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By Daya Dissanayake/DailyFT-Harmony Page
A well-balanced ecosystem continued for millennia until we developed agri-destruction in the name of agri-culture. Even in Sinhala we use the term Krushikarma. It is really our bad karma that made our ancestors develop Krushi karma.
Man’s first victims were the plant life. The first acts of destruction were the clearing of vegetation to plant a few specific trees, thus destroying the delicate balance of nature and developing into vast land areas limited to monoculture, of rice, wheat, tea, rubber, and worst of all oil palm and tobacco. Monoculture not only destroys the balance, but makes people keep on adding agro-poisons, because the natural nutrients in the soil get continuously depleted and there is no biological control of pests and other invasive species, causing slow genocide and matricide.
Water is sacred. As Mother Earth gave us life, water is our life blood. Over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. 50-65% of the human body is water. Without water we cannot survive.
Like everything in life today, religious belief too have been commodified. Bottled Gangotri Gangajal is now available at Amazon. We have to collect the water at Gangotri, because downriver the water is no longer sacred. It is polluted and defiled, by us. 260 million litres per day of industrial sewage is added to the Gangajal on her way down to Gangasagari. We worship the most sacred river with sewage, garbage, industrial and agricultural chemicals which are all poisonous and carcinogenic.
In Sri Lanka we have Jalaya for water, and Pán for cleaned, filtered or blessed water used in religious practices. That is probably because Jalaya is no longer pure. When we were young we had no problem drinking water from a river, a well or a pond. Today we insist on bottled water, claimed to be purified and free of pollutants. We add the pollutants and all the poisons to the natural water resources, and then try to purify it again for our consumption. We bathe our vegetables in poisonous agro-chemicals, and then at the supermarket we buy these vegetables along with more chemicals to wash away the other chemicals
In Sri Lanka we have Jalaya for water, and Pán for cleaned, filtered or blessed water used in religious practices. That is probably because Jalaya is no longer pure. When we were young we had no problem drinking water from a river, a well or a pond. Today we insist on bottled water, claimed to be purified and free of pollutants. We add the pollutants and all the poisons to the natural water resources, and then try to purify it again for our consumption. We bathe our vegetables in poisonous agro-chemicals, and then at the supermarket we buy these vegetables along with more chemicals to wash away the other chemicals.
The water flowing down a river does not discriminate between man and animal, or among men of different races, creeds or castes. The light from the sun falls down on all of us. None of us can claim the sun belongs to us, and not to other people on earth. Then there would not be any necessity to fight each other for the possession of our sacred object. There would not be any necessity to convert a person from one form of worship to another.
Sripada is mentioned in our ancient chronicles. “When the teacher, compassionate to the whole world, had preached the doctrine there, he rose, the master, and left the traces of his footsteps plain to sight on Sumanakuta.1” Sripada is also known as Samanthakuta, believed to be the abode of God Saman, who was venerated by the Yaksha. The 6th cent. Tamil poem Manimakalai refers to the footprint of the Buddha at Sripada.
Buddha’s footprint is believed to have been left in every country He had visited, and such places began to be places of worship. In Sri Lanka the most famous and officially accepted is the Sripada Mountain. In Thailand it is believed to be at Wat Phra Phutthabat in Saraburi.
South Indian Hindus believe the footprint is Sivapadam. Faxien is said to have visited Sripada. First Western reference is by Ptolemy, then Marco Polo. It is also known as Kaladi Malai, the mountain of the footprint. Giovanni de Marignolli had climbed Sripada in the 14th century and he had said, “The Buddhist monks on the mountain and elsewhere are very holy, though they have not the faith… they welcomed me into their monasteries and treated me as one of their own.”
Shaikh Abu Abdullah Khafif is claimed to be the first Muslim to have been to Sripada. People of the Muslim faith believe that Adam, when he was expelled from heaven, his foot first touched the earth at its loftiest point.
There are many records of Muslim pilgrims visiting Adam’s Peak, because they all believed that the footprint of Adam was on Sripada.
It was in the 12th century that the Sufi Saint Sheike Muhitadeen Abdul Qadir Jilani, had meditated for 12 years at Kuragala. Kuragala, in the central hills of Sri Lanka, near Balangoda in the Sabaragamuwa Province, has been considered a Holy Mountain, probably long before the dawn of established religions, and today by all faiths, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Islam. This is the most suitable sacred space on earth where all four religions could share and share alike in peace and harmony. Kuragala Mountain would bring a sense of awe to any visitor or even for permanent occupants of the caves, because of the magnificence of the location and the vista before their eyes.
The water flowing down a river does not discriminate between man and animal, or among men of different races, creeds or castes. The light from the sun falls down on all of us. None of us can claim the sun belongs to us, and not to other people on earth. Then there would not be any necessity to fight each other for the possession of our sacred object. There would not be any necessity to convert a person from one form of worship to another
Worship of a mountain sacred to all communities will save mankind from killing others for the love of god, while protecting our natural resources.
When we hold all nature as sacred and we respect her, we would never think of violating her. When we worship a tree, we would never think of cutting it down. When we worship a river and hold her sacred, we would never think of polluting her. We would not need to start campaigns to clean the Yamuna and the Godavari, if we do not pollute her. When we hold a mountain as sacred we would never think of destroying her forest cover and use the earth and the rock to earn filthy lucre.
We can learn from Inayat Khan, the founder of the Sufi order in the west. “Anyone who has some knowledge of mysticism and the lives of the mystics knows that what always attracts the mystic most is nature. Nature is his bread and wine; nature is his soul’s nourishment; nature inspires him, and gives him the solitude for which his soul continually longs…..Nature does not teach the glory of God; it need not teach this, as nature itself is the glory of God.”ii We can learn how to live in total harmony with nature, through our reading of Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Farid al-din Attar and others. I need not quote their poems because all of you are familiar with them. If we can be one with nature, then we become one with God, with Brahman or we have attained Nirvana.
Deep Ecology, promoted by Arne Naess, the ecosophist is also talking about this, but in a different way. Through deep ecology we learn to respect all diverse forms we find in nature. Which itself reminds us that nature, our stable ecosystem survives because of diversity.
One more reason we have to go back to nature worship, specially the worship of Mother Earth, is because it has now been accepted by many scientists, that Mother Earth is a living goddess, Gaia. When we look at Gaia as a living organism, and as a tiny planet in a multiverse, then man is probably like a single celled creature in the mighty ocean.
To save ourselves, to save all life on Mother Earth, and to save Mother Earth herself, we have to respect and worship nature, and that is one simple way to bring back peace and happiness to all of us.
To save ourselves, to save all life on Mother Earth, and to save Mother Earth herself, we have to respect and worship nature, and that is one simple way to bring back peace and happiness to all of us
(Continued from the last edition of the Harmony page.)
(The above was the part of a plenary paper presented by the writer, at the International Conference on Language, Literature and the Anthropocene, held at the Berhampur University, India, in December 2019.)
(The writer is an award-winning bilingual Sri Lankan novelist, poet and blogger. His work spans a critical study of King Ashoka, nine novels in English, six novels in Sinhala and a collection of poems, and numerous articles in newspapers, journals and magazines. He is the author of the first e-novel in Asia, ‘The Saadhu Testament’ (1998), and the first e-novel in Sinhala, ‘Vessan Novu Wedun’ (2003). He is the only Sri Lankan writer to receive the Sri Lankan State Literary Award for the best English novel thrice and was awarded the SAARC Literary Award in 2013. He considers himself a student of history and is currently working on a series of writings on the worship of trees, mountains and rivers.)
