Environmental Education as a Lived-Body Practice? A Contemplative Pedagogy Perspective

Environmental Education as a Lived-Body Practice? A Contemplative Pedagogy

Perspective

JANI PULKKI, BO DAHLIN AND VELI-MATTI V ¨ARRI

Environmental education usually appeals to the students’

knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived-body. This paper introduces the lived-body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge-based environmental education. Alienation from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one’s body. It is claimed that through overcoming the (Cartesian) dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are

introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived-body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived-body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so.

Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived-body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non-human.

INTRODUCTION

Human beings often act against their best knowledge about sustainable modes of life and cause harm to the ecosystems we rely upon. Why is this

so? It is a question for society with its economic and institutional structures, but also for the individual student of environmental education (EE). The question of acting against our best knowledge is a perennial question of the philosophy of education about the relationship between knowledge and action: how are we to act upon our best knowledge, which we know we ought to for the flourishing of life? In order to answer we need first to problematise our current way of conveying the subject of environmental education.

Students in EE are bombarded with a lot of facts about what is happening in nature as an effect of human action, but the students’ own actualand embodied feelings, thoughts and experiences of nature and environment are often ignored. Teachers may hope to evoke feelings of interest and engagement for the environmental cause. Letting students hear about more or less depressing facts about ecological problems from the early school years onwards, however, may have the opposite effect to what is intended: a so-calledearly closure, which has been noted regarding students’ interest in environmental issues (Ashley, 2005). Arriving in their early teens, students may already have lost interest in such apocalyptic issues because they have heard about them for so long. Furthermore, self-restraint and self-discipline based on fear and feelings of guilt for the mistakes of previous generations is not entirely helpful for building the intrinsic motivation necessary for constructive environmental action (Postma and Smeyers, 2012).

As Ergas (2015) points out in his argument for including contemplative practices in education: the school curriculum is almost always about external facts ‘out there’, almost never about what goes on ‘in me’ and in my lived- body. Thus, the hidden curriculum of all mainstream education is that ‘you, your thoughts/feelings/experiences, do not really matter; only the world out there is important’. This disregard for what is ‘in me’, our inner subjective feeling life, most certainly contributes to making it acceptable for scientific investigation and science curriculum to kill and dissect living beings, or inject them with toxic substances to study the reactions (see Bonnett, 2007).

But this kind of analytic, instrumental, and ‘invasive’ rationality is poor for invoking a real appreciation of nature, which is also in us (ibid., p. 708).

It seems obvious that for me to be able to develop genuine interest and engagement in/for the world, these things must surely grow out ofme; they must emerge out ofmyfeelings,mythinking,myexperience,mylived-body awareness. To address the problems of disembodied environmental educa- tion, and invoking a true interest for the well-being of other living creatures, we turn to contemplative pedagogy (CP). The perennial question of acting against our best knowledge is translated into a question of embodiment:

how can we cultivate environmentally fruitful ways of thinking and feeling, life-oriented biophilic attitudes, and ways of experiencing belonging to and caring for for nature?

‘Opening the contemplative body’ (Klemola, 2002) through CP practices like sitting meditation, yoga, tai chi or chi gong, we claim, can have many positive effects for EE regarding the embodiment of true and effectual environmental care. We certainly need direct multi-sensory experiences of nature for children and youth so that they can experience the mysteries

of nature first hand, as many environmental educationalists propose. But merely exposing children to nature is often not enough. Their abilities to calm down, to focus, to clear their consciousness, to compassionately notice and care are also in need of cultivation, as are the abilities for respect and intrinsic valuation of nature. Without such abilities whatever experiences there are run the risk of dissolving into the continuous flux of ‘one thing after another’ that characterise so much of modern life.

In this article we first outline the need for a ‘biophilia revolution’ and how this is related to overcoming bodily alienation. Second, we argue for cultivating the body and the senses in order to learn the intrinsic values (instead of the instrumental ones) of caring for nature and its diverse beings.

Third, we introduce CP and how this is related to bodily ethics as both moral and environmental education. Fourth, we introduce Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh of the world and its relationship to CP for finding an ontological framework for combining the ideas of CP and EE. Finally, we introduce some practical suggestions.

