Aparigraha the Humane Solution

Author(s): Kamla Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 57

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION-RISK TO HUMAN SURVIVAL 49
Fortunately, environmental concern has a secular colour so far, and both religious and non-religious people are responding to environmental problems. If however, the ecological issue is viewed from a spiritualistic angle, it can be more appealing and can reach the masses. People should be made to understand that the rape of nature should be resisted with spiritual strength and our spirituality should not permit us to exploit nature for our self-chosen purposes. Selfish patterns of life revolving only around our egos need to be abjured once and for all. Egoism in the sense of short-lived selfishness pertaining to this life only, has to be replaced by altruism not only in the sense of the greatest number of people' but also in the sense of the greatest number of years' but “without spiritual regeneration and global political unification man's greed released from traditional restraint of law, custom and conscience would result in suicide of homosapiens through his murder of mother earth”. (Man and Mother-Earth, Arnold Toynbee).
When man felt weak and helpless he attributed divinity to nature and he worshipped it, and this prevented him from assaulting it. When the view that nature is no more an object of worship but an object of study got popularised the craving and selfishness of humanity led to irresponsible attitude and indiscriminate exploitation of it. Viewing nature as a mass of raw material to be exploited is unjust both to man and nature, and denying God as the creator could also be a reason of deepening ecological crisis. God and nature have been substituted by our selfseeking desires, and the temptation to use it more and more for our selfish ends has become more and more predominant.
The task of maintaining environmental balance requires a revival of spirituality. Our perspective has to change since whatever our achievements in various forms, we know we are far from being happy. The mental state of happiness is one of the most difficult things to be understood or defined. It may come to us when we do not expect it. Its complexity cannot be better explained than in a passage from J.S. Mill's autobiography where he says, 'In this state of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself, “suppose all your projects in life were realised, that all the changes in institutions and opinions which