Paleo-Sangha: Jill Schneiderman’s “Awake in the Anthropocene”

Jill Schneiderman is an earth scientist, an environmental justice activist and a Buddhist. She’s a professor at Vassar and author of four books, including The Earth Around Us: Maintaining a Livable Planet (2003) and Liberation Science: Putting Science to Work for Social and Environmental Justice (2012). A pioneer in work at the intersection of science and activism, she’s also a committed meditator. In 2009 she was a fellow of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, where she helped develop curriculum on geologic time and contemplative practice. The essay we read, “Awake in the Anthropocene,” touches on many of these concerns. It appeared in 2012 in Contemporary Buddhism, an interdisciplinary academic journal. 

The main argument of “Awake in the Anthropocene” is that Buddhist thought has something important to offer those who seek to respond effectively to problems of violence and anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on Rob Nixon’s ideas of “slow violence” and Johan Galtung’s analyses of “structural violence,” Schneiderman draws attention to the mismatch between human attention and the deeper processes at work, processes which operate at scales imperceptible to ordinary human consciousness. The patient work of earth scientists, who are able to understand change over geological time by learning to “watch nothing happen,” is helpful but insufficient on its own. Schneiderman cites many Buddhist and other ideas but particularly recommends the Noble Eightfold Path’s understanding of the interconnectedness of wisdom (panna), ethical conduct (sila) and mental discipline (samadhi). This ancient Buddhist idea/practice is a way to reconnect the “head” (science), the “compassionate heart” (activism) and the “body” (mindful experience) in response to the demands of environmental justice. 

Schneiderman mentions the Anthropocene in her title but the problems and the solutions she discusses are independent of whether and how we understand the current crisis. (In her conclusion she proposes thinking of it instead as the Kali yuga, to draw attention to the cycles of destruction we are trying to comprehend and disrupt.) Schneiderman breaks new ground in linking the challenges of grasping geological time and the structural analyses of violence in human affairs – perspectives often seen as incompatible. Her use of Buddhist traditions is fruitful for thinking about religion and the Anthropocene for its inclusion of not only ideas but stories and practices too – “religion” is much more than a set of beliefs! – and for the creative eclecticism she models in response to the wicked problems of the Anthropocene. In this critical moment, it’s all religious hands on deck! 

Our discussion wrestled with what Schneiderman means by “watching nothing happen,” a deliberately paradoxical phrase which suggested many things to us – but not necessarily the kind of active response to the violence of the world she is promoting. Her argument is compelling for those already initiated in discussions of violence on various scales and in the rich tapestry of Buddhist practices, but is harder to appreciate for readers new to these areas. Likewise, her account of how contemplative practice connects us to our bodies and hearts – and so to the suffering of the world – may be something which must be experienced to be understood. But “Awake in the Anthropocene” is a fantastic map of the terrain we need to learn to navigate, and an inspiring call to start traversing it. 

For someone not already conversant with all Schneiderman references, one way in might be to focus on her account of spending time on the island of Barbados, and then to try to find analogs in our own experience. 

On Barbados, I ascended arid slopes that reveal the fact that the land underfoot once was beneath the sea. Hillsides shaped like treads and risers of a coralline staircase, coastal terraces in geological parlance, mark ancient shorelines. These old coastal features some distance above the modern coastline tell of tectonic uplift, changed climate, and sea level fluctuations that caused the extinction of some reef colonies and the succession of others. I think of these ancient reefs as paleo-Sanghas [Buddhist communities], extinct communities that lived and died together. From the tops of the coral staircases, I peered down to clear, aquamarine waters bathing the living reef communities and I anticipated their end, brought on eventually by tectonic shifts, rising temperature, or nonpoint-source pollution. 

Just how does this sort of awakening to deep time not lead to resignation at the inevitability of loss? How can scientific knowledge, individual practice and collective action for change work together rather than against each other? (ML) Picture source: https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/freshwater/schneiderman_story.html