A popular representation of the Buddha is seated cross-legged, with his left hand in his lap, palm facing up. The right hand extends beyond the right knee and touches the ground. This posture, the so-called bhumisparsha mudra, the “earthly witness” pose, commemorating the Buddha’s victory over the challenge of the demon king Mara. According to the usual account, Mara wanted to distract him from his deep meditation. He tried to intimidate Gautama with armies of demons and monsters, then sent his daughters to lure him from his meditation session. When none of these tricks worked, Mara claimed that he deserved to sit in the light chair.
In response, the Buddha touched the earth, and when the earth screamed “I bear witness,” Mara and his armies disappeared, defeated. This is a strange story, apparently more of a myth than a historical event. But what does that mean?
This bhumisparsha incident is not found in the earliest Buddhist texts, although it was soon added to the traditional narrative of the Buddha’s mission. The question is whether Gautama was really entitled to sit in the place where (according to the story) all previous Buddhas attained enlightenment.
From our perspective, however, another aspect of the myth becomes important. Notice that the story does not refer to any “higher” reality beyond this world. Instead, touching the earth means awakening to a different relationship with the Earth. Instead of the usual trope – the “ascension” of the natural world – this suggests another, opposite metaphor: descending back into the earth, returning to the Mother who created all life, which is also settling back into the physical body, becoming fully embodied. This includes getting in touch with and working through repressed emotions and traumas, avoiding what John Welwood calls mental bypass: the “widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to escape or evade unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks…trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanity before we have fully faced and come to terms with it.”
But can we push the bhumisparsha story a little further? To be more speculative – and perhaps this is what is needed today – can we say that the earth itself awakens when one becomes enlightened? Was that why he roared when Gautama appealed to him? This would answer the old question of whether a anattaor “no-self”, the teaching of Buddhism raises: If there is no self, then who or what becomes enlightened? As Sufism emphasizes, no one knows God but God: We are the mirror through which God views himself and becomes self-aware. Given what we now know about biology, DNA, and the evolution of all life from a single-celled universal ancestor, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to suggest such an answer—in which case, touching the earth becomes an evocative symbol of recognizing one’s non-duality with the earth. As Joseph Campbell says, “If you think of ourselves as having come out of the earth, instead of being thrown here from somewhere, then you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth.”
According to the philosopher of science László Ervin, this non-dual perspective is in line with an emerging post-materialist paradigm, which also happens to be the traditional pre-modern paradigm:
At the forefront of contemporary science, a remarkable insight is emerging: the universe, together with everything else, is a quasi-living, coherent whole. Everything in it is connected. . . . A connected, coherent and whole cosmos evokes an ancient concept that was present in the traditions of all civilizations: it is an enchanted cosmos. . . . We are part of each other and of nature. We are a conscious part of the world, a being through which the cosmos learns about itself. . . . We are at home in the universe.
to be home in the universe– how wonderful! Is this what mystics talk about?
This new paradigm also raises the fascinating possibility of understanding evolution in the broadest possible sense as the creative groping of a self-organizing cosmos. Tendon History of the UniverseThomas Berry and Brian Swimme put it more poetically: “The eye that searches the Milky Way is itself an eye shaped by the Milky Way. The mind that seeks connection with the Milky Way is the mind of the Milky Way that searches its innermost depths.”
Shouldn’t this be the role of religion today: not to transcend this world, but to awaken to our true body?
Shouldn’t this be the role of religion today: not to transcend this world, but to awaken to our true body? Berry concludes that humans are “the consciousness of the universe.”
By creating the planet Earth, its living forms and human intelligence, the universe has found the most elaborate expression and manifestation of its deepest secret, as far as we know. Here the universe in its human way reflects and celebrates itself in a unique way of conscious self-awareness.
Becoming self-aware, then, means realizing that we are all being made by the entire universe—our real bodies—here and now. Could there be a better homecoming?
Finally, an important consequence of this should be emphasized. For archaic civilizations, humans played a fundamental role in the cosmos. Our sacrifices and ritual activities prevented it from descending into chaos again. In the modern age, of course, we no longer have such a function, which raises fundamental questions about the meaning (or meaninglessness) of our lives, both individually and collectively. It seems all we can do is enjoy ourselves while we can. . . until the inevitable happens. But if we are not separate from the rest of the biosphere—if humans are actually one way of becoming self-aware—then that gives us meaning and role.
To love the world as our own body means that the culmination of the spiritual path is not to reach some blissful state, but to be fully engaged with each other and the earth.
To love the world as one’s own body means that the culmination of the spiritual path is not to reach some blissful state, but to be fully engaged with each other and with the land: contributing to what Judaism describes as. my stick“repair of the world”, or following what Mahayana Buddhism a bodhisattva pathvowing to help alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings (and now deteriorating ecosystems).
Are we here to nurture and take care of the biosphere, our larger body? How to help you heal? Will this also be our own healing?
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© 2026, David Loy, Let’s love the world as our body: The unusual way in a dangerous time. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.
