A few weeks ago, while covering Chris Gill’s new book Learning to Live Naturally, we looked at how important an environmental mindset is for living a truly excellent life. As Gill pointed out, it’s not a question of developing virtues such as awe or appreciation of nature that are separate from other virtues. Rather, the goal is to incorporate environmental thinking into all our virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance—such that e-virtue is present in all our decisions. If our aim is to live in agreement with nature, then love and respect for our beautiful planet should infuse our worldview.
This week, the comparative religion scholar Karen Armstrong is our guide in cultivating e-virtue. While Armstrong is not a Stoic and does not refer to Stoicism at all in this book, much of the lifestyle she advocates aligns very well with Stoic principles. As a contemplative, her concern is not primarily with activism or advocacy but with “incorporating into our lives insights and practices that will not only help us meet today’s serious challenges but change our hearts and minds” (p. 20). This book, Sacred Nature: How We Can Recover Our Bond with the Natural World, is a manual for doing just that.
What sets Armstrong’s commentary apart from others is her deep knowledge of the religious traditions that societies developed over millennia to ensure a balanced harmony between humanity and nature. In Sacred Nature she intertwines religious principles like ahimsa (nonviolence), holiness, sacrifice, and compassion with a 21st century sensibility of environmental care. As she skillfully weaves together wisdom from many of the foremost traditions of the world—Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity—Armstrong offers a reverential worldview that aligns well with Stoicism.
Reconnecting with the Natural World
In most pre-modern and non-Western societies, Armstrong argues, care for nature just came naturally. She contrasts our contemporary alienation from nature with the more traditional, natural way of seeing:
For most of us, immersed as we are in urban life and increasingly retreating from the world of nature into technology, such an experience [of nature] is alien. Where we see a range of separate beings and phenomena, tribal people see a continuum of time and space, where animals, plants and humans are all permeated by an immanent sacred force that draws them into a synthesized whole. For millennia, long before the development of urban civilisation, this was probably how most humans experienced the natural world.
p. 9
The unfortunate result of our alienation from nature—and from each other—is destruction and unhappiness. Armstrong suggests we need to find a path back toward reverence and respect for the natural world. Not only will it permit us to live a more fully human and virtuous life, but it will also protect our planet. If you truly love something, you take care of it.
So how do we regain our awareness of the sacredness of nature, even in the midst of our busy 21st century lives? Sacred Nature offers several short, practical exercises we can do on a daily basis to reconnect with the natural world:
Spend at least 10 minutes a day in a park, garden, or anywhere you can see the soil and the sky.
Pause to recognize and appreciate the sacredness of life around you: “Every day we should try to honor in our minds the holiness of every single natural object and person that we encounter” (p. 100).
Read a poem with gratitude toward nature: Armstrong recommends the Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth and Coleridge, but this could be Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, or any nature-themed poetry you find moving.
Meditate with humility on the mysteries of the universe: “Every day, first thing in the morning and at night, for just a few moments we should consider three things: how little we know; how frequently we fail in kindness to other beings; and how limited are our desires and yearnings, which so often begin and end in the self” (p. 114-115).
Try the Confucian practice of quiet sitting: “a state of repose, where you sit comfortably, not necessarily in the yogic position, and open your mind and heart to the natural world, feel its sights and sounds, and develop a sense of universal compassion” (p. 154).
An Anthropocosmic Point of View
All these exercises are meant to help us develop what Armstrong, following Confucian scholar Weiming, calls an anthropocosmic point of view. Based on the Confucian idea that “heaven, earth and humanity formed a continuum—a triad that was organic, holistic and dynamic” (p. 32), an anthropocosmic attitude almost exactly tracks Stoic ideals of community and nature. As Marcus Aurelius says, “All things are interwoven, and the bond that unites them is sacred, and hardly anything is alien to any other thing, for they have been ranged together and are jointly ordered to form a common universe” (Meditations, 7.9).
When we ponder the foundational unity of “the myriad things” (to use a favorite Chinese phrase), what emerges is a strong sense of reverence for both humanity and the natural world. Humans and nature are obviously not separate; homo sapiens is just one small part of the natural order. An anthropocosmic mentality reinforces our intuition that we can’t truly care for one without caring for the other:
Concern for the natural environment follows naturally from respect and reverence for humanity…The more you become aware of the sanctity of your fellow human beings, Mencius taught, the easier it becomes to perceive the sanctity of other beings and then love them too. You begin to understand that holiness is also present in all the wu (‘things’) of nature.
p. 141-142
It’s not surprising that Armstrong recommends visualizing our care for others in terms of concentric circles, an image used in Stoicism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.1 This is an ancient psychological technique, one that is still effective for bringing us psychologically closer to other humans. But it can also work for the natural world. To the existing circles of self, family, neighbors, nation, and humankind, Armstrong remarks, “we should add a new circle, which transcends our focus on humanity. When finally we realize that our very existence depends upon nature, it will be time to surrender our anthropocentrism and include the entire cosmos in our ultimate concern” (p. 171).
