has No Color,” in Dharma, Color, & Culture

Angel Kyodo Williams•Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace (Viking) •(Editor) Framing Deep Change: Essays on Transformative Social Change

•Founder of the New Dharma Meditation Center for Urban Peace in Oakland, CA, a training center for engaging individual, community and social transformation as spiritual practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvmJGYQNXY

Being Black & hip-hop CD

Dharma, Color, and Culture (2004)

“When speaking of the history of Western Buddhism in general—and its presence in the United States, in particular—it is imperative that the point of origin not be located in a white, European American context. The story of how the Dharma reached the shores of the United States is embedded in the history of immigrants of color.”

Chinese were actually the first Buddhists to reach America…

•Hui Shan & monks in 4th c.e.•immigrants of 1860s.

Nature as Body, Bodies as Nature“the assault upon the natural

environment today is but an extension of the assault upon black women’s bodies in the nineteenth century” when “slave-owner consciousness” prevailed, and “black women (and black men) were ‘viewed as beasts, as cattle, as articles for sale.’”

--Delores Williams, “Sin, Nature and Black Women’s Bodies”

Women’s Buddhist Environmental Texts

• Thematic progression in standpoint , & writers:• Deep ecology (non-

feminist)• Feminist, Environmental

Justice

• From elite locations (race, class, sexuality) to

• Diverse race, class, sexuality, ethnicity

• Usual Narrative Genres• Creative nonfiction,

Fiction, Biography, Science fiction

• New genres / narrative structures

– Reflective essays & memoir– Dharma talks– Hip-hop, music, video

Uncovering root causes of suffering, & Path to the cessation of suffering

– Waking up, present moment attention, listening

– Turning toward suffering– Dropping the narrative of Self-ing– Uncovering dependent 0rigination in social

& environmental injustices, and

…Acting to end suffering for all sentient beings

Feminist Buddhist Ecocriticism