THERE IS A POSSIBLITY OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MAN AND TREES

Osho : I used to sit by the side of a river in my village, under a small tree. It was the same kind of tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened, and because of Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment, the tree’s name has become the bodhi tree. I used to sit under this bodhi tree by the riverside for hours. It must have been almost the middle of the night, a full moon night, and we had become such friends….


Just that day one of my teachers had told me, “I hear that you are saying to people that there is a possibility of communication between man and trees?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Don’t spread strange ideas for which you don’t have any proof.”

I took him with me on that full moon night and I told him, “You touch the tree and just tell me how you feel.”

He said, “It is cold.”

And I said to the tree, in front of the teacher, “It is a question of your friend’s word. I want you to respond in some way. And the easiest will be that when my teacher puts his hand on you, show your warmth, don’t be cold.”

The teacher said, “You must be mad, you are talking with the tree!”

But I said, “There is no harm in trying. The tree is willing – I feel the willingness all around. You put your hand there.”

He said, “I don’t believe that there is any possibility of communication.” But he put his hand on the tree and was shocked – the tree was so warm, and it was a cold night.

He said, “My God, now you have got me also into trouble! Everybody thinks you are a little bit crazy, now what about me?”

I said, “You are my disciple – first disciple! Just start spreading the news that….”

He said, “I have never done such a thing…but I will have to do it because I have experienced it myself.”

He told others and everybody laughed. And I never wanted so many people to hear, because I was not certain how much the tree liked people, who she liked, who she did not like, whether she liked to be in a crowd or just to be alone, standing high in the sky – or perhaps just with a chosen few friends.

OSHO,

When the rivers run dry - Everybody chases short-term wealth even at the cost of destroying their long-term collective future.

When The Rivers Run Dry is about water, especially fresh water – where it comes from, how it flows and what happens to it. The news is not good, but it needs to be listened to, especially in Asia – and nowhere more so than in the Indian subcontinent, which may be heading towards a catastrophic scarcity of water even faster than other parts of the planet.

Fred Pearce is an English journalist, currently the environment consultant of New Science magazine. He is a writer who knows how to craft a compelling narrative out of mind-numbing facts.

‘Get your head around a few of these numbers if you can. They are mind boggling. It takes between 250 and 650 galloons of water to grow a pound of rice. That is more water than many households use in a week. For just a bag of rice… And when you start feeding grain to livestock for animal products such as meat and milk, the numbers become yet more startling. It takes 3000 gallons to grow the feed for enough cow to make a quarter-pound hamburger, and between 500 and 1000 gallons for that cow to fill its udders with a quart of milk…. And if you have a sweet tooth, so much the worse: every teaspoonful of sugar in your coffee requires 50 cups of water to grow… (G)rowing the crops to feed and clothe me for a year must take between 1500 and 2000 tons – more than half the contents of an Olympic-size swimming pool.’

This introduces us to the concept of ‘virtual water’: ‘In this terminology, every ton of wheat arriving at a dockside carries with it in virtual form the thousand tons of water needed to grow it. The global virtual-water trade is estimated to be around 800 million acre-feet a year, or twenty Nile rivers… This trade “moves water in volumes and over distances beyond the wildest imaginings of water engineers”.’

Much of this trade is unnecessary and illogical. Pearce points out that US is draining its aquifers only to export enormous quantities of virtual water as wheat; Pakistan is pouring a third of the flow of the Indus into cotton, and thus exporting it as virtual water: ‘the global trade in virtual water… lies at the heart of some of the most intractable hydrological crises on the planet.’

Much of Pearce’s reporting comes from the Indian subcontinent. His travels take him to Pakistan, which is as dependent on the Indus as Egypt is on the Nile. But ‘it is abundantly clear that the Indus is in deep trouble. In the first years of the twenty-first century, the river was largely dry for its final few hundred miles to the sea.’ He attributes the rapid growth of Karachi’s population to Pakistan’s hydrological crisis.

