Hinduism & the sacred environment
To the outsider, it may seem that Hindus worship ‘everything’, including natures - trees, the planet earth, the sun etc. To what extent is this true, and what are the reasons in the framework of Hindu philosophy? All this and more is answered in this guest column by David Frawley.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:06 am
i agree totally with the article .. . but I would like to add one mroe thing. . . rituals are extremely important because te bring spiritual power to a place . .. but they are not enough . . . with our actvitivities we scarr the earth . . . how can we affirm through a ritual that we love it and then abuse its very essence creating poison ugliness and disharmony?
Love is achieved through devotion and sheer hurling of inner spiritual energy . . . but it can also require a conduit . . . concrete action in this surrounding world. . . we worry aboutt feeding the poor . . . about taking care of children. . . . but let us also worry about buying land that hs been scarred . . .healing it . .. give it back to nature and make it beautiful and holy once again.
Without thethought of profit but as a gift to nature itself. for we take to much and give too little.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:21 am
OM
This is an excellent article!! How can I get copies to distribute to students and friends?
May 31st, 2007 at 8:40 am
yes we are the oldest religion and the only major religion to give such honour and respect to natural earth. vedas gives prayer to sun , moon, sky, and earth. Fire is regarded with reverance and juwalla deva is fire goddess. vayu is wind God, surya dev is sun God.
There are gods for every element of earth and we worship respect and honour all these elements. Hinduism is by far the most sophisticated religion when it comes to astrology, ecology and the environment. planets , plants and our natural earth were mentioned 3,000 years before christ. the solarsystemis expalined in vedas and gita , scientists are still learning new planets even today.
‘Om’ is every element , vibration , light , atma, end , beginning and all life on earth. mantras are cleansing agents for the soul and the environment. we must not kill - ecologically this is better, we pay homage to plant minerals and even atoms - rooh. Tell me a religion that does this?
The worship of rivers hills and mountains is the best way to appreciate our natural world, others are jealous of this relationship or can’t understand it and continue to be mystified ………Christians stand back in amazement as hindus dip in their millions into rivers on Kumbh mela…..they are in awe of this relationship we have with our natural world!!!!!!!
jai Dharti mai ki jai
May 31st, 2007 at 10:52 am
Thank you for this factual knowledge on environment. Now the information needs to go out of what and how we can respect and save our earth from pollution and climate change leading to distruction of our ecosystem.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:52 pm
fantastic article.
thank you sir.
i hope the christian evengilists can read this article. i hope to distribute many.
thank you hindu voice.
May 31st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
This is an admirable excellent article which shows Author”s deep knowledge of Hinduism.
Hope we shall have many more such articles in future to enlighten us.
thanks
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:47 am
this is really a beautiful article and im glad someone chose to write about it.
the opinion that christians have on nature can be summed with one quote by an infamous american political “pundit” named Ann Coulter. Here is what she said…
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
There you have it. HOWEVER, we as Hindus are not doing enough to combat pollution of Ganges, depletion of our forests, and the extinction of our animals. Sad fact is that Hindus aren’t following Hinduism (respecting nature) at all.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Excellent article and such beautiful pictures–i keep looking at them again and again.
Best wishes
_CS
June 12th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Yes; Hindus are not following Hinduism. It is so because they have been de-Hinduised by the bug of Secularism and Westernization. But, it would be more appropriate if we blamed the government, instead, for all those things and asked why it is not doing enough? It is a default on the part of the government, city councils and corporations that millions of litres of highly polluted sewage of the towns is being pushed into the rivers every hour. Right close to Haridwar a Public Sector Plant built and run by the Indian Government for the manufacture of Penicillin and Streptomycin is throwing a stupendous amount of waste and pollutants into the sacred Mother Ganges every day – and, mind you, the government is secular; and not Hindu.
Why should they be allowed to be poured into the rivers, one fails to understand? It is not done here in UK nor in any other ‘advanced’ country.
The deforestation is also being carried out by the government, and not individuals. Green lands are being acquired under the continuing British legacy of Land Acquisition Act and given over to builders for building houses or to influencial industrialists for expanding their industrial empires.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:28 am
The above comment confuses me.
As I understand it, the comment begins by saying that the reason Hindus today do not respect the environment is because we have been led astray by the West. It then says that actually, Hindus do all kinds of bad things to the environment that the West do not do. And finally, it ends by saying that many of the evils that Hindus bring upon the environment are the result of our being made evil by the West. Oh, and of course, to add to the confusion over whether or not the West is to blame for all the world’s evils, no, actually, it is the - of course, that great description that can say so much and yet so little, “secular” - government that is to blame.
So for my own clarification, I wonder if I could ask a few questions:
1. Who is corrupting who exactly?
2. So are the Hindus bad now or is the West the evil one?
3. If the West has so successfully ‘de-Hinduised’ Hindus, is that a comment on: (a) the inherent weaknesses of Hindus and/or Hinduism; (b) the evident worthlessness of Indian society that allows a colonial ‘legacy’ to rule its nation so forcefully even after 60 years; or (c) both?
4. Where exactly in all this talk of ‘de-Hinduising’, ‘continuing […] legacy’ and third party ‘blame’ (in this case the Government - how convenient..) does personal responsibility fit in?
June 15th, 2007 at 9:09 am
“There you have it. HOWEVER, we as Hindus are not doing enough to combat pollution of Ganges, depletion of our forests, and the extinction of our animals. Sad fact is that Hindus aren’t following Hinduism (respecting nature) at all”.
Navin Bhai, my comments were with reference to the above paragraph in Vij Bhai’s posting. The words: “But, it would be more appropriate if we blamed the government, instead, for all those things…” were with reference to ‘pollution of Ganges, depletion of our forests, and the extinction of our animals’ – and not to ‘the bug of Secularism and Westernization’. Perhaps, I should have qualified the phrase ‘these’, and also put the matter in a different paragraph. It was my flaw and I do apologise.
The bug of Secularism has certainly made an average Hindu de-Hinduised. This has inculcated in him a habit to shun the very word Hindu and join in anti-Hindu tirades of the adversaries. The other one of Westernization has disposed him not only to discard the traditional Hindu practices, ways of life and belief but also to actively oppose them.
Regards.