World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 229

It should interest us immensely that this concept of love towards all souls by perceiving them as own soul continued to reflect in the writings and advocacies of the saints in India. Gandhi while emphasising love force quotes one such saint Goswami Tulsidas who is very well known for his epic poetry of Ramayana. Gandhi quotes the following couplet explaining the love force. Gandhi quotes this in Chapter 17 of Hind Swaraj.
Daya Dharamka mool hai, Deh mool Abhimaan, Tulsi daya na chhandiye, jab lag ghat mein pran".
Hence he believed in loving all human beings including the enemy. A Gandhian Scholar notes that Gandhi's primary concern was to revolutionise human life itself, to remake a man capable of cultivating Soul Force, by transforming his motivations and the modes of his nature so that he could meet the demands of life in human way. One could appeal to others only when one had nothing but love for all and not hatred in the inner side of the self.
I began with the observation that humankind is faced even today with the problem of physical well being today and tomorrow, our generations and the next innumerable generations. Second, we all want to lead that physical wellness life with peace and almost no conflicts. However, we know that the path we have tried to follow since the Industrial revolution has increasingly reduced our attachment to soil the mother earth and hence we have only tried to exploit her. Unfortunately, the earth is only the source, but also the sink. It is the same place where we are producing, using the resources and consuming. While we do so we are also creating waste (In the sense in which it is not useful to human specie and in many cases hazardous and lethal to some other species). This waste that is produced by the human beings also reduces the scope for regeneration of resources that we need to produce and consume. By abusing mother earth, by making it filthy we are not disrespecting our creator and our provider, but also we are putting our own existence into danger. We shifted from Soil economics (i.e. agrarian economics), where we used human and animal energy both of which were renewable and hence sustainable. We removed S from soil and landed into Oil Economics and we know that the trouble began.
Have we ever thought that for thousands of years of existence when mother earth supported us and in turn we supported her, we all lived sustainably? The conflicts were less; peace was inbuilt, because there wasn't much greed. With shift in energy source, the production and consumption leapt many times and so also the greed. And here we are; in less than 300 years of the great industrial revolution, we are in deep crisis. Scientists, technologists and the economists have influenced the politicians who are trying to sell us the idea that everything will be fine and we only need to innovate, innovate and innovate and work for low carbon emitting technologies and
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