There is another reason to stress their relationship as well. Both the forms of hierarchy share a crucial feature in that both are about power. Or perhaps we should say the one is about power, and the other is about empowerment, the transformative power of compassion.8 The first offers the power to control all, while the second cultivates the empowerment to transform oneself in order to truly benefit all life (including ourselves). It is this empowerment that we cannot afford to jettison in our desperate efforts to flee from the oppressive legacy of our past and present.

REAFFIRMING THE DEVELOPMENTAL DIMENSION OF TRADITIONAL BUDDHISM

IF THE THEORY and the structure of the Buddhist hierarchy of compassion are now clear, one might well still wonder what this would look like in actual practice. This is the point at which the danger of overlooking the vertical, developmental aspect of Buddhism becomes most evident, for it is in the context of its developmental dimension that the tradition provides quite concrete suggestions as to how to put the insight of interrelatedness into actual practice. Without its developmental dimension all that Buddhism has to offer contemporary environmental ethics is the metaphysical assertion that all things are interrelated. Lost is the fact that Buddhism offers also a systematic and comprehensive set of techniques by which one can actually realise that relatedness in practice.

I have already surveyed the doctrinal roots of the developmental aspect of the tradition, but the question we are currently addressing requires that we now focus on this aspect of the teaching as an actual path of practice. Consistently favouring pragmatism over metaphysical speculation, the Buddha would point out that the only way we can realise what a hierarchy of compassion would look like in practice is by actually doing the practice of Dharma, and this of course involves much more than just being more environmentally correct or sensitive, important as that may well be. Buddhism is saying, quite literally, that we cannot expect to act in an environmentally more ethical manner until we cultivate a much broader ability to act with compassion and wisdom. How we are to do that is the subject of a vast body of traditional teachings and techniques, but it is frequently summarised under the rubric of the 'threefold learning' (tri'siik.saa): the systematic cultivation of morality, meditation, and insight into the actual nature of existence. Each of these three is widely explored by the various schools of Buddhism, and a full exposition of what is entailed goes well beyond the space available here. For our present purposes it will suffice to note simply how these three elements of Buddhist practice are related to one another, and what implications this has for a contemporary environmental ethics based on Buddhist principles.

This threefold formulation of the Buddhist path is presented as clearly sequential in that each step builds on the previous one. The three phases of the path do overlap however, so the point is not that one cannot begin meditation before completing the practice of morality, for example. The point rather is that one cannot expect to make progress in one phase except on the basis of substantial progress in the previous phase. In other words effective insight into the actual nature of existence requires real progress in the cultivation of higher states of awareness through meditative practice. And that, in turn, is possible only on the basis of a practice of the ethical precepts and a cultivation of the primary virtues. This may seem a simple point, but it has significant implications when we ask what a Buddhist environmental ethic would be like.

Buddhism is saying that we can expect to act in accord with the basic interrelatedness of all existence only once we have cultivated a significantly different state of awareness. Simply attempting to change specific environmentally detrimental behaviours will not work. Efforts to change our environmental behaviour may well be part of the ethical practice that creates the necessary foundation for experiencing states of higher meditative awareness and ultimately for realising transformative insight, but these efforts will be effective only to the extent that they are undertaken as part of the whole three-step program. The Buddhist solution to the environmental crisis is thus nothing short of the basic Buddhist goal of Enlightenment. That may seem like an unimaginably distant and lofty goal, and indeed it does involve a fundamental and total transformation of what we are-nothing less. At the same time Buddhists need not feel overly daunted by the immensity of this undertaking, for Enlightenment is, in one sense at least, simply (if not easily) a matter of becoming more fully human in that this radical transformation is the potential of all humans, indeed of all beings. The solution to the problem is thus imminently possible, although that potential can only be actualised on the basis of both a clear vision of the goal and a well defined path to reach it, coupled with an sustained effort to pursue that path to its completion.