Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

48 Designing ecological Habitats
of the undivided macrocosmic universe process of interacting Heaven,
Earth and Humankind. This would be cosmic evolution experiencing itself
without dividing human being from all of being. In this case, our Earthsustaining
ideas and conduct would demonstrate what Yijing #20 calls guan,
(contemplation, view), “a process in which the forms of things and [our]
forms of seeing things coincide and in which the object and subject codetermine
what look a thing has or how [a] thing presents itself ”. 1 Here is
an integral narrative where ancient wisdom and contemporary ecoscience
may join in the human-cosmic process of universe-storying on Earth. This
could guide us to sustainable conduct.
The scholar Cheng writes, guan is not “biased by any scope or any level
or any perspective”. Rather, its undivided or holistic quality overcomes the
fragmentation of outlooks in optimizing the potentials for common well-being.
One who guans does this by way of contemplation or meditation. We might
think of this as experience that is self-rewarding because it is not divided
into subject(s) seeking external gains through object(s). Or to put this idea
another way, we can participate with the world in fully attentive interactions
that are their own end and not means to some external end or bottom-line.
Where our interactions are fully, contemplatively, attentive, there is nothing
much left over in the way of a selfishly gain-seeking self – instead, we become
full participants in self-rewarding experience; we embody it. The narrative
of guan offers intrinsic accord and satisfaction beyond partial, sectorizing
consciousness. Its ecosocial mindfulness is sustainable and sustaining because
it makes less of a demand on the natural environment.
Through attentive responsiveness with the Dao of natural processes, the
eco-contemplative sage practicing guan is alert to and expressive of subtle
changes in the environment, even able to anticipate their appearance. S/he
thereby spontaneously conducts hirself in a way based on a sincere and serious
attentiveness which feels and comprehends nature through responsiveness from
overall viewing rather than from fragmented ego-separateness. We may see this
as a way of maintaining links and identification with the ever-present origins
of being and evolution. Where we form one body with all things, our ecocontemplative
mind is the mind of Heaven and Earth; sustainability is sagely.
A story of cosmology that helps us transform from an instrumental,
acquisitive and fragmented perspective on Earth to holistic guan-like
participation with the universe rhythms and patterns of experience evokes
appropriate conduct and thinking. It evokes the experience that there is
no privileged, anthropocentric point-of-view. Variants of this narrative
have included shamanic ecstasy, discussed by Berry. These point towards
a genuinely eco-poetic and celebratory mode of well-being rather than
one based in consumerism or power and control. We may thus regard the
development of sustainable ecosocial consciousness and conduct as
[T]he primordial creation of a creative mind based on a vastly comprehensive
and profoundly contemplative observation and understanding of a universal
reality both outside and inside. 2