One of the final sessions of "Religion and Ecology: Buddhist Perspectives" almost became a religion ot trees class today. I'd chosen three final readings from the old anthology Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism - the passage from the Lotus Sutra which gave the anthology its name, an essay on "the religion of consumerism" from Sulak Sivaraksa's 1991 Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society and Gary Snyder's semi-serious "Smokey the Bear Sutra" of 1969.
The "Medicinal Herbs" fascicle of the Lotus Sutra argues that the limitless Dharma, like a soaking rain which lets each and every kind of plant thrive, naturally expresses itself in a variety of teachings suitable to the variety of suffering beings. I was hoping that would allow us to sense a wide and still unfolding tradition in Sivaraksa's critique of consumerism in Thailand as well as Snyder's revelation of Smokey the Bear as a kind of Dharma protector for Americans.
Discussion of the Lotus section went well enough. A student from Pakistan helped us appreciate the text as written in a monsoon climate, to which I added that the "inferior, middling and superior" medicinal herbs and small and large trees to which the Lotus likens beings of different levels of enlightenment should be understood as constituting a forest, each part of which was distinct and necessary - herb, understory, canopy. Even the tallest trees can't provide the healing of ground-hugging medicinal herbs, though they provide shade for them. So far so good. The "Dharma rain" wasn't just offering each individual something that worked for them, but sustained a whole interconnected world.
But if religion and trees was helping here, students weren't having it come Smokey. Zen poet Snyder revalues the familiar U. S. Forest Service mascot, whom the Buddha "once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago" announced would be his "true form" in our time:
... Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display—indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys; ...
Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism...
Fun, huh? The students tasked with leading the discussion on this weren't having it. "We all hate Smokey the Bear!" they cried. Why? He's so commercialized! He represents the settler colonial effacement of indigenous peoples! He's the emblem of the fire suppression strategies which generate mega fires! He anthropo-morphizes the non-human world! The real Smokey bear cub was rescued from a fire only to spend the rest of his life in a cage! He makes tourists endanger themselves thinking real bears are warm and cuddly!
Did you read beyond the title, I asked? Snyder isn't actually much more interested in forests than the Lotus Sutra is. It's a metaphor, a skilful means... They assured me they hated Snyder too, whom we've critiqued for claiming he had become a "Native American." When I observed that Synder was one of the models for Kerouac's Dharma Bums one volunteered "I hate the Beatniks!"
This conflagration of Smokeyphobia caught me by surprise. Synder's "Sutra" is celebrated among American Buddhists, appearing in the HDS "Buddhism through its Scriptures" MOOC as well as the Norton Anthology of World Religions, not to mention Dharma Rain. But clearly what was a skilful means for older generations wasn't working for these students.
I tried to let this be the takeaway of our discussion. Smokey's clearly not the medicine we need now. But the forest is full of plants. "What might a more skillful metaphor be?" Our class time had sadly run out. But I think we were all struck by the ferocity of the reaction to the "Smokey the Bear Sutra." That must be telling us something. Perhaps it's the effrontery of the generations which destroyed the environment telling children "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." On Earth Day no less!
