Seeing Nature, Sensing God: The Cosmology of Rāmānuja: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

To act without an ontology is to act without understanding and, inevitably, to act harmfully. Especially with regard to the environment, human beings have too long acted greedily, as if nature were a resource perfectly translatable into money or other material commodities. Such an interpretation belies an ontology—that human beings are outside of nature and separate from it. Such an interpretation also belies an axiology—that nature exists to serve humanity’s desires, that nature has no intrinsic value, that nature’s only value is its usefulness. Our current practices suggest an economistic ontology and axiology, reducing all things to their economic utility. Tragically, our current practices suggest that the world around us is dead, profane, and subordinate. We see dirt, not nature. And we desire money, not God.