The Heart Chan Paths

Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics

Reviewed by Eric Sean Nelson

University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA
Email: esnel@yahoo.com

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Review of
Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics

Eric Sean Nelson*

Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics. By Simon P.
James. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2004. 142 pages.
ISBN: 0754613674.

Zen Buddhism has often been seen as disclosing a different, more recep-
tive experience of nature. Instead of imposing predetermined constructs,
ideologies, theologies, and worldviews onto the world, it suggests that one
can shake up and clean out the eyes, ears, and mind in order to look and
listen responsively to things as such in their interdependence and unique-
ness. Despite skeptics who deny the value of applying an ‘ancient eastern
philosophy’ to a ‘modern western problem’, Zen Buddhism articulates an
ethics of care for sentient beings and of nature as a whole that has signifi-
cant implications for environmental thinking and practice. Given the re-
cently proclaimed ‘death of environmentalism’, and the continuing preva-
lence of views reducing nature to a mere object for exploitation, there is
salience in anything that reminds us that there is more to life than human

*
University of Massachussetts,  Lowell, MA. Email: esnel@yahoo.com

Nelson, Review of  Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics 120
projects and challenges us to consider that responsibility extends beyond
human obligations.
Simon P. James’s provocative and trenchant work Zen Buddhism
and Environmental Ethics transforms such intuitions about Zen’s openness
to nature by systematically articulating in relation to both Mahayana Bud-
dhist and western philosophy the import of Zen for ecology and environ-
mental ethics. This work also serves as an excellent introduction to Zen
philosophy and ethics in general, since it richly unfolds these dimensions
of Zen in response to its critics. The relative brevity of this work makes it
at times more of a prolegomena, but one that will surely inspire further in-
quiry into the ethical and environmental import of Zen Buddhism.
James answers the charge that Zen is intrinsically irrational and
anti-philosophical by clarifying how Zen’s employment of tension, para-
dox, aporia, and absurdity (such as in k?an practice) pesupposes and re-
quires rationality rather than suppressing it in the name of irrationality or
mystical intuition. Although Zen throws cognitive constructs into ques-
tion, and thus challenges thinking, this clearing away of and release from
misconceptions and reifications is done for the sake of generating insight,
mindfulness, and wisdom. That thought can question and unsettle itself,
and the self confront and encounter itself, is not the impossibility but in-
deed the very possibility of philosophy.
r

Is there such a thing as Zen Ethics?
Although it has been suggested that Zen has no ethics, even by some of its
twentieth-century Japanese proponents, Zen has persistently addressed the
question of what kind of life is best worth living. One argument against
the possibility of Zen ethics is that Zen is inherently antinomian, amoral,
and hostile to ethics as a type of dualistic thinking that is overcome in
awakening. Zen can have no ethics if it is ‘beyond good and evil’; if moral

121    Journal of Buddhist Ethics
conduct, including the Buddhist precepts and Mahayana perfections
(p?ramit?), is merely a device to be tossed aside after serving its purpose.
Given that partaking in a different kind of ethics does not necessarily
mean having no ethics at all, James correctly shows that such an argument
profoundly misinterprets Zen. Zen practices imply an ethic since they in-
volve the cultivation of character (to the point of the spontaneous realiza-
tion of no-self) according to a model of what a person should be (awak-
ened, compassionate, and so on). James fittingly argues that this ethic is a
kind of ‘virtue ethics’, since it differs from ethics defined as obedience to
a set of commands or the application of an abstract rule—such as utility or
the categorical imperative—governing actions about what one should do.
He argues that the Buddhist concern with happiness is eudaimonistic,
since it is oriented toward the flourishing and cultivation of human and
sentient life rather than the application of a universal rule.
Zen ethics shares with virtue ethics a type of eudaimonistic ques-
tion concerning the best way of life. It employs a parallel language of per-
fections (p?ramit? understood as excellences that are comparable with Ar-
istotle’s virtues) and skillful means (a sense of appropriateness akin to Ar-
istotelian phronesis, yet without Aristotle’s bifurcation of practical and
theoretical reason). However, James risks confusing this powerful analogy
and ‘family resemblance’ with identity by not carefully distinguishing at
times the important differences between Zen and Aristotelian virtue ethics.
Zen ethics can only be analogous since it gives a different answer to what
constitutes happiness and virtue.
James deepens his argument by demonstrating that the constituents
of the Buddhist way of life (e.g., the Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path,
precepts) are constitutive and exemplary of such a ‘good life’ rather than
being merely instrumental means to be abandoned upon its realization.
One transcends these constituents, abandoning the raft on reaching the

