How to heal Mother Earth from ourselves

By Suryamithra Vishwa

Last week, going to a small boutique in the outskirts of Kandy, which had local fruits, vegetables and many varieties of fresh leaves ideal for the daily ‘mallung’, I unfolded my large cloth bag and few pre-used plastic bags, paper, etc., I had stuffed into it for carrying away what I bought this time around. I was amazed to hear from the gentleman running the shop that I was about the 10th person in the past few COVID-19 curfew release days who had bought their own bags.

I had for years given up preaching to plastic-addicted shopkeepers, even the most rural-based ones, who grab for that menacing plastic bag for even few pieces of ‘inguru’ and dared not open my mouth to fellow buyers around me who instantly clutch at that plastic virus bag, sometimes quite aggressively. But to hear now that around 10 people before me had bought their own bags made me optimistic, that in every disaster, there may be a resurgence of something introspective, wise, kind and meaningful. 

Hence this coronavirus, of ambiguous origin, which has killed off many humans, can have some silver lining; it can teach the rest of us who are alive, not to be a living virus to the earth and continue to endanger the soil, water and all creatures of this one home of ours. About two weeks ago Sarath Perera, a bee conservator in Waaduwa wrote in this page on how the coronavirus may not be as fatal as what would happen if the remaining 40% of the bee population in Sri Lanka were to become extinct. All creatures, especially those such as the bees, or frogs can exist only when nature is in its purest, non-contaminated forms as meant to be. 

This is the same with humans. We are designed to function to our optimum when we live entwined with the natural world around us. This immersion can affect our well-being ranging from our mental, physical and emotional health. But we are not aware of this. We are not aware because we are not mindful. What we consider as health is mostly the gulping of vitamins, tonic or eating processed food. 

Just consider how we live a life of non-awareness or non-mindfulness. We say we are a Buddhist country but we have as a nation done away with mindfulness in our actions; a quality central to the mind-science taught by the Buddha, the enlightened one. If we are a mindful country, we will not have the many ills that we are facing today. Above all we will not have plastic inundating our Mahaweli River and every possible nook and corner. 

If we were mindful, we will not have beheaded our natural habitat, including our forests, to set up large concrete monstrosities that not house us but make us get lost and in a perpetual quarantine from our other family members. If we were mindful, we would not plant all kinds of useless foreign plants while forgetting about our medicinal flowers, herbs, trees and native seeds, and now reaping our foolishness by having to import basic herbs from other countries. 

If we were mindful as a nation, we would not allow our rural farmers to be weedicide, pesticide and chemical fertiliser addicts while at the same time pontificating about the economy and what state it is in. If we were mindful as a nation neither would we allow our farmers to be exploited, to be poor and miserable to the extent that they commit suicide and others vowing never to allow their children to be farmers.

No, we have been anything but mindful as a people. But let us change now. Our life is short. We rent this earth for a fraction of awhile in the great oceans of time that have swept away before us and will sweep us away and our children. Let us not accrue the karma of destruction before we end this lease here. Let us pay the debt of life by living meaningfully, and productively, for ourselves and all living beings. Let us attempt true mindfulness in all we do, beginning at this Vesak season.