In the U.S. our debt is owed to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Brits, and our next-door-neighbors. Our debt is big enough so that if we put dollar bills end to end, they could reach to the moon and back about three thousand times.
This though is not in any way the full extent our debt. As humans, we owe a debt to the planet earth for having harmed the forests, the oceans, the air, the animals, the plants, the mountains, the climate, and then so many of the peoples of the earth, indigenous peoples who are now long gone or, more or less, hanging on by a thread, who once had languages, art, histories, sacred places, and culture.
Our existence on the planet has not been a blessing to everyone else who lives here.
Over the past few months, we have watched escalating turmoil or transformation (depending on one’s perspective) afoot on the four corners of the earth, and this may end well or badly—or both – again, depending on which side of the fence we are on.
The state of our global pocket book is part of this wild ride.
Imagine for a moment that all economic activity has ground to a halt, then after a while, a short time or a long time, there will be no more rings of space debris encircling the earth, no more plastic trash clogging the oceans and the streets, no more slaughterhouses, no more research labs, no more pollution draining into streams and rivers, no more of the black rider of death who gallops across the earth doing away with all in his path.
What will there be then? No one knows. There may be great swathes of burned continents left behind in the wake of this rider of death. But maybe there will be flowers that emerge to dance in the meadows, striped fish that play among the river rocks, or chickens that once again can spread their wings in the jungle. Maybe.
So, as we watch the stock markets of world teetering across our television screen, if we catch flashes before our eyes of our diminishing lifestyle and the prospect of standing on a street corner, tin cup in hand, there is a reason not to be overcome with fear and doom, but to be joyful. A reason that we may not instantly welcome —a reason that we may find alarming in the night – but a reason all the same.
Because with the end of this skeletal rider will come release and freedom for the earth—for the cows, the deer, the turtles in the sea, for the eagles that would like to breathe pure air and fly through white clouds, for the dandelions that would like to peek out through the snow, for the moon that would like to shine bright in the clear night sky. And whether all these events take place on an earth reborn and re-awakened, or whether they happen on different worlds, in other dimensions, or in the landscapes of heaven, somewhere they will happen.
There is one option left yet to try—and that is an economy based on the restoration of the earth, rather than on trampling it under foot. And whether one wins or loses in this endeavor is not the question; as it says in the Hindu scriptures, one is not to be attached to the fruit of one’s actions. Walking on the path that gives life, rather than death, is the way to go.
Is it possible that people may play a part in a magical new beginning, may walk by the sea listening to the waves fall on the shore without envisioning recreating Miami Beach or live again in the forests with the birds and the animals, without harming the trees and without taking over more land than is their share?
One way or another, the consciousness that has worshipped the radiance of the tumbling waters, the shining sunlight, and the beings of the heavens will do so again—on one earth or another, on one level or another. Those who have hands will offer a drink to the thirsty fawn, and those who see the spirit world will give the gifts of peace and beauty and a link to the worlds of the stars.
In the meantime there is the debt that will be paid, the great cosmic ocean that will be churned again, the great unsettling of the world as we have known it, and the dismantling of the armies of iron riders that have plundered the earth.
Ravi & Anoushka Shankar – Ravi is probably the most famous sitar player in the world, according to his charitable foundation, “Nada Brahma — Sound is God.” He’s an extremely prolific composer, and plays his instrument in a soulful musical language that anyone can understand. He taught the art to his daughter, Anoushka, and she has become a brilliant composer and celebrity sitar player in her own right. Her playing has airy streams of smoke in it; his playing is more moist. Both of them are tremendous world ambassadors for the music of India, and they are both huge public advocates for ending cruelty to animals. Here they are: Click here.
Buffy Sainte-Marie – She was one of the first Native Americans to become a folk music star. Buffy Sainte-Marie is part of the Cree tribe (an Algonquin-speaking people who lived in the northern USA and Canada before Europeans arrived.) She was born on a reservation, and began writing songs and singing professionally in the early 1960s. She’s still an active musician today, and I still collect every new album she puts out. Her music has always been very political, her messages of peace teetering ironically on the edge of fury. Her style of voice has always been uncompromisingly Native American, with a traditional emphasis on raw, vocal power and a quaking vibrato: Click here.
