Coming Full Circle: Completing the Journey from Sustainability to Spirituality
Living Pathways addresses all those who are actively involved in development work based on spirituality and community cultural values. Nat (as the author/researcher is affectionately known to me) developed an intuitive research process by merging with the lived and inner experience of the people he engaged with across Asia in order to draw out the deeper spirituality or inner power of the people (called ‘empowerment from within’).
Such an intuitive approach is totally different from an empirical study – and accordingly, the outcome is unique to the methodology used. The findings of the study (which Nat perceives as a ‘research pilgrimage’) are not purely intellectual. Rather, they act as a sort of transcription of an integral part of the spiritual sacredness present in all aspects of life.
Spirituality in the development process is a vital element for sustainability. Based on the holistic worldviews and perspectives of the indigenous people in the villages Nat visited, it is clear that sustainability has many seamlessly integrated sub-elements: spiritual sustainability, environmental and ecological sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, etc. Through engaging with and understanding the components of sustainability, Nat discovered that the scope of the people’s concerns and practices are far beyond that of their own sustainability – their embrace of the whole cosmos reaches far beyond what is paraded as globalisation!
Nat has shown very clearly that in order to achieve authentic sustainable development, we should abandon the old Western paradigm and shift to a new paradigm – and accordingly, re-think, re-see, re-feel and re-act based on particular contexts. Such a shift encourages us to reconsider the very idea of development, and moves us away from the concerns of mainstream ‘sustainable development’ to a worldview of ‘sustainability’.
The cosmology of sustainability is a very thought-provoking notion. It offers an enriching way to experience the cosmos and to understand our lives in that larger reality. Having been in the field and working with the Karen community for over four decades now, I strongly agree that the way to sustainability should be based on the spirituality which the Asian people, particularly indigenous people, have already been practicing in their everyday lives. Also, I strongly agree with Nat that ‘we need to recover, develop and share Asian cosmologies that promote the spirit of sustainability’. My friend, a Jesuit priest based in Malaysia, Fr. Jojo Fung, calls it ‘sacred sustainability’.
Living Pathways contributes significantly to the Asian thinking on this vital issue of sacred sustainability, not only because it engages in a debate with mainstream development paradigms, but also because it seeks alternative pathways to our future(s). It actively articulates the deep heritage of the Asian people, which needs to be understood, appreciated, nurtured and implemented in the ‘development’ process. I strongly believe that science and technology alone cannot solve the crisis that mainstream development has created, because they are themselves an inherent part of the root causes of the global crisis of unsustainability.
I commend Nat for undertaking this work and pointing us in the right direction. I believe mainstream development will not last for long – it will take the world to hell! This grave challenge calls for a re-enchantment of the world or a return of the ‘sacred’ to the arena of ‘development’ – as seen in this ‘research pilgrimage’. Nat is now going beyond, having arrived at the point of looking not only at our world but also at the whole cosmic reality.
Certainly, a cosmic vision animates this book.
Fr. Niphot Thianvihan Director and Spiritual Head Research and Training Centre for Religio-Cultural Community (RTRC) Chiang Mai, Thailand