Paper short abstract:

In this intervention, I will explore how ethical and aesthetical commitments shape human, non-human bodies, and environments conterminously. Through the case study of an Advaita sanctuary, I will show how religious practices constitute a mutual process of care in a peculiar “cosmoecology”.

Paper long abstract:

This intervention is drawn from my fieldwork experience in a Non-Traditional Modern Advaita sanctuary (located, for anonymity reasons, in an imaginary country called “Euroamerica”), which was carried on to collect ethnographical data for my Master's Dissertation. In this spiritual tradition originated in the Indian sub-continent, physical phenomena are understood to be illusory manifestations of an all-encompassing, unmanifest God. Humans and non-humans are thus conceived as progressing through a spiritual path to recognize their identity with such God, perceived as an embodied sat-cit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss). I will show how cosmological connections constitute a mutual form of care for humans and non-humans alike. In particular, I will use the examples of the vegetation around the sanctuary, the chickens in its barnyard, and the timid behavior of a dog, highlighting how local ethical and aesthetical relations shaped a peculiar way of caring for the environment – and also feel as the environment was caring for people. Therefore, a mutual care process was established between humans, nonhumans, and their land. The ecological behavior of residents was in fact deeply connected to their cosmological commitment to a particular religious path and negotiated with the socio-political and environmental trajectories gravitating around the sanctuary. If Deborah Bird Rose believes that “people save what they love”, I will show how also the opposite is true: people, and much more than just people, are also saved by what they love – and save. Caring bonds mutually operate on bodies and environments, shaping human, non-human, and environmental health.