Djur Djura – This artist is a folk hero to a lot of women. The lore is this: She was born in Algeria, but her family had been very disappointed to have a girl, and so she was raised by her grandmother. Later, the entire family moved to France, where Djura’s wonderful singing voice was discovered. But when she was offered a very prestigious job performing on a French television show, her father refused on her behalf, and began arranging her marriage. It wasn’t long before Djura ran away and eventually formed her own band. The band, Djur Djura has been performing since the 1970s. Djura usually mixes traditional Berber folk melodies with her own original lyrics. She sings with joy, but it’s an insistence on joy – a determination to be happy rather than just a natural inclination. Her lyrics emphasize the importance of liberating women all across the world. Click here.
Alan Dawa Dolma: Outside of China and Japan, this is still a very little-known artist. She’s a Tibetan Buddhist who was born and raised in Szechuan, China. She can sing in Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese.
Her career so far has mainly been as a pop star in Japan. But I like her best when she’s singing with simplicity . Because when she sings from her deepest, gentlest heart, she is really an artist – and her voice is a gift that should be given to the world as a showcase for her soul – something that should never be buried under danceable beats. Here she is: Click here.
Loreena McKennitt: I think she could be one of the most important composers of our time. It’s possible that 500 years from now, people will still be discussing her work, in a way they may not even yet be doing. She’s a Canadian, whose music is a tribute to the sounds of the British Isles (particularly Ireland), back where her ancestors probably lived before so many people left for the Americas. And even farther back than that – back to when the Celts ruled the islands.
I think it’s fair to say that she’s a genius. And that her music not only brings ancient Europe back to life, but that its lush layering whispers of western spirituality with a holiness unsurpassed. Here she is: Click here.
Yaruba Andabo: Once upon a time, a group of dock workers in Cuba got together after work to sing and dance. They were of African descent, and they were so talented, that they one day became Yaruba Andabo, a 17-person ensemble dedicated to keeping the songs and dances of West Africa alive. They knew these songs because the words had come on boats – packed in the memories of the slaves who arrived to Cuba from West Africa for hundreds of years.
Some of the songs have been “Cubanized” a bit over the centuries, but they are an historical treasure – as well as a spiritual one, as you can see in chants like “Yemaya”, dedicated to a gentle West African ocean goddess: Click here.
In some countries people burn cities, in others they stage revolutions, in some places there are civil wars, in some the government kills thousands of civilians, in others mobs loot stores. In a world of instability, only in India does someone inspire massive protests by threatening to fast to the death.
From a collection of facts about India, compiled several years ago by Sumit Singh…
Be Proud to be INDIAN
Quotes about India:
“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.” Albert Einstein
“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grandmother of tradition,” Mark Twain
“If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India,” French scholar, Romain Rolland
These facts were recently published in a German Magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA:
§ India has never invaded any country in her last 1,000 years of history.
§ India invented the Number system. Aryabhatta invented the zero.
§ The world’s first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects.
§ The University of Nalanda, built in the 4th century BC, was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
§ According to Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.
§ Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.
The art of navigation was born on the river Sindh 5,000 years ago. The very word “navigation” is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.
Budhayana first calculated the value of pi, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars last year (1999) officially stated that Budhayan’s works date to the 6th Century, which is long before the European mathematicians.
Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were first used by Sridharacharya in the 11th century.
The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106, whereas Indians used numbers as big as 1,053.
According to the Gemological Institute of America, up until 1896 India was the only source of diamonds to the world.
USA-based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdish Bose and not Marconi.
“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border,” Hu Shih (former Chinese Ambassador to the USA). If we don’t see even a glimpse of that great India in the India that we see today, it clearly means that we are not working up to our potential, and that if we do, we could once again be an ever shining and inspiring country setting a bright path for rest of the world to follow.
One of the roofs at the Qingyang Taoist Temple in Chengdu
By Elizabeth Doyle
Whispers of the Jade Emperor began during China’s Han Dynasty.
In Taoism, the gods may sometimes seem a little more like saints. They’re often historical figures who are thought to have become very powerful when they died. (I’m not sure whether all of them really lived or not. Some almost definitely did. Others may be legends.) It’s important in Taoism that the most powerful force in the universe, the Tao, is not anthropomorphic. It’s something that can’t be described. It’s what existed before, before, before – to infinity. So their anthropomorphic gods, to my understanding, are just great followers of the Tao who are thought to have become something spectacular when they passed.
