I found the photo essay
Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER)
in a shop full of antiques,
folders of art prints and many books old and new.
I was wandering just a city away from home,
while high on internationalism.
My experience with this book lead to a twenty four month long dance
with the photos, its content, and its meaning.
Developments in the area I was living in encroached upon how I was living.
Fields of wildlife and living vegetation bulldozed and churches expanded into fortresses of belief.
Strong feelings arose in relation to the ecological impact.
I maintained a less passionate involvement then I was feeling about the developments.
The reflections on Buddhist teachings that I had been studying were helpful in remaining calm and clear.
I made original music, prose and a video compilation.
all of this was very overwhelming and life changing.
I was promptly advised to leave the area after a confrontation lead to aggression.
Below is the synthesis of the ecological material and reflections on the teachings of the Buddha that I was studying.
Here is the short film with the musical soundscape that I put together.
6.1.2020 – 5.21.2022
– OVERDEVELOPMENT –
Cinematic Presentation and Musical Score
You can use the digital book below while film and score are playing to better read text with the zoom function and control page display time.
– Overdevelopment, Overpopluation, Overshoot (OVER) –
Digital Book
Populationspeakout.org
The Realms of Samsara
The earth system
suffering and humans
If rebirth brings us back to the same earth
What earth do we inherit…and if there is no rebirth
Then what earth do we leave behind?
“This Is not Mine, This I am Not, This is Not Myself” – The Buddha
Yama holds the wheel of life in his mouth
the great cycle of life and death
Samsara
The Realms of Samsara and The Earth System
In Buddhism they say:
Samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth,
They say
There is the Deva Realm, the god realm and the primary emotion of pleasurable distraction wearing a crown of energy
The Asuras of the Demi-god realm know envy at the throat chakara
Humans are with earth, and have jealousy and energy at the heart chakara
The Animal realm is at the naval and knows ignorance
The Pretas are the Hungry-ghosts, greedy with energy at the sex organs
The Hell realm knows hatred at the soles of the feet
They say there is an exit through the human realm,
a departure from the endless cycle of Samsara…
When the Humans are with Earth
the Humans are kind, loving and compassionate when at the source of spirit
But Humans creating in the terror and torment of darkness and ignorance
have brought about machines of destruction and war
and internal perceptions of turmoil, confusion, and daratha; disturbing feeling in the body-mind
The earth has become polluted by the toilings and wanting of humanity
The want of more, ingrained in the systems of capital and governance
The animals flee the destruction, struggling to find peace and transcendence
The Asuras speak the world into existence from the throat Chakra, envy leading and misleading, professing, debating, battling the Devas and building earthly palaces
Jealousy, power and voice
The wholeness of earth, changed and made, built and modified
The flow of the earth system rearranged by humans
The waste objects piling up in the ocean currents and rivers, the vains and arteries of the earth clogged with plastics and oil.
A perception, the human body-mind naturally changing with the environment,
It seems now, the internal realm of feeling and perception, to be arranged and rearranged like objects in a room, or materials at a construction site
Sometimes the body-mind’s motion feels like solid silicone shapes
forms with soft, rounded corners, gliding past each other
duality compartmentalized as if it were no problem at all
The fluidity of flow, like a river undamned, can become unfamiliar
The Devas, aware of the earthly condition would rather dwell peacefully above the earth,
with god like creations of mind,
swatting away the Asuras, casually defending their heavenly palace in the sky
The knower of worlds, transcending the boundaries of the wheel of life held in Yama’s mouth
traversing the planes of existence, knowing the different realms, encountering all the realities of perception
From hell to the godly palace and back again, the knower of worlds travels around the cycle of Samsara,
with effort of spirit,
adding a wobble to its rigidity
travelling the spiral path through all the sections of mind
in the middle, there is a tree in the court yard
acknowledging suffering, cessation and impermanence
the heights and depths,
the fires and freezing of the body-mind,
the deserts of consciousness,
mental formations and form,
the ultimate realities of matter,
the ultimate reality of feeling and perception,
and the unconditioned oasis of Nibbāna
Learning of Annata, Nonself
Identity and being an individual,
If all beings do indeed pass out of life, into the death cycle and back again,
Then what earth do they inherit?
The smoke stack skys, landfill cities and oil field wastelands?
How do the humans build and regrow?
the designed and the natural together
a synthesis of worlds, across the dimensional planes of existence
creating earths future, can humans mend what they have torn apart
So the future may know a whole earth, a whole mind-body
and the cessation of suffering for all earth’s beings.
