If you hurt nature, you are hurting yourself

KOCHI: What is nature? There is a great deal of talk about and endeavours to protect nature, the animals and the birds, to clean the polluted rivers, the lakes, the green fields and so on. Nature is not put together by thought, as religion and belief are. Nature is the tiger, that extraordinary animal with its energy and a great sense of power. Nature is the river, not a particular river, whether the Ganges, the Thames or the Mississippi. Nature is all those snow-clad mountains with dark blue valleys and ranges of hills meeting the seas.

One must have a feeling for all this and not destroy it, not kill for one’s pleasure, not kill animals for food. We do kill the vegetables that we eat, but one must draw the line somewhere. If you do not eat vegetables, then how will you live? One must, therefore, discern intelligently. Can you have a feeling for a tree, look at it, see the beauty of it and listen to the sound it makes? Can you be sensitive to the little plant, to the little weed, to the creeper that is growing up the wall and to the light on the leaves and the many shadows? You must be aware of all this and have that sense of communion with nature around you. The next-door garden may be unkempt, crowded with weeds, but look at the flower in it, and feel that you are part of all that, part of all living things. If you hurt nature you are hurting yourself.

One knows that all this has been said before in different ways, but we don’t seem to pay much attention. Is it that we are so caught up in our network of problems, our desires, our urges of pleasure and pain that we never look around, never watch the moon? Watch with all your eyes and ears, your sense of smell. Watch. Look as though you are looking for the first time. If you can do that, you are seeing the tree, the bush, the blade of grass for the first time. There is an extraordinary feeling about that, like the wonder, the strangeness, the miracle of a fresh morning that has never been before, never will be again.