Spiritual Ecology and Behavioral Ethics: Enabling Pro-Environmental Actions in the Himalayan Beyuls

Abstract

This article investigates the Nyingma religious prescriptions that govern the sanctification of the Himalayan beyuls (hidden sacred valleys) and analyzes the ecological significance of such spiritually driven actions. It explores whether spiritual ecology inspires the intended pro-environmental actions among the Sherpas of Khumbu whose ecological awareness on scientific terms is less pronounced. It intends to answer how sanctification of a certain location on spiritual and religious grounds results into its conservation in the long run. It adopts a qualitative, interpretive reading of beyuls discussed in Lakpa Norbu Sherpa’s Looking through the Sherpa Window, Sherpa and Wengel’s The Sherpas and Their Original Identities, and Francis Klatzel’s Gaiety of the Spirit. It particularly focuses on the dos and don’ts related to a beyul, and foregrounds religious values as cognitive frameworks that regulate behavioral ethics. The cognitions are approached through behavioral indicators including cultivated piety to enter a beyul, attribution of personhood to nature, and refrainment from sexual transgressions in the Himalaya mentioned in the aforementioned texts. For the theoretical purpose, the article employs Leslie E. Sponsel’s idea of spiritual ecology, and other related concepts including deep ecology and spiritual geography to understand cognitions that enable or restrict human behaviors in a beyul. The article concludes that in communities where ecological practices are not always articulated through scientific frameworks, spiritually driven actions that operate without prior scientific reflection, also contribute to the maintenance of a place’s ecological ambience.