The Monk’s Podcast 7 with Bhakti Rasamrita Swami – Environmentalism and Bhakti

Podcast Video:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna Maharaj, humble obeisances. Thank you very much for joining once again. It has been a joy to have you and many of our viewers have appreciated last time's podcast.

This is a very deep, detailed discussion with quite a few practical pointers and especially the common comment was that apart from what came below YouTube also is what I got is that we never get to hear a subject in so much detail in normal classes or in normal forums. So I think that it's, I'm grateful that you're sparing so much of your time. So it's a pleasure Chaitanya Charan Prabhu to be on this podcast and have some very nice and deep engaging discussions on various topics that are of great relevance to everyone in the modern age.

Yes, thank you. So that's our purpose. So today I thought that based on the theme we discussed last time of veganism and bhakti, we could take it forward to a related and broader theme of environmentalism and bhakti and we could more or less follow the same structure that we could talk about how environmentalism has risen and then how there are areas where it overlaps with bhakti and where the areas where they diverges how those areas can be dealt with.

So will that be okay? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So the environmental movement broadly has three aspects to it in terms of the historical or in terms of the origin.

One is the practical consequences of the environment which started it. Then the intellectual understanding of why it has happened and what can be done. And then the practical measures that can be taken for dealing with it.

So that means what is happening? Why did it happen? And what can be done about it? So now what is happening? It seems from the 1960s, 70s onwards, slowly this awareness started rising that our rampant industrialization is having a lot of counterproductive consequences. It was broadly till more or less the First World War or the Second World War, much of modernity had a very starry-eyed view of the effects of science, technology and the results of that for society. But the Second World War and especially the use of the atom bombs, that began the erosion of the belief that science and technology will be the source of unmitigated good for humanity, of unquestionable good.

Because Einstein was considered to be probably the greatest scientific brain of the last century. And his greatest scientific insight that E is equal to MC squared led to the greatest man-made disaster in terms of the weapon of mass destruction actually being used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So from that time onward, the skepticism went on.

The skepticism was also intellectual in terms of philosophy of science, philosophers of science questioning how reliable is science as a source of knowledge. Karl Popper and others, they pointed out some problems. So now when the industrialization was going on and when we were expanding our, humanity was expanding its reach, there was just one definition of progress, more or less, that the more industrialized the society is, the more technology that we use, the more we push back into the world, we expand humanity's reach, the more successful we are and the happier we will be.

But the silent spring was on the first books that brought the environmental hazards into public consciousness. And thereafter, more and more things have become evident. And especially over a period of time, as originally what was called was global warming, that the temperature is increasing and there were several predictions of almost environmental, of the earth's destruction.

But then now the idea has been broadened that it's not just global warming, but it's climate change. And so global warming was one aspect that the oceans would overflow, but now it is broader that there are many aspects to it and they need to be addressed. So this is my broad understanding of historically how skepticism about industrialization and its consequences, especially in terms of environmental consequences came about.

Well, environmentalism, as I see it, is a response, as you also indicated that, because there were very visible, tangible consequences that humanity started experiencing in the last many decades. So gradually there emerged a response. And as the consequences became more and more harmful and more and more visible, more and more undeniable, the more the questioning of the underlying, shall we say, practices and philosophies that fuel that kind of situation began to rise.

Hmm. And ultimately then environmentalism rose as a protest, as a response, as an act of concern, because after all, what is environmentalism? It's a kind of an activism. Yeah.

You know, there are activists of different sorts, you know, you have activists in various social areas or scientific areas. So you have people who are very concerned about the way things were going on the planet and they did not want to see this destruction and this harm being continued. So there was a kind of alarm that was raised in the minds of people.

Okay. If we let the situation persist, then it's not going to be a pleasant scenario at all. It's only going downhill.

So environmentalism actually rose as a symptom. It was a response to things that were seen. Yeah.

Of course, should I come to the second question? Your first was what, what are the consequences? What is, what are the effects? Yes, I think we should answer and the intellectual questioning of it. Yes. We can focus on the second part, I think.

Yeah, you can come to the second part. So I think that, you know, whenever we speak a symptom of something or a response to something, one must examine the underlying causes. Yes.

Otherwise one will never be able to do the third thing that you said, which is to find a remedy or a solution or even to understand what's going on. So because environmentalism is a kind of activism, it's a kind of response, it's a kind of a concern and action based kind of field. We must see it in relation to what led to this whole thing, not just the consequences, but there were underlying philosophies and events that happened in recent human history.

So I would say there were, basically one thing that sparked it all off was the rise of modern industry, like industrialization, specifically the industrial revolution. I think what the industrial revolution did was that it gave man or humanity, let us say, a kind of a false belief in the power that it could wield. And it gave a kind of a, it diluted man into thinking that humanity could control and manipulate nature at will for maximizing the pleasures and comforts and fulfill all the desires of the human race.

And what industrialization led to is also a kind of belief that humanity did not need anybody else or anything else apart from its own intellectual prowess and its own technological might. Hmm. So because of that, there were other issues that came up.

Number one, we omitted, we neglected to see the complex and sublime interrelationships that existed between the living organisms and entities in this world amongst each other and with the environment. And second of all, it also gave rise to a feeling of power that we can do it on our own. And that also probably set the tone for various kinds of atheistic thinkers in the physical as well as the social sciences, physical, biological, and social sciences.

So I would say the 19th century was the turning point, although it had been building up for a while from before, when you had industrial revolutions starting, and then you had some very powerful thinkers who came on, specifically Karl Marx, who advocated a theory of social and economic, you know, shall we say, well-being, because he had a certain formula and analysis of a diagnosis of what was wrong with the world socially and economically. And he wanted to remedy that based on his understanding. So Karl Marx became very, very influential.

And till today, his thinking is very influential, even though there are very few countries that are communist, China, maybe Cuba, maybe a couple of Latin American countries, but it's not there. But you have such influence of the Marxist ideology, neo-Marxism and so on, that is heavily influencing the thinkers of today, the academia in particular, and maybe the liberal thinking of today. And then also came thinkers like Charles Darwin, who then inaugurated a kind of an atheistic science.

Earlier also, there were scientists who were somewhat atheistic. But previous to that, largely in the previous few centuries, given few exceptions, by and large, the scientists in Europe, who really inaugurated modern science, modern science, as we understand it today, they were theistic, they believed in God. But from Charles Darwin, there was a turning point.

Yes. But then you had these two things together. You had the Industrial Revolution, on one hand that gave technological might and change the mindset of people in a certain way.

And then you had these powerful thinkers coming along, who became very, very influential. And then as the 20th century began, and then there was a great explosion in modern physical sciences, specifically physics, and to some degree chemistry. And then that perhaps in the minds of many people, also strengthened the idea of atheism.

And as the 20th century progressed, by the time we had reached the mid 20th century, and maybe a few decades later, atheism was very strongly entrenched. So these two things combined, power, and a sense of intellectual pride that I can figure out the world myself with my science and you've got all these theories. So it kind of led human beings to go down a road, which was self destructive.

And it was only a few sensitive scientists, who actually probed deep into this and started self questioning. You mentioned the name of Einstein, that he also started thinking you also mentioned Karl Popper. Yeah.

Karl Popper was, of course, a philosopher of science. He started examining the processes and the philosophy of science, and what it had brought to humanity. Yes.

So I think because of this, the consequences of everything, the technology, the industry, the science, the hubris of humanity all came together. And then before we realized it, the devastation of the damage was quite enormous. And I think that is when slowly the environmentalism movement began.

Thank you, Maraj. This is so this is quite a cogent analysis. In preparation for this talk, I had a discussion with a friend who is who studied environmental ethics.

He's a PhD in that. So he sent me a link on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Environmentalism. And it's it's fascinating how they have the mainstream environmental researchers and environmental thinkers have seen these developments as having a significantly different cause.

Rather than atheism being responsible, they hold Christianity to be responsible. Rather than industrialization to be responsible, they hold capitalism to be responsible. And there is a utilitarian approach towards religion that is being slowly grudgingly admitted.

So basically, what happened is that the the idea is, why are we humanly exploiting nature? The other idea is technology, industrialization is true, but that is simply a tool. Somehow, I haven't seen anyone, at least in the mainstream environmental research, holding science and the consequence of science as responsible for this. What it is, they said that Christianity was existing in the Western world.

Last time we discussed about anthropocentrism. So because of the Christian worldview that humans are special, and we have dominion over nature. So that gave us the entitlement mentality by which we exploited nature.

And there are specific historical trajectories, and there are different for this, but that anthropocentrism, so not so much materialism or atheism, but anthropocentrism is seen as the primary cause. And in fact, Marx, in his own way, was, he condemned industries, not so much industrialization. His idea was that in the way industries work, workers are exploited, and they have to do work which doesn't allow them any creativity.

And he felt that there has to be a more fulfilling kind of work. So his critique was against capitalism. And if we even see today, the idea is, if we have environmentalists who are, say, there is a Green New Deal being proposed in America, which is involving radical measures for restructuring the economy, but there is not much accommodation of anything spiritual in it.

