The earth has spoken again

The earth has felt all of these things owing to our modern destructive living. However it cannot speak to tell us this. It can only quiver in agony. When it does, we call it an earthquake and we die

By Surya Vishwa

From below the foundations of the high-rise buildings we have built on its spine, despite the high-tech know-how we have wallowed upon distorting the natural earth-intelligence, regardless of us priding ourselves that we can force it to feed us via our scientific poison, the Earth has had its say. And we are quaking in our boots. 

There is death, shock, mayhem and sorrow across the world as the death toll surpasses 20,000 in Turkey and Syria in the earthquake that is called the worst natural disaster of the century. The extent to which such disasters are manmade or natural are subject to conjecture. 

Death. Shock. Mayhem. Sorrow. We know we feel these things after such a tragedy because we can speak and say so. The earth has felt all of these things owing to our modern destructive living. However it cannot speak to tell us this. It can only quiver in agony. When it does, we call it an earthquake and we die. We bury the dead, read a few newspapers about such news, and then move on. Building more brick buildings and ruining the earth dispassionately and carrying on with our modern trappings. 

We have for decades communicated our disregard for its wellbeing by throttling the earth with our menacing inventions – plastic, insecticide, and fumes – to name a few. We have dug into its bowels to provide us electricity, ignoring the bounty of the sun overhead. We have inundated the earth with chemicals to force it to produce food, ignoring the encyclopaedic knowledge our tribes and elders have on the earth based expertise through which we could secure our wellbeing.

Yet, just to get from one place to another, we have choked the earth with the fumes of our petty and speedy comfort as we speed up the smuggling out of the future of our children. 

We have robbed the other children of the earth, the birds, bees, insects, animals and reptiles of their habitat. 

In our arrogant stupor we have thus communicated to the earth that it is our slave and that we humans are the most superior and we have forced it to bear up our horror. We have seen its garments, the trees merely as ‘timber.’ We have replaced the concept of contentment with ‘development’ without even understanding what this term means. We have come to believe that living in a mud house is ‘undeveloped’ and living in a brick made house, in debt for every brick and the things to put in it, was ‘developed.’ It could be argued that Sri Lanka has got itself into this current infamous international pauper status by pursuing a ‘development’ it was clueless about – a development that had nothing to do with the heritage of its ancient civilisation that prided itself upon an earth-water secure equitable and authentic Buddhistic wellbeing of all creatures.  

Yet we consider ourselves ‘nature friendly’ in our development goals because we parrot out the term ‘sustainability’ because it is supposed to be an internationally ‘accepted’ policy but which remains a farce as we can see right across the world. Even though modern man may convince himself of his brand of ‘sustainability’ the earth dismisses as it digs our reciprocal grave for us.    By seeing the earth and its produce from the greedy mercenary lens of a predator, we have not given heed as the earth cried out repeatedly the only way it knows how; through landslides, tsunamis, tornados, cyclones, irregular rains and an abnormally persistently wrathfully burning sun, bitter cold. We blithely called it ‘climate change’ and we organise grand conferences across the world downing gallons of plastic water, one time plastic and burning up coal based energy. 

We have for decades communicated our disregard for its wellbeing by throttling the earth with our menacing inventions – plastic, insecticide, and fumes – to name a few. We have dug into its bowels to provide us electricity, ignoring the bounty of the sun overhead. We have inundated the earth with chemicals to force it to produce food, ignoring the encyclopaedic knowledge our tribes and elders have on the earth based expertise through which we could secure our wellbeing

Were humans always like this? The answer is no. We once worshipped this earth. That is before we started killing, hating and abusing each other in the name of religion. There was a time when the earth and all that lived in it encompassed our religion. The ancient medicines such as Ayurveda, Sinhala Wedakama and Siddha were arrived at from this communion with nature as the ancients attuned their mind to the consciousness of the universe and found out subtle knowledge that modern science cannot fathom. For example how two branches of the same tree would have differing energies that would treat a physique differently or how to find exactly which reptile had bitten a patient even without the patient being able to tell it, or how to summon a reptile to withdraw its venom from a patient declared as dead. All of the earth and all of its creatures existed forming one network of understanding and empathy. 

The farmer would keep a share for the creatures of the wild, the elephants would be provided with water and no one would tamper with their territory. As a corresponding gesture the elephant would keep to its own home and not encroach the homes of humans. If at all one wandered away to the living quarters of man then man would know what words and tone to use (known as elephant  mantras) to communicate with such an elephant, even one rampaging with a very bad mood. The Gurukula education system would teach all these things as it would the different plants and herbs that would ward off different insects that are attracted to diverse crops. It would teach about identifying the natural water veins of the earth – that criss-cross across its territories. 

The agriculture carried out in the ancient world was in a combination with the wild. Today few who want to instil some sanity to agriculture to prevent large expanses of trees being cleared away just to grow a few vegetables, resort to forest farming where both the earth, other creatures and humans are fed. Ancient agriculture of almost all traditions of the world followed the dictums of nature and did not fight it. It followed the cycles of the moon and there were different times for cultivating different plants. 