Nelson, Review of  Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics 122
other shore, only in the sense that they are perfected and realized. They
have become the spontaneity and freedom of a ‘second nature’ rather than
being left behind. Wisdom (prajñ?) is nothing less than to spontaneously
live a deeply compassionate and hence ethical existence. The Buddhist no-
tion of expedient or skilful means (up?ya kaualya) does not signify ethi-
cal relativism or nihilism but the situation-oriented appropriateness that
openly and compassionately responds to things as they are. Compassion
(karu??) is the central virtue or perfection to be cultivated and spontane-
ously generated. This responsive spontaneity overrides moral rules. Yet it
is not relativistic arbitrariness if it is the phronetic consequence of wisdom
(prajñ?) or the skilful manifestation of the virtue or perfection of Buddha-
nature.
?
Yet how can one be compassionate given the emphasis on ‘no-
self’? The examples of ‘Samurai Zen’ and the uses of Zen in modern
Japanese militarism indicate that Zen shock tactics do not lead to compas-
sion by themselves. Selflessness can be deeply unethical if it leads to in-
difference to the suffering of others and the inappropriate sacrifice of self
and others. These cases illustrate how attachment to emptiness (??nyat?)
can in fact undermine compassion. James’s analysis suggests that there are
different tendencies within Japanese Zen Buddhism: Whereas some might
seem satisfied with their experience of satori, remaining in emptiness and
an unresponsive selflessness, others challenge themselves further by de-
centering or ‘emptying emptiness’ so as to respond to the suchness, thus-
ness, or as-is-ness (tathat?) of things. Despite the fact that some conceive
awakening as complete, and non-attachment as the indifferent abandon-
ment of morality and compassion, others live and continuously deepen not
only awakening but the precepts as a way of life that manifests the perfec-
tion and compassion of Buddha-nature while serving as a needed exemplar
for others to emulate.

123    Journal of Buddhist Ethics
Can there be a Zen Environmental Ethics?
The next set of issues pursued by James is whether Zen is anthropocentric
and, if so, whether it can yield an adequate environmental ethics. He ar-
gues that Zen virtue ethics is not inherently human centered if (1) human
well-being is defined by natural well-being, (2) nature is not merely in-
strumental for but constitutive of the human good, and (3) regard for and
care of the natural world is good for its own sake beyond issues of human
health, longevity, and well-being. Although it has been argued that Bud-
dhism is inherently anthropocentric because it is primarily concerned with
human awakening, James responds that Zen awakening is tied to the chal-
lenging and decentering of the human and conventional such that insight is
gained from and into the wider network of life. Whereas ethicist Peter
Singer, perhaps like Indian Buddhism, limits ethics to a response to the
suffering of sentient beings (which is already fairly ambitious judging by
human behavior), Zen extends the moral circle to encompass all life as a
reflection of the inherent Buddha-nature of all things, as expressed in
D?gen’s discussion of “mountains and rivers” in the Sh?b?genz?.  In
Chan and Zen Buddhism, emphasis is laid on learning from and becoming
like the natural world—from the uncarved block to the flow of the river—
and natural entities are seen as teachers, models, and exemplars.
Two difficulties of using non-harm (ahims?) as a basis for an envi-
ronmental ethic are (1) its limitation to sentient beings rather than nature
as a whole and (2) the possibility that some take it as a rule to rigidly
avoid intentionally or accidentally harming any creature whatsoever. For
James, the latter is more characteristic of Jain than Buddhist thought. It is
incompatible with Zen insofar as respecting nature cannot mean total non-
intervention in the natural world. As one is always a participant in nature,
naturalness rather than otherworldliness is exemplary. Although the tradi-
tional notion of ahims? was not applied to nature as a whole, and the mere