In India  the crisis takes a somewhat different form: the green revolution has led to an indiscriminate plundering of underground water reserves. In Pearce’s account the electrical water pump is largely to blame because it allows farmers to pump water at will, with highly subsidized electricity. In Tamil Nadu he meets farmers who have stopped farming and spend their days doing nothing but pumping up water, which they then sell to tankers. They know the water will soon be exhausted; the table is sinking so fast that they have to deepen their boreholes every week. But no one person will voluntarily end this suicidal practice – because that would only leave more for his neighbours, most of whom are also pumping up water as fast as they can. As Pearce notes, this ‘is a classic case of what environmentalists call “the tragedy of the commons”.

Everybody chases short-term wealth even at the cost of destroying their long-term collective future.’
The celebrated ‘white revolution’, which has led to a huge output of milk in semi-arid parts of Gujarat, is also creating the conditions for a water disaster. Pearce goes to meet a farmer who keeps a herd of cows, which he feeds with alfalfa grown on his five acre plot. ‘I did the math. He uses 4.8 million gallons of water a year to grow the fodder to produce just over 2400 gallons of milk. That’s 200 gallons of water for every gallon of milk… (C)alculated over the year, it means he pumps from under his fields twice as much water as falls on the land in rain. No wonder the water table in the village is 500 feet down and falling by about 20 feet a year. What looks at first sight like an extremely efficient local economy, making milk in the desert for a dairy that trades across India, is in fact hydrological suicide.’

The notion of ‘hydrological suicide’ is hard to comprehend – this is perhaps the reason why people tend to shrug it off. It is their indifference that allows policy-makers to ignore it too. But ‘hydrological suicide’ is a real predicament; it happens. Perhaps the most dramatic chapter in the book is Pearce’s account of one instance of it: the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which has been described as the ‘greatest environmental disaster of the 20^th century.’

The Aral Sea was not a small water-body: it was once the world’s fourth largest lake – the size of Belgium and Holland combined – and was fed by a river the size of the Nile – the storied Amu Darya. Its waters were filled with fish and it was famous for its beach resorts; the lands that surrounded it had extensive orchards and vineyards. Now it is largely a desert, surrounding a few ‘hyper-saline’ stretches of water. It was essentially killed by cotton: in order to cultivate the crop on a large scale, the Soviet Union diverted the waters of the rivers that fed it into irrigation schemes, reducing the flow of water to a trickle by the time it reached the sea.

credit: treehugger.com

The sea was gone in a few decades.
 
The population that once lived off the sea’s bounty have now been reduced to penury; the rate of throat cancer in the area is 9 times the world average. They too were probably unable to envision the prospect of hydrological suicide, even as the water that sustained them was vanishing before their very eyes.
Pearce is at pains to explain that the problem lies not in an absolute lack of water, but in the patterns of water use. ‘Today,’ says Pearce, ‘the countries around the Aral Sea – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan – occupy five of the top seven places in the world league table of per capita water users. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the two countries that take their water from the Amu Darya, use more water per head of population than any others on earth. The Aral Sea basin is very far from being short of water. The problem is the simply staggering level of water use.’

In every country where cotton is grown in dry regions people should know that cotton is a slayer of rivers. The warning should be heeded in Egypt (where I lived amongst the cotton fields of Beheira a long time ago) and in Pakistan where, as Pearce writes, the British, by building the Sukkur barrage, ‘established what amounted to one giant cotton farm’ to feed the mills of Leicester.

But Pearce also has some encouraging stories, including some from India. There is for example the interesting case of Pepsee, a kind of plastic tubing for ice candies. ‘Sometime around 1998, somewhere in the Maikal hills of central India, someone – perhaps a farmer with a sideline of selling ices – started using Pepsee rolls for another purpose: to irrigate the fields.’ This became a kind of indigenous drip irrigation technique that minimised the loss of water through evaporation. The idea caught on and Pepsee is now in wide use among farmers.

