Highlighted session: Education for sustainability and recovery of our spiritual and child-like Self: the promise of contemplative methods and pedagogies

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

The Washington Post published an article on Oct. 7, 2018, reporting that UN scientists warned that “The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control.” This is an alarming reminder again that we do not have much time to waste to prevent environmental catastrophe from happening due global warming and climate change. It is extremely timely that the CIES conference theme for 2019 is on “Education for Sustainability.” We must actively explore ways to fundamentally change our value system and our practices in education so that the new generation cares for rather than exploits nature.

Effective sustainability education must return us to our true nature. We are inherently connected with everything that exists in our natural and ecological environment, and children exemplify curiosity, awe, respect and love for nature. Sustainability education needs to return us to be like a child.

There are wonderful contemplative methods that should be explored, to recover our intimate love and fascination with nature like a child, to feel the awe and wonder of nature. Mindfulness exercises are simple but can be very powerful in changing our habits of consumption. Presence to nature enables us to recognize other species as living beings who also long for love and the right to live. Meditation can open up our senses and kindle the light in our spirit to embrace nature as One with us. Students can be guided to delve beneath intellectual academic learning to be in touch with their emotional, spiritual and ecological self. Contemplation can also enhance our sense of compassion for all existence (Lin, forthcoming) and to take an active stance to make changes and mend wounds for nature and for people.

This panel comprises five papers that touch on all of the topics above with specific and different focuses. Practices in schools, universities and communities in the United States, China, Canada, and Cambodia are presented. More deeply behind every paper is a deep philosophical exploration about our nature of kindness toward people and things, and how we can effectively recover that and take actions to be agents of change in this time of paramount crises.

References:
Lin, J. (forthcoming). Enlightenment from body-spirit integration: Dunhuang’s Buddhist cultivation pathways and educational implications. In Di Xu (ed.), The Dunhuang Grottos and Global Education: Philosophical, Spiritual, Scientific, and Aesthetic Insights. Book proposal under review by Palgraves-Springer.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Contemplative Inquiry and Holistic Education

Individual Presentations

• Education for sustainability: Contemplative methods revitalizing our child-like awareness and kindness to mother nature - Denise McHugh, University of Maryland, College Park; Jing Lin, University of Maryland

• Learning through head, heart and hands: nature education in Steiner (Waldorf) schools in China - Yifan Sun, University of Cambridge

• Contemplative techniques for sustainable learning: A comparative study of China and the United States - Amanda Fiore, University of Maryland

• Personal sustainability: We are Nature! A Daoist perspective and contemplative exploration in a Canadian university - Neha Shivhare, Simon Fraser University; Tom Elwood Culham, City University of Seattle in Vancouver

• The role of Theraveda Buddhism after conflict and the need to reconnect to nature in Cambodia - Annie Rappeport, University of Maryland