Surf Notes from 'Dark Green Religion' (Bron Taylor, 2009)
Wikipedia article on the book
Compiled in 2025
Notes on the rest of the book can be found at: Notes from 'Dark Green Religion' (Bron Taylor, 2009)
p103 - Point Break
- "The Hollywood motion picture Point Break (1991) was a campy thriller in which a band of surfers funded their global surf quest by robbing banks. Early in the film Keanu Reeves, acting as FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah, went to buy a surfboard as the first step in his effort to penetrate the surfing 'tribe' and find the robbers. Utah explained to the teenager-clerk that he always wanted to learn to surf. The teenager replied, 'It's never too late.' Utah protested, 'But I'm only twenty-five.' The young evangelist responded, 'I hope you stay with it, surfing's the source, it'll change your life, I swear to god.' The movie continued with religious themes woven throughout. The leader of the bank-robbing surfers, for example, was named Bodhi and this bodhisattva proclaimed a mystical gospel of surfing."
- Matt Warshaw: "is based in sport, but can drift into art, vocation and avocation, even religion."
- Brad Melekian: surfing is a religion, it can make you more compassionate to other people and nature
p104 - Aquatic Nature Religion
- "The ideas introduced in this chapter-that there is a mysterious magic in surfing that can only be apprehended directly through the experience; that surfing fosters self-realization; that commercialization of the practice is a defiling act but that even such acts cannot obviate its spiritual power; that surfing can lead to a life characterized by compassion toward other living beings-have been expressed repeatedly and increasingly within surfing subcultures."
- "a form of dark green religion, in which sensual experiences constitute its sacred center"
- Going to surf as akin to going to Church.
- Surfing fosters "... understandings of nature as powerful, transformative, healing, and sacred. Such perceptions, in turn, often lead to ethical action in which Mother Nature, and especially its manifestation as Mother Ocean, is considered sacred and worthy of reverent care. Many surfers also develop feelings of communion and kinship with the nonhuman animals they encounter during their practice. These experiences sometimes take on an animistic ethos and lead surfers to activism on behalf of marine ecosystems and particular species."
p105 - Pulse magic
- "The Ultimate Guide to Surfing labels the sport as 'a powerful, elemental activity' involving 'the pure act of riding on a pulse of nature's energy,' which brings contentment and also the 'magic that only comes from spending time on the moving canvas.'
- Surfing "puts you one with nature, clears your soul of bad vibes, and can make you a more humble person."
- "Yet surfers are also known for sexism, territoriality and even violence, as practitioners battle to get the best wave or prevent newcomers from paddling out in places they consider special. Is it possible, then, that surfing fosters territorial feelings toward sacred places in which only some people are considered worthy to enter, and others are infidels or desecrating agents who must be excluded and suppressed?"
p106 - Surfing as paganism
- Origins with indigenous Peruvian, Polynesian and more recently Hawaiian cultures.
- "The arrival of Captain James Cook and other Europeans in 1778, however, with their guns, diseases, alcohol, and 'strange new religion' led to the cultural implosion of the indigenous Hawaiian civilization, including the near extinction of surfing culture. The surf-focused culture came under direct assault with the arrival of missionaries, beginning in 1820, who sought to destroy what they considered to be its pagan dimensions. This dark period of cultural genocide and deterioration almost ended the sport, according to surfing historians, and by the late nineteenth century surfing was rarely practiced."
p107 - the meaning of "Aloha"
- Kekuhi Kealiikanakaole (native Hawai'ian scholar): "'Alo' means your frontal presence. So when we say, 'he alo a he alo' we mean face to face. 'Ha' means breath. The importance of this word ... is that when each of us breathe those cavities that we use to have air enter and leave are the same cavities with which we share the breath of a friend, neighbor, relative or acquaintance. That is the meaning. And surfing, well for the local surfer guy, it's his/her daily spiritual experience, a sort of reconnection or meditation. On another level, the ocean for us is Kanaloa, or deep knowing and ancestral memories. This is why we need the salt water for cleansing, whether it's a sea bath or just a stroll."
p106-8: Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake, prophet and apostle
- Kahanamoku = charismatic native Hawaiian who popularised the sport in 1910s
- Tom Blake = author of "Voice of the wave" essay in 1969.