TOWARDS ‘A BIOPHILIA REVOLUTION’ FOR OVERCOMING BODILY ALIENATION

Following Orr (1994) and others, the environmentally fruitful relationship with the world that EE should strive for could be characterised by one word:

biophilia. Orr suggests a biophilia revolution towards affinity of all life.

Instead of biophilia, however, modern people often suffer from biophobia, a fear of nature, an attachment to non-natural things such as technology, human artefacts, etc. Biophilia is friendship or affiliation and love for living things and without the capability for this we can revert to biophobia.

It may be difficult to love the malaria bacillus in the same way as we love our pets or gardens (Bonnett, 2007); but it is not impossible. Starting with recognising the desire to live and to avoid death inherent inalllife forms, we may come to understand that in causing malaria the malaria bacillus is merely trying to live life in the way that has been ‘given’ to it. Our problem is that it threatens our organism and therefore we have to remove it—that is an expression ofourdesire to live. But we do not need to exterminate it from the whole Earth, as we tried to do with DDT, which was an overkill reaction typical of insensitive technological instrumentalism. Thus, biophilia is our suggestion for a general educational inclination for appreciation of life in all its forms; in all its otherness, mystery and wonder (see Bonnett, 2007).

The lack of biophilia is a deep rooted feature of our civilisation and its foundational assumptions (see Martusewitzet al., 2011; Plumwood, 2002).

For example, the dualist experience of human beings and nature as sepa- rate has traditionally implied that human beings are ‘the crown of creation’, superior to nature because of their rationality. Other forms of life have there- fore been considered as of less value. In economics, for example, damage to nature is often considered ‘an externality’, left out of the calculations of true costs for the environment and its living creatures (Marglin, 2009; Patel, 2009). The question of externalising the environmental costs is a telling idea in terms of our civilisation, and also in terms of our lived-body experience.

What are, really, the grounds for externality and internality and are they well founded? Inuit leader John Amagoalik, who led the 30 year struggle in Canada for recognition of Inuit rights and occupancy of the Arctic, answered some interesting questions in a 1976 television show (Rasmussen, 2004).

When Amagoalik was asked what the Inuits wanted from their land—

money, services, real estate etc.—he made it clear that the Inuit land was not for sale. The question of compensation for land was, to Amagoalik, absurd. The land is a part of Inuit heritage, language, identity, philosophy, the whole way of life. According to Amagoalik, the heritage related to the land is ‘inside you’ (Rasmussen, 2004). In other words, an environmentally friendly relationship to the environment in this example is embodied in memories, feelings, philosophies, art, language and the whole way of life.

Environment is not out there, but in me. Environment is a part of the lived-body experience for an Inuit living in direct contact with the natural environment.

The questions of embodiment of environmental knowledge and the em- bodiment of a biophilic relationship to the world are, thus, deeply inter- twined. Theorists of EE criticise the tendency of modern education to lose a sense of place. Orr describes how ‘in school I learned about lots of other places, but I did not learn much about my own. We were not taught to think about how we lived in relation to where we lived’ (Orr, 1994, p. 157;

Rasmussen, 2004). This lack of understanding of our own surroundings is perpetuated by modern developments like globalisation, industrialisa- tion, rationalisation and commercialisation, which alienate us from the very nutrients that sustain our lives.

Our schools convey a lot of information to the students, but do not necessarily reflect the complex network of dependencies between human and non-human life forms with the common ingredients that they are both part of. Instead, they convey a worldview in which the world and its phe- nomena are neatly divided and objectified in disciplines, subdisciplines and study subjects, disconnected from our bodies (Bonnett, 2007;Orr, 1994, p.

23;). Nature seems, in this rationale, chaotic and messy as this is what we have learned in our isolated classrooms. But, then again, what is the precise place for us humans? Where do we draw the line between our bodies and the body of this earth? Is it the outline of our skin, or the point where the air gets into our lungs? Are we a part of the air we breathe, or the forests that produce it?

Even though this may remain a mystery, it is helpful to acknowledge two things from Plumwood (2002). First, we need to re-situate human beings in ecological terms. Our claim is that this re-situating includes also the re-situating of the human mind into the lived body and the human body into its surroundings (thefleshof the individual and the world; see below). Secondly, there is a need for re-situating non-humans in ethical terms (Plumwood 2002, p. 9). This latter deals with the sensitivity of our perception, which is connected to our awareness and our attention (see Pulkkiet al., 2015). It is difficult to really feelrespect for example for the trees we meet if we do not perceive the ontological qualities of nature in and with our lived bodies.

