Cultivating Insight Through Comparing Cycles

Abstract

The Christian ecological tradition rejects problematic dualisms that separate and hierarchically value the body and soul, humans and creation, man and woman, etc. Ecofeminist theology seeks to provide alternatives that better recognize the interconnectedness of life overall, yet it has not fully responded to the dualism of life and death. This is evident in the work of Ivone Gebara, a leading ecofeminist theologian who addresses life, death, and resurrection within a more immanent understanding of the Trinity. Though she argues for a more ambiguous understanding of good and evil, creation and destruction, life and death, the tensions between these categories are never fully resolved. This is where the Hindu tradition, and in particular the Kali tradition of Hinduism, may shed new light on the Christian understanding of death as part of creation and of its interconnection with all life. The goddess Kali in particular is often referred to as the mistress of death, or death itself, and as such she does not protect her devotees from the inevitability of life, suffering, and death. Instead, Kali reveals the mortality of all life and frees devotees to embody their own fate and accept their own death as she grants them liberation from samsara (the continuous cycle of dying and rebirth into the world of materiality). Gebara advocates against hierarchical dualisms of good and evil, creation and destruction, life and death, where Kali already embodies the tension of these polarities, even the transcendence of them altogether. Even though there are fundamental differences between Hindu and Christian worldviews and conceptions of the divine, the figure of Kali addresses traditional tensions between life and death and between creation and salvation, and thus inspires a more integral liberation for all creation.