Nelson, Review of  Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics 124
fact that all things have Buddha-nature does not necessarily imply that
they have a moral status, Zen’s aesthetic and ethic of naturalness suggests
respecting nature as such and as a whole. This ethical holism stresses
minimizing harm through unfolding the excellence or virtue of respecting
natural entities, whether living (plants, animals) or otherwise (mountains,
streams, ecosystems). Of course a clod of dirt or drop of water cannot ac-
tually be ‘harmed’ in the way of sentient beings. Nevertheless, the air, the
land and the water can be damaged such that they also call for the virtue of
ahims?.
Whereas holism and individualism are generally opposed to each
other in western thought, James uses D?gen and others to explain how
each being—just as each dewdrop distinctively reflects the moon and each
moment is the singular expression of the entirety of time—has supreme
worth in and through itself and in relation to everything else. Thus Zen
treasures the most ephemeral and fragile, such as the blossom, the dew-
drop, and the leaf.
On the basis of these and additional arguments, James proceeds in
Chapter Four to examine the charge that Zen cannot yield an environ-
mental ethics in which natural beings have an intrinsic value and is poten-
tially nihilistic because of its focus on emptiness (??nyat?) and no-self
(an?tman). However, according to James, “intrinsic value” in ethics does
not mean “non-relational” but rather “non-instrumental” such that a Bud-
dhist can be committed both to the ultimate emptiness and interdepend-
ence of natural entities as well to their non-instrumental character. Con-
temporary Engaged Buddhism has fruitfully shown that the two claims can
complement each other. In an intriguing analysis, James considers whether
dependent origination (prat?tya-samutp?da) entails that things are inter-
nally or externally related and whether it can be articulated as a relational
multiplicity. The nihilistic interpretation fails to accord with Zen accounts

125    Journal of Buddhist Ethics
of awakening, including its ethical character, and forgets that emptiness is
not a positive ontological assertion but a skilful means of dismantling
fixed ‘realities’ in order to awaken responsiveness to the disclosure and
singular event of the thing itself in its thusness. As other recent works
have shown, the use of such phenomenological language can be quite
fruitful in explicating the experiential tendencies of East Asian Buddhism
and correcting the view that they are variations of Idealism. It would be in-
teresting to more thoroughly articulate the difference between Zen respon-
siveness and, for example, Heidegger’s letting/releasement (Gelassenheit,
which seems to lack the Buddhist dimension of compassion) or Levinas’s
precognitive ethical responsiveness to the Other (which is restricted to
human relations).
In the final chapter, James responds to the criticism that Zen can-
not motivate environmental practices, especially political activism, be-
cause of its supposed escapism and quietism. This view misses the pro-
foundly practical character of Zen as an engagement with and opening up
of the world.  It forgets that the wuwei of Zen is not letting be in the sense
of indifferently accepting anything, since ahims? calls for emptiness rather
than holiness and accordingly does not only concern one’s own actions but
also those of others. These interpretations, echoing earlier Neo-Confucian
critiques of Chan, profoundly miss the social dimension of Buddhism. If
karma and merit do not purely apply to an isolated self, and they cannot,
then the individual is deeply responsible for what happens to others. It is
certainly important to distinguish Zen responsiveness from western con-
ceptions of accountability and guilt, which presuppose a constant identity.
In Zen, responsibility is perfected as a natural and effortless responsive-
ness to things as they are—especially the spontaneous compassion in re-
sponse to the actual suffering of others exemplified by the figure of the
bodhisattva. For masters such as D?gen, mindfulness in the ordinary and

Nelson, Review of  Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics 126
everyday is the perfection of zazen. In answering the critique of Zen’s
supposed quietism, James also reflects on the contrary criticism that tradi-
tional Zen has at times been overly active in politically problematic ways.
He accordingly discusses the political conservativism within traditional
Zen as well as its unfortunate role in Imperial Japan. These issues need
more extensive treatment to suitably respond to the recent work of Brian
Victoria and others. James notes but could more fully articulate the point
that advocates of Engaged Zen need to be mindful of the possible dangers
of engagement, since activism can learn from Zen but also endanger Zen’s
interruptive and responsive tendencies through politicization and institu-
tionalization. As this work excellently shows, Zen is not a mechanism or
theory for resolving every problem. It is not a policy, political program, or
general moral theory at all but rather a profound and ecologically insight-
ful response to questions of the kind of life best worth living.1