January 6 is Alan Watts Day!

6 January 1915 - 16 November 1973

Alan Watts was a philosopher and popularizer of Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism, who wrote throughout the Fifties and Xixties. He wanted to bring Eastern ideas to the West, and perhaps did so more than anyone else prior to his time, and perhaps since. Most people associate him with Zen buddhism and other eastern religions, but in his later years he described himself as a Pantheist.
Watts described himself as "an unabashed pantheist" in his autobiography, In My Own Way. He wrote: “We are all unconscious pantheists, trying to grasp the moment, the Eternal Now, in its various forms, trying to identify God with something in the moment.” According to a recent collection of surveys at online pantheism discussion groups, Watts has been considered the favorite communicator and advocate of pantheism, followed closely by Carl Sagan and Eckhart Tolle. Although best known as a Zen Buddhist, his efforts to blend Christianity, mysticism, Taoism, and other Eastern philosophies is actually a form of modern Pantheism.

He said, “The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.... The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.”

His views led to a profound ecological awareness. He complained that “Civilized human beings are alarmingly ignorant of the fact that they are continuous with their natural surroundings.” He saw that in the same way that brains, hearts, lungs, and stomachs are our internal organs, the air, water, plants, insects, birds, fish, and mammals are our external organs."

He said, “The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain.”

Despite his association with Eastern religions, he centered his religious relationships directly in Nature, not with the writings of men. 

He often warned against what he considered spiritual charlatans. 

He said: “I wish that there was a way of putting a time-bomb into scriptures and records — not a time-bomb, but some kind of invisible ink, so that all scriptures would un-print themselves about fifty years after the master's death. And just dissolve.”

 Watts said “if you want to find out what is the spiritual, what is Buddha-nature, what is Brahman, what is Tao, the best way is to go directly to the physical world and find out: the physical world as you are it, and as everything around you is it; the immediate experience.”
​
Read more about Alan Watts in this presentation:

http://www.pantheist.net/uploads/1/8/9/8/18984797/alan_watts_as_pantheist_-_a_presentation_by_harold_wood.pdf

September 3    Wilderness Act Anniversary    
On September 3, 1964, after 8 years of effort by conservationists, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act. The 1964 Wilderness Act provides the highest level of protection for some of our most iconic, wild landscapes through wilderness designation. This historic bill established the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) and set aside an initial 9.1 million acres of wilderness and called for further studies and public involvement on potential additions. Over the subsequent years,  as a result of citizen campaigns throughout the United States, Congress has added over 111 million acres to this unique land preservation system. The current 803 (as of 2022) wilderness areas within the NWPS are managed by all four U.S.A. federal land managing agencies, the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service.  We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act in 2014.  The system continues to grow: 37 new wilderness areas in California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah were designated on March 12, 2019 by the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Unfortunately, some academics trapped by “indoor philosophy,” and now many social justice advocates, who should know better, argue that wilderness is an antiquated idea that ignores the fact that people lived in those places, regarding wild nature “as a transcendent realm apart from the Native people who inhabited those realms.” Close examination reveals that this “Big Lie About Wilderness” is a literary/philosophical construct little related to the Real Wilderness Idea that conservationists have used to establish the National Wilderness Preservation System. Wilderness has never meant “unpeopled” - the Wilderness Act very carefully used the much more accurate term: “untrammeled.”  Here are some essays which further correct this “big lie”:

• Criticizing Muir and misunderstanding the foundation of American nature conservation by Bruce A. Byers (October 22, 2021)
• Wilderness and Traditional Indigenous Beliefs: Conflicting or Intersecting Perspectives on the Human-Nature Relationship?
  By Roger Kaye, Polly Napiryuk Andrews, and Bernadette Dimientieff in Rewilding Earth (December 8, 2021)
• Reclaiming Wilderness: It Tells Us Who We Are, and We Lose It at Our Peril by Kenneth Brower (June 4, 2014)
• The Real Wilderness Idea by Dave Foreman (May, 1999)
• For more information:
  https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/wilderness-act

Remembering the extinction of species by humankind; the last Passenger Pigeon died on this day in 1914 in a zoo. It is a psychological necessity to mourn in order to recover from grief. Just as funerals reinforce the awareness of loss, so the lovers of the land and life need to experience ritual and expressions of mourning. The need is vital as part of the grief work necessary to return to our task of protecting the Earth. For background on Species Requiem Day, see:
https://planetpatriot.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/species_requiem_day_wild_earth.pdf 
​

August 23    Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)     

Arnold Toynbee was an eminent British historian and major interpreter of Western Civilization in the 20th century. Toynbee’s sweeping perspective on human history led him to affirm a Pantheist world view. He wrote:

 "If I am right in my diagnosis of mankind's present-day distress, the remedy lies in reverting from the Weltanschauung of monotheism to the Weltanschauung of pantheism, which is older and was once universal.”

​

Friday May 21, 2021 is Endangered Species Day!

Learn about threatened and endangered species and how you can help them.

Because of the pandemic, most events and activities, including a K through 12 art contest, will be held online. Learn more at:
www.endangered.org/campaigns/endangered-species-day/.

From the current issue of Pantheist Vision, we read about this famous landscape photographer, born this day in 1902 in San Francisco.  He "believed in the sanctity of Nature.  He raised photography to the status of fine art and used his photographs in efforts to preserve wilderness and protect the planet.  Adams wrote, "I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite" -- at the age of 14, on a vacation with his family. "

From Pantheist Vision, we read:

Join the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands, called the Ramsar Convention.  This year's theme is "wetlands and water" -- healthy wetlands have a rich natural diversity of life that maintains and improves water quality. 

Discover activities worldwide at https://www.worldwetlandsday.org.

Celebrate the birthday of author/essayist/environmentalist Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927 -- March 14, 1989).  His "works, set primarily in the southwestern United States, reflect an uncompromising environmentalist philosophy" (from Britannica.com).
​

Happy National Bird Day!  Hope you're enjoying watching and listening to the birds outside your window.
​

Wishing everyone a Happy Solstice (summer for those in the southern hemisphere)!  As we celebrate light and hope this new season (something we can all use especially this year!), we also have Saturn and Jupiter shining together as a 'Christmas Star.'  Read all about the "great conjunction" here.  It's a great time to be a pantheist and a sky watcher!  Stay warm and safe as you celebrate this week.