Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

Just who is it that’s doing the designing? Dr. Guy Burneko takes us to the origins of the
universe and back to demonstrate that the answer has been here all the time, and we
never had to go anywhere to find it. He suggests that an ecosocial sustainability begins
with this contemplative kind of attitude. By referencing the I Ching hexagram #20, what
the Cleary (1986) translation titles ‘Observing’, we are led to believe that functional
ecohuman conduct is nothing less than an expression of cosmogenesis, the universe
coming to know and understand itself. This essay may stretch your conceptual comfort
zone but it will be well worth it: with a poetic flare for sculpting language, Guy reminds
us ever so sublimely why we’re all here doing this work.
Contemplative Ecology:
An Intercultural Story
Guy Burneko, Ph.D. – Institute for Contemporary
Ancient Learning, Seattle, USA
This presentation uses ideas and analogies from different cultures to say
something about the kind of story or narrative we might tell on behalf of
sustainability. The stories we tell about the origins and ongoing life of the
universe set up the conditions for the sustainability or damage of the life
systems of the Earth, because stories influence how we behave and how we
treat the living systems with which we interact. In one kind of story, these
systems are expressions of the overall life of the universe – and so are we
and our story too.
But if we tell a story that all living things are just machine-like parts of
the Earth and not its actual participants or members, this inclines us to look
at Earth itself as a big machine and ourselves as controllers and operators
detachable from it, something separate. In dividing the universe this way, we
keep reaching ‘out there’ to get things from the Earth that will suit us rather
than finding satisfaction in experience not carved up into pieces called me,
you, me, the woodlands, waters and the animals. Dividing or dualizing
outlooks intensify our drive to make unsustainable demands on the natural
environment, turning it and ourselves into marketable commodities.
Suppose the story we tell is the story the universe tells about itself
through us. In this case, our values, ideas and behaviors become skilful
means (upaya) expressing the evolving universe becoming conscious in us
and in our relations with it – with our greater Self. Thomas Berry calls
this ‘the Great Story’. Long ago, the Confucian sage Zhang Zai expressed
such integrated understanding as our companionship with all things.
And we may say today that mature ecological citizens are sage-like. Their
comprehensive responsiveness (Chinese kanying) with things is a microcosm
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