The idea is, humanity is the problem, and humanity needs to be curved. So what has happened, at least as a reaction to this, like environmentalism has become a very leftist movement in many ways. And those who are on the right, they feel that this environmental movement has become a tool for the leftist liberals to grab power and control us, control what vehicles we use, what planes we use.

And there has been a significant, not overwhelming, but a significant resistance to the environmental movement. So it has become quite politicalized. And it's not so, at least in the mainstream, there is a utilitarian acknowledgement of the role of religion, that just by telling people that take care of the environment, it doesn't work.

So they say we need a cultural transformation or a spiritual transformation. And if people can find more non-material enrichment, then they will stop the rampant consumption of goods, which is fueling the degradation of the environment. So in that sense, curbing humanity's expansionist reach by various political, social measures, including incorporating religion.

But many of those who even say that nature should be infused with a view of the sacred, they are themselves quite atheist. But there's such a vision that nature is sacred, that might help for people to respect nature more. So in some ways, while it is leftist, there is a significant openness to Eastern spirituality.

Because Eastern spirituality often is seen to be more, to be having also an immanent vision of divinity, that even nature is sacred. So now Buddhism has actually presented itself much more than the Vedic path, in terms of how it can be environmental friendly. But that's just the mainstream intellectual trends that are there.

Yeah, you made a lot of points. Excuse me. Let me see if I can recall the main points, because there's quite a few important points there.

Now, you mentioned that environmentalism has become a largely leftist oriented kind of a movement. And that is not surprising, because any kind of activism is usually politically oriented. And by definition, environmentalism is a kind of a political and social movement that is born out of a concern for the protection and the conservation of the environment.

I want to distinguish that from ecology. And that's a very important distinction that I want to make later as we go down. So yes, definitely.

It is a politically connected or oriented kind of a movement. Now coming to the causes for the rise of environmentalism, I would definitely grant that there are many reasons for it. Let's examine some of the things that you mentioned, and that your friend said, which is a thinking in the academic circles.

Nowadays, the academics or many thinkers today lay the blame for environmental degradation and misuse of industries and so on at the feet of Christian theology. Because Christian theology, they say, is essentially anthropocentric, which places humanity at the center of the earth, and it gives human beings a sense of entitlement, that they are the monarchs of the earth and the entire environment is at their disposal to enjoy. Now, to some degree, I would say it is true that Christianity is indeed anthropocentric.

For example, from the Vedic point of view, as follows in the Bhagavad Gita, we accept that the soul exists in all living entities, in all life forms, including trees and animals, insects, but many Christian theologians don't accept that animals are souls. Yes, that's true. So in that sense, this is just one example of how the allegation that is made against the Christian theology that it is anthropocentric and therefore would have a role to play in environmental problems, it has some merit.

At the same time, I also want to point out that Christianity has existed for 2,000 years. Why have we not seen the kind of scale of environmental degradation and the other problems that happened prior to the industrial revolution coming in? Yeah, we didn't have the tools. We didn't have the tools.

So undoubtedly, it is a mindset of human beings that drives anything, because any action has to have an underlying thought process. So the thought process is not an exclusive. This thought process is not the exclusive preserve of Christian theology, to be fair to them.

It's essentially a materialistic thought process that we want to enjoy this world. Okay. Any religion or be someone subscribing to any religion or being an atheist or whatever.

So therefore, the entire gamut of philosophies that espoused a philosophy that focused on giving primacy to the human enjoying spirit and to the position of humans here is also responsible. But now after science and technology came to the fore, modern science and technology, then man had the tools. Science and technology gave power and power has to be exercised very responsibly.

It requires great intelligence, great wisdom to be able to exercise power. And without that wisdom, which comes from some higher spiritual source, it is very hard to be able to utilize or wield power very benevolently. Then in the absence of a benevolent mindset or a philosophy that guides people, then rather it gets to be used malevolently.

So even though Christianity does speak about theology and there is service to God, but because of this particular issue of anthropocentrism, there is a problem here. But this problem also exists with many other materialistic philosophies and perhaps some other theologies, I don't know. And this is where I want to bring in the point of ecology.

It is a well-known fact amongst those who study these two subjects in academia, that there is a distinction between environmentalism and ecology. Environmentalism, as I mentioned earlier, is a kind of an activism, born out of a concern for protection and conservation of the environment. Whereas ecology is a kind of a study, very interesting.

It's a study of the interrelationships between living organisms amongst each other and also between living organisms and the inanimate environment. So ecology is a science of relationships. It's very, very complex.

And there are cycles, there are flows of energy, there are nutrient cycles of, if you study biology or ecology or things like that, then we have all these cycles of how energy flows, goes into the cloud, comes back, goes into the soil. There's a water cycle and there's a photosynthesis and now the sun's energy is transformed. So this is ecology in a sense that it speaks about relationships.

Now, where the underlying philosophies that drove the exploitative spirit have what they have in common is that they don't have a holistic, a wholesome understanding of ecology. So therefore, I would say bhakti ecology is a better way to put it than environmentalism because a devotee of the Lord sees the relationships of the world. Now, I'll come to the other point that you mentioned.

We'll talk about ecology a little later if the opportunity arises. But you also mentioned an interesting point that some people say that nature itself is sacred. Yes.

At least we should infuse a vision of the sacred into our conception of nature so that it will be respected and protected. Yes. And ironically, some of these people are atheists themselves.

Yes. So here, probably these are what were called in the 70s and 80s. I don't know what it is today.

Deep ecologists. Yes. Ecologists are those who try to see that man has a certain humble place, a position in the scheme of things in nature on the earth.

Man isn't anything very special. There is no exceptionalism there. Yes.

So the kind of vision probably extended a little further would mean that they try to see nature itself as sacred. But they may not understand the spiritual nature of living entities, that we are the spirit soul. And they don't accept that there is ultimately another superior force that is controlling everything.

So we see that such thinkers who consider the earth as an entire ecosystem, which it is indeed, although the earth also has many sub ecosystems, these sub ecosystems also interrelate with each other in a beautiful way for harmonious coexistence. Deep ecologists and similar kinds of thinkers stop there. Whereas we as bhakti ecologists, as devotees of Lord Krishna, we do not see the earth as an isolated ecosystem.

And actually, even from a modern scientific point of view, the earth is not an independent ecosystem because we depend on sunlight. Just imagine if there was no sunlight even for a few hours, what would happen to the whole earth planet. So even apart from the sun and the rest of the universe, we're talking of a supreme intelligence, a supreme power, God, we call him Krishna, under whose superintendence and direction this whole ecosystem is going on.

This massive ecosystem, yes, which is in itself perfect. And the perfection lies, our perfection lies in seeing the intrinsic perfection of each ecosystem within itself. But we also must see the interrelationship of each ecosystem with the other.

And overall, the relationship of the massive earth ecosystem and the universal ecosystem with the ultimate source of all of them, which is Krishna. So because we lack that in the general world of environmentalism and modern thinking, so there is a great missing point. If you remember last time when we spoke about veganism, I mentioned a point that environmentalists speak about mother nature, they want to conserve mother nature.

And I said that what's missing is an understanding of father God. Yes. So that is what completes the ecosystem.

So when you consider understanding Krishna as the father of all living entities as a source of everything animate and inanimate, then you have a complete ecosystem. Okay. Krishna out of the picture, you leave God out of the picture, your ecosystem is incomplete because the very root, the very origin and the very source of sustenance and interdependence of all these complex ecosystems is neglected.

Therefore, I think where environmentalism has a drawback is that it doesn't take into account this thing. And even though Christianity believe in a supreme God who has created, they see it from the point of view of human exceptions. They do not see everything else as sacred.

Therefore, coming back to your point, although Christianity may have a role to play, but I would not, to be fair to Christianity, blame it entirely. It is essentially materialism. It is lack of an understanding of our own spiritual nature as spirit souls.

It is a lack of understanding and faith and belief in a supreme source of everything. It is a lack of understanding of the divinity of the entire creation. There are two reasons why principally we believe as follows of the Bhagavad Gita, that nature is divine because it comes from the divine.

It is the energy of the divine. We don't have nature as God, but we accept nature as godly because it comes from God. It is the energy of God.

And that connection is very important. And the second reason is that God is imminent in this creation in the sense that he is all pervasively present. Not only is he present in the heart of every living being as the Bhagavad Gita says, but he's also present in every atom.

Therefore, every atom is sacred from that point of view. So we see the divinity of nature in this respect. It is not a sentimental or a utilitarian kind of a premise for accepting nature as sacred or divine.

Yes, Maharaj. So now there are opportunities for Bhakti theology to act as a act as a spiritual foundation for environmental concerns. Right now, environmental concerns are genuine, but I would say that there is no proper worldview within which to ground them.

So Bhakti theology could work for that. Now one of the objections that I have seen is that in principle, we may say that the world is sacred and nature is sacred, but is this seen through our actions? That means that does, do we see, say for example, in India or any other parts of the world that because of our spirituality, because of our understanding of nature, we have taken special care of nature. Now, if we look at our epics, there are descriptions of destruction of nature, say the Pandavas burned the Khandava forest, the Hanuman destroys the Ashoka Vatika.

Then when the Vanaras come back after searching for Sita and they said they're celebrating, they disrupt the gardens of Sugriva. Then even there are descriptions of how when some warriors are fighting, they just pick up trees and hurl and destroy trees. So now that's one side of it.

