As climate change intensifies and our planet takes centre stage, is religion an ally? Religious leaders Sengkuttuvan Kanniyappan and Kuek Yi Hsing talk about how interconnected they are.
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00:00 You cannot pluck a flower on the earth without disturbing a distant star.
00:04 Mmm.
00:05 You come in to play a part in harmony.
00:09 Hi, I'm Senggut Duvan from the inter-religious organisation of the Hindu faith.
00:24 My name is Quek Ising. I'm from the Singapore Bahai community.
00:28 Hi Quek, good to see you again here for this coffee talk.
00:33 And we have explored quite a lot of issues.
00:36 I think today we've got something pertinent that really touches base with everybody.
00:41 It's all about the earth and the environment.
00:44 Just as a start, maybe we should ask ourselves,
00:47 what is our relationship with the earth, Mother Earth, or even with this cosmos itself?
00:52 Like all other religions, I think we believe that the earth and the universe
00:58 is created by one creator.
01:01 But we are not part of this environment, not part of this nature,
01:05 because we have a special capacity.
01:09 We are empowered with intelligence.
01:13 But we are interconnected with every creature on earth.
01:18 With the environment, we have to take care of the environment.
01:21 You know, I remember when I was young, this is not a hot topic, you know.
01:26 There weren't that many people. But as we go to now, what, seven billion?
01:31 Every action that we take and we do here on earth
01:35 affects the environment and other creatures.
01:38 We as a microcosm is no different from the macrocosm,
01:43 because it stems from the fundamental understanding that God is the only thing.
01:49 We don't have anything without God.
01:51 So we treat divinity as pervasive.
01:56 Pervasive means all around, including us.
01:58 So therefore, the environment itself is part of the divinity,
02:03 as divinity is present everywhere.
02:06 We don't see divinity apart from us.
02:08 We see the divinity together with us in relationship with the atmosphere,
02:15 the earth, the cosmos, and everything.
02:17 Man is a special being, so we are supposed to be responsible also
02:25 for the environment and for their well-being as well.
02:29 So with that capacity comes responsibility.
02:34 I agree with you on that.
02:36 So it's very true. In terms of intelligence, you're right.
02:39 In our scriptures too, the human being is created with the highest level of intelligence.
02:46 He's able to see and discern and discriminate.
02:51 You see, in the Bahá'í scripture,
02:53 the vegetable kingdom all have the spirit of growth, actually.
02:58 You see the trees growing.
03:00 There is a spirit in this vegetation.
03:03 The animals have that spirit of sight, senses, and movement.
03:10 But for man, we have all the other spirits.
03:13 We have the spirit of growth, and we have the spirit of movement.
03:16 We have the spirit of senses, plus the spirit of this intelligence.
03:22 But we also eat the plants and the animals,
03:25 and all the spirits are actually joined in the spirit of man.
03:31 So the reverence is there because we revert their spirit as well.
03:37 Now that we understood that we agree that the earth is divine,
03:42 and we have to treat it with reverence,
03:45 what does it say about protecting the environment?
03:48 From the fact that we are interconnected,
03:50 because if we don't protect the environment, it comes back to us.
03:55 We will suffer as well, as now we are all suffering from this ultra heat.
04:02 In the old days, we threw everything into the sea,
04:06 and the sea would help to clear all this stuff.
04:10 But now, because we are so many billions of people,
04:15 this stuff comes back to us.
04:17 Not only to you, but to the rest of the earth.
04:22 The other side also suffers.
04:24 Now what we are doing is we are polluting the air.
04:27 In the future, it will come back to us again.
04:30 We cannot ignore this because we know that the time is short for us to correct ourselves.
04:38 So this is mentioned in your scriptures?
04:41 Not really, but it implies.
04:43 So they teach them through value teaching and ethics to look after the environment.
04:49 I believe so.
04:50 Yes, the fact is that we are capable of destroying as well.
04:56 If we don't have the morality, we are all going to suffer.