CULTIVATING THE BODY AND ITS SENSES FOR LEARNING INTRINSIC VALUATION AND CARING

The ‘hyper-separation’ (Plumwood, 2002) of man and nature has conse- quences for human thought and experience because it leads to an instru- mentalisation of nature, and therefore a failure to give intrinsic value to nature itself. According to Plumwood, by conceiving human beings and the world as ontologically separate, we tend to reduce other living beings to human domination and usage. This way a great part of reality is left outside the scope of our empathy (ibid., p. 9). This is quite the opposite to what Bai and Scutt (2009) state about CP practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation, which is also a bodily practice (see also Klemola, 2004) is:

. . . an effective way to cultivate a sense of interbeing or consanguinity between ourselves as human beings and all other beings that make up the ecological community that we call earth. Mindfulness practice cultivates subject–object integration and bonding, rather than subject–

object dichotomy and alienation. From this integration and bonding flows love of life (biophilia) and deep appreciation of other beings’

sacred existence (Bai and Scutt, 2009, p.100).

There are of course different ways of trying to overcome the ontological separateness of man and nature, including conceptual and philosophical ones (cf.the discussion of Merleau-Ponty below). CP is interesting, how- ever, because it involves a conscious cultivation and enhancement of the lived body and sense-experience, our primary connections with the world around us. Losing touch with our body and its senses makes it difficult to really occupy the places we inhabit (Bai, 2001, p. 88). It is our bodily and carnal empathy that connects the human self with other entities, even to the Earth and its biosphere (ibid.; Plumwood, 2002; Pulkkiet al., 2015).

If the sensual and bodily connection to nature is lost, our carnal empa- thy is blocked, thus contributing to a biophobic and implicitly destructive relationship with nature. In other words, the EE challenge of alienation is a part of the larger tendency of alienation from our senses, and from life sustaining natural systems. Familiarising ourselves with our carnal homes and their sensual faculties can give us a sense of place in both our lived bodies and our surroundings. We need to expose children and youth to nat- ural environments as often suggested (for example, Postma and Smeyers, 2012). We also need capabilities to listen to our bodily experience in order to notice what is in us and in nature.

‘Education which is dedicated for reversing social and ecological degra- dation’ has, according to Bai (2001), to ‘start with learning to value the world intrinsically’. But how? According to Bai, we learn to value the world intrinsically by bringing the senses to the centre of consciousness, instead of staying in the prevailing abstract linguistic-conceptual mode of thought. Thus, the human lived body is not merely a curiosity of abstract philosophical reasoning, but a concrete site for EE.

Our focus on the senses and the lived body does not imply a complete disregard for the conceptual, cognitive and rational elements that are also

needed in EE. The cognitive and rational are not replaced, but rather re- lieved of their excess contents, which operate in our consciousness without any fruitful function. The operation of this excess content means that our experience of the world is almost totally dominated by what has been called a ‘top-down processing of sensory input’ (Rumelhart and Ortony, 1977, p. 128). Such processingimposesa pre-established conceptual struc- ture on the incoming sensory data. It does not stop to contemplate the sense-qualities of the object, but quickly labels it according to the practical needs of the situation. CP encourages the opposite, a bottom-up processing (ibid.), in which aspects of observed sensory qualities themselves suggest or activate the concepts that seem adequate to our experience (cf. Dahlin, 2001).

By altering our habits and enhancing our capabilities of focusing and observing through CP practice, we enable care and biophilic attitudes to arise spontaneously. For example mindfulness meditation can reduce ‘ego- consciousness’ and make room for ‘body-consciousness’ (Klemola, 2002), thus making us loosen the hold of personal self-interest and also see the interests of others. Loosening the hold of self-interest means the contrariness of the self and the world (or nature) is also relieved, thus making more room for a loving or biophilic relationship with nature. Saving the diversity of species and natural environments from excessive harm is difficult without an emotional bond between ourselves and nature. We are unlikely to fight for something we do not love (Bai and Scutt, 2009; Orr, 1994, ch.5). ‘People who connect with a place look after it; those who are rootless do not’

(Rasmussen, 2004, p. 39). The human body can be used as ‘a localized “site”

for understanding, explaining, and acting on ‘embodied’ environmental issues’ (Payne, 1997).

