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To revisit John Burrough’s definition of ritual, the symbolic perception of gardening is to transform the land while allowing the land to transform the self. When understanding the act of gardening as an opportunity for spiritual transformation, it is assumed that there are canonical and self-referential messages to receive from this act. To provide historical support for the necessity of a contemporary gardening ritual, civilization as we know it, was founded upon the creation of settled agriculture, which developed out of the desire to create a more efficient method of attaining the most basic survival need: food. The unignorable fact of nature is that humans depend on the land for food, and as a result, agricultural rituals were designed to celebrate this dependency. Mayans sacrificed their people to appease the gods in the hope that they would be granted with a bountiful harvest, North Americans performed rain dances, and certain ethnic tribes in Thailand ask spirits for approval of selected farming sites. At the heart of all of these practices is the recognition that the resources we take from the Earth are necessary for our survival, but the amount that we are provided is dependent upon a greater natural force, despite the attempts to impose human order onto the production of food. Religions and rituals highlighted and celebrated this dependency and harmony with nature. The absence of agricultural ritual coincides with the evolution of religion. It is a common conception among people that the Western religions are less sympathetic to the natural world than the more Eastern religions.13 This can be understood when observing Aristotle’s viewpoint that humans are the only animals with a sense of morality, denoting a sense of superiority of man over nature14; or, after reading Lynn White Jr.’s criticism of the Christian religion for creating a precedent in support of the right of man to exploit his natural surroundings, precipitating an environmental crisis15. Roy Rappaport suggests that economic systems are becoming the new standard deciding the assignment of value upon the world, making money the new determinant for a fulfilling lifestyle, but his kind of value assignment impinges upon the intrinsic and far more symbolic value of the natural realm.16 These theories express the de-emphasis of the sanctity and importance of the natural realm in our daily lives, substituting a more egalitarian perspective of the relationship between man and nature with a system based in a delusion of superiority and consumerist progression. |
To help alleviate this issue, I propose that the practice of gardening ritual will help to re-identify the meaning of the natural environment in our daily lives by acting out agricultural practices in a manner that is mindful of the deep meanings and symbols applicable to all of the Earth’s inhabitants, whether sentient, or not. The four rituals are a Ritual for Sacrifice: Giving up Time and Sweat, a Ritual for Purification: Weeding, a Ritual for Rejuvenation: Composting, and a Ritual for Thanksgiving: Harvesting. The proposed rituals are meant to be suggestions for making gardening meaningful, and are in no way to be considered restrictive. The rituals can be expanded upon because rituals are meant to be applied to the lives of the individual, and are meant to allow for self-referential interpretation. Rather than viewing weeding as a ritual for purification, one could interpret the action as a ritual for rejuvenation, as a way to give oneself greater energy just as they are provided plants with the added energy weeds would otherwise steal away. There are also other gardening tasks that may have self-referential meanings for people, such as the planting or collecting of seeds, tilling the land, or planning crop rotations. Not everyone will find value in attributing meaning to gardening, but for those who can find spiritual comfort in working with nature, this is a possible method for understanding and applying that spiritual meaning to personal life. However, it must be noted that the goal of the rituals are not entirely self-centered, but transpersonal in the willingness to become receptive to the natural flow of the natural realm. |
