Nature has been exploited by man for thousands years. For million years, they are destroying the forests, polluting the rivers and air, and killing animals for pleasure and food. And so when one asks, what’s your relationship with nature? Is it merely exploitation that you are interested in? That is digging coal, getting gold out of the earth, finding diamonds and cutting down trees to build houses.
Is that all your relationship with nature? If you have no relationship with nature, have you any relationship with your wife, with your husband, with your neighbour? Have you any relationship at all? Have you enquired into that? Isn’t that part of religion to find out what is a true relationship? Let’s enquire what a relationship is.
To be related to another. Not only with nature, with all the beauty of the earth, but also what is a relationship — Have you ever asked this question? When you say, ‘Yes, she is my wife’, or my husband or my girlfriend — what does it mean to be related? How can there be a relationship with another, however intimate or not, when each one of us is pursuing his own way? Right? The husband goes to the office — god! — aren’t you all familiar with all this? He goes to the office from nine to five — working, sweating, being bullied, insulted, adding up figures or being bureaucratic, or ambitious, seeking more money, higher position, concerned with his own activity — aren’t you doing that? No? And the wife either is cooking, bearing children, or goes to an office too.
So husband and the wife are running on parallel lines — perhaps they meet in bed — don’t be shocked — or occasionally or daily quarrel, nagging, bullying each other, saying, she is my wife, my husband, you mustn’t look at anybody else, jealousy. This is your life.
So where is your relationship with your wife when each one is pursuing his own line of thought and ambition and desires? In that is there any love? Is there love in life? If there is no love there is no religion. You may go to the temple three times a day, if you are a Muslim pray five times a day, and worship all kinds of silly gods, but if there is no love, life has no meaning.