ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that human nature is far from ontologically simple and unified. Ancient Buddhist philosophy and contemporary scientific insights play complementary roles in pointing us in another direction. It focuses on what must surely be one of the most neglected themes in religious anthropology: human beings in the context of the microbial ocean that births, supports, threatens, and reabsorbs them. The microbial ocean is somewhat neglected even within the biological sciences themselves, much to the chagrin of microbiologists. The chapter offers a portrayal of human beings as an 'ecology of organisms' that is, not just in an ecology but also as an ecology. Microorganism-based disease is extremely rare relative to these facts of human life harmonized within the microbial ocean. Just as the concentrated identity viewpoint has natural ethical and theological implications, so does the distributed identity viewpoint. Ultimately the harmonies of human identity disintegrate into chaotic sounds, which yield to the silence of nothingness.