Pearce’s best stories are those of rainwater harvesting. ‘In China,’ writes Pearce, ‘it was Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution that began the revival of the ancient tradition of rainwater harvesting. In India, it has been a mixture of swamis and scientists, schoolteachers and even policemen.’

Pearce writes about many such figures: Haradevsinh Hadeja, a retired police officer who has transformed the village of Rajsamadhiya in Gujarat; Rajendra Singh, a government scientist in Rajasthan who gave up his job to dedicate himself to water-harvesting; G.N.S.Reddy, a Gandhian; Pandurang Shastri Athavale, a Vedic scholar who is known as Dada to his followers. These are the real visionaries and innovators of our day: if the world were a saner place they, and their movement, would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
For a long time now the world has been in the grip of ideologies that celebrate ‘growth’ for its own sake.

One particularly powerful version of this is the neo-liberal iteration of a philosophy that has historically regarded air and water as ‘free goods’. Ironically this ideology has found some of its most enthusiastic proselytes in countries where water is in short supply – India, Pakistan and Egypt are good examples. Egypt and Pakistan are both dependent on single  river systems. But Pakistan, as Pearce writes ‘abstracts five times more water per person than Ireland does, Egypt five times more than Britain.’

How long can this go on? It is time to recognize that the idea of ‘unlimited growth forever’ is a fraud, a hoax. This book shows us why – the planet will not allow it.

When The Rivers Run Dry is an exceptionally readable and well-written account of the world’s water crisis. It should be on every bookshelf.

___________________________________

When The Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis Of The Twenty-First Century, by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press, Boston 2006; there is also a Kindle edition).

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You are the flame at the tip of the Candle : Meditation for the 100th day after Tsunami - Thich Nhat Han

It was exactly three months ago that the tsunami hit the Northeastern coast of Japan. Let us breathe mindfully, come back to ourselves and be with the direct victims of that gigantic catastrophe.

Let us tell our friends there, those who survived the catastrophe, that we are with them, we suffer with them, and we need their courage and their perseverance to maintain our hope. During the war in Vietnam, I myself underwent many moments close to despair. The village of Tra Loc, near the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam, was rebuilt by our Buddhist social workers after it had been destroyed by the American bombing, just because it had been temporarily occupied by the other side of the war. Our young monastic and lay workers rebuilt it, only to see it destroyed a second time. “Shall we rebuild it again?” our workers there asked. “Yes, we have to rebuild it,” I answered. The village of Tra Loc was destroyed five times, and we rebuilt it five times. We had to, because otherwise we could have allowed despair to overtake us. The young people came to me and asked, “Thay, do you think that the war will end someday?” We did not see any sign telling us that the war was ending. We could not yet see the end of the tunnel. But in order to protect us from despair, I said, “Dear ones, the Buddha said everything is impermanent. The war is also impermanent. It cannot last forever. It will end someday. So let us trust in the Buddha.”

Dear brothers and sisters, please do not lose hope. We are aware that you are doing your best. Not only for you, but for your children, for your people, and also for us. We also need hope. Your courage and your compassion will help us retain our humanity and our hope. The situation is really difficult. But the world is with you. We are with you. The tsunami hit us all.

You are the flame at the tip of the candle. It is hot. That heat reminds us all that mother Earth is calling for help.  And you shine the light for all of us. We need the light in order not to be drawn into the realm of darkness and forgetfulness. You are children of the Buddha, children of God. Please allow your compassion and courage to be your guide. We need you. And we try to be present for you in every way we can.

Dear brothers and sisters everywhere, please come back to your breath. Let us breathe mindfully to be aware of what is going on, and try our best to preserve our humanness.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Go Green at Work - The Hindu Newspaper

If you feel stressed and exhausted while in office, keeping potted plants on your desk could have a health benefit, a new study says.