There's also the other side, historically speaking, there have been movements like the Chipko Andolan where people embraced trees and were ready to die to protect trees. There are also cases of, especially certain trees, which are considered sacred, people protecting them at the cost of their lives. So it's one thing to talk about what the theology is, but India is also, has India, if you consider India, have we really seen environmental concerns being tangibly addressed because of somebody's religious or bhakti beliefs? I think this has to be seen in a complete context.

Unnotedly, there have been instances of destruction, right? You mentioned a few, and I can mention a few more like Indra unleashing torrents of rain to try to destroy Vraja and so on, the land, holy land of Krishna, Vrindavan. However, we will see that these are by and large rare instances. They're exceptional events.

They're not the standard. Generally, we hear about exceptional events in history. For example, let's say you were studying the history of a king.

And you will say, suppose he was a very good king and people were happy and he was very just and there was a lot of productivity and so on and so forth. A little mention of that, but if there were some wars and so on, you'll find a lot description and discussion on those wars. Okay.

But in the day-to-day life of the people, you know, because it's kind of a day-to-day, everyday thing, it's just ordinary. So there isn't much of a discussion there. So that's the first point that we have to see these as exceptional events, number one.

Second, even concerned with these exceptional events, why do they happen? There are lessons to be learned from that. Now, Indra was the king of the demigods and he's supposed to be the protector and the benefactor of the human race. But here, it turns out that he was acting in exactly the opposite way.

So the lesson to be learned is that however high and mighty one may be, it is the way of this world that power may corrupt one's mind and make one proud. And even someone who is a devotee of God may lose his good intelligence and act in shocking ways like Indra did. So in this example, what is to be learned is how fickle and fragile the situation of people is in this world and how we should not act and how we should be aware that even very elevated personalities can lose their intelligence.

So that's one thing. Now coming back to other examples like Hanuman and Hanuman burning down Lanka, etc. Of course, these are acts that are meant to show to the world the victory of dharma over adharma.

You know, the victory of the righteous and the virtuous over the sinful and the demoniac. So violence is not completely prohibited in the Vedic scheme of things. Although the Vedas do talk so much about Ahimsa, but there are situations in life where it becomes imperative to exercise violence and that's why the whole battle of Kurukshetra happened and Krishna was the one who basically orchestrated this whole thing.

Regarding the kind of episodes that you mentioned, this is my response about the two categories of people who did that. But over and above that, the general way of conduct of life in the Vedic civilization was very much of a kind that was completely in harmony with nature and that has continued and perpetuated over millennia and millennia. It was only in the last several centuries that there appeared to be some kind of a break or some kind of deviation from this norm.

Even till a few years ago, in villages in India, you would find such a sublime spirit, such a sublime sensitivity to the environment, such a beautiful culture of respect for the environment, such a high level of discipline and education and awareness about these things that it might come as a complete surprise to us because even we as educated, so-called educated people don't do that. For example, take a typical village. One devotee from Orissa was mentioning to me that in his village, even till recently, till a few decades ago, they would have many lakes or ponds and these lakes and ponds were scrupulously preserved by the people of the village and there were different ponds that were earmarked for different purposes.

There were ponds that were earmarked for bathing and you couldn't do anything else there except bathing. There were ponds that were earmarked for drinking water and wells and you only could take drinking water from there. You couldn't wash your clothes there.

You couldn't do anything there like that. So there were different lakes for different purposes and everybody understood that. There was also enormous forest wealth and there were different types of forests and each type of forest had a certain purpose earmarked.

Some forests were those where the animals and the birds were left alone. There were certain types of forests where the sages went in for meditation. There were certain types of forests and these forests usually were those that were adjoining the villages which would be used as sources of livelihood for the villages.

It was not that they exploited forests like the way people do today. It was done in a scale of moderation. It was done in a spirit of sensitivity and it was done collectively with an understanding of what was needed for replacement and for sustenance of that particular forest.

So there were forests, there were water bodies, there were animals. All these were protected in different ways. So humanity, that is those living in the villages, did utilize the resources of the environment but it was done in a very cultured way, in a very sustainable way, in a very sensitive way, in a very cooperative way.

The entire village cooperated. You see this was the level of education. I don't mean material education as we understand it today but this was the level of refinement of the intelligence and the consciousness even of people in the village who may not have known how to read and write.

And this was there till a few centuries ago and then what happened is that gradually there was colonization and this particular culture was eroded and it was sometimes willfully destroyed and it came to be that laws were enacted in the British times to take away the rights to the forest from the village to the state. So earlier the villages were managing their own affairs, they had wise elders, they were steeped in understanding, there were saintly people who used to come there, live there, travel, visit. So because of the refined spiritual understanding and their understanding of spiritual ecology, this thing was preserved for millennia.

But the moment the government took away the rights of the villages and their, shall we say, superintendents of their own resources in their neighborhood, gradually with passage of time the government started exploiting those resources for capitalistic purposes. So yes, I agree with the point that those people said earlier that the rampant capitalism was also one very, very important cause but it's a form of materialism anyway. So the government started coming in giving contracts to timber contractors, the British wanted to cut a lot of wood to send back to the UK and they wanted to do so many things, to build railway carriages, to do so many things.

And gradually the villages lost the incentive, they lost the opportunity, they lost that culture, they lost that mindset that it was they who were responsible for the upkeep of these forests and for the environment. Now it was the prerogative of the government, it was the duty of the government because the government took away these rights in the first place. So villages generally were of that sort and finally after years and years and years of such, shall we say, disempowerment of the villages and the dismemberment of this kind of sublime ecological culture which was based on spirituality and deep religion, what happened is that the villages started becoming dirty places.

They started becoming places where the villagers remained uneducated. I don't mean again educated from the point of view of what we commonly understand it but they lost that sense of ecology, the sense of relationships, they lost that sense of civility. They also became exploitative like everybody else and then there were social problems, there were quarrels, bitter quarrels amongst the people, exploitation in nature, it all happened like that.

That's why Mahatma Gandhi, if you look at it, Prabhupada may have deferred with him on certain theological issues but when it came to economic organization and environmental protection, he very much appreciated Mahatma Gandhi's views especially the idea of Swaraj. Swaraj means independence but his definition of independence was self-restraint. Whereas the modern understanding of independence is freedom from restraint.

So in that sense because the villages of yore in India practice the principle of simple living and high thinking. So the moment industrialization came in, mass production, mass consumption, consumerism and all of that started to get encouraged with industrialization, technology and so on, that sublime innocence, that beautiful culture of spiritual ecology of the villages was lost. So it's not that there weren't examples, there were examples.

There was over a period of the last few centuries some centuries gradual deterioration in that because of the factors that I just mentioned. Thank you, that's quite a comprehensive overview. While you're talking, I just remembered that in the Mahabharata when the Pandavas are in the forest, Yashadev comes to meet them and says that you have stayed here for a sufficient amount of time and many sages come to visit you also.

You stay for too long over here, the flora and fauna here will get disrupted, you can move to another place now. So that is environmental sensitivity we could say. And another point about self-sufficiency, I have been reading about Indian history and I found that in some ways before the British came into, before colonization, even when India was ruled by Islamic invaders, they didn't interfere so too much with the with the socio-economic systems.

They did disrupt the religious structures but the socio-economic structures were maintained in their own way and as long as they got their tariffs, they got their taxes, they left people alone and that was one of the reasons why India has been so resilient. Although the cities were visible manifestations of wealth and opulence but with the villages which were the sources of the wealth and invaders came and plundered the cities and that plunder was devastating but the villages were not affected that much and within a few years or a few decades again there was a resurgence because the villages were still prosperous or rather they were the source of prosperity and the self-sufficiency in terms of local leaders managing things locally is something which actually keeps people more in tune with the ecology. In some ways capitalism is blamed but when you're talking about the government taking power, this is what happened in a very tragic way in China at the time of Mao Zedong's rule.

There is something called the Great Leap Forward and he wanted to show how China is prosperous and he had the idea that all the grains from all over China will be centralized, brought to the central place and then allotted everywhere and then so there were people they would grow land, grow grains but they were not allowed to use them and all the grains were taken for them and they're kept in the granaries and stocked so outside those granaries people were starving and dying and but those grains were not given and everybody started inflating that we have got this many grains, we've got this many grains because none of them wanted to incur the wrath of the ruler and eventually millions of millions people perished in that famine which came from too much centralization. So it's not just capitalism in terms of political ideology, capitalism and communism differ substantially but in terms of having a common denominator of materialism and exploitation of nature for the purposes of humanity, I think both of them are similar. You know that reminds me of a little joke of course it's true both capitalism, communism all these sorts of isms are basically just different words or different types of materialism.

So there's this little quip, I forget who said it, he said capitalism is the reverse of communism. In one man exploits man and in the other it's the reverse. Yeah I think it is Winston Churchill, I've heard about this.

Somebody, somebody else. Oh is it? Okay. So essentially the point is that you have to bring in your spiritual conception, your devotional conception into your thinking.

