Buddhist-Ecofeminist Spiritualities: Beyond the Entanglement of New Materialism and Engaged Buddhism in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being

ABSTRACT

A Tale for the Time Being articulates from a Buddhist-ecofeminist perspective Ozeki’s ecological view of interconnected beings and her heightened awareness of increasing global ecological crisis. Entangling new materialism with engaged Buddhism, Ozeki in this novel highlights the ecological interdependence between humans and non-human nature, underscores environmental problems intertwined with nuclear-industrial and military-industrial complexes, and exposes systematic violence, in/visible hazards, and harms on othered beings and nature. Building on Karen Warren’s ecofeminist spiritualities that challenge the patriarchal system and its destructive beliefs, Ozeki’s Buddhist-ecofeminist spiritualities interrogate life-denying and self-aggrandizing practices justified by the dominant patriarchal power, such as building nuclear power plants and military aggression. As a compassionate Zen Buddhist-environmental activist, Ozeki stresses ethical responsibility toward the interconnected ecosystem not only on the level of individuals, but also on the structural level, by exposing systematic violence on humans and non-human nature. A Tale for the Time Being evokes caring ethics and responsibility for living and non-living beings on earth, and it is her tale of possibilities for changes and strategic interventions for the interdependent ecology.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ozeki in My Year of Meats further depicts harmful impacts of radiation leaks to humans, animals, and nature: “Just outside Denver was the Rocky Flats plutonium plant. It was closed in 1989 after two major fires and numerous accidents and leaks lead to charges that the plant had seriously contaminated the surrounding countryside, causing a significant rise in cancers among Denver area residents and a veritable plague of mutations, deformations, reproductive disorders, and death among farm animals” (246).

2. In addition, Bennett underscores matter’s “vitality” and materialism’s new way of thinking that “eschews the life-matter binary” (63).

3. Barad writes, “Entanglements are not a name for the interconnectedness of all being as one, but rather specific material relations of the ongoing differentiating of the world” (“Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance” 265).

4. Nhat Hanh explains that his concept of “interbeing” means “our deep interconnection with everything else”: “‘To be’ is always to ‘inter-be.’ … We inter-are with one another and with all life” (“The Insight of Interbeing”). In addition, Nhat Hanh in his book Interbeing talks about what it means to be in touch with reality: “To be in touch with the reality of the world means to be in touch with everything that is around us in the animal, vegetal and mineral realms. If we want to be in touch, we have to get out of our shell and look clearly and deeply at the wonders of life – the snowflake, the moonlight, the beautiful flowers – and also the suffering – hunger, disease, torture, and oppression” (3-4).

5. Sallie King in Socially Engaged Buddhism states, “Buddhist thinking opens up new possibilities for ecological thinking” (118). Citing Nhat Hanh’s concepts of mindfulness meditation and awareness of no separation between self and world, King writes: “Nhat Hanh suggests that if one is walking mindfully, one doesn’t rush by the river, caught up in one’s thoughts, scarcely noticing the water; one pays careful attention to it, noticing its smell and appearance. If one notices trash, foam on the surface of the water, chemical smells, and the like and does not feel separate from the river but a part of it, one will feel that he himself is sick and be moved to do something about it” (125).

6. Nhat Hanh coined the term “engaged Buddhism” in order to “address social issues beyond the walls of a monastery,” and he led a “nonpartisan Buddhist movement that sought a peaceful end to the conflict” during the Vietnam War (Kraft, “Prospects of a Socially Engaged Buddhism” 12, 18). Regarding engaged Buddhism, Kenneth Kraft writes: “The touchstone for engaged Buddhism is a vision of interdependence, in which the universe is experienced as an organic whole, every “part” affecting every other “part”“ (“Engaged Buddhism” xiii).

7. Sallie King notes that although Nhat Hanh did not mention deep ecology, his core concept of interdependence runs parallel with the ideas of Buddhist deep ecologists, such as Joanna Macy, whose “attention to the problem of nuclear waste” is “based upon the Buddhist principle of mindfulness, of facing reality or recognizing what is as what is” (King 128). Despite various perspectives on deep ecology, Michael Zimmerman says that most deep ecologists agree on the major issues: “the industrial pollution, species extinction, biospheric degradation, and nuclear annihilation” (139-40). Robert Sessions in his article states that some deep ecologists, such as Arne Naess who coined the term “deep ecology,” often “turn to Buddhism for a higher Self that transcends the ego-self of the individual” (91). As opposed to “shallow ecology,” Naess’s tenet of deep ecology, according to Karen Warren, recognizes the “intrinsic value” or “the inherent worth” of non-human nature and holds the view that “humans are not discontinuous with nature, above (or superior) and essentially different from nature, but part of an interconnected webs of relationships” (“Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology” 256). However, Warren argues that many deep ecologists, such as Warwick Fox, George Session, and Bill Devall, maintain “a dualist notion of the self,” which Warren views as “a patriarchal conceptual framework” that “makes otherness a problem to be overcome” (“Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology” 266-67).

