The Monk’s Podcast 3 with Shyamananda Prabhu and Hari Vamsa Prabhu – Eco-Friendly and Anthropo-Friendly
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Welcome everyone, greetings from the Monks Podcast recording room and my name is Harivamsha and I'm very delighted to have our two wise sages here, Shyamananda and Chaitanacharan, welcome. And this is the third episode, we'll have an interesting discussion today as well. To motivate the topic and set its context, let me bring an interesting anecdote from the Booker award-winning novel called The Life of Pi by Jan Martel.
So this is the story of a child getting stuck with a tiger named Richard Parker in an ocean. So this protagonist Pi Patel mentions that his father used to have a zoo in Pondicherry and his father would keep something hidden behind a curtain near the ticket office pointing it saying that beware the most dangerous animal here. So all the people who were buying the tickets were very curious and tempted to open the curtain and they were very amused, surprised and also enlightened to find a mirror there.
So the most dangerous animal is perhaps the person. So this is the topic which we want to discuss today. How to be eco-friendly but at the same time avoiding becoming anthropo-unfriendly.
With this COVID outbreak we are seeing so much awareness about being friendly to the environment but somewhere we are also seeing a whole Pandora box about how humans are the culprit and get the humans out of way. So we'll have discussion in three main topics and I would like both of you to share your views. The first topic is how to be not anthropocentric which means environment is no good.
Just use it whichever way we feel for ourselves. That's one side of the pendulum. The second is the another extreme which is what they call misanthropy that humans are no good.
They have just such a small biomass but they have troubled everybody. And finally we would want to know from you especially from the perspectives of yoga texts like Bhagavad Gita and from your tradition that how we can avoid these two extremes put everything in perspective and lead a very balanced and responsible life especially in 21st century when such pandemics I think may become a routine. So over to you maybe Shamananda, Chetan, Charan anybody of you would want to start.
Okay so historically if you consider the first point now how we need to become more eco-friendly. Historically if you consider Plato he said knowledge is virtue. The idea was knowledge is meant to help us discipline our lower impulses and live more virtuously.
This resonates with the Gita's description of knowledge in terms of virtue in the 13th chapter also. Now as the age of science started advancing in what is called as scientific enlightenment then basically Francis Bacon one of the pioneers said that knowledge is power and the idea over there is that the more technological scientific knowledge we get the more power we will get to control the outer world and we will be able to bring it we will be able to discipline it. Whereas nature was thought of as a mother traditionally in all cultures but during these times nature started being seen like a stepmother.
She causes us so many sufferings and in some Western thinkers who even said that nature is like a war who will stab you behind the back unless you keep it under control and their idea was that technology which is developed through scientific knowledge is the source of the power by which we will be able to control nature. So over the centuries progress itself became equated with an increase in power and this kind of definition of power of progress in terms of power is typical of the mode of passion in terms of the Bhagavad Gita. In the Bhagavad Gita if we broadly would want to say that progress in terms of the mode of ignorance would be just escapism.
The more we can escape from challenges and responsibilities and just have an easygoing life that's progress that's the definition of progress for those in ignorance. For those in passion progress is we get more and more power to control things, to dominate things, to bend nature to our will whereas in goodness the progress means to understand the nature of reality and to harmonize ourselves with reality. So virtue is not just some sectarian conception of values.
Virtue essentially is that virtue is often a translation of dharma and dharma is that activity which keeps us in harmony with our nature. So as we progressed in terms of defining knowledge in terms of power the idea became nature is hostile and has to be controlled and dominated and we did succeed to some extent but there are disastrous consequences of this and the world is increasingly witnessing those consequences as well as foreseeing those consequences. Earlier it was talked about primarily in terms of global warming.
Now the exact magnitude of global warming is being contested so a more generic term of climate change is being used to refer to a wide variety of phenomena, air pollution, water pollution and loss of biodiversity, the melting of the polar ice caps and the consequent rising of the ocean level. So why the desertification of many landmasses, the drying up of rivers, the huge variety of diseases that come because of the pollution of the atmosphere. So all these are being talked about and they are the results of not living in harmony with nature, of trying to dominate nature indiscriminately and this all came from this conception of progress as power.
Knowledge as power, progress as increase in power and now we are recognizing that we can't just think of our progress in terms of our greater power over nature. Nature has powers that we can never overpower and therefore we need to learn harmony, not just domination but cooperation, learning to cooperate and harmonize with nature. So that is how environmental consciousness has risen especially we could say in the last half a century or so from the 1960s, 1970s onwards, environmental consciousness has risen and now it is something which is very prominent at least in terms of the issues of concern for thoughtful people.