The culture that is based on an understanding of our spiritual nature, an understanding of the existence of the supreme lord and understanding that we are his servants and we have to be devoted to him and carry out activities for his pleasure to achieve perfection in our life, to live a life of gratitude for what the supreme lord has given us to live in this world which is our environment and to deal with it with respect and with care, with love, with intelligence. That is the kind of culture that can make everything sustainable. Otherwise environmentalism devoid of this kind of a consciousness will not sustain.

One of the prominent thinkers not related to environmentalism but overall sociological thinkers is Max Weber and he has a theory of the disenchantment of nature. That nature was in the past seen as infused with sacred, mysterious, subtle presences and powers and we have disenchanted nature and because of that we have lost respect for it. So that idea that nature should be seen as mystical in some ways is or rather not mystical in the sense of mystical in the sense that we just can't indiscriminately interfere with the ecological balances.

In fact, going back to the same point of communism, it is that the birds which would sometimes take the peck on the grains and the crops. So Mao Zedong labeled all the sparrows and other birds as capitalist birds and he had all of them shot down and eventually that led to other predator, other forms of pests coming up and something like China had to import about 500,000 sparrows from Russia afterward. So nature has its own balances and so it will be, there is a certain amount of, we could say decentralization, you use the word disempowerment.

So for eco-friendly culture to develop, there will need to be a certain amount of decentralization, isn't it? Now this would be in many ways, the environmental movement or environmentalism is talking a lot about centralization. At a central level, government will adopt these policies and then we will all become united because we are all concerned about the earth which is our home. But that is not happening.

It is actually, although environmental movement is becoming active, the opposition to it is becoming active and there are people who are called as climate change deniers, that's the derogatory label given to them, but they are saying that with respect to climate change, the skeptics of climate change, there they have threefold concerns which in some ways I feel are valid. One is that when we consider how much of the climate change is actually caused by humans, how much of it is natural? Now the earth itself, sometimes the temperatures rise and go down. So what we call as climate change, how much of it is natural and how much of it is human? Then second is how destructive is it actually going to be? Because there were many doomsday prophecies about how the world would be by 20, 2000, 2010, 2020.

They're not happening. And third is that how much are your recommended measures actually going to correct things? So how much is it caused by humanity? How harmful are the effects? And how much can we change it or by doing what you're saying? And from what I have read, there is no doubt that the environment has changed. There's no doubt that humanity has caused it.

But rather than a top-down approach where there is an attempt to politically enforce a macro restructuring of society, a more bottom-up approach where people are individually inspired to become more environmentally conscious, more spiritually conscious, that has a greater chance of working without making too much of a demand and evoking too much opposition. So probably now I think we are going toward the last part of what can be done about it and what our theology can contribute to that. Yeah.

You mentioned this example of Mao Zedong and all that he did is ill-conceived plans and his ventures about killing the sparrows and so on. In fact, it was so ghastly. I think it was called the four pests.

There were sparrows, there were rats, there were some, I forget now. Four capitalists. There were such entities.

I think sparrows, there were three others. Yeah. And it was so cruel.

What they did was that not only did they shoot them, but what they did was that they galvanized not only the army, but the whole civilian population as well in the villages and everywhere. And they went around banging utensils with spoons or wherever they saw sparrows. So they stood under trees where the sparrows would come and rest.

And they did not let the sparrows alight on any surface. Then they flew and flew and flew and just died out of exhaustion. Many died like that.

So herein lies a basic misunderstanding and ignorance of the fundamentals of ecology. That is why I was mentioning earlier that in the protection and conservation of the environment, an understanding of ecological principles is very important. And I don't mean just simple mundane ecology.

That in itself is very vital. If Mao Zedong had at least understood even basic modern scientific ecology, he would have understood what kind of devastation it would cause just by destroying one type of species. So much of interdependence.

But more and above the modern scientific ecology, which is very important, there is the higher sense of the ecology where we see the role of the Lord, the Supreme Lord of Krishna within it. And Krishna's scheme of things for the world, where every species has a right to survive and exist. Every species has a stake, has a claim to the resources of nature proportionately.

It is not only the prerogative of the human race. So these were the mistakes, the paradigm problems with Mao Zedong's worldview. So that was one part.

Coming to the other part of what you said was about rather than everything being centralized, it should be decentralized. Yes, that is exactly what I was saying earlier. And also, yes, I agree with the point that during the rule of the Mughals and other such invaders, they didn't so substantially interfere with the socioeconomic setup.

But not to that degree. But the Britishers, when they came, they completely overhauled the system. Yes.

So as I mentioned earlier, that they took away the entire prerogatives and the rights and the powers of the local communities from the resources that were traditionally for millennia at their disposal, and which they looked after with wisdom and care and love. Once they took that away from them, what happened is you alienated them, you disenfranchised them, you disempowered them. And then you made laws sitting in some capital city somewhere.

And then you expected everybody down to every village to obey every law you made. And because it was a difficult thing now in this age of materialism, where everyone is driven by selfish ambition. And because of the simultaneous lack of spiritual education and the rise of materialism, it was very difficult for the people in the village to buy in to everything the government was saying, and even what the environmentalists started saying of late.

In as much as decentralization is important, it is not sufficient. And you also alluded to this point, that there has to be spiritual education. And there has to be a restoration of the spiritual culture in every village.

Otherwise, it won't work. What will happen is that instead of some personalities, some bureaucrats sitting somewhere, some politicians sitting at some distant place, you know, having their own vested interests in making some decisions or policies, you know, and very often they do it for their own private gain. And now you will have people sitting at the local village level who will exploit.

They will become the exploit level because they don't have that spiritual culture, they don't have that spiritual education. So in as much as an administrative decentralization is necessary, it is even more important to restore, to revive, to strengthen the spiritual culture by making people aware of the fundamental bhakti ecological principles or the spiritual ecological principles. So when one takes to the process of devotional service, and that's also another reason, coming back to the earlier point you had made about why we have seen so many mistakes in our culture, where even though we have this philosophy, but we have destroyed the environment.

Partly because even if you are intellectually aware of this kind of spiritual principles, but we have not internalized it. We have not imbibed it. We have not realized it.

And there isn't that kind of a support structure around us that facilitates the growth of that spirit, that spiritual spirit and that culture. So I think spiritual education and restoration of spiritual culture is a must. And automatically in the environmental conservation and protection will happen.

You know, I was hearing a lecture just this afternoon. It's a conversation rather, Srila Prabhupada was having with somebody in the Bhaktivedanta Manor in the 70s sometime. And he was telling the guest that, you know, love is the principle, he said.

You can do something with love, or you can do something without love. So when you do something with love, then the person you're trying to please is very much pleased. And therefore, because you love Krishna, when you see everything around you, it reminds you of Krishna.

Therefore, because you love Krishna, everything connected to Krishna reminds you of him. And therefore, you can see Krishna everywhere in this sense. So he gave the example of a parent seeing the toy or the slippers of the child.

And the parent loves the child. Upon seeing the paraphernalia, the belongings of the child, immediately thinks about that child affection. So similarly, just as the parent loves the child, and therefore will automatically, you know, see the child in everything around, so to speak.

So if we love Krishna, we will see the divinity in nature all around us. We will understand that this is Krishna's creation, whose nature is it? It's Krishna's nature. And therefore, we should protect it, we should conserve it.

We should not destroy it, we should not harm it. And we should treat it with respect. And we will also develop the understanding that harming nature means disrespecting God.

So for those of us who may be practicing devotees, but we may not have thought of it like that. You know, we may be chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, and we may be doing so many acts of worship of the deities. But then we may go and needlessly cut trees, and we may do so many other things that are not necessary to do.

Another thing that comes to mind is that one time, when some devotee asked Srila Prabhupada about how he could see Krishna everywhere, he gave the example of his own spectacles on the desk in front of him. And he asked the devotee, when you look at these spectacles, what do you see? Whom do you remember? He said, we remember you, Srila Prabhupada. Why? Because these are your spectacles.

So similarly, when you look at nature, you remember Krishna. That is how you learn to see Krishna everywhere. It's not necessarily that you see Krishna's form.

Because the devotee was asking, is it that you see Krishna's form? So many Krishnas everywhere in every atom. Is that how you see Krishna? No. You see Krishna in the sense that you see the connection of everything with Krishna because this is all Krishna's property.

So I'll extend that analogy a little more. Let's say that devotee, you know, brushed off the spectacles from the desk in a disrespectful manner. What would that mean? It would mean that he was disrespecting Srila Prabhupada.

Correct? Because he was disrespecting or, shall we say, not ill-treating something that was the property of Srila Prabhupada. So treating somebody's property badly means to treat that person disrespectfully. You know, let's say you go to somebody's house, you see his car parked there in the driveway, you go and kick the car and you smash the car and then you go to meet the person.

But because you mistreated the car, you've already indicated that, you know, you have treated the owner disrespectfully. See, if you did not know the connection, you did not know who owned the car, it was one thing. But all the more serious is the offense if you knew who owned the car and still you acted disrespectfully.

So therefore, what devotees, it's all the more important that we treat nature respectfully in all her aspects, nature, the water bodies, the forest, the trees, the plants, the animals, the birds, the insects, the hills, the rivers, you know, everything around us. Because we understand that treating nature disrespectfully means treating Krishna disrespectfully. And that is against the tenets of the bhakti cult, the love, the cult of devotion to the Lord.

