Harmonising with Heaven and Earth: Reciprocal Harmony and Xunzi’s Environmental Ethics

Xunzi’s philosophy provides a rich resource for understanding how ethical relationships between humans and nature can be articulated in terms of harmony. In this paper, I build on his ideas to develop the concept of reciprocal harmony, which requires us to reciprocate those who make our lives liveable. In the context of the environment, I argue that reciprocal harmony generates moral obligations towards nature, in return for the existential debt that humanity owes towards heaven and earth. This can be used as a normative basis for an environmental ethic that enables humanity and nature to flourish together.

Тувинская рукопись «Сутры о восьми хулилах»

The article aims to introduce a manuscript of the “Sūtra of Eight Khulils” in Mongolian, part of the collection in Aldan-Maadyr National Museum of the Tuva Republic. The idea of eight khulils, or eight trigrams, which symbolize eight great elements (fire, earth, metal, sky, water, mountain, wood, and air / wind) and form the basis of the Tibetan-Mongolian astrological system may be traced back to ancient Chinese divinatory practices which one can find in Yi jing, or Book of Changes. Despite the title, the Sūtra has nothing in common with canonical Mahāyāna sūtras either in content or composition. No parallel work of the Tibetan canon identified as an original for the sutra in question, assumingly, it is either a translation from Chinese or of purely Mongolian origin. The body of the text is preceded by schematic pictures of eight khulils, supplied with indications of eight directions (life, health, luck, happiness, evil, illness, evil spirit and five demons), each direction having eight combinations that are differently positioned (south, north, east, west and four intermediary directions), depending on khulil. Then, there is a short instruction on what one should or should not do in these eight directions, as well as an explanation of negative consequences of abiding in each of the eight khulils and methods of their neutralization. This passage contains a list of places and situations that should be avoided, including demons (albin, aišiginar (Skt. piśāca), bug demons, demons of curses, etc.) that can do harm to humans, diseases, unfavorable objects, beings, types of food, as well as unfavorable directions and time periods. Also, Buddhist texts and various offerings needed for the ritual are mentioned, such as “Vajravidāraņa-dharaṇī”, “Sitātapatrā-dharaṇī”, “Sutra of Eight Luminous of Heaven and Earth”, and “Paňcarakṣā”. Of great interest are the respective lists of Buddhist ritual texts, dungli and kereg ritual offerings, classifications of Bon and Buddhist priests to perform such rituals, and lamas who can take donations; their further investigation may shed additional light on the Buddhist practices of the Mongolian peoples. The fact that the manuscript repository of the National Museum of the Republic of Tuva includes about sixteen texts devoted to eight khulils may indicate that khulil divination was quite widespread and popular in the local tradition of Tuvan Buddhism.

Review of: Mark R. Wynn, Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues: Living Between Heaven and Earth

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Kroppen som en plåga. Kroppen som en välsignelse. Kroppen som ett gränsland

Body as Torment. Body as Blessing. Body as borderland: The Symbolism of the Body and Illness in the Works of Tito Colliander. In my article, I examine the mental and physical illness of the body in the writing of the Finnish-Swedish writer Tito Colliander. Based on Yuri Lotman’s semiosphere theory, I show the cross-border function of the body in the text. The body suffering from a mental disorder or a physical pain is a kind of a filtering membrane that controls, filters, and adapts the external into the internal. The body can be considered as a borderland between the external and the internal, right and left, life and death, the male and the female, the upper and the lower, the spiritual and the material, heaven and earth, one’s own – alien. Based on Colliander’s writing, I show how the depiction of the body and the body’s diseases contributes to the literary representation and understanding of the fundamental oppositions of the culture.

Application of Multi-dimensional Technology in Water Conservation Monitoring of Power Transmission and Transformation Production and Construction Project

Under the background of the new era, as the production and construction projects of soil and water conservation began to fully promote the “integration of heaven and earth”, the traditional application technology has been unable to meet the needs of practical development, and the power transmission and transformation production and construction projects put forward higher application requirements. Therefore, on the basis of understanding the current implementation of soil and water conservation monitoring work, this paper analyzes how to reasonably use UAV technology in practical monitoring work according to the multi-dimensional technical means proposed in the new era, and conducts performance analysis according to the practical verification.

Kuyper’s Spirituality in Its Calvin-Context

This article explores Abraham Kuyper’s spirituality by comparing it to that of John Calvin. Calvin’s Institutes exhibits three dimensions of his spirituality in the context of the mystical union with Christ, namely, the affective character of this union, its effects and its significance for a correct estimation of the world. By comparison, Kuyper put a greater emphasis on the importance of the affections in mystical union because he gives more weight to the regenerated life. This focus also coheres with Kuyper’s more optimistic approach to the Christian life, which contrasts with Calvin’s emphasis on the need for daily justification. In Kuyper’s approach the indwelling of the Spirit represents the union between heaven and earth, while Calvin stresses that God’s future kingdom is beyond the here and now.

The Heaven and Earth Concepts in Women Beauty Comparison Phraseological Expressions of Different Cultures

Research relevance in this article is the study of concepts Heaven and Earth, through phraseological units belonging to carriers of different-structured languages, which reflect female beauty, determine their universal and national-unique characteristics. Research purpose is to study and analyze the features of stable expressions about the beauty of women associated with the concept Heaven and Earth in different cultures. Research methods: we tried to understand and identify how the beauty of women is reflected in the stable expressions of different peoples, where the culture and assessment of female beauty is preserved in comparison with heavenly bodies and with all earthly beauty on our planet. Research results can be used: in the practice of teaching the course of comparative typology, lexicology of the Russian, Kyrgyz and English languages, as well as in teaching Russian, Kyrgyz and English on a linguacultural basis, both in foreign and national audiences. Conclusions: the semantic spaces of different languages made it possible to compare them with the subsequent allocation of universal universals, the national specifics of the concept sphere, since the concept sphere and the semantic space of a language have a common nature, since they are mental entities.