Daoism, Ecology and Undisciplining the University

On October 14, 2016, I made a presentation at Harvard Divinity School on Daoism and Ecology. The context for this presentation was conference on Religion, Ecology, and our Planetary Future, organized by Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. This conferenced marked the twentieth anniversary of a series of conferences on world religions and ecology that was organized in the 1990s by Mary Evelyn Tucker, and which led to the formation of the Harvard Forum on Religion and Ecology, now translated to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.

In this ten-minute talk I reflect on my experience of studying Daoism and Ecology, and attempt to link this to a broader conversation on how the disciplinary structures of the university underpin modes of knowledge production that are antithetical to an ecologically flourishing future. The future of religion and ecology thus entails the ushering in of new modes of thought spanning the sciences and humanitities, and requires an accompanying undsciplining of the university.

Learn more about my “outside-in” philosophy of education.

China’s Green Religion? Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future

The monumental task that China faces in the 21st century is to create a way of development that does not destroy the ecological foundations for the life and livelihood of its 1.4 billion citizens. This requires a creative leap beyond the Enlightenment mentality and the Western model of industrialization. Can China’s cultural traditions, its religious values, ideals and ways of life, play a role in building a sustainable China?

The following video was recorded at the University of Southern California’s US-China Institute on November 19, 2014.

journey of the universe

At the end of June I had the privilege of speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The topic for the week was the film Journey of the Universe, by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker. If you haven’t seen it, you can read all about it on the website at http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org.

The film narrates the 14 million year epic of cosmic evolution from the big bang through to the present day. The purpose of the conference was to present responses to the film from the perspective of various world religions. Below is my 15 minute presentation on Daoism, Ecology and the Journey of the Universe.

My Approach to Teaching

In 2012 students at Queen’s University interviewed me for a video project to help introduce new students to life at Queen’s. Here are some of the clips that focus on my approach to teaching.

green china rising

http://www.youtube.com/v/YlOA_eO8IsQ&rel=0&fs=1

As the trailer for this new documentary from Mandarin Films makes clear, the global environmental crisis will be solved in China, not in America, for the simple reason that China has no other option. As I noted recently in my post on ecological civilization in China, there is a widespread recognition in China that the paradigm of industrial civilization must be changed so that China can bring economic development to its people without a correspondingly large increase in its ecological footprint. (More…)

Luo Tian Da Jiao

In 2007 a large scale 12-day Daoist ritual took place in Hong Kong to mark the tenth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China. This ten minute video captures some of the ritual, with commentary