The Jade Emperor would be at the top. (Although sometimes he’s placed below the Three Pure Ones.) He’s the distributor of justice. He rules over heaven, the underworld, and earth, distributing rewards and punishments via his elaborate court system, very much like court systems on earth. There’s something very culturally Chinese about the precision with which he operates. (In fact, he was a god in Chinese folklore even before he was embraced by the Taoists.) And on the surface, from an outsider’s perspective, there can seem to be something a little un-Taoist about him. Lao Tzu, Taoism’s founder, did not seem excited about superimposing iron-fisted rules onto the natural flow of life. His writings show him as a proponent of living softly and gently walking the path of the Tao.
Sign at the Hall of the Jade Emperor, Qingyang Temple
But upon closer inspection, there’s more Tao in the Jade Emperor than an outsider might think at first glance. He’s a vegetarian. (You can make offerings of meat to him – but only because he insists on being polite to guests – and he may have guests over sometimes who eat meat.) And in his real life, it’s thought that he was born to a great emperor and empress within China, and did himself inherit the throne. But soon, he left his throne in order to pursue the light of the Tao. He focused his life on good deeds toward all humans and animals. That’s why, after his death, he achieved immortality. Then, millions of years later, after his continuing good deeds as an Immortal, he became the Jade Emperor, who enforces the laws of the universe. All of our good and bad thoughts and actions are reported to him once a year.
Some believe that he’s in line to rise even higher someday – to become formlessness itself – that which cannot be described. And that the next god in line will then take his place.
The Jade Emperor is traditionally celebrated nine days after the Chinese New Year. That’s his birthday. Anyone who would like to make an offering might choose to do so on that day. Sugarcane and incense are both good, traditional offerings – though enormous temples in his honor are even better, and there are still some gorgeous ones in mainland China.
The paintings in the Lascaux Cave in the south of France, in the department of Dordogne, are believed to date back 17, 300 years. Inside the cave, in the Hall of the Bulls are many equines; among them paintings of aurochs, a species of cow now extinct, ancestor to the varieties of modern cows.
The painting of one of the bulls is 17 feet long and is the longest cave art animal anywhere. The paintings in the cave, because of the presence of visitors (the visitors’ breath has affected the air) have been damaged by fungi, and in 1983 a different cave was constructed for visitors with replicas of two of the cave halls.
The earliest cave paintings in Europe go back around 35,000 years.
Reverence for bulls was widespread in the ancient world – in Paleolithic times and on into Neolithic times – and up to today as well.
In the book of Exodus, in the Bible, is told the story of the Hebrews returning to the practice of worshiping the Golden Calf while Moses was up on the mountain collecting the ten commandments. Moses wasn’t pleased to see the image of the Golden Calf when he got back, and he smashed the ten commandments in anger when he saw it.
Still, worship of the bull cropped up again and again, both before and after the time of Moses.
The Babylonian god Marduk is called the Bull of Utu. In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, the heroes are often referred to as “bulls”.
An Indian calf
In Mesopotamian mythology, Gugalanna was the Bull of Heaven. The word “gu” meant bull and was of the same origin as the Sanskrit word ”go” or “gau” meaning “cow”. “Cow” comes from these earlier words. The bull Gugulanna was associated with the constellation Taurus (the Bull), which from 3,200 BC held the place where the Spring Equinox occurred in the northern hemisphere.
The myth tells us that the bull Gugulanna was killed by Gilgamesh (the Sumerian Noah). Gilgamesh was linked to the light of the sun, and when the streams of sunlight rose at the Spring Equinox, they overcame the starlight of the constellation of Gugulanna, which then became invisible, thus “killing” Gugulanna.
The bull, whose horns are shaped like a crescent moon, has been associated with the moon.
Bull-leaping in a Minoan fresco
When I visited the Minoan ruins in Crete in the summer of 1969, I recall looking at a stone block, one of many there with carved bulls’ horns, and noticing for the first time the unique importance of the bull to ancient cultures. The bulls’ horns were everywhere.
The aurochs, the ancestor of today’s cattle, both western and eastern, became extinct when the last of the aurochs, a female, died in 1627, in the Jaktorow Forest in Poland. Authorities at the Paleontologisk Museum, University of Oslo, believe that the aurocks first appeared in India two million years ago, and from there spread throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
It is thought that South Asian, including Indian, cattle descended from a sub-species of aurochs who lived at the edge of the Thar Desert which lies across Rajasthan and Pakistan. These Indian cows have a hump and have a very elegant, distinctive look.
Western cows do not have a hump and are known as taurine cattle. Aurochs were much larger than all modern cows; the males were black, and the females reddish.
