Book Title: Makaranda Madhukar Anand Mahendale Festshrift
Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
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Ecological Awareness in Indian Tradition
3. Did the theory of retribution (Karmavipäka) gain a very strong foothold in India because it was the only panacea for this structure?
4. Is it, as the great philosopher J. Krishnamurti asked-is the mind in India being caught and carried away by the materialistic wave? The wave is threatening the Western World, expressing itself through technology, materialism, nationalism. The Western mind is moving in the direction of the outer and it dominates the world. So is India losing something that was there ?'
5. What is in store for us? Mutation or metamorphosis? Or is complete destruction waiting to pounce on us-the homo sapiens?
To sum up :
Science has been more a problem-monger than a problem-solver. It has created and complicated more problems, than it has solved. So we cannot hope to find any solution for the present crisis in the progress of science. We have to seek solution elsewhere.
Religion in the traditional sense also will bring no solution as with all its dogma and ritual it has become outdated. So what is essential is a truly religious feeling, an inculcation of ethical values that make a clearcut distinction between need and greed as also deep feeling of reverence, love, sanctity and responsibility towards Nature. Ancient man had a close and live relationship with nature, which he kept alive through his myths, rites etc. Now in a complex society like ours every man, every scientist has to find out and reinterpret his own relationship with nature. To rediscover this is to have a true ecological awareness. For that, education at the individual level is the only solution, though it is a very slow meandering process. But it is as essential as it is difficult. In this great struggle of ours, no sacrifice is too great, no effort too small.