Therefore, the root is trying to love Krishna and understanding what it really means to love Krishna, not just in terms of the physical acts of doing our sadhana, chanting our rams and going through the motions of doing activities in the day of worship and so on and so forth, but also to internalize it by understanding that there is a worldview that will come as a result of that love. Because if I love Krishna, as Prabhupada said, I will love everything connected to Krishna and I will then see Krishna in everything. So when I see Krishna in the trees, why will I harm those trees? If I see Krishna in the rivers, why will I pollute the rivers? If I see Krishna in the air, understanding the air to be Krishna's energy, why will I pollute the air? So basically, that is how I see bhakti ecology to be the real alternative to the activist environmentalism of today, which is left oriented, as you rightly said.

So we want to bring in, we're not left or right or this or that, but we are God-centered, bhakti-centered. So we want to bring in a bhakti-centered, ecologically driven environmental consciousness. Yes.

Actually, see everything is holy, everything is divine. Hmm. Yes, that's beautiful.

While you're speaking, I remembered a few things, how Shri Prabhupada, while the Juhu temple was being constructed, there are some trees in the perimeter of where the temple was to be. Yes. And the government authority said, we will have to cut the trees.

Yes. And Prabhupada said, that's against our religion. And Prabhupada, the devotees had to do various things, but finally, they insisted that the tree should be there.

So yes, Prabhupada said specifically, tell them it's against our religion to cut trees. It's quite striking. Yeah.

And when you're talking about, yeah, Krishnabalram courtyard. Sorry? All similarly with Krishnabalram courtyard. Yes.

So I was thinking, another thing is that we have Bhaktivedanta Thakur in Chaitanya Shikshambhava talks about these four levels, fear, desire, duty and love. So if we apply these four, even to nature, much of many environmental activists are trying to get people galvanized at the levels of fear and desire, or maybe duty. It's a lot of fear.

If you don't do this, this will happen. This will happen. This will happen.

And they are dismayed. Why are you not recognizing that it's so dangerous? So on the other hand, if we talk about desire, you say that, no, you want to, you have lived in the environment, you have to take care of your descendants. You know, instead of, there's a common environmentalist saying that, so we have, we have not inherited the earth from our ancestors.

We have borrowed it from our descendants. That means the way we have lived is that we have not left anything from our descendants. So in some way they try to create desire for concern for others or duty.

But in general, just like when we talk about religion at these four levels, fear, desire, and duty, often fear, desire, and duty, these levels are not very sustainable because if I feel that there is, just because I'm doing something out of fear, as soon as I feel that the danger is not there, I'll stop doing it. But when there is love, then it'll be much, then it has become sustainable. So now, so what you said is that if we develop love for Krishna, naturally we will develop love for nature.

In one sense, there are two distinct applications of this. Those who are already devoted to Krishna, we need to see that Krishna is not just someone whom we worship through the chanting of our mantras, but we serve Krishna through the way we are environmentally conscious also. So that's for those who are already bhaktas.

So that, but for those who are not, so is it easier to appreciate and love nature or is it easier to appreciate and love the source of nature, love God or love Krishna? In one sense, there are many people who nowadays talk about the universe in a generic way. And they say that, I pray to the universe. There is a whole category of prayers.

I saw one book on Amazon, it's called Prayers for Atheists. So there is a British author who has said that since Friedrich Nietzsche in about 150 years ago, sociologists have been predicting the death of God, but it has not happened. Religion has had enormous staying power.

And he says that his theory is that this is because religion serves some human emotional and psychological needs. So if we want atheism to spread, then we have to find out how atheism can serve those needs. And what they're saying is we, instead of believing in some transcendental God for whose existence according to them there is no proof, he says we can sanctify the universe.

So pray to the universe. May the universe respond to your prayers. And the universe is reciprocal.

In one way, for some people, they feel the universe is what it's real. I see that. Nature is what I see.

So to develop concern for nature, is it necessary to develop concern for God? And would it not be easier to develop concern for nature because it is visible and essential, and we can see that we need it, but we don't see God. Many people don't feel the need for God. So do we need to go the, in one sense, I care for the environment.

I respect the environment. Do I need to bring in God to care for the environment? It seems to be going like a long cut Yeah, our clear belief as devotees of Krishna is yes. It is necessary to believe in God to make our conservation of the environment sustainable and complete.

So I have given the theological background to it. The theological paradigm based on which we have such a belief. Before I come to that, I'll just make a brief mention of these atheistic prayers that you mentioned.

Humanity has been there before and done that. Worship of the universe or worship of nature even is not something new. In fact, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks of five types of worshipers.

Those who worship Krishna, you have the pure devotees, Mahatmas. You have those who are mixed devotees. You have those who are worshipers of the demigods.

You have those who are impersonalists who believe the absolute truth to be impersonal. And finally, you have those who are worshipers of the universal form. Now, this fifth category is basically worshipers of nature, worshipers of the universe.

Okay, this is a kind of a pantheism. Pantheism is the belief in the universe being God. So you don't need a personality behind it.

You don't need a supreme intelligence behind it. There's no controller behind it. But nature itself is God.

That verse you're referring to? Okay, yeah. First to the universal form. So this is a kind of pantheism.

So it's not a new viewpoint. It's been around for a long, long time. So that doesn't impress us very much.

Because it doesn't have much substance. It lacks depth. It lacks any form of logical and certainly spiritual rigor.

So to explain this point of why belief in God and faith and devotion in God is necessary to sustain our concern for the environment and its conservation and protection, I'll go back to the four points that you mentioned, that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur said, that our motives for working, for performing any action are, you know, first there is fear, there is a sense of reward, and there is a duty and then love. Yes. So you know how I would see it.

This is, by the way, a very beautiful analysis. This is an analysis, a categorization that I love to quote on many occasions, because it is so apt. I also see a correlation between this and the three modes of material nature and transcendence.

Fear is a characteristic of the mode of ignorance. The reward and desire for material progress and accomplishments and enjoyment is a characteristic of the mode of passion. Performing things out of a sense of duty is a characteristic of the mode of goodness.

Whereas love, if it is applied to the Supreme Lord, is a transcendental phenomenon that goes beyond the three modes of material nature. Here we are speaking of spiritual love, not ordinary mundane love. So let's look at environmentalism or the approach to the environment from these four points of view.

What is the tamasic viewpoint or the viewpoint for the mode of ignorance to the environment? That is essentially destructive, right? It's a demoniac kind of viewpoint. Asatyam apratishtham jagat ahur anishwaram. As Krishna says in the 16th chapter, that they say that this universe is asatyam, it's false.

It is apratishtham, it has no foundation. Ahur anishwaram, it doesn't have an Ishwara or a controller. It happened by itself.

You know, so the views of the atheists today are not necessarily new. They have been around for a long time in different forms. So this is a kind of a demonic view that is the cause of destruction in nature.

If I remember right in the very next verse of the Bhagavad Gita, etam drstim avashtam dhyan nashtatmanam prapuddhayah parbhavatyukra karmanah kshayayo jagato dhitah. Right? That's the next verse, am I right? Yes, 16.9. So basically in this verse, Krishna will say, etam drstim, by this viewpoint, this worldview, what worldview? That there is no creator, there is no God, there is no foundation. Yes, to this whole world, you know, what comes? They are lost unto themselves.

Okay, so the people who hold such viewpoints are first of all lost unto themselves and they are less intelligent. alpabuddhayah parbhavatyukra karmanah and they engage in horrible acts, terrible acts, kshayayah, which will lead to destruction, jagato dhitah, which are for the jagato, for the world, dhitah, which is unbeneficial. So all the environmental destruction that we see is ugra karma.

That ugra karma comes, it is propelled by principally the mode of ignorance. Now the three modes of nature are not watertight compartments. They flow into each other, they merge and mix with each other and as Krishna himself says in Bhagavad Gita that the three modes don't exist in isolation, they exist in combinations with each other.

So then you have the mixture of the mode of passion that wants to enjoy the resources of material nature for the selfish purpose. Now this ugra karma could be caused by a combination of the mode of ignorance and passion. When the mode of ignorance drives environmental destruction, it is quantum, it is irreparable, it is just mindless completely, just simply just blowing up something, simply just destroying something, you know, completely.

The mode of the passion, the rajaguna, the rajasic exploitation of the environment is a little better, not much, but a little better because there is some semblance of of sense there because they know that if I do too much of this then I'll suffer the results of my own misdeeds. So they will still cut the trees, they will still pollute the atmosphere and in sattva there is a kind of a sense of duty. It is my duty to protect the environment but we should also remember that sattva is not also truly selfless.

In sattva also you have the desire to be free from misery, from the reactions of one's own karma. So therefore they perform religious activities to get rid of their previous sinful activities or whatever. Now for those people who may be atheistic but adopt a kind of a sattvic approach to environment, it's a kind of a strange combination.

So on one hand they understand the need to maintain the harmony etc. but they're not fully sattvic because they don't have that belief in God, you know, they don't have that sense of understanding the relationship and the place of man in nature and man in nature and relationship with God, they don't have that. So they're not fully sattvic.