05:01 We are told by the scriptures that to treat the environment and the earth
05:08 with divine reverence.
05:10 We don't treat them with contempt in any sense.
05:14 And that is why very often you'll see a lot of Hindus praying to the sun,
05:17 praying to the tree, praying to the river, praying to the water and everything.
05:20 It's not a prayer, it's a reverence.
05:22 To accept the divinity in all forms, I will not treat it with contempt,
05:27 I will treat it with care.
05:29 Then the other word you must have heard of is karma, right?
05:31 So this karma is this thing, when you destroy the environment,
05:35 what you serve is what you get served.
05:38 So when you throw away some things like the plastics,
05:41 those days they were all biodegradable.
05:43 You throw them, they get degraded.
05:45 Today they are full of plastics and all that.
05:47 So when you throw them and clog up the rivers and everything,
05:50 they get polluted and likewise the air is no different.
05:53 So it is the scriptures that tells you to revere the environment
05:59 because it is where you are staying.
06:01 And if you go and throw it into your own backyard,
06:04 eventually you will find that that thing will start coming into your house
06:08 where you are staying in Saudi Arabia.
06:10 You know, in the Bahá'í faith, unity is that catchword.
06:15 Unity among ourselves because with unity,
06:17 we can do a lot of things in protecting the environment.
06:22 But if we are doing me for my own interest, you for your own interest,
06:27 then of course the environment is going to be in ruin
06:30 because you just take care of your own backyard,
06:33 you don't care about whether or not the smoke comes over this side or whatever.
06:37 This is the time for cooperation.
06:39 The role of man is no different from any item that he plays
06:44 or any part that he plays in the environment.
06:46 There's a very famous saying in one of the scriptures that says that
06:50 you cannot pluck a flower on the earth without disturbing a distant star.
06:55 What it's trying to say is that how connected we are.
06:59 But it says very clearly, you as a man, your role to play a part
07:04 in conforming to the law of the cosmos.
07:07 That's how the scriptures are.
07:09 You come in to play a part in harmony.
07:12 Do not cause harm, not only to a fellow being, to other beings,
07:17 and even to the environment itself.
07:19 Come here, take whatever you needed,
07:21 but make sure that you leave behind a place where it was better than before,
07:26 or at least the way it was, but never in a worse situation.
07:31 That is really fundamental.
07:33 In Hinduism, there are a lot of rituals.
07:35 And some of the rituals can be seen that they are destroying the environment
07:40 because there's a lot of smoke emitted.
07:43 How do you think such practices can be curtailed?
07:47 I think all this would come with education.
07:52 And the young people, I believe nowadays, are not that crazy over
07:57 these old rituals of burning incense and offerings, you know,
08:03 burning paper houses and all that.
08:05 I see less and less of them.
08:07 But the issue is whether or not we want education to be in schools
08:15 where they teach them to collaborate, to really have that spiritual idea,
08:21 that spiritual training of concern for others.
08:25 We want to emphasize these spiritual habits.
08:30 I really don't want to stop and put a full stop on rituals
08:36 because I don't want to step those areas.
08:38 I respect them because they do carry some value in the practice that they do.
08:43 But what we could do, I feel that we could do it as a community,
08:47 like a few people get together and do the same thing in a collective way.
08:51 So that instead of 10 people doing individually,
08:54 then now the 10 people get together and do a one person portion
08:57 and observe, or maybe more.
08:59 So now the numbers get grouped and they can find a place and all these things.
09:03 So it's a matter of management, actually.
09:05 We all can have our own faith, but our role now,
09:09 our role actually is to learn to, as you say, live together, coexist.
09:15 You said it very well, that the whole idea is to get this harmonization done.
09:20 Not possible maybe in one generation, but working towards the goal is a good thing.
09:24 Thank you very much.
09:26 If you have any doubts or questions, please put them below as usual.
09:30 Once again, thank you, Quek.
09:32 Thank you very much.
09:33 Bye.
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