A copy of a fifteenth century painting of an aurocks
Aurochs also spread to North Africa, and the cattle of the ancient Egyptians may have descended from them.
Throughout the centuries, the bull has been both worshipped and mistreated.
One might wonder whether the human race has a propensity for killing what it worships – from the sacred bull to the life and death of Jesus. To be fair, it may not only be humans who behave that way. Among all mammal species, males engage in battle with each other. And any male who seems to stand above the others becomes a target—to be feared or to be attacked in order to take his place. (Having the top place seems to be a pretty essential goal, which can supplant any inclination towards reverence or worship.) Females are not immune from an impulse towards violence, and they also attack when they are defending their young.
Throughout the ancient world the bull was worshipped as a divine being, yet today, one finds in various places extremely cruel rituals that seem designed for young men to prove their dominance over the bull. These ritual “games” seem to have degenerated over time into greater and greater levels of barbarism.
The cruelest of these are festivals put on by the Catholic Church, on feast days of saints, held in Mexico and Spain, in which the bulls are tortured and killed. There are also, of course, the bullfights in Spain, introduced here and there in other countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia. In the western U.S. there are rodeos, also cruel, also exported to other countries. There are attempts taking place now, to introduce rodeos into China.
The slaughter of bulls and cows for food happens all over the world, more in the U.S. than anywhere else, where around 33 million cattle are killed every year. Brazil and China are fast catching up. The pursuit of cattle for food is destroying the planet through climate change and destroying vast tracts of land, as well as native animals like the bison and the wild horse, thousands of whom are being killed by the U.S. government to make way for cattle grazing.
Worship of the bull has tended to devolve over time into torment of the bull.
In the Greek legend, the Minotaur, who is half-man, half-bull, dwells in a labyrinth, and is killed by the hero Theseus.
The Egyptian god Apis, (or Hape, which is closer to the original Egyptian word), was worshipped, and the bulls were mummified and interred in great underground complexes. It is assumed that they were killed.
Bulls and cows are very highly revered in India. I’ll only mention them briefly for now. The fascinating book “Sacred Animals of India” by Dr. Nanditha Krishna, has a great deal of information about them.
Nandi at the Brihadeshwara Temple, Tamil Nadu
In India, the bull Nandi is the beloved vehicle and gatekeeper for the God Shiva. In every Shiva temple throughout south India, there is a figure of the bull Nandi. Nandi is also the leading disciple of Shiva.
At the Brihadeswara Temple, Nandi is immense, majestic, and charming, with a very innocent, rather playful face. The devotee pays his or her respects to Nandi before going into the temple. Nandi is a much loved and revered figure, who would never be harmed.
In a strange contrast, however, there is also in south India, in Tamil Nadu, the cruel practice of jallikattu, in which crowds of young men torment and pursue bulls, often leading to injury to the bulls and to themselves in the process.
What begins as honor, worship, and devotion, can degenerate over the centuries into persecution and killing. Indeed, things tend to take that route.
These observations have taken a gloomy turn, but are not meant to be gloomy. The same fate is befalling all of nature—as we humans, who once worshipped the forests, the trees, and the divine beings who lived in them, have destroyed nearly the whole earth now to make way for ourselves. But of course we cannot live without the earth. Going to live in a colony on Mars or the moon doesn’t really seem like the best option—not for us, and certainly not for Mars and the moon.
Enlightening our fellow human beings and encouraging kindness to animals and to the planet is absolutely well worth doing. It may be the only thing well worth doing, and it will go a long way towards lessoning the immensity of the suffering of many people and many animals.
But as for affecting the fateful course of events and the downward-spiraling destiny of the earth, something else, an approach on a more cosmic scale, seems to be needed to turn the tide or to bring about a new tide—a tide that may go back to the beginning before the origin of cruelty.
A booming procession of flutes and drums marched down the central pathway of the sacred grove of Puthupet in Tamil Nadu, in southern India. Photographers ran along beside the procession, dignitaries followed the musicians, students gathered laughing and smiling on the sidelines, village people sat beside tables of wares, with children running helter-skelter, dogs in the background slept or scrounged for a snack, a truck was parked randomly on the pathway, its cab brilliantly decorated with painted blue birds. And over all, hung the branches of ancient trees. Lining the pathways leading off into the Puthupet sacred grove were more beautiful old trees, draped in thick vines, that, amazingly are a thousand years old.