A circle of care for the cosmos is highly reminiscent of Whiting and Konstantakos’ (2021) suggestion to add an outer circle of concern for Earth to Hierocles’ concentric circles. In Being Better: Stoicism for a World Worth Living In, they write:
The extension of the circles of concern serves as a graphic reminder of the fundamentally Stoic call to strive for the courage, justice, self-control, and wisdom required to tackle the environmental crisis. In line with Hierocles’ instructions, we are required to bring each successive circle back upon the previous one. This would lead us to treat our family members like ourselves, our friends as if they were family, and so on, until eventually we see Nature’s essence in us and our individual selves as part of the web that constitutes the cosmos. The “Earth” circle also reminds us that when we harmonize our thoughts and actions with Nature, we are very much building upon the lessons taught to us by the ancient Stoics.
Whiting and Konstantakos, p. 119
By explicitly including our natural environment in our daily meditations, we can keep reverence for nature at the forefront of our minds and actions. To return to the earlier point Gill makes in Learning to Live Naturally, caring for nature is not a separate virtue but is incorporated into all the other virtues—into virtue, period. In this sense it’s not an add-on to the search for wisdom and happiness; it’s at the core of wisdom and happiness. As Whiting and Konstantakos put it, “Seeking unity with the natural world, by extending our care toward animals, plants, and their habitats, helps us to reevaluate our priorities and reconfigure our values” (p. 118).
A Meditation on Nature
In our discussion of environmental care at the Stoics Care conference in April 2022, someone in the audience asked whether it might make sense to start caring for nature in the same way we start caring for other people: beginning with the natural environment immediately around you. Rather than trying to cultivate love for nature as a whole—which is, admittedly, very abstract—perhaps we start with a small patch of nature closest to us. This would parallel how we learn to care about other people, starting with those closest to us and moving outward.
I found this perspective very intriguing, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Just as it doesn’t make sense to care about strangers on a different continent if you don’t care about your own neighbors, it wouldn’t be logical to worry about global environmental degradation if you don’t first love what’s in your own backyard. Not that you should only care about your own backyard, but it’s the place you should start. The point is, if you truly love the nature around you, you will then be able to extend that love toward the rest of the cosmos. If you don’t truly love and appreciate the river that runs through your own town, how can you love and appreciate rivers in general?
So I would suggest, as you do your quiet sitting or morning meditation on nature, that you visualize a specific place, as near to you as possible. (If you’re able to actually go to that place to sit quietly, so much the better, but that’s not necessary if it doesn’t work out for you.) In the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation, we visualize specific people to love, starting with those closest to us. In our contemplation of nature, we can start with a specific patch of earth, and really focus on loving it.
Love the particular trees, shrubs, animals, and insects that are there. Love the air and water flowing through it. Love the sunshine (or rain) falling on it. If you have time, zoom in on each individual leaf and blade of grass. Go beneath the soil and visualize the roots, the fungal network linking plants together, the earthworms, the decaying plants and animals. Think about every aspect of this little environment. If you want to be very thorough, you can zoom all the way into the microscopic organisms that we know are all around us. Think about each element as an individual in itself, but also as an integral part of the larger whole.
You can then slowly zoom out and think about a wider area—the mountain, valley, or plain where you live, for example. Try to think in terms of natural boundaries, not man-made ones. Consider all the lifeforms within this area. Visualize all the different animals: mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects. Move on to plants: trees, bushes, flowers, groundcover. Maybe you want to think about the fungi and smaller organisms, and nonorganic matter such as rocks, soil, water, air. As you zoom out still further you can incorporate whole biomes, larger bodies of water, mountain chains, layers of the atmosphere. As you consider each thing, hold it in your mind’s eye and give it a moment of appreciation. Think about how much you owe each of these elements. Without all of them, you certainly wouldn’t be here.
Finally, you can zoom out to the whole Earth, like you are looking down from a space shuttle or even from the moon. Think about nature on a grand scale: tectonic plates shifting, tides and climactic events swirling around the globe, layers of the atmosphere holding in our oxygen and shielding our planet from the sun’s radiation. Really grasp each element in your mind, appreciating it and recognizing its beauty. Ponder the complexity of what’s going on throughout Earth’s many layers, from the exosphere to the core. Give thanks that you are present as one tiny witness of the grandeur and magnificence of our planet.
Conclusion
All too often, when we realize what damage we have done to our environment, our response is fear—and fear can be paralysing, quelling any creative initiative to address the problem. We need to learn how to revere nature in a positive, life-affirming sense, which then sets us free to cherish our environment rather than exploit it.”
p. 153-154
Thanks to Karen Armstrong’s wonderful book Sacred Nature—supported by Whiting and Konstantakos’ wise insights in Being Better—we’ve explored some concrete practices for cultivating love and reverence for nature. I hope these help you reconnect with the natural world and find ways to “revere nature in a positive, life-affirming sense.” And if you’re looking for more inspiration, I highly recommend both these books to continue your path toward flourishing, for yourself and for the world around you.
Another excellent read Brittany. Thank you for the book recommendation. If I can, I’d like to recommend a couple of books on the intricate connections within nature. “The Secret Network of Nature” by Peter Wohlleben and “Nature is Never Silent” by Malden Ziege offer examples of how different animals, plants, rivers, rocks and weather systems cooperate and what’s at stake when these delicate systems are unbalanced.