BODILY ETHICS AND CONTEMPLATIVE PEDAGOGY

Contemplative pedagogy (CP) refers to forms of education which are about cultivating attention and aim to develop calmer, relaxed, attentive and har- monious people. We have also claimed previously that CP is highly relevant to moral education, as it deals with the ethics of the lived body (Pulkkiet al., 2015). After all, we carry the same life in our body that we learn to respect in nature (Bonnett, 2007). In the context of EE, the ethics of the lived body means paying attention to our body in various exercises including yoga and meditation. This does not exclude thoughts and emotions which are related to bodily sensations occurring simultaneously. The ethical signifi- cance comes from refining the use and accuracy of our senses resulting in heightened capabilities for attention and empathy. That is, our perceptual capabilities increase, which makes us more able to notice all the differ- ent qualities in nature as well. The need for bodily ethics come from our current preoccupation with the cognitive and rational realm of the mind, which—in our Western culture at least—tends to dwell in the instrumental and invasive rationality (Bonnett, 2007) that ignores the lived-body expe- rience. Following the phenomenology of Klemola (2002), we can speak of thecontemplativebody, referring to:

. . . a body that is trained with different methods that allow its body consciousness to become very sensitive. This kind of training can open different experiential levels of the body. [ . . . ] Body consciousness is opened by getting acquainted with the inner space of the body, its structure and our proprioceptive perception of this space. The concept of the contemplative body also includes the idea that we can change the quality of our experience by exercising our body and mind. And this practice can have an ethical meaning (Klemola, 2003).

Klemola reveals an interesting ‘life principle’ directly connected to both EE and CP: Different exercises for opening the body-consciousness, he claims, are used to have an experience of life principle, ‘a direct experience of nature and also an “expression of life”’. Experiencing life in one’s own body enables empathy also towards other sentient beings as there is a certain kind of kinship involved. In our everyday attitude to the world the experience of one’s own body with its inner sensations is usually overlooked as we rarely stop and really listen to it.

CP uses different methods such as meditation on the breath (see Saari and Pulkki, 2012), free writing, silently observing an object, poetry, dance and relaxation techniques such as ‘the body scan’ (Ergas, 2015; Hyland, 2015;

Willard, 2010). In general, the practice of meditation has been ‘specifically designed to move human cognition from a illusory view of reality to a true one: that is, to one in which the profound interconnectedness of reality is directly perceived’ (Zajonc, 2006). Strengthening of body-consciousness means strengthening the possibilities for experiencing the implicit unity of human beings and nature.

For finding out what is in me and what is out there in the world, and what the connection is between the two, there is a need for a ‘critical ecological ontology’ founded on phenomenologically based inquiry (Payne, 1997). This can make clear how the responsibilities of oneself and of the environment are complexly intertwined. An ecological ontology based on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh can help us—we claim—to re-situate both human beings and other creatures in ontological terms, and also, in ethical terms (cf.Low, 2012). CP as a bodily practice means affiliating with the world and its ‘flesh’, but this flesh is easily unnoticed if we do notpay attentionto it. In order to pay attention to it, however, we must first try to understand what it is. We therefore turn to Merleau-Ponty in our attempt to develop a phenomenologically based ontological framework for CP in EE.

MERLEAU-PONTY’SFLESHOF THE WORLD

One of the starting points of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical work is the pre- sumption that Western philosophy has generally failed to give a plausible account of human experience (Low, 2000). The consequence is a form of alienation that manifests both in science and in politics (Low, 2014). Both domains are ruled by a rationality which starts from a preconceived idea of reality, rather than from a pre-reflective lived body experience of the world.

This goes for almost all political ideologies and especially for natural sci- ence. The main reason for failure to account for human experience is the

dualistic tendency to abstract and separate a pure subject from a pure object.

This tendency arises out of not having realised that perceptual experience is the existentialgroundof all reflection. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s ex- istential phenomenology returns to the basic ground of the subject–object dualism manifested also in Plumwood’s hyper-separation of man and nature.

