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~~~~~~~~~~~~
Video Information: 27.07.22, 'East-West Dialogue on Climate and Justice', organized by Bard College, USA.
~ What is climate change?
~ How to stop climate change?
~ What is the solution to global warming?
~ How can we control the increasing population?
~ How can spirituality solve the problem of global warming?
~ What is the most effective way of dealing with climate change?
~ How can population control help in dealing with climate change?
~ What is the solution to climate change?
~ How spirituality can stop climate change?
~ Climate change has no scientific solution
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Video Information: 27.07.22, 'East-West Dialogue on Climate and Justice', organized by Bard College, USA.
~ What is climate change?
~ How to stop climate change?
~ What is the solution to global warming?
~ How can we control the increasing population?
~ How can spirituality solve the problem of global warming?
~ What is the most effective way of dealing with climate change?
~ How can population control help in dealing with climate change?
~ What is the solution to climate change?
~ How spirituality can stop climate change?
~ Climate change has no scientific solution
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00It's a little bit on the different side of the spectrum of human common sense and the
00:10emptiness that causes a large carbon footprint and need for consumption.
00:16Do you personally think that religion or lack thereof has any impact on what a person feels
00:25like is the right level of consumption or what is right and wrong regarding their carbon
00:32footprint?
00:35You said religion or what was the next word you used?
00:38Or lack thereof.
00:40So whether they have religion or they don't have religion, do you think that plays a part
00:44in how much they consume or how large their carbon footprint is?
00:49See obviously.
00:50First of all, what is religion?
00:54Religion is the way to bring this restless mind to peace.
01:04We are born restless and there is no moment when we feel safe, secure and sane within.
01:15So religion in its purest sense, in its true sense is the intention and the way to bring
01:26the mind to some sanity, some peace, some rest.
01:30That's what religion is.
01:33But then we see so many distorted versions of religion going around.
01:37I'm not talking of all that.
01:40I'm talking of pure religion, I'm talking of core spirituality.
01:45So true religion obviously involves knowing what the mind is, what plagues it and therefore
01:54what can heal it.
01:57If you can know what really your sickness is about, then you will stop giving yourself
02:02false treatments.
02:06The climate crisis that we see is a result of the false treatments we apply to the mind.
02:15So if we can be truly religious, then the climate crisis and so many other problems
02:27facing us would be very naturally taken care of.
02:37So am I saying the people who are not religious, they will keep contributing to the crisis
02:46that they will never be a part of the solution?
02:49Well, no.
02:52If religion is about being truly observant of the mind and being determined to bring
03:04it to its true destination, a true rest, then it does not matter whether one calls himself
03:17religious or not.
03:21One could very well declare himself an atheist or agnostic.
03:28But if he still has honesty within to self-respect, to observe what is going on, then the fellow
03:48is religious in the true sense.
03:53The society may call him irreligious, the fellow himself may call himself as a hater
04:06of religion, but he would still be deeply religious.
04:11So religion is not an ideology, it is not a tag you wear.
04:18Religion is a certain inner quality.
04:21Religion is to be honest to yourself, you want to know what your inner climate is like
04:28and you are not afraid of seeing that the inner climate is not good.
04:33And when you see that, then you don't run away, you don't start lying to yourself.
04:41With courage and determination you say, yes, the inner climate is not right, but I'll set
04:46it right.
04:47That's what life is for, to set a few things right.
04:54That's religiosity, that's religiosity.
04:58You could actually say that the climate crisis is a crisis of loss or dilution of true religiosity.
05:18And hence, if the climate were to be saved, we might find that the redemption or rescue
05:36of climate is parallel to and concurrent with a revival of true religiosity because
05:51these two will go hand in hand.
05:53The betterment of the inner climate through understanding and a betterment of the outer
06:04climate through renunciation.
06:11Observation of the inner climate leads to dispassion and detachment towards the stuff
06:22that is causing the inner sickness.
06:28And this observation of the inner climate will become a renunciation leading to betterment
06:37of outer climate.
06:41These two will always go hand in hand.
06:44So I'm glad you brought this up and helped me come to this that what we are having is
06:57a crisis in religion and that crisis in religion is unfolding externally in so many disastrous ways.
07:15That was great.
07:17Thank you for your time.
07:19I'm an environmental lawyer and working with an NGO and have been listening to you since
07:28past three years.
07:29So the question I have is that I believe lawyers and activists in the domain of environment
07:35win worthless battles or such battles which will seldom benefit in achieving the climate
07:41goals.
