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ENVIRONMENT:
JAIN ECOLOGY
BY SATISH KUMAR
A paper presented to the conference on Jainism and Ecology at Harvard University, July 1998.
I LEARNT THE principles of Jain Ecology from my mother. She had never heard of the word "ecology". She would not see things in isolation, or by naming. But ecology was implicit in the way she lived.
I was then six years old and was educated by my mother. Again, as she was not conscious of the term "ecology" she was not conscious of the idea that she was "educating" me. But looking back I can say that perhaps my mother was the greatest and most important of my teachers.
We have to learn from nature, mother would say. We humans think that weare very clever but that is our arrogance. Look at the honey bee: she goes from flower to flower taking only small amounts of nectar from each flower; a flower has never complained that a honey bee came and took all of its nectar away.
What do we humans do? When we see something beautiful or useful in Nature we take it, take it, take it until it is depleted and exhausted. If we were to follow the way of the bee we would learn to take only a little and be contented.
When the honey bee has taken the nectar from the flower, what does the bee do with it? She transforms the nectar into sweet, delicious and nutritious honey which has great healing qualities. The greatest teacher of transformation is the honey bee.
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The worker bee works diligently and dedicatedly to show us that not only should we take little from Nature, but what we take should be transformed into something greater than what has been taken - into something which is replenishing. nourishing and nurturing to life.
The honey bee knows not how to create waste! The bee not only teaches us the way of transformation but also the way of pollination. We do not find the fulfilment of our full potential by ourselves, we depend on each other. Man depends on woman. I depend on you. I am grateful to you my son that you have come into the world through me. You needed my body to be born. I needed you so that I could be a mother. We humans depend on trees and rain and on the fruits of the earth. We need to work to enhance the relationship between us and all life. This is the meaning of pollination.
The great teacher and founder of the Jain religion for our time was Mahavir and he taught us to be like the honey bee. He went, begging for his food, from door to door and from household to household, always taking just a little. If someone offered him two pieces of bread he would accept only one. No householders could ever say that the begging monk had taken all their food, that they had been left hungry, that they had been forced to cook again. Mahavir would go once a day to a dozen doors to get enough for a single meal.
It was as though he had learnt the great virtue of restraint from the honey bee. Mahavir was like the bee, a great pollinator of wisdom.. He went alone, always walking
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barefoot, carrying no possessions, not even a begging bowl, and he brought stories and dreams, myths and meanings to peasants and princes, to poor and wealthy. Walking the earth was a most sacred act a form of continuous pilgrimage. There have been twenty-four Jain masters or tirthankaras in the history of Jain religion and they all walked up and down the land of India, covering thousands of miles. The tirthankaras, communing with and meditating upon nature, roamed through the wilderness with a deep sense of the wonder about the mystery of life. Countless mystical experiences in the natural world brought them enlightenment.
My mother used to say to me, "How do you think the tirthankaras became enlightened?" To which she would answer, "Because they lived in the wilderness sat under the trees and communed with nature. How is it that we do not have tirthankaras, enlightened beings, these days? Because we have cut ourselves off from nature and live in towns and cities. Even the monks no longer go to the mountains and sit under the trees." The Tirthankaras spent long periods meditating in caves in the mountains and all of them went to the mountains to die.
When Mahavir walked, he walked barefoot: treading lightly on the earth. He kept his eyes on the ground to avoid stepping on any living creature. And if by mistake he stepped on any form of life the harm would be less because he walked barefoot. Not injuring any life was his greatest concern and passion. Such was his reverence for life that he taught his disciples to refrain from eating any kind of meat. His concern for life went
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