How much practical action has been taken is open to discussion. But that's a quick historical overview of the rising of environmental consciousness in today's society. Thank you.
Shamananda, you want to share something? Yeah, I like this heading, the title and I also like the way in which we are diverted into three parts. Anthropocentrism. Anthropo is Greek for man or human.
So I'll begin with this piece from Hamlet where Shakespeare in his time said, what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And the first time I read this, I was thinking, oh, you are going overboard, you are praising man a bit, a tad, too much. But then especially in Judaeo-Christian theology we find that man has this kind of glorification.
I don't know if in the Upanishads or in Puranas we have man singled out, man basically means humans, humans singled out for this kind of lavish praise for being so superior or being given that kind of a dominance. Western thought has this, one of its cornerstones that man has dominion over other creatures. And now we see the small sentence stretched like a really unstretchable elastic to its extremes, which means we can use them, throw them, mutilate them, perform all kinds of experiments on them.
And basically, I think yesterday or two days ago, Chetan and Charan said that if animal society would have to have the face of Chetan, in majority they would choose man, the devil would have a human face. So Shakespeare praising man for all that is, of course this is Hamlet. So after these sentences, man, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals, and then Hamlet adds, and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? So basically he says, he's just plain dust.
And then we have one Hubert Reeves who says that man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible nature. Unaware that this nature he is destroying is this God he is worshipping.
So taking this cue from Narada Muni's statement that, idam hi vishvam bhagavanivetara, the Bhagavatam gives a, this may not be a major point, but oh human being, the earth on which you are standing from this particular angle is also the God whom you are worshipping. It could be a very fine sentiment, it could take some time for the human mind to evolve to that, but there is this hint here that there is divinity even in the most mundane of material elements which you are not kind of aware of. So this anthropocentrism has, at least in today's times we can see, has gone to a bit of an extent where it needs to be managed.
Of course we will come to this next point that it cannot be stretched beyond a certain limit, it need not be misanthropy, but right now our discussion is focused on how being anthropocentric we have come to this stage where, I will end with this another quote by Rene Dubon, man will survive as a species for one reason. I think he was a doctor of, I don't know exactly, but he has some famous quotes about communicable diseases. I'll check again later.
Man will survive as a species for one reason, he can adapt to the destructive effects of our power intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth to the dirt, to the pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. So he is suggesting that somehow we will cope even with, like to tell you the truth, this time when New Delhiites were given millions of masks because the pollution was too much, I never thought that I would live to see this day when so-called like a normal situation and we have masks and we have department stores and malls which after a particular level of purchase offer you free oxygen. Wow, what bounty, I can get free oxygen.
So here is Rene Dubon saying with all the mess and even more we may survive because we are good at survival and then he adds and that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy, but the quality of human life. So it is not just the toll of ecological not being aware of that or ecological disaster is not only in terms of body bags or graves or just the population which is depleted.
It is the quality of life and I feel that that is something which is a worthy goal to strive for. Excellent, I think these two points were amazing about the first and I think you are saying about the second point, misanthropy. Just a couple of thoughts about what you said, Shaman.
Two things that when we talk about the way humans are living, anthropocentrism at one level is a natural outgrowth of the Judeo-Christian worldview where the idea was that humans alone have souls that are capable of using reason to perceive God. Thomas Aquinas talked about the light of reason that illumines human souls and he said that light of reason is not present in animals or in plants. So his idea was that they don't have souls or they don't have the souls which can perceive reason.
So they have different kind of souls. Sometimes they are called spirits. So the anthropocentrism in one sense is innate to the Judeo-Christian worldview that humans alone are special and are to be delivered because we alone have the kind of souls that can attain eternal life.
And in some ways, while the progress of modern science was in confrontation to Christianity, in other ways it was a progression from Christianity. That means that Christianity had the idea of history as being a linear arc upward toward the point where the second coming of Jesus and we would all be delivered. So the idea of history being a linear arc going forward, that was continued by science also.
And science simply translated that or rather transformed that elevation from the spiritual level to the material level. Rather than Jesus coming and delivering us spiritually, science and technology will deliver us materially and create paradise on the earth. And this idea, as it went forward, as science and technology progressed, that idea of progress has become very, it's very deeply rooted within human society.
And we should be progressing. Now, of course, nowadays progress is measured in terms of say the GDP of a country, or we measure progress in terms of the bandwidth of the Wi-Fi connection that we have, or we measure progress in terms of the memory and the capacity of our phones and laptops, or the speed of our cars. But the idea that history is going in a linear arc forward, that is innate.