- "Blake found a divine force in all of the waves in the universe, including ocean waves, concluding that 'nature is synonymous with God.' In this essay and a subsequent one titled 'The Voice of the Atom,' Blake expressed reverence for the sea and a biocentric kinship ethics, which was also the ground of his vegetarianism and belief in the equality of all peoples. He also articulated a metaphysics in which the atom was equated with the soul, and a belief that 'even when we die, we are never lost, but revert back to the kingdom of the atom, nature, or God.'"
- "The intrinsic sustaining balance of the natural world is self-evident to . . . each surfer. If you ride waves long enough and keep your eyes and heart open, you get it."
- Dave Parmenter: "When all the waves had been ridden . .. what looms above it all is Blake's unique spirituality. He formulated a belief system that was predicated on the idea of 'Nature=God,' and he practiced this faith out-of-doors in what he called 'The Blessed Church Of The Open Sky.'"
- Some argue that surfing is a religion. If so, the great Hawaiian surfer and Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku would certainly have to be seen as surfing's messiah or prophet, and from the vantage point of the present day we can see that Tom Blake became his chief apostle."
p110 - Surf films
- "The influence of the psychedelic age was then and can still be discerned in surfing cultures. Graphics from surf magazines, surf-film posters, surf-music album covers, and designs on surfboards and other elements of surfing's material culture-especially those dating to the 1960s and 1970s- illustrate the sport's psychedelic dimension. Beginning in the late 1960s, surf movies revealed that the sport had 'proudly and enthusiastically joined the counterculture,' overtly promoting LSD and other drugs, including as spiritual aids. The titles and advertising copy on film posters show the development of nature spirituality in the sport and how this was sometimes intertwined with the psychedelic era. The film The Natural Art (1969) was 'an organic 90 minutes of positive vibrations.' Pacific Vibrations (1970) resembled 'Woodstock on a wave,' and its famous poster was crafted by Rick Griffin, one of San Francisco's best-known psychedelic-era illustrators, who also produced cartoons in surfing magazines that depicted the sport as a mystical, nature-bonding experience."
- And surf films were non-Hollywood to begin with, helping to cement a countercultural identity.
p112 - Gerry Lopez and Marilyn Edwards
- Lopez: "We became hippies and got into yoga and that whole self realization thing and started to realize that those moments when you were completely focused on riding a wave are actually kind of spiritual ...religious moments."
- And Lopez led pilgrimages to famous surf spots.
- Marilyn Edwards = publisher of "Wahine" magazine = for women surfers.
- Edwards: "When I see a female on a wave, I see the connectedness with the wave. Women's emotional energy is about unity. The masculine energy is more independent, more 'me' out front. And that is not true for all men, but sometimes men surf 'on' the wave, whereas women surf 'with' the wave."
p113 - Surfing and the environment
- Environmentalism has always been a key aspect of surfing - Save Our Surf was founded in Hawaii in 1961.
p113 - Ritual
- "Surfing's most important ritual dimension is rising at dawn to greet the sun, waves, and sea creatures."
p115 - Matt Walker and surfing as religion again
- "In the absence of all other forms of worship, surfing has become my religion. My rock. My go-to source for solace and celebration. A way to track time and form social bonds and - most importantly- a sanctuary where I feel a strong spiritual connection to something ultimately unknowable. Where, I find myself every once in a while-for no special reason - looking skyward and saying 'thanks' to whatever strange cosmic forces wait behind it all. And, as weird as that sounds to some people, I know I'm not alone. In fact, I'm less alone than ever."
p115 - The Shadow side
- "the territorial feelings and sense of superiority over nonsurfers and less practiced surfers that is common in surfing cultures"
p116 - The experience of surfing
- "It is the sensuous experience of surfing, however, that is the root of its religious ethos."
- Many surfers refer to the sea as "Mother Ocean".
- "Mother Ocean has become a metaphor for intimacy with the sea, functioning like Mother Earth does for terrestrial participants in dark green religion."
- "Other surfing neologisms, such as the exclamation 'cowabunga', and references to being 'stoked,' express the joy if not ecstasy that can accompany surfing. Such terminology testifies to the power of the practice. So does surf writing, which repeatedly returns to the experience of wave riding, understanding it as the sensual center of the sport."
p117 - Living in the moment
- "Some of the most dramatic examples of heightened consciousness are what happens perceptually in dangerous situations, especially when a surfer is riding 'in the tube' of a large hollow wave. Such situations intensely focus one's attention, forcing one to truly 'live in the moment.' This kind of presence is a centerpiece of certain religions originating in Asia (especially Zen and some other forms of Buddhism). But it is also an idea that New Age subcultures have appropriated. Living in the moment is believed to bring peace, wisdom, and divine purpose."
