Religion And Ecology In India And Southeast Asia

What part can Hindu and Buddhist traditions play in resolving the ecological problems facing India and South East Asia? David Gosling's exciting study, based on extensive fieldwork, is of global significance: the creation of more sustainable relationships between people and the natural world is one of the most urgent social and environmental problems of the new millennium. David Gosling looks at the religions historically and from a contemporary perspective.

Throughout the world religious organizations are exploring and implementing into action ideas about the relevance of religion and spirituality in dealing with a growing multitude of environmental issues and problems. Religion and spirituality have the potential to be extremely influential for the better at many levels and in many ways through their intellectual, emotional, and activist components. This collection focuses on providing a set of captivating essays on the specifics of concrete cases of environmental activism involving most of the main Asian religions from several countries. Particular case studies are drawn from the religions of Animism, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, and Jainism. They are from the countries of Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Thereby this set of case studies offers a very substantial and rich sampling of religious environmental activism in Asia. They are grounded in years of original field research on the subjects covered. Collectively these case studies reveal a fascinating and significant movement of environmental initiatives in engaged practical spiritual ecology in Asia. Accordingly, this collection should be of special interest to a diversity of scientists, academics, instructors, and students as well as communities and leaders from a wide variety of religions, environmentalism, and conservation.

Becoming a Buddhist monk in Thailand has for a long time provided the opportunity for access to a good education and to social advancement, both to bright, poor rural youths and to members of the urban elite whose youth often become monks for a few months as a rite of passage into adulthood. Moreover, although women are not allowed to become fully fledged monks, recent developments have encouraged a special status akin to nuns for many devout Thai Buddhist women. All this has resulted in large numbers of well-educated, well-motivated Buddhist religious people, keen both to engage in religious contemplation and also determined to contribute to this-worldly social, economic, educational and medical development goals. This book, by a leading authority on the subject, considers the role of Thai Buddhist religious people in development within Thailand. It discusses how Thai Buddhism has evolved philosophically and in its organisation to allow this, examines various examples of Buddhist people's engagement in development projects, and assesses how the situation is likely to unfold going forward. In addition, the book considers the relationship between science and religion in Thai Buddhism and also some aspects of the parallel situation in Sri Lanka.

Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space, place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of the Anthropocene. Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical perspectives from political ecology, the book views ecology and polity as constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and global networks. Readers will find the very first systematic comparative analysis of sacred forests that include the karchall mabhuy of the Katu people of Central Vietnam, the leuweng kolot of the Baduy people of West Java, the fengshui forests of southern China, the groves to the goddess Sarna Mata worshiped by the Oraon people of Jharkhand India, the mauelsoop and bibosoop of Korea, and many more. Comprising in-depth, field-based case studies, each chapter shows how the forest’s sacrality must not be conceptually delinked from its roles in common property regimes, resource security, spiritual matters of ultimate concern, and cultural identity. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of indigenous studies, environmental anthropology, political ecology, geography, religion and heritage, nature conservation, environmental protection, and Asian studies.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between religion and environment in Hinduism.

The last two decades have seen the emergence of a new field of academic study that examines the interaction between religion and ecology. Theologians from every religious tradition have confronted world religions past attitudes towards nature and acknowledged their own faiths complicity in the environmental crisis. Out of this confrontation have been born vital new theologies based in the recovery of marginalized elements of tradition, profound criticisms of the past, and ecologically oriented visions of God, the Sacred, the Earth, and human beings. The proposed handbook will serve as the definitive overview of these exciting new developments. Divided into three main sections, the books essays will reflect the three dominant dimensions of the field. Part one will explore traditional religious concepts of and attitudes towards nature and how these have been changed by the environmental crisis. Part II looks at larger conceptual issues that transcend individual traditions. Part III will examine religious participation in environmental politics.

Every day before sunrise, millions of Tamil women in southeast Asia create the kolam, an ephemeral ritual drawing created with rice flour on the thresholds of houses, businesses, and temples. The kolam welcomes Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, good luck, wellness, and alertness, while banishingMudevi, the goddess of poverty, misery, ill-luck, sickness, and laziness. It also acts as a reminder to remember and ask forgiveness from the earth goddess Bhudevi for walking on her. Creating the kolam is a ritual of compassion and generosity, and is meant to feed a thousand souls by providingnourishment for insects and small creatures.The kolam forms a connection between the spiritual and the natural world for many Hindu women. This is the first comprehensive book on the kolam in the English language. It examines its significance in historical, mathematical, ecological, anthropological, and literary contexts. Feeding a ThousandSouls is the culmination of Vijaya Nagarajan's many years of research and writing on the kolam and on the experiences, thoughts, and voices of Tamil women.

"This publication is focused on the interface between religion, sustainable development and higher education. It is based on the underlying research question : How are the different worldviews and religions as well as the debate about their alleged contributions to sustainable development incorporated in the academic disciplines of religious studies and theology?"--P. [7]