This basic ground is lived experience, which is pre-thematic, and embodied.

Hence, the ‘lived body’ becomes of central significance in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The traditional dualistic understanding of the subject–

object relationship is deconstructed and the two poles are integrated into an ontologically more primordial, non-dualistic structure.

Human consciousness is thereby understood in a new way. Whereas in traditional philosophy it belongs only to the pure subject—and therefore becomes ‘private’ and ‘internal’—for Merleau-Ponty it isrelational; it is an

‘active transcendence towards the world’ (Low, 2000, p. 17). This means that we are not totally enclosed in our own private worlds of subjectively constructed experiences; we can actually be aware of the experience of other beings (not only humans). We cannot think another’s thoughts or feel their pain in a literal sense, but we can experience them as experiencing something of this or that kind.

In embodied human consciousness, nature becomes conscious of itself.

Nature has produced/evolved the human organism that has this remarkable capacity to be conscious of itself and of the world. Human perceptual consciousness ‘splits open’ its lived body, as in the often cited example of the two hands simultaneously touching and being touched. The lived body is experienced both from the inside and from the outside, and these two experiential dimensions never coincide, but they are also not completely separate. This ‘split’ is actually what makes human experience possible.

Embodied perception also splits open the world. The world obviously surrounds us—wherever we turn, there it is—but we also surround the world with our senses: everything from the starry sky to the smallest grain of sand is potentially encompassed by our perceptual consciousness. ‘[T]he world and I are within one another’, Merleau-Ponty says (1968, p. 123). This ‘within one another’ is possible because of the ‘splitting open’, the dehiscence of perception, in which the inside turns outwards and the outside turns inwards (cf.Low, 2000, p. 15). The relationship between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, between subjectivity/consciousness and objectivity/world, is baffling and paradoxical in that it is both continuous and discontinuous. The image of

‘splitting open’, of dehiscence, points to the aspect of discontinuity.

However, the split between ‘the inner’ and ‘the outer’, touching and being touched, seeing and being seen, is not an ontological void spot in the world. Instead, there is an ontological continuity between the different sides of being, to which Merleau-Ponty refers as the concept ofchiasm. The chiasm is the key to Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology and to his understand- ing of the relationship between human and non-human nature. The chiasm refers to a mode of non-difference between self and world that captures the intimate relation of the sensible and sentient aspects of the body with those of nature (Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Toadvine, 2009, p. 20). The chiasm opens the movement of expression. Without the dehiscence of the chiasm

the world would be a mute and unattainable being (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 148, 194). If sensible and sentient are identical, it would not be possible to even talk about communication and our relationship to world (Merleau- Ponty, 1968, pp. 124–125). In our pre-objective relationship to the world we have a direct and immediate experience of nature. As carnal beings we are intertwined with nature, which is our source of being and the origin of our all experiences. The concept of chiasm is essential in referring to our primordial relationship with nature and the origin of expression. Primor- dially our thoughts come forth from nature (pre-objective world) and nature expresses itself through our thoughts, while remaining always ultimately transcendent for us. To reconsider the being of nature is also to reconsider our own being, and the moment where the being of nature and of the human cross (Toadvine, 2009).

The non-subjective or a-subjective origin of bodily being is essential for understanding the human/non-human relationship. In describing the body’s original intertwining with the world, Merleau-Ponty utilises Edmund Husserl’s termIneinander(Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 306).Ineinandermeans in Englishwithin each other.This term refers to the core of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature. Merleau-Ponty defines Ineinanderas the inherence of the self in the world and of the world in the self, of the self in the other and the other in the self (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 306). Animality and human being are given together, within the whole of Being. Approaching both the animal and the human by way of ‘natural being’ allows us to recognise an irreducible intertwining of animality and humanity (Merleau- Ponty, 2003, pp. 214–215, 220, 268, 273; Toadvine, 2009, p. 90, 271).

The relationship between humanity and animality is not hierarchical, but a lateral relationship, an overcoming that does not abolish the kinship.

There is a strange kinship between the human and the animal in their common intertwining with Flesh (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 214, 277; see also Toadvine, 2009, p. 91). In the archaeology of the human body there is always present an inherent, pre-objective past, in which the human is originally intertwined with the animal and with nature (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, pp. 271–273). Because of the common Flesh there prevails the unity, the strange kinship between the world of the human and the world of animals (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, pp. 211–214, 268–273; see also Toadvine, 2010, pp. 254–256).