Now, contradicting this picture of progress is the idea of our progress is causing environmental destruction. And this is not so easy to accept for the progressive mind. And one way the progressive mind tried to come to terms with this is by thinking that, so we retain the idea of progress, but we, at least in the Western context, the idea that there is something to improve for us.
What is there for us to improve that Christianity has given us a big ego to think that we alone are special. So if you consider the history of Western science, there have been multiple phases within that. There was the spiritual, there was the phase when we thought that we can conquer nature, but Darwinian evolution said that actually we humans are simply a part of nature.
There is no such thing as a soul. We have just evolved from primates and there's nothing categorically different from between us and animals. And at one level, Darwinian evolution places humans entirely within nature.
But then what happens is once we are placed within nature, the problem is among all the beings in nature, we cause the maximum problem to nature. So therefore the idea went from anthropocentrism to misanthropy that if there's nothing special about humans, humans are just a part of nature, then why is it that humans are causing so much problem? There must be a reason for this. So if you study the environmental movement, there are four broad theories within what is the cause of the environmental crisis, but all of them have the idea, what I would call anthropocentrism, it's also called as human exceptionalism, that humans are exceptional among the species.
And all these four explanations of environmental crisis, take it as a given that human exceptionalism is a problem, but how human exceptionalism leads to the ecological crisis, that different people have different ideas, but essentially everybody agrees that human exceptionalism is a problem. So that's why among some thinkers, especially if you look at some environmental websites, this Corona crisis, they are quite strongly saying this is nature's punishment, nature's revenge on humanity for having indiscriminately exploited nature. So to some extent we are going towards the other extreme of becoming misanthropic in our adoration of nature.
So that's how the pendulum has shifted, not in a major way, but in some way, among some people who are becoming increasingly influential towards that direction. Just to ask you, what do you see is the danger with misanthropy vis-a-vis ecological movement? What could be the fallout of that? Well, it can become an alternative religion which displaces other religions, traditional religions, and people can have a religious forward. So like you said, we can see God in nature, but when nature itself becomes God, then transcendence becomes entirely ruled out.
And even religion and spirituality, their value is based on how eco-friendly they are. And of course, nobody's actively talking about destroying humanity, but I have read on some websites, at least on environmental websites, that a purging of humanity would be good for nature. That if the population of humanity decreases, that will be a constructive thing for nature.
So in that sense, firstly, there can be destructive effects of environmental extremism from a practical perspective, but more from a philosophical perspective, it leads to a denial of transcendence and a denial of the soul. So humans, from the Gita's perspective, are special, not because we alone have souls, but because the consciousness of the soul is specially developed in human society, in humanity. So I wrote an article recently that human exceptionalism is not the problem.
Failure of humans to act exceptionally is the problem. That there is something special about humans is undeniable. If there is nothing special, we would not have science and technology, we would not have philosophy, and we would not be having this discussion at all.
It's something special about humans. So there is, humans are exceptional, but exceptionality is not that we alone have souls, but that we alone have consciousness evolved enough to sense that we have souls or we are souls. So it leads to a denial of transcendence and spirituality.
That is where eco-extremism can take us. Do you want to add anything? Yes, amazing point. I had been reading the famous environmental specialist from theological standpoint, David Heberman.
He is a professor in Indiana University, which is perhaps the first university to have a religious studies program. In his book on River of Love in the Age of Pollution, so that is the pollution of River Yamuna, he mentions that the authorities who were trying to tackle with the Yamuna pollution said that now religion is not the alternative pill to solve the fever of pollution, but it can be the only thing because nothing is working out. And in that it is added that personalistic religion may have a lot to play.
So that because we understand and perhaps you can give more light, shed more light on this, that some impersonalistic viewpoints of spirituality may just consider this world to be a dirty mess. We have nothing to do with it. We have to transcend.
So there is an underlying fine print there that we really don't care about the world. However, in personalistic religion, it's I think not anthropocentric but anthropomorphic. We see humanity in other aspects of the nature also, rivers are goddesses, mountains are gods, etc.
New Zealand took that lead in according the status of a person to one river over there, so you're right. Yes, yes. In New Zealand, they have given the status of a person to a river.
Yes, yes. Thank you for bringing that. So my question was that in kind of straddling between these two extremes, which I think folks of the world will go from one to another, what is the contribution of personalistic religions in kind of just giving to the nature what it should be given and the position of humans also in this entire ecosystem? Because I believe some religious viewpoints may not end up doing good to nature also.