8. In North America, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF), a nonprofit organization established in 1978, addresses social and political concerns in its Buddhism practices and promotes engaged Buddhism (Simmer-Brown 67). One of the founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Aitken Roshi, who links his social and political activism to his Zen practice, demonstrates against nuclear testing and the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Simmer-Brown 69-71).

9. Kate Rigby in her article entitled “Spirit That Matter” suggests extending new materialism’s view of non-human agency by including “something immaterial called ‘spirit’” as well as granting access to practices of “ecomaterialist religion” or “spirituality” (283). In a similar vein, Charlene Spretnak states that “there is nothing ‘mystical’ or ‘other worldly’ about spirituality,” and urges cultivating a “holistic attitude toward life on Earth” (“Toward an Ecofeminist Spirituality” 127, 130, emphasis in original).

10. Starhawk points out that the goal of ecofeminism “is not just to change who wields power, but to transform the structure of power itself” (76). Similarly, Lee Quinby views ecofeminism as a “politics of resistance in this era of ecological destruction and patriarchal power” (127).

11. Iovino and Oppermann write, “All nonhuman things – water, soil, stones, metals, minerals, bacteria, toxins, electricity, cells, molecules and atoms, and a vast array of nature’s constituents as well as culture’s trash and garbage – are manifestly vibrant and possess various degrees of agentic capacity” (461).

12. Oppermann notes that the phrase “narrative agency” is not only about stories of “historical,” “cultural and literary texts,” but also about “geological, biological, and cosmic stories” in the physical world that act as “storied matter” (57).

13. Hsiu-chuan Lee argues that A Tale for the Time Being “incorporates quantum mechanics as a trope” in order to “illustrate the importance of time in sustaining the openness of (Nao’s) life” (41). On the other hand, Derek Lee reads the novel as a “postquantum fiction” and considers Nao as “the novel’s most explicit quantum character” (10). Lee argues that Ozeki “highlights physics’ Eurocentric bias” (11) and views “quantum mechanics and Zen Buddhism as equal and entangled approaches for representing space-time” (12).

14. Barad explains the cat’s two states – dead and alive at the same time – as a quantum superposition: “Quantum superpositions … tell us that being/becoming is an indeterminate matter: there simply is not a determinate fact of the matter concerning the cat’s state of being alive or dead. It is a ghostly matter!” (“Quantum Entanglements” 251, emphasis in original).

15. In her essay entitled “Naming the Cultural Forces that Push Us Toward War,” Spretnak argues that “Militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system” (105).

16. The Japanese Zen Master Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) views the human as a “relational self” and recognizes that “the self is not indistinguishable from nature” (Curtin 210).

17. Regarding the ethical decision Haruki #2 has made, Daniel McKay calls this “Haruki’s spectral presence” in Nao’s father: “Haruki’s spectral presence and textual ‘voice’ are thereby revealed as mutually reinforcing precedents that frame the life-affirming decisions” (20).

18. Issho Fujita in his article explains Dogen’s Zen meditation tradition. Zazen – ”usually translated as Zen meditation” – is a “sitting meditation” practice for “attaining objectives such as mind/body health, skillful social behavior, a peaceful mind or the resolution of various problems in life” (37). For Dogen, Fujita notes, “a holistic body posture” – ”sitting immovable like a bold mountain” in “full-lotus position” (kekka-fuza) – is the “key to zazen” (which is “different from the yogic tradition of India”), and kekka-fuza becomes “a means for optimally conditioning the body and mind for mental exercises called ‘meditation,’ but is not an objective in itself” (37).

19. Chris Jimenez in his article notes that digital information has “the potential of being used as a weapon” due to “unpredictability of the digital transmission” (279), and it also acts more like “a virtual currency” that has become “an ontological condition” (280) in contemporary society. Marlo Starr calls Ozeki’s novel “a suspicious reaction to optimism about the liberating potential of digital technologies” (106).

20. Elizabeth DeLoughrey notes, “Radioactive fallout presents us with the most invisible yet pernicious form of the wars of light, one directly tied to the transformation of the human body and a sign of our merger with the alterity of our planetary environment” (486). Similarly, Ursula Heise states, “Radio-active contamination is the most obvious indicator that the natural and domestic can no longer be decoupled from the technological and transnational” (185-86).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Youngsuk Chae

Youngsuk Chae is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke. She is the author of Politicizing Asian American Literature: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism (Routledge, 2008) and a co-editor of Asian American Literature and the Environment (Routledge, 2015).