In the study led by environmental psychology expert Tina Bringslimark and her team at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and Uppsala University, Sweden, researchers found that the presence of potted plants in offices reduced fatigue, stress, dry throats, headaches, coughs and dry skin among workers.

In a second study conducted on 385 office workers, the researchers looked at sick-leave rates and the number of plants individuals could see from their desks. Results showed that the more plants they could see, the less sick leave they took.

An explanation is that plants and the microbes in their soil are good at removing volatile, organic compounds that can affect health.

“There could also be a psychological explanation in that people believe plants are healthier and are likely to evaluate their own health more optimistically,” said Bringslimark.

Potted plants are particularly beneficial for offices where workers do not have a window, says a report from Washington State University.

In the U.S. research, workers completed timed computer tasks in rooms with and without plants. When plants were present, workers were more productive and had a 12 per cent quicker reaction time. They were less stressed and had lower blood pressure.

Bringslimark says that foliage plants, or houseplants, may be better than flowering plants.

It looks like we are existing here has a last generation. The next generation of people, our children, they will look back at us with great animosity.

Environmental Disaster on the Brink in Tamil Nadu. Sadhguru

Environmental Disaster on the Brink in Tamil Nadu. Sadhguru

Saving the Planet

How to plant a tree - Project Green Hands by Isha Foundation

 Part 1


Part 2

What has an individual can we do to stop global warming

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1. Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs: Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) will help increase your energy efficiency.
2. Use reusable bags.
3. Up to 20 percent of heating and cooling energy is lost due to poorly sealed or insulated ducts in your home. Make sure your ducts are properly insulated and install weather stripping around windows and doors for a better seal.
4. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Reducing your garbage by 25 percent will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,000 pounds per year. Recycling aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic, cardboard and newspapers can reduce your home's impact by 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. Decreasing carbon dioxide emissions can help stop global warming.
5. Conserve Water: Purifying and distributing water takes lots of energy. You can make simple changes to reduce the amount of water you use. Replacing an older toilet can save about 7,500 gallons of water a year. Fixing a leak in a toilet can save as much as 200 gallons a day. Use low-flow shower heads and turn your water heater thermostat down to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. These steps can add up to serious savings on your water and energy bills.
6. Air Dry Your Clothes: Line-dry your clothes in the spring and summer instead of using the dryer.
7. Buy Products Locally Buy locally and reduce the amount of energy required to drive your products to your store.
8. Buy Minimally Packaged Goods: Less packaging could reduce your garbage by about 10%.
9. Plant a Tree: Trees suck up carbon dioxide and make clean air for us to breathe.
10. Turn off Your Computer: Shut off your computer when not in use.

