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    Ancient Trees, Dwindling in the Wild, Thrive on Sacred Ground

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    The Putuo hornbeam, a hardy tree that thrives in the damp air by the East China Sea, could be easily overlooked by visitors to the Huiji Temple on an island in the Zhejiang Province.The tree has an unremarkable appearance: spotty bark, small stature and serrated leaves with veins as neatly spaced as notebook lines. But its status is singular. As far as conservationists can tell, no other mature specimen of its species is alive in the wild.The holdout on the island, Mount Putuo, has been there for about two centuries. And according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, its setting may have been its salvation.The study found that religious sites in eastern China have become refuges for old, ancient and endangered trees. Since the early years of the Common Era, Buddhist and Taoist temples have sheltered plants that otherwise struggled to find a foothold, including at least eight species that now exist nowhere else on earth.“This form of biodiversity conservation, rooted in cultural and traditional practices, has proven to be remarkably resilient, persisting even in the face of modern civilization and rapid economic development,” said Zhiyao Tang, a professor of ecology at Peking University and one of the study’s authors.The trees survived at religious sites in part because they were planted and cultivated there. The report noted that Buddhism and Taoism emphasize spiritual association with plants and the temples tended to be left undisturbed, shielding the areas from deforestation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      America Wants a God

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      Today, we’re introducing “Believing,” a yearlong exploration from The Times on how we experience religion and spirituality now.Americans believe.Most people are wary of the government, the future and even each other, but they still believe in astonishing possibilities. Almost all Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they have a spiritual belief, in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something “beyond the natural world,” as we reported earlier this year.The country seems to be acknowledging this widespread spiritual hunger. America’s secularization is on pause, people have stopped leaving churches, and religion is taking a more prominent role in public life — in the White House, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even at Harvard. It’s a major, generational shift. But what does this actually look like in people’s lives?I have spent the past year reporting “Believing,” a new project for The Times. This project is personal to me. I was raised a devout Mormon in Arkansas. I’ve left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I understand how wrestling with belief can define a life. I hoped to capture what that journey looked like for others, too — both inside and outside of religion. I interviewed hundreds of people, visited dozens of houses of worship and asked Times readers for their stories. More than 4,000 responded.In my reporting, I found that there are many reasons for this shift in American life. Researchers say the pandemic and the country’s limited social safety nets have inclined people to stick with (or even turn to) religion for support. But there is another reason, too: Many Americans are dissatisfied with the alternatives to religion. They feel an existential malaise, and they’re looking for help. People want stronger communities, more meaningful rituals and spaces to express their spirituality. They’re also longing to have richer, more nuanced conversations about belief.Unsatisfying alternativesIris LegendreOver the past few decades, around 40 million Americans left churches, and the number of people who say they have no religion grew to about 30 percent of the country.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Phoenix Springs: Computer Game as Philosophical Journey

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      The writer of the game Phoenix Springs says it touches upon two questions at the heart of Buddhism: What is the nature of death, and what is the nature of perception?Reflecting on mankind’s long history with technology, the British philosopher John Gray makes a bracing assertion in his book “Straw Dogs”: “Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world. Once a technology enters human life — whether it be fire, the wheel, the automobile, radio, television or the internet — it changes it in ways we can never fully understand.”It’s an observation brought to mind by the new point-and-click computer game Phoenix Springs, an eye-catching, thought-provoking exploration of the unintended consequences that follow a society-wide embrace of biohacking.Players fall into the role of Iris, a veteran reporter, as she sits on a train with a desert looming through a window. The opening seconds, and an arresting dissolve from the sun-flooded train to a shadowy apartment, sets the tone for what follows — a slippery exploration of memory, time and space grounded in Iris’s quest to uncover the mystery of what happened to her brother.Phoenix Springs, by Calligram Studio, offers a refreshing take on the point-and-click genre whose heyday was the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of amassing items that need to be deployed throughout the game, Iris collects information — names, ideas, phrases — which she must apply to her surroundings to try to make sense of them.The game’s writer and designer, Jigme Ozer, said he tried to avoid “the key before door problem” baked into too many point-and-click games — where the player picks up an object lying around an environment and then looks for where it can be used. That’s not how it works in real life, Ozer observed. “If you have a problem,” Ozer said, “it stays in your head before you go looking for the solution.”Iris’s problem is unveiled in those early moments on the train.Clicking on Iris causes a squarish white overlay to appear with the name Leo Dormer. The window disappears when you click the name, and hovering the cursor over Iris causes a small text box to appear with both of their names next to each other.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in World Politics

      Tawang Is the India-China Battleground for Tibetan Buddhism

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