Poetry, Buddhism And Ecology

Gary Snyder was born in 1930 in San Francisco. By the age of 25 he had begun to write mature poems in a form recognizably his own. Since the 1960s, critics have increasingly analyzed and praised Snyder's work. In 1975 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Turtle Island (published in 1974), and in 1987 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In addition to his poetry, he has a large quantity of publications, including several volumes of prose and essays in various environmental magazines, upon the strength of which, he has been recognized not only as one of the most important contemporary poets alive today, but also a thinker, an important spokesperson for American Buddhism, international ecological movement, and bioregional philosophy.This dissertation begins by providing a background of the forming and development of Snyder's thoughts. His close relation to nature, love of Chinese culture, and his study and practice of Zen Buddhism have shaped his Buddhist ecological philosophy and made him a spokesperson for nature, as well as for American Buddhism.The second chapter treats the development of ecological philosophy in the 20th century and the Buddhist ecological philosophy of Snyder, which includes his ideas on interpenetration, Indra's net, the food chain, bioregionalism and Great Earth Sangha. The 20th century ecological philosophy has absorbed much from oriental ecosophy, especially Zen Buddhism, which laid a solid foundation for Snyder's Buddhist ecological philosophy. Snyder made some revisions of the traditional Buddhist ethics and philosophy, such as the concept of compassion and non-harming, which facilitates the acceptance of environment protection for westerners. As Barnhill observes, Snyder has"'ecologized'the Buddhist notion of interpenetration and the image of Indra's net and'Buddhacized'the notion of ecosystem"(189).