We believe that the so-called M¨obius strip could be a possible and illuminating analogy for the paradoxical relationship between subjectiv- ity/consciousness and body/nature/world; the ‘within one another’ of sub- ject and object. Mathematically, a M¨obius band is a surface with only one side and one edge; as such it can only exist in 4-dimensional space.

Yet, when this surface is embedded—as it is called—in 3-dimensional space, for instance as a paper strip folded in a particular way (see Figure 1 below), a certain twofoldness appears in that the single surface turns both inwards and outwards. The inward-outward turn is smooth and gradual, without breaking up or disrupting the single surface into a dualistic struc- ture. This seems to be a perfect analogy to what Merleau-Ponty wants to convey with his indirect ontology of the lived body. That is, the world as a

Figure 1: ‘M¨obius strip’ by David Benbennick—Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wiki- media.org/wiki/File:M%C3%B6bius_strip.jpg#/media/

whole is one and non-dualistic, but through the embodiment of human per- ceptual consciousness a duality between the perceiver and the perceived, the sentient and the sensed, appears. The very same surface is sometimes turned inward, sometimes outward. Hence, for Merleau-Ponty,reversibilityis the paradigmatic phenomenon in which sentience is grounded, as illustrated by the double-touch of the two hands (Berman, 2003).

It is here that Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh clicks in as an attempt to describe the element that joins together the duality—or rather, that is the primordial ground upon which the split occurs. There is the flesh of embodied perceptual experience, and there is the flesh of the world, but they are one flesh. The flesh is that within which all that exists inheres. ‘[I]t is as flesh offered to flesh that the visible has its aseity [absolute independence and self-existence], and that it is mine [is part of my embodied experience]’

(1968, p. 131, footnote). The subject–object dualism is transformed into a temporary and reversible construction ‘inscribed into the flesh’ (Berman, 2003, p. 412). Flesh is therefore, obviously, not a material substance in the ordinary sense. Its nature is, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, more akin to the ancient notion of the four elements:

We should need the old term “element”, in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in this sense an “element” of Being (1968, p. 139; italics in orig.)

In ancient cosmologies, the elements of earth, water, air and fire were not seen as objective material substances, which is what these terms literally mean today, and why we tend to misunderstand their significance for the pre-modern understanding of the world. They were not taken in a metaphor- ical sense, but as elements of both the inner and the outer world (the invisible and the visible). For example, the element earth was that which gave solid structures both to physical phenomena and to inner experience (cf.Barfield, 1952). However, Merleau-Ponty obviously does not make any absolutistic ontological claims regarding his notion of the flesh, claims that may char- acterise the ancient ontologies. He wants to suggest an ‘indirect ontology’

(Berman, 2003). The flesh, therefore, ‘is neither material nor metaphysical, but rather existential and experiential’ (ibid., p. 411).

Finally, the flesh is more than simply the world of sensible things. It is not limited to the merely sensible; it also has meaning. Meaning is an ‘invisible inner framework’ (1968, p. 215), which is not opposed but internally relatedto the visible/sensible. The visible ‘is pregnantwith the invisible’ (ibid., p. 216; our italics). Meaning emerges out of the ‘reso- nances and correspondences that the body feels when in contact with the sensible’ (Al-Saji, 2001, p. 110). The body responds to colours and tones with subtle differences in tension and rhythm, corresponding to nervous and muscular processes normally taking place below the level of conscious experience. Meaning, the invisible inner framework, manifests as waves of resonances and rhythms moving through the flesh of the body and of the world. This is a dynamic view of phenomenological ‘essences’, which Merleau-Ponty elaborates by drawing upon the concept of intuition in Berg- son. Dynamic essences are perceived in intuition, not in intellectualistic conceptions (the latter are static and discrete, the former are fluid, related to Bergson’s notion of dur´e, duration). Merleau-Ponty describes intuition as ‘auscultation or palpation in depth’ (1968, p. 128). Intuition thereby becomes ‘an attentive and patient attunement, which is not a state of pas- sivity, but an active effort of attention’ (Al-Saji, 2001, p. 116). This quote is also a perfect description of what is involved in all kinds of mindfulness meditation.

