At the root of the eco-disaster
Prithu das Adhikary
The endless proclamations of scientists promising us a world of complete
happiness, endless well-being and unlimited satisfaction are dying down:
The earth is heading for an ecological disaster.
Confused and concerned, people are shaking their heads in disbelief: Something went
wrong.
While the "little mistake" is gradually unfolding, people debate what year
the planet will become a total wasteland.
WE DESECRATED NATURE.
Industry may be cutting their emissions by paltry percentages and flood the markets
with "environmentally safe" products; politicians may go on rehearsing their
television facial expressions endlessly or waffle forever on the airwaves about the ozone
layer, the whales or whatever:
It seems all too late.
We scoffed at the red Indian Chief, who warned a century ago:
"Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strain it. Whatever he does to
the web, he does to himself. To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator."
We laughed (all the same) about the East Indians in our racial and religious chauvinism
and belittled their "Heathen" scriptures which tell us:
"Everything animate and inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and
owned by God. One should therefore only accept those things necessary for himself, which
are set aside as his quota. One should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they
be long." (Isopanishad I)
And while we thought we followed Jesus, who told us: "What you have done unto the
least of my brethren, you done unto me", we took Gen.1:26 "let man have dominion
over the earth and every creeping thing," as a license to legitimize shooting,
looting, drilling, butchering, ransacking, polluting, raping and destroying the planet.
Industrialized nations have been living for centuries at the cost of others.
Global warming plus the world's increasing population will only produce further poverty
while the "better off' will continue to consume unabated until the end.
Consequently oceans, airs and atmospheres are continually be polluted, and our bodies
are the favorite objects to be exploited with drugs and sex.
5000 years ago Sri Krishna predicted in the Bhagavad Gita; "Lost to lust with no
intelligence, they engage in unbeneficial, horrible work, meant to destroy the world"
(Bhagavad Gita 16.9) And only a century back a Red Indian Chief said : "The earth not
his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He kidnaps the earth
from his children, and he does not care. He treats his mother, the earth and his brother,
the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, or sold like sheep or bright beads. His
appetite will devour the earth and leave behind a desert."
The root of man's outrageous behavior towards himself, others and nature in general was
asserted in Vedic Philosophy thousands of years ago: Actions are all based on desire, and
desire is the most subtle expression of the soul. This desire of the soul can express
itself on the spiritual as well as on the material plane, and our minute independence is
to choose between one or the other. While in spiritual consciousness the soul's desires
are directed towards the Supreme in unlimited variety of spiritual ecstasies.
When propelled by desire for material satisfaction, the soul engages in self-solving
actions which yield only frustration, makes man an enemy to others, to nature and to
himself. Driven by material thirst he becomes entangled in a chain of endless actions and
karmic reactions, and needlessly he rots in material existence. Hence Jesus prayed:
"Blessed are those who thirst for Truth..."
Unless we transcend this material plane and realize our actual spiritual nature, we
will not taste real happiness, and our greed for matter will find no end.
Destruction of nature and the war of man against man will go on forever - symptoms of a
habitual state of atheism, barely concealed by shallow claims of affiliations to temples
or mosque or churches.
Where love for spirit deteriorates to lust, the earth is turned into a wasteland.
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