Okay, so we are fast approaching our time where both of you have to report for other assignments. I will kind of try to find the golden mean between not keeping man in center and just shooting man from the center or no sorry, man totally in charge and man totally loses his existence whatsoever. So to begin with, one thing which inspired me to understand this nature, this connection between humans, nature and divinity is from a Suhathra Maharaj's book and he brilliantly uses the Oedipus complex.
Oedipus is the prince and so many things happen and he's torn away from his family and he ends up seeing a kingdom with a queen and he doesn't know that she's his mother and then he marries her and tries to kill the king who tries to attack. So it's a tragedy sort of. So he said that here Oedipus represents modern man, he doesn't know that material nature is his own mother and he's trying to exploit her and he thinks that by killing my father, that is God who whenever he's taught that God is the controller of nature, God is the king of this kingdom and God is the controller, God is the enjoyer.
So there is this animosity, resentment or being inimical towards God. God is seen as the evil and even today we have people who say that statistically, you know, religion has caused so much bigger problem than just trade and commerce and it is the opiate of the masses according to Marx. So trying to kill your mother, trying to murder your father and then it's a tragedy because Oedipus is not happy in the end.
So this is what will fall on us. So what could be a remedy? First as the wise sage Narada Muni, he is advising, learn to look at the environment around you, although it is material, as part of divinity. And again, it is not the only point and it is not a central point, but it is one of the building blocks.
You have to begin from that point. Then the Ishopanishad tells you that Om Purnamada Purnamidam. If you see things like in mathematics, let the number be x. So here for eco-conscious mathematics, let us assume that whatever we need for our sustenance is there.
We don't need to mix things in our laboratory and say that that will make us happy. All the things necessary for our sustenance are already there. Nothing is redundant and nothing is extraneous.
So I see the problem with some modern scientific thinking. They have this two-pronged attack. Look, we have this situation and nature is not having this.
So we need to manufacture it. Look, this is something lying there and there is no use for it for the last three millennia. We don't know what this is supposed to be.
So either you feel that someone up there doesn't know his marbles, doesn't know what he is doing or there are things which are made which are of no use. So this particular caution that Om Purnamada Purnamidam, everything is complete. How do I know how everything is complete? I need to know what is my quota.
You take whatever is your quota and I have seen Shri Prabhupada saying that if somebody is hell-bent on eating meat, that also will be his quota. In a wise society, those who really hanker for flesh, they are not considered outcasts or they are not to be shot. But we will see how their needs are provided in an eco-conscious way.
And we may call it primitive, but previously all the religious texts, you are allowed to eat meat and there is a small asterisk. So for Hindus, the asterisk was Mamsa, you are giving a license or the goat can be offered to Mother Kali only on a moonless night or Islam has Halal, Judaism has kosher, Christianity has some days where you don't eat. So today's McDonald's culture has made everything upside down and said that whenever you want, you can have it.
It's like today, the world is following the McDonald's culture of breakfast menu available all day. Why? Because the breakfast menu increases the revenue by a hefty 6% which is too good and too lucrative to be overlooked. So that is the thing which you need to understand.
I will end with this thing. We have Dharma Artha Kama Moksha. I am giving it a different kind of a translation.
First is duty. Duty gives you economical gains. Gains help you fulfill your desires and in that kind of situation, you can ask for your liberation.
The Moksha here doesn't mean in a strict philosophical sense, but liberation from mental anxiety, liberation from physical disease. But the root is Dharma. Am I fulfilling my constitutional duty? Like today's first responders, today's nurses, paramedics, they know very well.
The moment somebody comes with breathlessness, we have to hook up on a ventilator and the whole target is somehow keep this person breathing. So, of course, outside there is, I mean in Britain, it's not there. But here duty means, what should I do to play my role? Who will tell me what my role is? I need to have some guidance.
So, Bhakti texts, especially Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, the Isopanishad can guide. And then when the gain comes, I have some right over that. I have my desires.
The Bhakti texts do not tell you that all desires are bad or money is the root of all evil. The lust for money is the root of all evil. Money is needed.
Like the communists, they try to abolish money altogether. But it ended up with such a heavy toll of the quality of human consciousness. And this will lead to the Moksha here.
Ecologically speaking, Moksha could be at least that what this scientist said that we may somehow survive, but the victim could be the quality of our life. So, that's my, rounding up. Any thoughts, Chetan, Sharan? Yeah.
Thank you for this. Dharma is quite important, as far as I can say. In today's world, we could talk about Dharma in terms of harmony.
That there is the one notion is that this world is like a jungle and through technology, we'll make it into a paradise. So, the other extra other notion is that actually technology has converted this world into a concrete jungle and we just need to go back from it and we live more naturally, we'll be more peaceful. The question comes up, were we created in paradise or will we create paradise? Well, actually it is neither.
