Shattering the Schism of Form and Process: How a 1,700-Year-Old Text Can Lead to Unified Restoration Planning
Andy Newman
The Earth Partners, LP
Houston, TX
Dave Rosgen constantly reminds river professionals that channels and valleys are inseparable and thus “Form is Process and Process is Form.” Avalokiteśvara parallels Dave within The Heart Sutra disclosing “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.” The finality of Dave’s Level I course serenely ends with a picture of a river and a quote from Hesse’s Siddhartha. Inspired by the Buddha reference, the presenter utilizes a Buddhist lineage text to elucidate some of the paradoxes and nuances of ecological restoration.
The first two teachings of The Heart Sutra concern themselves with the absence of permanent identities and the arising of all phenomena intertwined and interdependent upon one another. As a restoration practitioner, this could be interpreted as a reminder to review our need to definitively define streams and valleys that are constantly being transformed at a myriad of scales. There is a continuous interplay between channel and valley forms and processes and we, the observers, can expand our multidisciplinary curiosities to attempt to notice the nuances.
The third calls for an acknowledgement of the dynamic and integrative mental patterns that expose perceptual blind spots and details antidotes to remove distractive aspects of ourselves, e.g. biases, delusions, expectations, etc., that prohibit a wider lens of awareness. The fourth harkens us to expand our capacity for compassionate wisdom as we strive to become stewards, educators, and legacy holders for the environs and beings with which we work and interact. Knowledge and technical skills are generously shared for the benefit of others.
The final teaching is a reminder of impermanence, noting we can work on fully accepting ourselves and rivers as an evolving movement and not a rigidly definable form or process. The Heart Sutra challenges us to let go of calcified assumptions and expectations of outcomes and acknowledge that “project failure or misbehavior” provides direct evidence to overlooked elements that are influencing observed phenomena. Siddhartha states, “The river knows everything, one can learn everything from it”. The Heart Sutra cajoles us to expunge our muddied myopias and claim irradiating awarenesses’ skilled cognition of the wisdom free flowing.
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