- Lopez: "To be truly successful at riding a wave we're approaching a Zen state of mind ... and you're in the pure moment. Other parts of your life might be in shambles, but because you're tapping into the source you're truly happy."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of flow:
- Flow states, or "peak experiences" "usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."
- Flow is "the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost."
p118 - The importance of fear
- Jay Moriarity: "A good dose of fear is soothing for the human psyche. When the brain detects danger, the human body sends out norepinephrine to every part of the body. Once this danger has passed, the body sends out dopamine to the brain, a pleasurable chemical, as a way to congratulate the brain for surviving. These chemicals are what make people want to surf waves."
The Tube
- "Riding in the tube is by far the most frightening and exhilarating part of surfing."
- "time slows down in the tube."
- "The faster I go out there the slower things seem to happen."
p119 - Mandy Caruso
- "In the Hawaiian culture, all ohanas, all families, have guiding spirits that watch over them. These spirits, usually dead ancestors, take visible form in the shape of animals: sharks, owls, turtles. The belief is that … at crucial moments ... your guiding spirit, your amakua, will appear to you, and you will know you're being given a message, a warning, or a blessing. Now, being haole (white) and a malahini (not born Ka'maaina-in Hawaii), I liked the idea of the amakua, but I never expected to have one. Yet, years before I learned to board surf, in the darkness before dawn, I would rise and drive to a little cove with the gentlest, most caressing bodysurfing waves in the world .... One morning, as I was . . . reveling in the luscious velvet caress of the waves, a head suddenly popped out of the foam beside me. My fast-beating heart caught in my throat as a large turtle floated to the surface of the water. His ancient gaze considered me for moments that seemed like eternities. It was as if the Earth herself had come to look at me. Long, long the turtle looked at me, and I looked at the turtle. I heard a sound, knew a wave was coming, and glanced out at the entrance of the cove. I saw it would be a good, surfable wave, and glanced back at the turtle. Still the turtle stayed right beside me, looking, watching, waiting. The wave came, I leapt into it... and the turtle surfed right alongside me, in perfect position. Wave after wave we rode together that glittering, blue dawn, and the turtle stayed as close to me as my outstretched arm."
p119-20 - The power of the sea
- Keith Glendon: "The sea holds a magic for those of us who know her. A magic so simple, pure and powerful it works as an unseen force in our souls. We're drawn to her. The spirit of the sea moves in us as we move within her... The sea brings comfort, solace, release and escape. The sea brings healing. The spirit of the sea, for some of us, is the very essence of life."
p120 - Surf rage
- Quoting Aboriginal surfer Dhinawan G.: "When Aboriginal people are in the ocean, they know they are in their country. They belong to it. They don't own it... Surf rage? What's that about, that's white man's culture. We know there is always another wave. Surfing's about being part of the wave. I have a shark tattoo on my body. This is... to remind me that the ocean is superior to me and that I shouldn't try to conquer it."
- Echoes back to Duke Kahanamoku: "You know, there are waves coming in all the time, you don't have to worry about that. Just take your time-wave come. Let the other guys go; catch another wave."
p121 - Stoned as a gopher
- Pierce Flynn: "While surfing after time spent in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I was mindful of how that snowmelt had fed the ocean nearby. I felt the Chumash Ancestors present somehow. I felt appreciative to be alive. As I rode beautiful, rolling waves I noticed the moon starting to reflect in the wave faces and even on the droplets of my board. I felt stoned as a gopher, but it was a natural high, I joked pleasantly with the other surfers in the water and it felt like aloha ohana.
My best surfing experiences are those ongoing moments, like this one, where I feel and intuit/think everything together and the eternal now emerges.
I want everybody to somehow receive the benefits of this experience, it is so rare. That becomes my meditation and that enhances my surfing experience because it is now somehow shared with everything and everyone. I think this is the essential idea behind the Surfrider Foundation and what provides for its real greatness. Sharing the positive force that you have been given by the waves.
Living aloha."
p121 - Drew Kampion
- "Everything is waves. The universe of space and matter is charged with energy... waves of energy.
Like echoes of the heartbeat of the absolute being, waves give expression to the divine will.
They give form to the universe... Waves are the imprint, the signature, not only of life, but of existence itself."