07:42So I'm often seeing that the cataclysmic projects getting environmental clearances for the
07:49amendments to the acts which delays the impact assessment reports that any industry before
07:54setting up should furnish or a utilitarian anthropocentric approach disguised as sustainable
08:01development and several other deficiencies.
08:04So you have always been telling and even today that conferences, policies and discussions
08:10will not yield much results unless man's mind comes to rest and bows down before the scriptures.
08:18And I completely agree with this.
08:20However, unless I think the spiritual message is spread to the multitude, unless Ashtavakra
08:27is in the minds of the masses, I think it is very important that the legal and compliances
08:33standards should be robust and looking at the obstacles which we lawyers and scientists
08:42face nowadays, I think I'm not able to perform my duties or in Hindi as the saints call it
08:48the Nishkama Karma.
08:50So kindly elucidate on this.
08:53You are very right.
09:00It may take time to bring Ashtavakra to every single household.
09:10To begin with, bring Ashtavakra at least to those who are in charge of policy making.
09:20Finally, obviously, every single sentient being must be awakened.
09:29But because we know that we do not have much time when it comes to climate action.
09:40So at least bring Ashtavakra to the policy makers, the legislators and other people.
09:53Otherwise, tell me how do you propose to induce a change in them?
10:01Mostly we are talking of democracies and in democracies, leaders represent the masses.
10:10Sometimes the leaders represent the worst face of the masses.
10:22The leaders are the masses themselves.
10:26If the leaders, the legislators are not exposed to Ashtavakra or Vedanta, how will you get
10:41the right kinds of policies and bills and laws?
10:53But since the majority of people, majority of people are following this utilitarian approach
10:59and are not bowing before, as I said, the scriptures and are not able to commit themselves
11:08to them.
11:10So how can this wave start?
11:16See the scriptures are not an idea.
11:21The scriptures are not an opinion that someone may agree or disagree with.
11:31If you look into this statement that people are not interested in the scriptures or people
11:38are not bowing down to the scriptures, what does it mean?
11:42What do we mean by the scriptures?
11:44The scriptures are like mirrors.
11:48They show you who you are.
11:50They represent to you the reality of your life.
11:54I do not know the meaning when we say that people are not liking the scriptures.
12:00The scriptures don't say a thing.
12:03There is nothing in the scriptures you can agree to or disagree with.
12:10There is just nothing in the scriptures.
12:12So then what is happening?
12:13What is happening is that the scriptures are not really being brought to the people.
12:18The scriptures are being brought in the form of ideas and concepts and opinions and stories
12:26and beliefs.
12:29Now that is something the masses can quarrel with and disagree with and also reject.
12:38You can quarrel with an opinion or concept or ideology.
12:41Can you not?
12:43You can very well reject a system of thought.
12:46Now if you turn the Gita or Vedanta into a system of thought or solid beliefs, then people
12:58get the right to disagree and reject.
13:07Not only that, even those who agree are now agreeing to a system of belief and thought.
13:13Therefore their agreement is now superfluous.
13:16Do you see this?
13:20So it's not the scriptures that are failing.
13:24The scriptures have to be rediscovered in every era.
13:31The scriptures have to be brought afresh to the masses in every era.
13:42In every century, with every passing generation, the scriptures require a new face.
13:50That face is missing.
13:54What the scriptures say always has to be given a contemporary life.
14:07That is what is not being given.
14:13You bring the Bhagavad Gita to people and they read it as if it has not touched them.
14:24They go through the verses without the verses cracking anything within them.
14:32And that is not possible.
14:34If one really understands the Gita, the Gita will shatter him.
14:40You cannot go through the Gita unscathed.
14:45If you really understand the Gita, the Gita will remain and you will be demolished.
14:52That kind of thing doesn't happen.
14:55That doesn't happen because the Gita needs to be retold in this age.
15:01What do you mean by retelling?
15:04We need today's context.
15:06We need today's language.
15:08We need contemporary examples.
15:12We need the eternal truth to be brought to this time.
15:19We need somebody who knows how to make bridges.
15:27The truth is eternal, eternal, eternal, eternal.
15:29Not only eternal, beyond eternal, timeless.
15:33But you are living in your particular time.
15:35Climate crisis is a phenomena of your time.
15:40Now, nowhere are the words climate and crisis mentioned in the Gita.
15:46Right?
15:47Are they?
15:48So that's what, today you have to have a mind that reads the Gita and sees the solution
15:56for climate change.
15:59That bridge, that mind is missing.
16:02Are you getting what I'm saying?
16:08I could dare to say that the Gita contains the very right, the very central and a sure
16:19shot solution to the climate crisis.
16:25I could even say that the Gita contains the only possible solution to climate crisis.
