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Spiritual Ecology: An Inclusivist Understanding

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The term “spiritual ecology” refers to the inherent relationship between spirituality and environment. Scientific and academic study of spiritual ecology is being developed by various universities and research institutions around the world.

For instance, the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, founded in 2006, was dedicated to multidisciplinary research on spiritual ecology. It is engaged in critical enquiry into the relationship of religion, nature, and culture. Major world religions including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism have profoundly focused on spiritual ecology.

Just as Islam lays great emphasis on the environmental protection and preservation of the earth by strongly disapproving of any corruption on the earth (fasad fil Ardh’), Buddhism also shows tremendous respect for ecology. Gautam Buddha was opposed to the cutting of trees and plants in a seeker’s path. He preached that Mother Earth should not be disturbed. It should not be exploited out of proportion. Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the interdependence and interrelatedness of all objects in nature and human beings. If one thing suffers, it would impact other things also.

The present global warming is not accidental. It has deep-rooted causes. The human-earth relationship is at the centre of ecology. The crisis in the human-earth relationship occurred in the nineteenth century with the reckless industrial growth. However, this issue was overlooked. We don’t bother as to what will happen to other people and the coming generation.

We go about polluting the environment, air, water, and space, and recklessly cut jungles and disturb and destroy mountains for making roads and railway tracks. We have made chemical weapons of mass destruction. We have an utter disregard for ecology. As a result, we are confronted with serious environmental crisis, threatening the very survival of mankind.

Have we ever stopped to really think and realize the intrinsic nature of things and their interrelatedness. Earth, fire, water, air, and space are intrinsically interrelated and mutually dependent on each other. There is an urgent need to understand the sacred nature of relationship in everything, animate and inanimate, in the spirit of environmental ethics. Let’s understand the mutual relationship of all objects in the universe.

Then who is the culprit? There is a need for united efforts. There is a need for coalition of forces and resources. Such efforts are bound to meet with resistance from the commercial world and market forces. There is a need for a living contact with all. We should avoid inhuman and unnatural relations among all things. There is a need for communion of one reality with another reality to create unity and integrated reality.

We are all engaged in increasing our material comfort. It is time we hear the sound of water, air, birds, plants, and everything in nature. It is time we understand the natural right of everything and every species. It is about time we recognised the spiritual status of everything…..

The nature has to be protected and saved for every one of us. Ecological crisis cut across national boundaries. We need a new holistic approach that establishes balance among all things. There is a need for a new ethos of spirituality which calls for love and concern for existential harmony. We must understand the mystery underlying the universe. We have to redraw a new boundary between heaven and earth in order to overcome the global crisis we are faced with.

There is a need for multidisciplinary research in spiritual ecology, which includes environmental spirituality, environmental behaviour, altitudinal changes, and interdependence of nature, religion, and culture.

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