CONTEMPLATIVE PEDAGOGY AND THE FLESH OF THE WORLD In the practice of mindfulness of body and breathing it is possible to en- ter more thoroughly into our lived-body experience (Pulkkiet al., 2015).

The automatic thought-stream that commonly occupies our head-centred, autopilot state of mind, then subsides into the background and we become aware of more subtle qualities of things and beings around us. We can even begin to feel the pre-conscious resonances and rhythms out of which cognitive meaning emerges. It is as if the whole body wakes up to thinking, feeling and perceptual processes hitherto unknown to us. Merleau-Ponty seems to have been aware of these possibilities. He seems to be asking of his readers to ‘step back, loosen our bonds with the world, that is, re- flect, and watch the meanings that are formed in the body’s lived encounter with the world fly up like sparks from a fire’ (Low, 2000, p. 14). Such

meanings, formed in the body’s lived encounter with things, presuppose a reflecting watchfulness, or a watchful reflection that engages the whole of our embodied being. It is a practice based on intentional attunement through attention. We regard this kind of effort in mindfulness as a way of putting Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy into practice. For one thing, many of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical points can hardly be understood without it; secondly, it is a way to discover new levels or aspects of experience in order to develop his philosophy further. (Unfortunately, we do not know how Merleau-Ponty himself arrived at his insights; maybe he had an inborn talent for phenomenological contemplation).

Contemplative bodily practices are more or less indirect ways to cultivate intuition in the above mentioned sense. Intuition is not a function of pure consciousness, but of the lived body. Neither is it a vague or diffuse contact with another being, but a way to tune in to the being of the Other. As Al-Saji (2001) points out, this attunement can take different forms, such as adapting one’s walk to another’s pace, or one’s talk to another’s style of conversation. It can also be found ‘in the aesthetic experience of the artist with the landscape, or the ecologist with the environment’ (ibid., p. 117).

Meanings and ideas, as we have seen, are inherent in the flesh of the world;

they are not mere subjective constructions. Merleau-Ponty says meaning bringsa style of beingto sensible things. A ‘style’ is something not merely perceived and cognised but alsofelt. It has a feeling quality. Painters express the style of things or beings in their work. But for Merleau-Ponty, these styles are not purely subjective, they are relational. The style is discovered in the painter’s lived-body way of organising the world. It is a certain way of meeting the world andbeingin the world (cf.Low, 2000, p. 22f). Inherent in the flesh of the world, experienced in and through the flesh of our lived body, are therefore certain ‘feelings of being’.

Ratcliffe (2005) calls such feelings existential because they are ‘ways of finding ourselves in the world’ (ibid., p. 43) (Ratcliffe does not draw heavily on Merleau-Ponty but his notion of existential feelings fits well within the latter’s existential phenomenology). As examples of the feeling of being, Ratcliffe mentions the following: feeling complete, at home, sep- arate, disconnected from the world, in control, powerful, part of the real world again, part of a larger machine, at one with life, and at one with nature. Such expressions do not seem to describe inner states or features of the external world; they rather describe the relation of myself to the world. ‘Myself’ here does not refer to an abstract psychic entity like the ‘I’

or the ego. Primarily, and more exactly, it denotes the lived body, and our lived body is not limited to the skin bag of physicality. In a certain sense it inhabits the space of the ‘inbetween’ (Weiss, 2005); that is, it is itself also relational.Existential feelings belong to the lived body, and in their rela- tionality they inform and structure our perception of the world around us. In other words, they are part of our embodied intentionality. Existential feel- ings are responsible ‘for the “sense of reality” incorporated into experience of the world as a whole, other people and even oneself’ (Ratcliffe, 2005, p. 51).

SUGGESTIONS FOR PRACTICE

A contemplative pedagogy of EE, based on mindfulness of body and breath, can begin to open up these to a large extent hidden, pre-reflective realms of experience, for students as well as for teachers. The point is not (only) to read about these things as abstract philosophical ideas, but to practice, to cultivate, and thereby come to richer and deeper experiences of our being-in-the-world. Such experiences are the sources of real change and transformation. In contemplative bodily practices one can experience the variety of existential feelings in a deeper and more conscious way, compared to our ordinary autopilot state. One may discover feelings of being at home, or being present, as well as their opposites: alienation and separation. The latter are as important as the former to reflect on in an EE context. Questions such as what are the possible reasons why I feel at home or alienated, connected or separate, in power or out of control, can be more consciously explored in actual experience; and such experiences could be registered in journaling and/or shared in small groups or whole class dialogues, in which one also cultivates mindful and attentive listening to each other.