So the environmentalism of the activists could be a combination of so many things and if they have political agendas and they have many other things that it further complicates matters. So therefore this environmentalism that is prompted by the three modes of nature will never sustain, will be at worst completely self-destructive and at best short-lived because in this material world as Krishna explains no mode of nature lasts very long. The predominance of the modes is always rotating.

Sometimes sattva predominates, sometimes rajas, sometimes tamas and it goes up and down and up and down. Now if sattva which is the mode of sustenance, which is the mode of balancing, which is the mode of harmony has to prevail with respect to the environment. If sattva has to become predominant then we need the help of bhakti.

Okay. Because sattva cannot prevail, sustain unless there is strong bhakti because we see another mistake environmentalists make is they see sustenance or sustainability only in the physical environment. They do not see sustainability in social terms of relationships.

They do not see sustainability in other terms, cultural terms. So for them and for environmentalists it is only a question of the physical environment but the devotees of the lord that the transcendental viewpoint sees it is a complete all and if your fundamental underpinning, your fundamental paradigms and philosophical underpinnings are rooted in rajas and tamas and even ordinary sattva it will not last. So therefore even if theoretically let us say you bring about a state where you have environmental harmony but you don't live a godly life so you'll have social disharmony, you'll have dysfunctional relationships, you'll have cultural problems.

So therefore in order to sustain environmentalism it has not only to ensure that it broadens its scope to not just physical environment but to social, cultural and other related areas and it has to take shelter of a higher and a deeper inclusive understanding of creation as a whole which means to bring in Krishna or God into the picture and I come back to the point I made right in the beginning and also last time that your environmentalism will be incomplete unless you bring in father God and Krishna is actually the perfect environmentalist. The top most environmentalist is Krishna and you see that in his pastimes in Vrindavan. So as devotees of Krishna you know automatically or if not automatically at least by deliberate action and thought we should try to follow in Krishna's footsteps and try to see how Krishna acted with so much respect, so much love you know towards the entire environment of Raja, of Rajaguni whether it was Govardhan Hill and according to due respect and worship, whether it was protecting the sweet waters of the Yamuna from the poison of Kaliya, protecting the other lakes, whether it was protecting all the various trees and branches by offering them worship.

There are so many verses in the Bhagavatam where Krishna glorifies the trees of Vrindavan and spoke of Krishna protecting and loving the cows and not just the cows but also the deer, the peacocks and all the other life forms there. So in Krishna's pastimes, in Krishna's actions, in his thoughts, in his personality as manifest in Vrindavan we see the complete transcendental environmentalist. So therefore we have to follow in Krishna's footsteps in order to achieve that kind of sublime environmental scenario.

Right. Beautiful. There's one devotee who's written a paper on the same theme of Krishna as an environmental, as an ideal deity for eco-friendly living and he takes some amount of metaphorical license.

So he says that especially representative of Krishna's capacity to purge the environment of disruptive elements is his Kaliya Leela. Yes. So Kaliya represents in some ways we could say market capitalism or communism or materialism and it was so toxic that even the birds flying above were being killed by it and then Krishna came and used his potency to subdue and then drive away Kaliya and then Krishna restored the beauty and the harmony of the ecology of Vrindavan.

So similarly if Krishna comes and dances in our hearts then the materialistic drives within us that make us do things that have toxic influences, they can be driven away. And I was also thinking that when you said about sattva and beyond that to transcendence, one thing which many environmentalists also are recognizing is that for people to actually give up consumerism, they need to find non-material enrichment and if we don't bring in God, mere love of nature will not really give non-material enrichment because nature is also material. So one way we could say why merely loving nature is not enough is that as long as we are in material consciousness we will want material pleasure and the nature of material cravings are that they go stronger and stronger and right now if I am in sattva guna and I am reflective I may say okay I live in harmony with the environment but as rajas and tamas start increasing then my desires will overpower my good intentions.

So if one loves Krishna and has some has get some higher taste in the practice of Krishna bhakti then the craving that drives consumerism will subside and that is how also we could say that just loving nature is not enough rather when we love Krishna then we will be able to act out our love for nature, act on our love for nature otherwise we will not be able to sustain it. So your love for nature will become more meaningful, more concrete, more substantive, more happy when you love Krishna. Yeah that's true.