Sadhguru on floods in Andhra Pradesh & Karnataka

...........................................................................................................................................................................08 October, 2009
After the recent floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, wherever I go, one question I'm repeatedly asked is: "Such a great calamity; what can we do? Are the gods angry with us? Is there some spiritual process that we can do to avoid cyclones and floods in this country? Can we do some yaga or yagna for this?"
I want you to understand, a cyclone or a flood is not a calamity but just a natural process that can happen anywhere, and at any time. Two-thirds of the earth is under water anyway, so a little extra gets displaced now and then due to natural reasons or maybe because of global warming. But what is a calamity is that so many people have died and so many more have been displaced, their lives shattered perhaps to a point where they will never be able to put it back in their lifetime. This could have been avoided to a large extent, if we only managed our lives better.
The present devastation by floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is not sudden or unforeseen. In 1998-99, when people in this region complained of lack of rains, I said that the way we were progressing in another 5-6 years there would be too much rain. It does not take any great intuition to say this because if there is any slight disturbance in climate over the oceans, a certain low-pressure area will get created over a dry peninsular tract of land with oceans on both sides and with insufficient green cover. This will naturally attract enormous amount of rains.
If there was enough vegetation, it would have held the rain and let it out in small drops to become streams and rivers which we could have enjoyed. But unfortunately, we have stripped the land completely of green cover so the rain, which should have been a great blessing, has become a curse upon us. This is just a natural progression; it is neither God's wrath nor is it some unforeseen force acting upon us. We are the cause for the effect that we are facing right now.
The human tragedy due to these rains is because the land is also overpopulated. In the beginning of the twentieth century the world had a population of only 1.6 billion people. Today we have grown to 6.7 billion, which is an enormous and unprecedented increase. So wherever there are any small changes in nature like earthquakes, tsunami, floods etc, human beings are badly hit, because they are everywhere to die. This has become our condition today.
This is because, through the advancement of medical science, to a large extent we have taken death into our hands. So it is all the more important that we also take birth into our hands. But today various vested interests in the form of religions and other forces are resisting any kind of control over the growth of population. So the pressure on the land will be high with more forest being cleared resulting in more devastation.
We can create human societies either with conscious action or nature and other situations will force us to act in a certain way. It would be worthwhile if we act consciously and see that such situations, such pain and such devastations don't happen to human societies. One of the most important things that we must do right now, as a nation, is to aim for reduction of population by at least one third in the next 50 years. We must also ensure that a minimum of 33% land is under green cover. If these two things happen we can largely control such calamities.
As a part of our efforts in this direction, Isha Foundation started Project Green Hands. I must say, since 1998 we have been making efforts to plant trees in people's minds and in the last six years we have been transplanting it into the land. We have planted millions of trees in Tamil Nadu where the green cover according to official figures, has actually increased by 4.2% in the last 5 years. This is probably the only geographical entity of its size in Asia where the green cover has actually gone up in the recent years, everywhere else, it has been going down. It is not enough if we do this in one state. Everywhere the political leadership, the citizenry, the religious leaders, media and everybody should come together and make sure that our goals on population and environment are achieved.
This is the yaga and the yagna that needs to be done.
For every calamity that we bring upon ourselves there is no need to look for cosmic explanations, this is a local disaster. When I say local I'm talking about what we have done to our surroundings and the planet. This has nothing to do with the cosmic phenomena and is very localized to our planet and to our country right now. So this is something we have to handle and there is no need to look for any cosmic solutions or divine interventions.

Kalpavriksha - Do we care for planet earth ?

I have been hearing a lot about global warming all these days. Scientist have been telling that we might be the last generation which will probably survive this mass destruction, that will affect the humanity. The words of Sadhguru are piercing. He made me feel embarass that Are we doing enough for the planet ? He says that though the awareness is dawning in people that they should do something for saving the planet, but their action is inspired by survival instincts and not love for the nature. Mother Nature has nurtured us from eternity and what have we done in return. I don't know if you are aware that if all the trees in this planet are uprooted, then you cannot exist even for a moment. It is a intimate relationship between the people and trees. While we inhale oxygen from trees, the trees inhale carbon-di-oxide from us. You must have experienced the coolness of the breeze, when you pass through a array of trees. Trees bring so much beauty and silence to the place. But has India is experiencing the economic upsurge, people are constructing more and more buildings by uprooting trees. This will prove disastrous to our existence. Certainly we cannot blame these people, who are commiting this acts in unawareness. They are strongly rooted in their minds and all their action are inspired by their past or their community. But the problem we are facing is anew and it is difficult for them to grasp the importance of the present. We are lucky that we are with someone as inspiring as Sadhguru. He has made us see what action is needed in present. Meditation has helped us to erase many of the unneccasary things which were cluttered in our minds. So, I feel that we are ultimately responsible for the well-being of this planet earth. The mass proportion of the humanity is not even aware of the existence of Sadhguru.

We can contribute by participating in some tree planting. As Sadhguru says, even our body gets organised when we are in touch with earth. You must have come accross yogis who are immersed in the ground upto the neck. That is their way of charging the body. The very soil generates intelligence. Even when we die, as our body is burnt, it is the same material of the planet earth. We can also contribute to tree planting by purchasing KALPAVRIKSHA VCD.