Today is Earth Day, so how shall we honor our Mother [Earth]? We can start by calling her Bhumi, Tierra, or Gaia. Then it might help to honor the Goddess as giving so much to us, our very bodies. Sure there's a karmic reason and an invisible alignment/arrangement of particles that make these amazing vehicles we're powering, but it is earth (base materiality) as the "what" these bodies are or appear to be. Is there "spirit" (prana)? Yes! That wind-like thing, the ephemeral airs as explained in Yogic philosophy and detailed in a collection of sacred Buddhist texts referred to as the "Higher Doctrine" (Abhidhamma or the "Dharma in Ultimate Terms"), can be called a "spirit" (pneuma). That's what "holy spirit" in Abrahamic religions seems to be getting at.
We have hardware and software as modern analogies, but in the past the seers had dense mud and invisible air to make the same comparison of the yang (hard) and yin (soft) that is this "self." Self is a persistent illusion, hard to grasp and understand, but the Buddha went to great pains to explain it in two doctrines, one being the Five Aggregates and the other being (in response to the common question, "Well, what is there then?!") Dependent Origination. If one understood the latter, the question of "what is there?" would not confuse the asker to assume there has to be something solid and "real." In the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, there's "something" (shadows), but that doesn't make them real, that is, that doesn't make them what they appear to be.
So this body, this earth, made of soil and the Four Great Elements (mahabhuta, the dhatus, which strangely are not "things" even though they sound like the most fundamental things but rather are qualities/characteristics of materiality, and that material can be reduced to something translated by Ven. Dhammadipa as "particles of perception" or what the historical Buddha called kalapas).
So thank you, Mother! "Where to next, Columbus?" Crass sings. Why? Westerners are imperial menaces in the world...
What is Earth Day?
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22nd to
demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated across the planet through
earthday.org (formerly Earth Day Network) [1], including
1 billion people in more than 193 countries [1, 2, 3].
In 1969 at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco, the peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere.
This day of Nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by him and signed by [Burmese Theravada Buddhist] Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations.
A month later, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, and hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the national coordinator.
The name "Earth Day" was coined by the advertising writer Julian Koenig [4]. Activist Hayes and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States.
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