The Living Covenant: Ecological Balance, Dharma, and the Ethics of Interbeing in Vandana Shiva, Indigenous Indian Lores, and Buddhist Philosophy

Abstract

This paper undertakes a sustained interdisciplinary reading of ecological balance as a form of ethical and cosmological practice through the convergent frameworks of dharma, Indigenous Indian ecological lore, and Buddhist philosophy. Drawing primarily on Vandana Shiva's ecofeminist critiques—particularly Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (1988), Monocultures of the Mind (1993), and Soil Not Oil (2008)—alongside oral and textual traditions from Adivasi and other Indigenous communities in the Indian subcontinent, the essay argues that ecological balance is not merely a biophysical condition but a dharmic obligation rooted in cosmological interdependence. The Buddhist analytical lens, particularly the Theravada doctrine of dependent origination (paticca-samuppada) and the Mahayana concept of pratityasamutpada as elaborated by Nagarjuna, provides the metaphysical scaffolding through which Indigenous and Shivian ecological ethics can be rigorously examined. By reading these traditions in productive dialogue rather than in false equivalence, the paper contends that ecological devastation is simultaneously a crisis of dharma—a rupture in relational obligation—and an epistemic violence that erases the ecological knowledges of communities who have long theorized and practised sustainability not as a policy goal but as a way of being in the world.