So began The National Conference on Sacred Groves, this past spring — well, the full title is “The National Conference on Conservation of Sacred Groves to Protect Biodiversity,” held February 12, 13, and 14, in Tamil Nadu, India, and organized by CPREEC, the C.P. Ramaswamy Environmental Education Centre, based in Chennai (sometimes called Madras).
Inside the meeting hall, conference attendees gathered, including speakers who had traveled from all over India to talk about their scientific work studying, researching, and preserving, the sacred groves of India. A ritual lamp was lit by Shri R. Sundararaju, Director of the Tamil Nadu Forest Service, who has done a great deal to preserve the sacred groves.
Shri R. Sundararaju and Dr. Nanditha Krishna
Dr. Nanditha Krishna, Honorary Director of CPREEC, the organization hosting the conference, described how their work restoring sacred groves had come about.
They had discovered that it was simply “not enough to talk about the environment and to train teachers.” More was needed—a “micro-level example of a perfect environment.” So at CPREEC, they began a search for such an example, and they found it in the sacred groves of India. “In my opinion a sacred grove is a magical place,” Dr. Krishna said. CPREEC has restored 52 sacred groves in Tamil Nadu. “25 villages have asked us for technical help… This is replicable at the local level.”
They have documented 13,000 sacred groves, 702 in Tamil Nadu alone. “Nenmeli [another sacred grove that CPREEC restored] was a wasteland—50 acres are now covered in happy plants.” Jackals and porcupines have returned.
For restoration of a sacred grove to succeed, “local people must be interested and willing… We get to know about the local plants from the elders.”
“Sacred groves comprise parts of forests, and they are protected by local spiritual tradition….Often they are the last refuge of endemic species.”
With the rapid urbanization that has taken place over the last 100 years, much of these traditions of sacred groves have been destroyed. Trees have been felled for development; there has been widening of roads, and new roads have come up where once there were sacred groves. The object of the Conference is to look at sacred groves as national heritage sites.
“Without the spiritual aspect of our lives, we will just have more trees cut,” Dr. Krishna concluded. It is, however, more and more of a challenge to protect them as the population grows. The tradition of India is that every village had its sacred grove.
Shri C. Achalender Reddy, of the Indian Forest Service, Secretary, National Biodiversity Authority, followed, speaking on the theme that “spiritual tradition and science can go together…such traditions have preserved knowledge.” He talked about the sacred groves as repositories of genes and about the crucial importance of genes. “These gene pools in the form of sacred groves will play a major role in the coming years…Some species have been growing and have been preserved around temples.”
“It’s important that our children do not forget about their roots,” he added, “These are living laboratories for all our children to learn about nature.” He pointed out that, “legal backing is essential to preserve the sacred groves.”
Students invited to attend the Conference
Dr. P.S. Ramakrishnan, INSA (Indian National Science Academy) Honorary Senior Scientist, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, mentioned that he had grown up in a small village in south India. “There are over 10,000 sacred groves in this country…some are rapidly deteriorating…how much do we know about these sacred groves?” He continued, “Biologists and scientists need to do a good job…we need to learn lessons from these sacred groves.”
Shri R. Sundararaju, Indian Forest Service, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden, Forest Department, Government of Tamil Nadu, who had opened the ceremony by lighting the lamp, presented some very telling examples of the unique contribution of sacred groves. Very sadly, as many as 96% to 99% of the vultures in India have succumbed to a drug that was being used to treat cattle, a drug that has now been banned.
One ingredient that has helped the vultures has been water that has been found only in certain seeds in some sacred groves. These kinds of discoveries can be essential for the recovery of species. Maintaining the forests of sacred groves also protects land from insect imbalances. He stressed that the Forest Service works for the people, and their job is to protect the environment for the people. “We need to protect sacred groves as the repository of species, so that they are not lost forever.”
The ways that preserving the environment are of benefit to people need to be conveyed to the public, he said. “If this is known, there will be more support for the sacred groves.” He also called for more studies of human/wildlife conflicts, which can be a major issue in India, affecting many people’s daily lives.
As the trees in the background listened and the dogs slept, this inspiring beginning of the Sacred Groves Conference came to the close of the first day.
The two days to follow were to be technical sessions (technical, but fascinating all the same) to take place back in Chennai at the C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar Foundation.
Photos: Sharon St Joan,
Top photo: Drum and flute procession at Puthupet
Second photo: Shri R. Sundararaju, Dr. Nanditha Krishna
Third photo: Some of the students who were invited
