Abstract: Sustainability: Syllogism, Synchroncity & Yijing

Abstract
Sustainability: Syllogism, Synchronicity & Yijing
©2011, Guy Burneko, Ph. D.
www.beyondthematrix.com/inst
gburneko1@aol.com
American Academy of Religion Pacific Northwest Regional Conference: Asian and Comparative Studies
Gonzaga University Spokane, WA May 13, 2011

Earth-Human sustainability requires an integral ecology of aptitudes and resources beyond those most utilitarian or rationalistically approved. In choosing skilful and appropriate means to sustainability, we must look beyond syllogistic logics premised on anthropocentrism, dualism, objectivistic atomism and linear cause-effect mechanism. Practicing synchronistic Yijing and the kind of spontaneous, nonimposing (wuwei) existential resonance (ganying) we come to learn through it is performing, and not merely interpreting, the sustainingly self-renewing potentials of a universe irreducible to any single category of existence, value or ontohermeneutic method. A precautionary ecosocial rectitude is found in relativizing instrumentalist, discursive, propositional agenda by a measure of nondualizing appositional, contemplative thinking and correspondingly synchronistic circumstantial conduct which, suggest both the Neo-Confucian Wang Yangming and the systems theorist Edgar Morin, acts according to the need of the moment and not overmuch by relying on the template of ego-interest or of a rationalized system, program and policy. Embodying with Yijing what Thomas Berry calls the “spontaneities” of the Earth, we demonstrate the self-adjusting and self-organizing resonance of a nondualizing guan (comprehensive, contemplative attentiveness) that sustains the productive and reproductive life of compresencing Heaven, Earth and Humankind. From Chung-Ying Cheng’s interpretation of guan, we understand that its precautionary rectitude or zheng coinheres with optimally sustaining dynamic complementary interrelations amid ourselves, Earth systems and sidereal rhythms in what Morin calls ontoepistemological “self-eco-re-organizing.” This evokes the potentials of a coconsciously evolving universe as suggested by quantum cosmological, archetypal psychological and eco-evolutionary-religious views.