16:33And having said that, if I distribute copies of the Gita among 100 people, they will not
16:38find any of the solution I'm talking of.
16:40They'll say, where is that solution?
16:42What nonsense?
16:45What we have here is arcane and obscure stuff, irrelevant to this century.
17:07So you need that mind that can read climate crisis in the Sanskrit verses of the Gita.
17:20And then the scriptures come to life.
17:22That's what you need.
17:24If that mind, if that bridge is not there, then the scriptures remain where they are,
17:29pure as they always were, but not very useful.
17:45I am Alec.
17:46I am from the Philippines, a little background about me.
17:49I am an educator, also a graduate student.
17:52Yeah, I'll go straight forward to my question.
17:56Since you have mentioned that we have to kind of change what our outlooks or our beliefs
18:05or ideals are, for instance, we are so, or people in general are too in line with consumerism
18:15and all that.
18:16But I wanted to point out a certain systemic problem or a certain system that instigate
18:21it rather than look into an individual level.
18:24That's why I'm going to ask, do you believe that we should totally scrap off capitalism
18:30and all its tools?
18:33For instance, the market, the concept of buying, the concept of selling, the concept of production.
18:42Since you have also mentioned that all of these philosophies that we have been following
18:46so far since the rise of man is erroneous.
18:50I believe you have mentioned that earlier.
18:56But the question is, do you think that we should totally eliminate capitalism in the
19:02face of the earth?
19:07What is capitalism?
19:09Capitalism is, you have the rights to see what people in general are demanding in terms
19:24of material goods and services.
19:26And you can produce those goods and services.
19:29And you can also advertise your stuff, right?
19:33And if there are people who want to buy what you are producing, there would be a market.
19:39And since there are several of you probably producing the same goods, so there would be
19:43competition.
19:46And all kinds of private persons have the right to produce and that is capitalism, right?
19:59Every single person has the right to make a profit.
20:05That is capitalism.
20:06Now, what is at the root of capitalism?
20:09I know that you are desirous of something material.
20:15Having known that you desire something material, I produce what you desire and knowing that
20:21you are desirous of this stuff, I create conditions in which you desire more and more of what
20:27I produce.
20:28That is capitalism, right?
20:31Capitalism is basically an extension of our superficial lives.
20:37I am looking at you and I am not bothered about the kind of person you are, whether
20:43you suffer within, what you really love and what would really bring peace to you.
20:49I am not bothered with all of that.
20:52I am bothered only with the fact that you probably want to buy a new shirt and you want
20:57to buy a new shirt, I will produce that new shirt and sell it to you at a profit, right?
21:04This is capitalism at the psychological level.
21:09Superficial relationship between man and man, a relationship that is founded basically on
21:15profit.
21:16My relationship with you is that I want to sell you something so that I may make some
21:21profit.
21:22This is capitalism.
21:23But what alternative do you have?
21:25You can give all the means and rights of production to a centralized government.
21:30How do things change?
21:32The man is still the same.
21:37What may actually happen is that the government is not very sensitive to your desire and you
21:41want a shirt and the government may give you sandals.
21:45I don't know whether that makes your spiritual condition any better.
21:53One very adverse fallout of the capitalist system is that you don't only produce, you
22:02have to, it is incumbent on you to encourage consumerism as well.
22:09So you simply cannot have capitalism in isolation.
22:14You will always have capitalist consumerism or consumer capitalism.
22:23That is there but even that is fundamentally a problem of our animalistic tendencies.
22:31You produce, you bring about any other economic system and unless the human being has changed
22:38from within, you will find it suffers from the same kind of human follies.
22:45So have we not tried enough of socialist systems?
22:50We have mixed economies, we have socialist economies and we had hardcore communist systems
22:58as well.
23:00Did they really deliver even social goods let alone spiritual advancement?
23:07So I don't think it's about the economic system you are living in or the economic philosophy
23:17you follow.
23:18It's about your spiritual quotient.
23:21Do you understand what does it mean to be a human being?
23:26How is a human being really different from an animal let's say?
23:32We have addressed this question.
23:37In India, Vedanta took only this question as significant and this question was addressed
23:46500-800 years before the Christ.
23:50In the West, in the last 200-300 years, you have had Viktor Frankl, you have had Kierkegaard,
23:59there is Nietzsche and somebody has talked of the will to life, the will to meaning,
24:08the will to purpose, the will to power.
24:15And the entire thing is about knowing what we really want.
24:24So Frankl would say we want meaning, Nietzsche would say we want power.
24:31What is it that you really want beyond your animal nature?