I read one more he's a bhakta scientist bhakta researcher he contrasts when I mentioned earlier that India doesn't have much of a history of environmental protection or activism so he has an interesting theory he says that in India there is the bhakti world view and there's a advaitic world view and the advaitic world view in some ways holds that this world is an illusion and the most important thing we need to do is to transcend this illusion whereas the bhakti world view holds that this world is also an arena for service this world is also a manifestation of Krishna's energy so so if environmental consciousness is to be fostered in India maybe the bhakti world view would be more conducive for that than the advaitic world view and if now if you consider world views there is this world and there is the other world that is the spiritual world now one of the defining differences between modern and pre-modern times is that in the pre-modern times almost everyone in whichever part of the world they lived they understood that there is some other world and that is life's ultimate destination whether Christians had their heaven Muslims had their jannat and Native Americans and Native Australians they also had some understanding of another world and this world is like a place of trial and travel we have to live through it so now the scientific revolution and the subsequent evolution of human thought led to the rejection of the other world as a mythology and then through technology we got the hope or the dream that we could make this world into paradise itself so we don't need any other world we will just make this world into paradise so we could so now in the attempt to make this world into a paradise we have in some way started making it into hell because our efforts are backfiring and if we consider like a four quadrant diagram you know this we have this world the importance of this world on the x-axis and the importance of the other world on the y-axis so if somebody says neither this world matters nor the other world matters then they are basically nihilistic they can't do anything then we have the materialists and within that we have communists capitalists and to some extent we have even environmentalists they say this world matters but the other world doesn't matter or the other world doesn't exist it doesn't matter whatever then we have the we have the advaitins that the other world matters but this world doesn't matter and then we have the bhaktas that this world matters and the other world matters also so in some ways those who say this world matters but other world doesn't matter their own desires eventually will not be will not let them take care of the world especially because now that we have the power to control the world or at least we think they have through technology so to have power and then not use power requires far go greater self-control than to not have power at all so when people throughout history had some level of materialism within them but when there was no technology we really felt that nature is much more powerful than us we can't do much about it now through technology when we think that yeah maybe we can subdue nature so then to not do that without having any higher purpose is not going to be very easy so in that sense the bhakti world view which acknowledges the importance of this world while also giving us giving due importance to other world and giving us access to happiness streaming down from that level that is the best way to actually sustainably take care of this world actually as we discussed in the earlier part of our chat that till a few centuries ago the culture of spiritual ecology was very much prevalent and pervasive even in Indian villages so that culture was there so there was no need for any kind of environmental activism because the environment was being automatically looked after however then there came a time when there was degradation happening and for a while you know there may have been intermittently here and there localized cases of activism you're not aware of but in the last century in the last few decades we've had several such people coming up you mentioned one in the beginning chipko the chipko movement and there have been several like that there have been many many instances of people now really campaigning for maintaining the purity of the river Yamuna or protesters some protesting against the destruction of the hills in Rajabhumi for mining and so on and so forth so against for the cleaning of the river Ganga and you know so there is a lot of activism going on it could be more it could be more definitely we should have more but as I said unless there is a proper spiritual education it's a humongous task it's an uphill task because you've taken away you disempowered the villages and the common person and you left him without the spiritual culture because of the materialistic and western style of educational system that you introduced you took away his spiritual culture you took away his powers and you centralized it and now he has neither faith nor any understanding of spiritual knowledge nor is he doing his spiritual practices significantly and even if he's religious it's just a mechanical kind of a ritualistic type of a religion and there are many people with some deep faith certainly but in a large number of people that substance is lacking their understanding of the spiritual ecology is lacking and because now everything is becoming so materialistic and the government and the NGOs and so on they try their best to rectify matters but they're still going to release their sewage into the river they're still going to throw and you know rubbish somewhere else you know so this happens you know because of the lack of spiritual education we're coming to the issue of the other world in this world yes certainly the idea of the quadrant is an interesting way of putting it of the four quadrants 72 axis and bhakti is best placed because we are concerned about both worlds sometimes however we see that it is the devotees who are a little callous when it comes to environment yeah and such things and the advaitins are more sensitive and concerned and they are the ones who are out at the forefront doing it and we as devotees many times are shy of doing it saying you know let's well you just better chant better sit and chant and you know get into all these other things so curiously enough we have a kind of an ironical situation or a paradoxical situation where those who give a lot of importance to the other world but not to this world seem to be doing more for this world in terms of the environment than those who claim to give importance to both so which means probably that it is time for us as devotees to also step up you know of course a lot of devotees have done a lot if you look at govardhan hill you see they've planted trees all around govardhan hill they've done a lot of work so a lot of NGOs a lot of faithful devotees you know from different places and you know have done so much work so we must appreciate that at the same time i think we need to make it more mainstream this kind of an approach and this kind of a consciousness and let devotees also internalize this as something as critical to their spiritual life as let's say you know going for darshan of the deities or something like that so i think we must have this kind of a worldview that has to be encouraged i think it's because the reason for devotees not having been so active in this is that perhaps they've not seen it like that they have not been accustomed to thinking like that this kind of a worldview a holistic kind of a worldview you know are probably a kind of a shall we say detachment you know because i do remember when i was in vrindavan and there was a whole movement going on to save the yamuna as you know it's a great tragedy the yamuna has diverted before she reaches delhi and into the and diverted into agricultural fields for growing rice which is exported it is diverted into industries in delhi and surrounding places and you don't have anything left of the yamuna as she flows after delhi except the sewage and the industrial effluents that are then emptied out into the yamuna and what we get in vrindavan is not real yamuna water except in the rainy season when the dams release some water so that is a great tragedy actually so when many organizations were trying to get together to do something about this you know many of our devotees were reluctant saying you know why should we get into all that we have to chant around you see so because devotees have not understood they have not internalized the larger scope of krishna consciousness who today we are able to enjoy vrindavan because somebody else did did it for us they built a temple for us they preserved the holy dhams for us you know and as you rightly said we borrowed it from our descendants the environment is something we have borrowed from our descendants not necessarily inherited from our ancestors so we have a responsibility we have a sense of duty to seeing that the the various elements of the spiritual and devotional heritage that we have inherited are preserved and strengthened so that posterity can also avail of the benefits of of these elements whether it's the yamuna is the ganga it's the ghats of vrindavan the hills of vrindavan the pasturing lands of vrindavan or any other holy place or any other element of nature even yes so therefore i think we need as devotees to expand the scope of our thinking and not just keep it narrowed down to just doing our rounds and just and that's it that of course is the foundation that's the fountainhead of all our spiritual convictions and activities if we don't chant our rounds if we don't hear the shiva bhagavatam if we don't worship the deity with faith and love then we will not have the right consciousness anyway so then we will not be able to see the sublimity and the the divinity in nature all around us so we have to have the the overall conception you know that's true of transcendent ecology yeah that's true are there some things which you could recommend what devotees could do because at one level most of our movement is present in the cities and even at the time of krishna there was there were cities when vrindavan was a village after all the city so i don't think urbanization itself is the problem based on our last time discussion i was re-articulating it that you know meat eating may have been going on throughout human history but with the industrialization of meat eating of the meat meat meat manufacturing factory we could say and then the scale three things the scale the cruelty and the recklessness the dangerousness like that has been unprecedented so maybe in same way urbanization itself is not the problem but maybe the the scale the scale the cruelty toward the nature and the recklessness of the dangerousness that could be a problem so what what could as a individual bhakti practitioner do to become more environmentally conscious hmm while it is true that urban settlements did exist in the vedic times and earlier we had dwarka we had aluthia we had hastinapur yes in the prastha yeah there uh but those were eras when the opulences presented by nature were profuse and these urban settlements were well spread out over large areas and probably didn't have the kind of congestion that we see today and the people also didn't have the kind of consciousness that people of today have so whilst i grant that urban areas have existed in the past i would say that urbanization as it exists today has inherently some problem that is the way i see it because it has become so infected so to speak with the modes of passion and ignorance that it is very hard for anyone living in the cities to cultivate the mode of goodness and to rise to the spiritual platform and grow on the path of bhakti or any such spiritual activity so to develop such a pure consciousness or even an environmental consciousness in the kind of city cities that we have is going to be very difficult it is not easy so organization at its core as let us say a strategy as a as a policy instrument has to be rethought today the predominant economic philosophy is that we must have more urbanization we must move the people from the village and from agriculture towards urban areas and this is a viewpoint that is articulated by mainstream economists regularly everywhere so they basically want to intensify urbanization so therefore the urbanization as it exists today there is a problem here it's a topic that will take a long time to discuss maybe we won't talk about in detail now so but therefore what i think we really need is to preserve also the rural areas properly and not to let the urbanization grow the way it is growing and we see in the example of the current covid 19 pandemic now in india just today or yesterday i think they released a list of the hot spots okay certain number of places which are hot spots where the lockdown has to continue and there are certain areas which are green areas where they will probably relax the lockdown significantly it's interesting that all the urban areas the major metros are red zones why so because they are so congested and even look at a place like new york if you think that is this is india fine but what about new york what about london what about so many other urban areas which are facing problems so urbanization has problems and that is well acknowledged it's not it's something new uh sociological problems cultural problems and a host of other types of problems but still economists and a variety of other thinkers today seem to believe that this is the way forward so at least first of all to answer your question i would say we need to recognize the severe problems associated with rampant urbanization mindless urbanization number one number two that also means that we must realize the importance of the villages of the rural areas and we must preserve them at least intellectually and with our heart we should be convinced of this without which you know it's going to be more difficult it'll be just a token environmentalism just growing a few plants in your home and flower pots on your terrace and just having a few vegetables that you grow there okay fine very good but it has to go deeper than that right then further what we should do is to uh maybe follow those five guidelines that i mentioned last time those five criteria you know when we spoke of veganism the five things that we spoke about yesterday the other time other day when we were discussing veganism they were essentially one that what we utilize from nature from the environment or from anywhere has to be i'll repeat that just to refresh memory and for the benefit of those who maybe didn't see that discussion number one that it must be scripturally recommended or at least permitted at least not opposed at least not prohibited yeah okay second is that we must cause no harm and not disrespect yes to anything in everyone anything and everything that we use cause no harm and offer no disrespect so here i include you know human beings i include animals plants rivers mountains oceans lakes you know everything the air okay third utilize it in a mode of devotion to god the process of obtaining it has to be done without causing harm respectfully and the utilization has to be done with devotion understanding that these are all gifts of nature understanding and to quote one of the sentences of prabhupada from his book was one of my favorite lines that human prosperity flourishes by the gifts of nature and not by gigantic industrial enterprises right so recognizing that actually our happiness our prosperity our longevity our success you know all depends on the gifts of nature we must realize that we must use them not only without causing harm to them but we must uh love it must be done with love the cows must milk with love the crops must be sown and harvested and utilized with love and ultimately they must be offered to krishna with love that was the fifth and the fourth element was used in moderation whatever you use use it moderately um don't over consume so this moderation point is there to counter or to take care of this consumerist mentality so and the last one offered to krishna with love so obviously you can't use anything which you can't offer to krishna and which is not scripturally authorized so therefore in terms of what we can do and what we can't do um number one let us avoid using anything that is not scripturally authorized therefore that means give up alcohol give up meat give up gambling give up illicit sexual activity give up this give up that right all of these things second of all it also means that whenever we utilize everything anything be conscious now that you don't cause any cruelty to it the other day i was just reading the news and there was some article about some young man in india one of the cities who was arrested or a group of young men because they whirled around the puppy and they smashed him to death the puppy and such cruelty coming up