Biography
Jess Navarette is a PhD candidate in Comparative Theology at Boston College and holds an MA in Comparative Religion. He focuses primarily on Hindu-Christian comparative work, and is also an interfaith and interreligious facilitator in both academic and community settings.
Paper Abstract
This paper brings Northern and Southern Hindu sectarian texts into consonant dialogue with the Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke on the themes of ecology and spirituality. These texts all provide ecological imagery (trees, flowers, bees, etc.) as spiritual metaphors, signposts of divine presence, and in some cases literal role models to be emulated.
The texts engaged include the Śaivite work Svacchanda-Tantra (8th century), in which Śiva’s divine abode is marked by an abundance of bees and flowers, together with commentary by Abhinavagupta; excerpts from the Caitanya-Caritāmṛta (17th century Bengali Vaiṣṇavism) with commentary by Śrila Prabhupāda, wherein practitioners are instructed repeatedly to imitate the spiritual conduct of trees; and the Christian Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which use repeated natural metaphors and imagery for teachings on human conduct, consulting commentaries both ancient (Origen, 3rd century) and modern.
This comparative theological and interreligious reading of texts proposes that as human beings more fully express their divine natures, the more they mirror the natural world - giving life, displaying tolerance, and contributing to a synergistic ecosystem. Primary religious texts will be engaged along with traditional commentaries, and the paper will conclude with a theopoetic synthesis that calls for an engaged spirituality across traditions, linking interior transformation to ecological responsibility and to the preservation of sustainable environments in both the physical world and interior human spaces.