A Zen Buddhist's Attitude Towards Global Warming

Global warming is hardly a new issue. Everyone has at least heard about it, if not participating in fighting it. But that's the problem. When an issue has lost its freshness, it loses people's zest and interest too. I noticed that among those who truly believe global warming is an important and urgent issue, only a small fraction is actually putting it in their daily-life agenda. This is not surprising though -- when it comes to doing something whose effects are not that apparent and immediate, it's hard to maintain it as part of the lifestyle, let alone sometimes doing it seems against our culture of convenience.

I think it all comes down to this. When it comes to making it a lifestyle, something beyond intellectual awareness is needed. That is the intimate and personal connection to this issue at a very deep level at the heart. In other words, cultivating a deeper awareness is needed. For this part, I have found that the Eastern philosophy and practice such as Zen meditation extremely helpful:

1. Cause and effect: Eastern philosophy says that the universe is governed by the natural law called cause and effect. What it basically means is "You reap what you have sown." With this in mind, you will less likely to trash the environment or waste the energy when no one is looking at you, because you know the effect will eventually come back on you. For instance, not saving the power as a person may lead to a power rationing in the future which affects everybody including you.

2. Interdependency between human beings and the environment: Human beings may appear to be independent from the nature, but not so. For instance, our biological clock depends on the sun, and our emotion is affected by the moon. This interconnection, when truly realized at heart, gives you a broader scope and deeper understanding that everything we do has an effect on the universe, however subtle it might be. Little contributions, good or bad, add up. So your little eco-friendly deeds will not be wasted but always have a positive contribution to the universe.

3. Loving kindness towards not only people but also the environment: Loving kindness, developed naturally through meditation, is transferable. Its receiving end ranges from people to all sentient beings to the mother nature. And this loving kindness cultivated through meditation practice and through knowing the interdependency between all sentient beings and the nature stays with you. It becomes a way of being, a lifestyle. And this lifestyle is a natural eco-friendly lifestyle, as what you do is always done with an altruistic mindset towards the nature and everything within it.

4. Four elements of the earth as a system: Eastern philosophy sees the earth -- and similarly, the human body -- as a whole system, rather than an aggregation of distinct objects. The elements of this system are interrelated by nature, and can further be categorized into four fundamental elements -- earth, water, fire, and wind. The whole system is healthy if these elements are balanced, and unhealthy if they are not.

For instance, by considering the earth as a system, the tornado and hurricane are nothing more than the disorders of the earth's respiratory (wind) system, just like the respiratory disorders of a human body such as asthma. Flooding and drought are the disorders in the water element (and you can liken it by human disorders as well). So global warming, from this perspective, is the earth having a fever -- that is, the fire element is too strong.

Understanding this can help in anti-global warming endeavor. By looking at the earth as a whole system, we will not consider ourselves as too small to make a difference. Even a single malign cell in a human body can propagate and cause serious problem to the entire body, so every one of us counts. The task of anti-global warming demands the cooperation of every element in the global system -- that is every one of us -- to treat the disorder and bring the system back to the balancing state.