It is not that the natural world is paradisiacal. There are predators from the microscopic to huge and it can be brutality in the natural world. So, nature in its pristine state is not necessarily paradisiacal and it is not that through technology we'll be able to create paradise, but we need to live in harmony so that we can pursue the purpose of the world.
The purpose of the world is spiritual evolution, to raise our consciousness to spiritual level and ultimately attain spiritual reality. So, for that, if we keep that purpose in mind, then we will use technology as much as is required for our comfortable and safe living, but we won't start exploiting using technology to arbitrarily and disproportionately exploit nature in the hope of creating a cocoon of comfort and safety in this world. That is not going to happen.
So, for enhancing environmental consciousness, religion and spirituality can be powerful tools, but when environmental consciousness itself becomes the supreme virtue, then religion is approached in a utilitarian way. Many of the environmental scientists may not believe in anything transcendental, but they think that infusing nature with the vision of the sacred will inspire people to take care of it. So, that is a utilitarian approach toward religion and spirituality, which makes environmental consciousness, supreme religion and everything a servant of that.
But we don't want that. We understand that spiritual growth is life's ultimate purpose and if we live to grow spiritually, then we will live harmoniously with the purpose of the world and we will be able to most sustainably live in an environmental friendly way. So, if we understand humans are ultimately meant to evolve spiritually.
If humans seek to gratify themselves materially, then we become eco-hazards. We become eco-destroyers. But if we live to grow spiritually, then we could say that environmental consciousness is a subset of spiritual consciousness.
But if environmental consciousness itself becomes the supreme consciousness, then spiritual consciousness becomes a subset and that too it becomes like a dispensable utilitarian subset. You have it good. If you don't have it, as long as your environmental consciousness, that's the important thing.
But environmental consciousness alone will not bring us any lasting fulfillment. It will not bring any enduring meaning to our life. Certainly, it can give us a higher meaning than the pursuit of sensual pleasures and the domination of nature for those pleasures.
But if you want enduring meaning, then we need to see environmental consciousness as a subset of spiritual consciousness. When we pursue spiritual growth, then naturally we will not exploit nature, but live as harmoniously and purposefully in our interaction with nature as is humanly possible. So humans are the purpose why nature exists so that the evolution of the soul can attain its zenith.
If we divorce nature from the total of reality and we think that nature is there just for our exploitation, that is unhealthy. But if we divorce humans from the total of reality and think that nature is all that matters and humans are just a pestilence over here, that is also a counterproductive view. But if you understand humans are here, nature is here, and divinity is the totality of reality that has both nature and humanity as subsets within it.
So the purpose of nature is to provide humanity an opportunity to arise toward divine consciousness. And within that holistic vision, if we pursue progress in terms of spiritual evolution, then the progress will be both eco-friendly and anthropo-friendly. Thank you.
Thank you. It was such a wonderful discussion. Allow me to just give a brief summary for our viewers.
We began with the discussion on the anthropocentric view, and our speakers here gave both historical viewpoint and also the viewpoint from our favorite Shakespeare, that how at one point knowledge became the power and it was used, the whole technological advancement was considered or used how we can utilize nature for more and more sensual pleasures. And then we saw the drawbacks of it. Of course, we are seeing the drawbacks even now, and people are touting the COVID outbreak, for instance, to be the result of one such exploitation.
So more and more over the centuries, there is a surge in environmental consciousness. And as Chetan Charan pointed out, that it has a tendency and he has observed it to be going the other side, especially some websites mentioning that humans should be first. And then our speakers mentioned that that won't help because having just focused on the nature and just focusing on only the environmental consciousness and religion, spirituality, humanity, morality to be just a small subset will not provide us any enduring meaning.
As it was said that provide us with some meaning, as Shamanand also mentioned that dharma, artha, kama, moksha, the ladder from the theological principles, it won't lead to that ultimate moksha, which is the ultimate, you can say, pedestal for the human spiritual evolution. So these two can be balanced using the principles from the yoga text, that human consciousness, the spiritual growth is the center, that's the superset, and a byproduct of it would be automatically an environmental consciousness. So the nature is provided, this facility is provided so that we be harmonious with the nature and then spiritually evolve ourselves, help us help others and avoid these two extremes.
So in my view that I had a wonderful food for thought today, this is what I thought is a nice way to balance. Any of you have to add anything before we call it a day on Saturday evening? Yes, okay. So thank you very much and thanks to all our viewers and we'd look forward to seeing you in our recording room soon.
Thank you, be safe and healthy. Thank you.