Ecological Nirvana and the Agency of the Non-Human: A Material Ecocritical Reading of Musan Cho Oh-hyun’s Zen Sijo

In the Anthropocene, the environmental crisis necessitates a radical repositioning of the human-nature relationship. This paper examines the sijo poetry in Musan Cho Oh-hyun’s For Nirvana through an interdisciplinary framework bridging Zen philosophy with material ecocriticism. The study elucidates how Musan deconstructs anthropocentric exceptionalism by restoring agency to the non-human world. Textual analysis reveals three arguments. First, elemental forces like wind and waves are subjectified as primordial teachers through mujō-seppō (non-sentient beings preaching the Dharma), dismantling sovereign human scriptural authority. Second, visceral encounters with animals and insects critique logocentric domination, proposing “epistemological silence” and “radical humility” as alternative eco-politics. Finally, bodily decay and trans-corporeal porosity are reframed as generative pathways toward a radical “ecological Nirvana”—a physical matrix of cyclical renewal. By synthesizing Jane Bennett’s vital materialism with Dōgen’s Zen vision of “walking mountains”, this study deploys a Zen materialism lens that enriches Western theory with the Buddhist soteriology of compassion (karuna). Ultimately, Musan reconfigures Nirvana not as an escapist transcendence, but as a profound somatic descent into the material mesh, where ultimate spiritual realization lies in the ego’s total dissolution into the “walking, talking minerals” of a sacred, suffering ecosystem.