Start pro-environmental religious traditions

Today is World Environment Day, and the theme this year is fighting air pollution. With every passing year, our mistreatment of Mother Earth is increasing and currently, it is as if she has Stage 3 cancer. 

This is due to humankind’s selfishness and greed. Our bond with nature has deteriorated to such a degree that restoring her to full health will be extremely difficult. How long can she be sustained? This is something our care alone will determine. 

If the efforts of all countries and cultures are united, we can restore it to some extent. Even if it is only 10 per cent — at least that much harmony would be restored. It would help reduce global warming and earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and other natural disasters.

In destroying nature, we are destroying ourselves. May it never come to pass that humankind has to perish for the earth to survive. We need to uplift ourselves from the current culture of taking and shift towards the culture of giving.

In this regard, I would like to ask religious and spiritual leaders throughout the world to encourage their followers to become more environmentally-conscious in all their actions and to consider creating and integrating new traditions that would contribute to protecting the environment into at least one of their religion’s annual religious festivals or holidays.  

For example, five years ago, our ashram started a new tradition on Vishu, the Kerala New Year. As per custom, on this day elders throughout the state give pocket money to children. We decided to start giving away saplings instead and to encourage elders to do the same on Vishu.  

The goal is not only to grow more trees, but to also infuse love for nature in the coming generations. We even told the youngest ones that each day before going to school, they should say goodbye to their sapling, water it and give it a kiss. When they return home from school, they should do the same. Children, who have been practicing this, begin to see the plant as it is — a living entity. 

The minds of children are like fields of fresh grass. It is easy to create pathways to goodness in them. But for this, parents must play their part. Care for Mother Nature and good environmental practices, such as not wasting and recycling, must be taught and demonstrated at home. 

We take great pains to ensure our children get the best education possible. We push them to become engineers or doctors because we want to secure a good future for them, and for them to be happy and to have some status in society. But for them to survive, they need this planet that has clean air and water. 

To religious leaders who may ask, “Who are we to modify and augment our traditions, change our outlook towards spiritual practices?” I would ask us to look to the religious and spiritual leaders of the past. In Hinduism, Krishna asked the cowherds of Vraj to stop worshiping god Indra and to worship the Govardhana Hill itself instead. He wanted them to understand that the Creator and creation are not two, and to worship God through nature. This practice continues in that place to this day. In Christianity, the customs associated with Christmas have also evolved over the years. 

Customs have evolved in other religions as well. By these we are not changing the essence of the festival; we are simply finding new ways of expressing it. There is nothing wrong in this. Religion should be practical. It exists for humankind; humankind does not exist for religion.

On this World Environment Day, may everyone make a resolve to be more environmentally aware and to do their part to not waste, to recycle and to plant more saplings. 

May grace inspire leaders of all the world’s religions, sects and cultures to create new environmentally-restorative traditions. May those traditions take root throughout the world.

Author is a world-renowned spiritual leader and head of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, an NGO dedicated to providing food, clothing, shelter and healthcare for the needy