In Sri Lanka it was referred to as astrological farming and in universities such as those in Netherlands it is taught under the category of bio dynamic farming. This is the type of farming in which the earth was held in the esteem and worshiped in the process to obtain food and where no artificial succour or prod was needed. The Hindu religion and earliest forms of Buddhist tradition had woven its philosophies into the vast realm of earth-traditions. 

Nevertheless modern science scoffs at these bodies of knowledge and they do not get taught in our classrooms.

The people who still bear a semblance of the ancient values and knowledge in respect to the earth are those who we now call the aborigines, such as our Veddha community. They communicated with all living beings and they had ethics for taking the life of another creature when compelled to kill animals for food. 

Across the world we have ruined their lifestyle, ridiculed their values and forced them to adopt the current religions and dress codes. The time when ancient tribes conversed with the earth, sky, sun and moon and knew when the rain would come and how the drought was continuing and what should be done to appease it is lost. Today in the world of knowledge gathered in sterile brick made buildings through monotonous information and memorization, it is considered a laughing matter to say that one communicates with the earth or that one worships the sun. 

The current natural disasters the world over tells us that we must dispense with our arrogance and admit that we do not know. That we do not know the vast secrets that this earth holds. We must hence retrace our respect to the ancient people in the form of our aboriginal communities, the sages and those who may stand out like a sore thumb because they ride against the tide of modernity or ‘development.’ We should seek out their knowledge. We should seek out the ancient knowledge of our aborigines and not what we forced upon them in our modern schools. 

The Kogi, the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia warned the world twice, in the 1980s and two decades later on the plight of man if he continues to abuse the earth through haphazard constructions and felling of forests.  

Addressing modern man as ‘younger brother,’ the Kogi told Alan Ereira as featured in the 2012 documentary, titled ‘Aluna’ that modern man’s increasing violence to other humans and the earth will result in more nature based disasters and illness. 

“They say we mutilate the world because we do not remember the great mother,” says Ereira quoting the Kogi in the feature film released as a sequel to the first one made in 1989. “Unless we do something, the world is coming to an end,” he continued in the documentary in 1988 as a senior Kogi said as follows:

“The earth is destroyed so much. But he (modern man) sees? No. Understand? No. The earth is a living body. It has veins and blood. Damaging certain places, is like cutting off a limb. It damages the whole body.” 

Well known author, Daya Dissanayake, writing in the Harmony page some time back recalled that in the earliest time of man the earth was considered a sacred goddess because then, as is now whatever we need to survive, the earth provides us. 

“The Great Mother was the Mother of all life. Human beings would have been totally non-violent, as they would have gathered their fruits and vegetables without hurting any living creature,” Dissanayake wrote recalling the worship of the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars, rain and the rivers, the trees and the mountains. 

Dissanayake pointed out that where modern man has gone wrong is creating the foundations of life on the belief that the universe is there to serve man. This attitude is polar opposite to that of ancient man which created a life pattern out of the belief that humans are there to serve the earth and reciprocate with protecting with gratitude for all that the earth provides. No tree, branch, twig, leaf or fruit was obtained without asking permission, utmost respect and the giving of thanks. It was believed that each tree was a living being with a ‘spirit’ of its own and housing deities of the unseen world. These kind of belief today would be scorned but at the same time there are enough phenomena of the unseen world connected with such beliefs that have affected humans negatively or positively. There are narrations of certain trees associated with deity (devas) of the unseen world, especially as per Buddhist and Hindu traditions, being vengeful if it is hurt by an untoward human action.

As we move forward from the disaster in Turkey and Syria let us remember some of the simplest things that we could do:

1.Throw seeds of fruits by the wayside as we travel in rural areas.

2.Collect scraps of paper and plastic that we find thrown away into the wild. 

3.Seek out entrepreneurship associated with recycling plastic and such non bio degradable items and promote such entrepreneurship.

4.Commence nature saving entrepreneurship even in a minor way.

5.Grow plants by conserving throw away seeds. Gift plants. Talk about plant growing whenever tempted to gossip.

6.Educate children on how to treat the earth right. Tell them that if there is no earth that we are homeless. Tell them to read about how ancestors looked after our earth before reading about how we sent men to the moon. 

7.Find out information about the animal and insect world and educate yourself and then educate your children.

8.Walk or take the bus as it is very earth unfriendly and unnecessarily expensive to drive around just by yourself. If you like to feel rich and prosperous purchase couple of trees such as Cadju, Jackfruit and Laulu. These will indeed give you a luxurious diet when it bears fruit. Every time you take the bus buy young plants of trees that will give you an abundant forest. Even if you do not have the garden space buy it and gift it to someone who has. Such acts are remembered. 

9.Teach your children that the greatest scientist of this planet is the earth itself. Teach your children to spend time with this scientist and learn from it.