What direct actions for environmental care can arise out of mindfulness and CP among students and teachers? Important as this question is, it is hard to predict or recommend any particular actions of this kind here, because the point of mindfulness and CP is, first of all, the awakening of our inner feeling life to the state of need of Nature and the Earth (for what can actually be done, see for instance Badiner, 2002). From this inner awakening comes action, because feeling is much more prone to action than information or abstract knowledge. The feeling of oneness with nature may give rise to a deep sense of ecological injustice when seeing for instance a river being poisoned or clean air being polluted:

Because I am here, because I am nature, because I am Earth . . . these things, to me, are a violation of something sacred. And this sense of violation comes with a strong desire to try to prevent such wrongs from being enacted, even if the trying may in the end turn out to be futile (Kingsnorth, 2015, p. 67).

In order to be even more concrete, let us quote Ergas’ (2014) description of how a simple yoga posture like the Tadasana, or Mountain pose—a form of standing meditation—can be a source of contemplative experience:

If I sink my weight down to the ground and begin to turn my inner gaze towards the soles of my feet, I quickly encounter the difficulty of marking the boundaries of my body. Where do my feet end? Where does the earth begin? As I turn my inner gaze to my hands, similar sen- sations appear. I observe the ‘twilight zone’ buffering between what I take to be me and what I take to be ‘not me’. The self/world du- alism transcends philosophical disembodied discourse, into an actual lived-embodied philosophy. When I began the practice I felt more like a Cartesian man, but now I am perhaps embodying/philosophizing Heidegger’s Dasein? Merleau-Ponty’s embodied subject? Perhaps

even more? What/who am I? Am I an embodied dualistic being, a monistic being?

How does this posture as embodied philosophy transcend the yoga mat to livingness? Maybe my sense of integration with earth can translate into a more ecological way of living? Perhaps to a sense of kinship with others surrounding me? This interesting inarticulate zone between the sensed body and the thoughts evoked by it, can transform my sense of inner integration.If I am more integrated from within, will it affect my integration with my environment, with others . . . ? (Ergas, 2014, p. 81; italics ours).

In pedagogical implementations like this simple yoga exercise, our attention is turned to the experience of the lived body in a non-instrumental fashion.

The purpose is not to use the body in order to achieve some goal external to ourselves but simply to dwell in its livingness. Strangely enough this

‘inward’ turn actually re-evokes the external world, but in a new mode.

It is a mode of awe and respect, in which we are more receptive to the mystery and otherness of nature. Life in nature is the same as it is in us, to be respected and related to with compassion, even loving biophilia.

How this dialectics between ‘being one’ with nature while still feeling its

‘otherness’ is possible, in spite of its illogicality, is a further mystery. It means, however, that we are not completely trapped in anthropomorphism.

Nature and ourselves may be of the same flesh, yet we are also different, otherwise we could not be ‘within each other’.

CONCLUSION

We have showed how contemplative pedagogy engages personal feeling and will based on lived-body awareness, not only on cognition of impersonal facts. This is an important step towards re-establishing the link between knowledge and action, and eventually also between the human being and nature/world. We have also showed how Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy of theflesh can be deployed to frame the experience and the practice of CP approaches to EE.¹ Such a framework also provides a basis for ethics:

through thefleshwe belong to the Being of the world—sentient as well as insentient. Therefore, what we do to the world we do to ourselves. Con- templative pedagogy can help us transform this insight into an existential feeling; something that we are actually able tosensein our lived bodies.

Correspondence: Jani Matti Pulkki, University of Tampere, School of Education, Doctoral student ˚Akerlundinkatu 5, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.

Email: pulkki.jani.m@student.uta.fi NOTE

1. After having finished this paper we became aware of the bookMerleau-Ponty and Buddhism, edited by J. Y. Park and G. Kopf (2009), which also has a chapter dealing with thefleshby Glen Mazis.

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