Taking inspiration from the Himalayan environment and contextualizing religious experience in the mountains, this course will draw on broad ideas about the relationship between religion and ecology to understand how belief systems and ritual practices are shaped by and shape environmental consciousness. In the philosophical traditions of southern Asia, the Himalaya represent purity, transcendence, and deep introspection associated with ascetic ideals of ethical self-perfection. In the structure of the ritual activities of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, the mountains are a place of pilgrimage where individuals, families and whole communities go in order to experience divinity. As the designation in Sanskrit indicates the Himalaya are considered to be the “home of the gods,” and the intimacy of entering into the domestic space of this divine wilderness produces the coordinates of a profoundly moral and ethical life deeply embedded in the natural environment.