24:34That needs to be known and once that is known, then you will get a suitable economic system
24:41as well.
24:42Then you may as well have capitalism and even capitalism will be good.
24:48It is not capitalism that fails.
24:52It is the capitalist that fails because the capitalist is the person.
24:57Similarly, socialism won't fail.
24:59It is the socialist who would fail because the person is everything.
25:05Has the person been set right?
25:06Has the person been treated?
25:10I hope I am making some sense.
25:11I don't know.
25:14Yeah, actually that makes a lot of sense and I actually agree with that point that it's
25:19not about really the capitalist, capitalism.
25:22I just wanted to brush off that idea of totally that when we antagonize consumerism, it is
25:32highly related to capitalism.
25:35That is because it is highly related to capitalism, but again, as I understand, it is more on
25:41an individual battle, more on an individual one rather than an institutional one.
25:51So I hope I get that right.
25:54So as a follow-up question, how can you suggest that or how can you say that we can achieve
26:01a collective mind on that certain idea of each and every one of us will be knowing our
26:10own meanings, so arriving on that moment.
26:14How can we achieve that on a greater scale in the society if most of our systems and
26:26institutions are somewhat contradicts that idea, but there are chances that the government
26:34might not value individual search for meaning, but they might value something that is beneficial
26:46for them or for the system or for them to stay in power.
26:50So how can we achieve that given that we have these contradictions in different aspects
26:55in the society?
26:56You see, it is a strange thing, but it is possible and it does happen that sometimes
27:16the intensity of love is directly proportional to the resistance that your love is facing.
27:34The more you find societies and governments averse to the truth you have, the more you
27:46start valuing and loving the truth you have.
27:51It does happen.
27:53So it is not as if governmental apathy or social resistance will necessarily weaken
28:05your truth.
28:09The very opposite is also possible that you know that the government is resistant to what
28:26you really have and therefore you become all the more committed to what you really have.
28:36The example that I gave is of the colonial period in India, the first half of the last
28:45century.
28:47When we sit down to list the towering figures in the last century of Indian history, what
29:05we find is that if we have 100 names to list, some 90 of them or 95 of them are from the
29:15first half of the century.
29:19What is happening?
29:20You see, India got independence in 1947 and that's the first half of the century.
29:30The conditions were just not right for any kind of greatness to prosper and exactly because
29:47the conditions were adverse, greatness prospered and when the conditions become favourable,
29:58what we found was deterioration in the human spirit.
30:06After 1950 till the year 2000, we do not see much individual greatness in India but we
30:16see a decent level of economic progress and India becomes a bigger military power and
30:24those things happen.
30:28Literacy levels rise and people are given rights and there is so much that people can
30:35do and people make very little use of those rights and there was a time in the first half
30:43of that century when the British were not giving too many rights to Indians and in spite
30:52of that we had great literature coming and we had the Nobel Prize in literature and not
31:00only the Nobel Prize, much of what is valuable in the literary dimension comes from that
31:09first half.
31:11We had revolutionaries we swear by even today.
31:19So how was that happening?
31:21All that was happening in the face of adversity.
31:28I fully appreciate the importance of the right conditions but then it is not necessary that
31:41favourable conditions are to be called as the right conditions.
31:45It is ironical.
31:50So I am not saying that we should deliberately turn the conditions unfavourable and that
31:57people should be oppressed and terrorised and that will bring out the greatness in them.
32:06But there is something within that loves a good challenge.
32:16The human spirit gets awakened when challenged.
32:24So I will not therefore give too much importance to what the governments are saying and what
32:32is the general social attitude.
32:35I would rather give primacy to the individual.
32:37If the individual can be set alight then great things just happen, governments, societies,
32:49conditions all these then become things to be overcome easily.
33:05I don't know whether I was more factual or poetic but that's what.
33:14Thank you very much.
33:15That makes a lot of sense.
33:17I think that's all for me.
33:18Thank you very much for having me here Dr. Acharya.
33:23Thank you very much.
33:30I want to thank you very much Acharya and Peyton and Alec and all the other students
33:39who participated including those who listened in and didn't ask questions but stayed with
33:48us for this entire conversation.
33:51This has been fascinating, deep but I was thinking there's no way to try to summarize
34:00this up but I think Acharya you actually in your last answer gave us really the summation
34:07of all of this which is more love, less carbon.
34:11If we can achieve that then the world will be a much better place.
34:16Thank you so much.
34:17Thank you so much.
34:18Thank you all for joining us and on behalf of Bard College and our graduate programs
34:24in sustainability we wish you all more love and less carbon emissions.
34:31Thank you sir.
34:32Best wishes.