because they just they just have no conception of any uh you know compassion or you know some alignment of the intellect that doesn't exist so we must be very careful to not act in a cruel way towards animals towards plants and trees and the air towards the soil etc etc even in our neighborhood here where i live people were cutting down a tree and the branches also and the reason for that is because the tree was shedding leaves and those leaves were falling into their building premises and it was a big headache for them to clean those leaves every time so just imagine they were cutting trees and cutting off branches because they didn't want the leaves to fall in because they didn't want to do the the task of cleaning up you know so we have to be very kind and we can't be disrespectful and can't offer cruelty to anything anymore so it's a question of cultivating this mindset wherever we and the item of moderation means that we should not come to the consumerist propaganda today modern economics thinks that prosperity and success comes or is measured in terms of how much you consume and how much you own whereas this the vedic viewpoint is that prosperity and success and happiness is measured in terms of how little you own and how simply you live so the modern urban lifestyle the modern materialistic lifestyle is oriented towards flashy living opulent living over consumption whereas the vedic lifestyle is oriented towards simple living consuming as little as possible as much only as is required not flaunting one's wealth and if excess wealth arrives by destiny or by the mercy of the lord we share it with others use it in benevolent ways especially in devotion to lord krishna so therefore in terms of consumption we have to be very careful we don't unnecessarily accumulate goods the acquisitive spirit the accumulative tendency has also to be reined in and has to be controlled that's very important we must not succumb to our desires to accumulate more and more goods when you go into the city marketplace into the shopping centers yes and this is again one of the problems of organization they just simply pour fuel into our dormant desires for acquiring more and more so because these shopping malls and these roadside shops the way they are decorated and the goods are displayed in such a tantalizing manner and the way the advertising is done and the way the whole social kind of mindset is the social fashions and what's cool to do and what is desirable so it just induces everybody to consume more and more and more so there's no question of any environmental friendly living if one is of this mentality so one has to guard very much against this consumerist mentality one has to try to believe in the principles of simple living and high thinking simple living refers to reducing your needs your wants if there's a difference between wants and needs living simply minimize the number of clothes you need just as much as you really need your paraphernalia at home don't just accumulate more and more there's this little thing that I keep saying when people ask how much is enough you know how much is enough to accumulate in terms of goods that we have and I don't know whether I mentioned it in the discussion last time but anyway because it's relevant to the question you ask I'll just say it again and it's practical that if the desire arises in our mind to acquire a certain good a certain item we should ask ourselves the question is it necessary is it required if the answer is no that ends the matter if the answer is yes ask yourself a second question do I really need this item if the answer is no fine matter ends there if it's yes ask yourself a third question do I really really need this item if the answer is still a yes then okay go ahead and buy it provided you also fulfill the other four criteria that the item that you desire to obtain is is not something that is prohibited by the scriptures that it is that you've not obtained it by any violence or cruelty or disrespect yes and also that you utilize that item lovingly when you obtain it and before you use it that you offer it to the supreme light so that's another tip that we have to reduce the consumption patterns that we have and reduce the wastage Vedic culture essentially was one where there was no waste today our consumption patterns are of such a nature that high consumption means high wastage yeah therefore one of the means of judging economic advancement and prosperity in economics is the garbage disposal index the more the garbage that you've disposed the more prosperous you are as a society oh okay whereas that's quite a commercial way of looking at it yes the Vedic culture was the Vedic culture was you know first of all there's nothing called waste it's all something that is a part of a recycling process so whether it's paper paper or cloth or wood or utensils and metals and so on you know it could be recycled it could be reused right and then the other things like all right yes try to use items that are organic try to have your little rooftop or your veranda little garden and so on and so forth support activities and ventures and that are of this sort especially you know those types of communities and projects that try to establish self-sufficiency so these are some of the tips that I would say it's a combination of mindset plus practical actions to do there are many more but I'm just giving some of them right now thank you yeah I think within within urbanization also we all can make it less toxic by adopting various practical measures and yes maybe you can conclude by speaking a little bit about you mentioned about projects for eco-friendly living and you have been you have a you have pioneered a project Gokul Dham near Belga we'd like to speak a little bit about that project and your vision how it is coming up right Gokul Dham is envisioned as a self-sufficient Vedic eco-village project a self-sufficiency farm project being inspired by the teachings of Srila Prabhupada and the idea is to have a community of devotees that lives there following the principles of simple living and high thinking so it's work in progress we have a long way to go before we can attain the target of self-sufficiency in all respects or at least in most respects so our devotees are living a very simple life there it's about 40 kilometers from the place where I stay the city where I stay the town Belgaum in the state of Karnataka in India and the devotees there don't use electricity I think that is among all the projects in our movement this is among the few if not the only one where we are avoiding electricity isn't it yes maybe not the only one there are I'm sure couple that also don't use electricity but that's rare it's rare yes but we are a little we are a little more rigid when it comes to trying to live simply so we try to not use plastic although to some degree some sometimes it's unavoidable but our attempt is to find substitutes in course of time so eliminate all the products of the modern industrial civilization you know so industrial we try our best to avoid using industrial materials industrial products and so on no chemicals certainly no chemical fertilizers and pesticides and so on we also don't use naturally not petrol and diesel although we do travel to the project in vehicles that are that use petrol and diesel but within the project we don't use that we use natural sources of energy including for cooking for water lifting and water transportation and such like for lighting also we try to grow our own food we haven't attained full success yet vegetables we're almost quite there but grains it will take a while we're struggling with water self-sufficiency self-sufficiency so once we have that then we will go on to this so that's the kind of life very simple life very rustic with how even the housing materials are basically non-chemical non-industrial no cement steel plastic used in the construction of the housing shelters we have a small little temple there which is within the ashram the altar is also made of stone and mud and limestone and so on so we have cow and the grace so that's a little description of this i have been there and i could see the devotees there are very inspired many of them are using their engineers by background they're using the engineering to come up creative solutions for local generation or local production of things and it seems that it has created a significant awareness at least in the nearby areas of maharashtra and karnataka where people come to visit and see that whether such a project is actually possible it's they are quite quite amazed to see people choosing to live like this voluntarily because most people as the trend is going to live the leave the as i consider primitive villages and go to cities but to see young educated intelligent people voluntarily choosing to live lives of simplicity and spirituality it speaks volumes for many people and makes them rethink their priorities in life so apart from specifically what is achieved over there just having a model of like that has ripple effects in society also yes you know we don't expect that everybody will live like the way the devotees live there we know there's not a practical or a realistic expectation but what we want to do is to be like a beacon light for the world to send out a message to the world that you don't really need all the things you think you need to be happy in your life and to be prosperous we want to get people to think about what real happiness is and what are the sources of happiness we want to redefine prosperity and success and we also want to make people experience a little bit of that joy that comes in living in such a sattvic atmosphere where there is which is based on devotion to krishna and simple living yeah long way to go but nevertheless it's the beginning it has come a long way also long way to go it has come a long way since started and and i hope that they can more and more devotees and others also feel inspired to establish such projects and work seriously on that but it means a lot of commitment yeah it needs also a very clear vision about what needs to be done so environmentalism is happening naturally there because we're learning more and more about how the ecological balance has happened you know living on the land is itself a massive learning experience one understands how that local ecosystem functions and then one has to blend into that rather than superimposing our conceptions there which to some degree is happening even in our case because here we have sort of intruded into nature into spaces that were probably earlier being taken up by animals and so on so to some degree we are also guilty of that intrusion but we hope it is not to a very significant degree and we hope that by this we can create a prototype or a kind of an example that will be inspiring to the world we are walking your talk in this specific sense by pioneering a project and um so if devotees want to know more about the local dam project is there a website where they can visit or is it on the iskcon belga website or well a little bit but i have consciously not promoted it in a big way for the simple reason that um you know we have a few devotees there a small team and there is a lot of work to be done there okay um so we want to have a at least develop the basic infrastructure like water and a few things like that and food and make arrangements by the time we are ready to receive more and more we already have many guests coming in professors bring their students environmentalists come in groups and you know school children come in with their teachers and general people who are curious to know what we're doing they come in our devotees from belgium and from other cities they come to see so we do have a lot of guests anyway but i think we'll wait uh till we have set up our infrastructural situation there in a better way at least water especially okay water and food and some further living facilities yes that is true that's nice i think when you're establishing mayapur also find they should not expect to find very wonderful uh you know cottages and things like that it's it's very simple it's beautiful but it's also very very simple yes we've covered a lot of territory but i just briefly try to summarize so we started about started with the origin of environmentalism that in some ways it is because of anthropocentrism coming from christianity in many ways it is also materialism coming from uh rejection of god and belief that technology gives us the power to do whatever we want with nature and through industrialization that became very strong and we differentiate between environmentalism which is a leftist political activist movement with genuine concerns but also embroiled with politics whereas ecology or eco ecological concern or ecosystem that will be much more localized and it can organically can i interrupt for one moment yeah i would i wouldn't say that all forms of environmentalism or environmental activism are uh leftist in nature some of them certainly are okay but if you look at the example of sundarlal bahuguna and the chipko movement yeah his mental activism was based on his spiritual beliefs yes of course yeah mr agarwal who was campaigning for mother ganga so his activism was also based on spiritual beliefs yes that's true the western models of environmentalism are based on the left left wing kind of approach yeah indian activists the homegrown indian activists i'm not speaking about those indian activists who are influenced by the western approaches homegrown uh you know environmental activists of the kind i've mentioned they are not left of center yes thank you for clarifying that then we discussed about so you know what the problem is more or less well known the ideological cause of the problem and the practical solution what could be done so in that you discussed that uh when we we may want to take care of nature but just the attempt to do that is not likely to work because the exploitative mentality will come in we talk about fear desire duty love and then you mentioned that when we bring god then the environmental activism becomes sustainable so these are associated with three modes and we get non-material enrichment through the practice of bhakti which can free us from the consumerist mentality which is the cause of environmental problems and then in ide in philosophically speaking bhaktas care for both this world and the other world but practically we might have a more insular attitude where we don't really we are not so socially engaged and otherwise things who don't care who consider the world to be illusion actually may care for it more so we need to become more become more aware of what bhakti means and when we care for krishna it's like if we especially respect his spectacles his glasses so similarly we care for krishna we need to care for his nature also and then as far as what could be done at a individual by devotees we talk about those principles you know what do what is even if we are living in urbanized setting we we recognize the importance of villages and try to preserve it as much as possible and while living in the urbanized settings we make it as less toxic as possible by doing what is i try to create a rhyme or a sanction then sanction compassion moderation devotion there's one more you mentioned a five factors love okay devotion that is offering with devotion but when you try to okay i'm working with love yes cruelty more cruelty that was compassion and then use with you i mean with love and devotion okay so use with love and devotion offer in devotion the two different things right okay so that way we could within our particular places we can make some become more environmentally conscious and of course there are devotees who are trying to do this and they can be supported in whatever way is possible so we as actually bhakti theology has a way to can can provide philosophical foundation for grounding environmental concerns in a holistic worldview and if that opportunity is tapped then bhakti can actually do a lot of good not just for the environment but for reawakening spiritual consciousness in the world through environmental consciousness yes very nice i think we could summarize it in in two words bhakti ecology bhakti ecology yes because ecology deals with the relationships of living entities uh amongst themselves and with the with the other the inanimate world and bhakti understands the conception of the relationship with god and sees the creation with respect to god and that gives a more deeper perspective so we just don't want to be environmentalists we just don't want to be only plain ecologists but our approach is a bhakti ecology yes something like that so i guess that would be something very wholesome very holistic thank you very much for your time and for joining this is always a illuminating to have your association yeah so thank you very much and i hope we'll meet again soon yes i look forward to that we'll all look forward to that we and our viewers.