Core concepts handed down to us through the Vedas and the Yoga Tradition provide teachings for an unbroken circle of sustainability that can save the planet.
An urgency to take action and move toward sustainability has unquestionably begun anew. As we yogis consider sustainability as a choice to be made, the Vedic concepts of sattva and dana are inherent aspects if we are to achieve true sustainability again.
Sattva and Vedic Sustainability
Sattva is the quality of being clear, calm, bright and balanced. When the mind is in a sattvic state, it sees the world as fundamentally one. It can most easily be grasped in comparison to its counterparts of rajas and tamas. In the mind, rajas creates agitation and sees the world as in a state of multiplicity. A tamasic mind is a dull dark mind inclined toward decay. In the world of Tolkien for example, Elron and the Elves are very sattvic; Men and Dwarves are rajasic; and the Orcs are tamasic. While there is nothing inherently wrong with rajas and tamas (they are as necessary as sattva, since tamas provides stability, rajas movement, passion and action), it is just that if the core orb of one’s awareness is permeated with sattva, then harmony, peace and longevity ensue and we get a world like Elron’s. Else we get a world like our own.
Innate sattvic views of harmony between individual and the oneness leads to consumption of sattvic food and drink and interactions with ‘other’ embodied in wisdom and compassion.
The rajasic and tamasic views that dominate the world today cause the present unsustainable vicious cycles we’re witnessing. Global warming, contaminated food supplies, over-consumption of vanishing resources as well as social and personal struggles such as corporate corruption, the breakdown of the family and global health epidemics like AIDS are reflections of rajasic and tamasic minds and actions, not sattvic ones.
Global sustainability hinges on each individual living, eating, consuming and interacting with ever increasing sattva and supporting a collective sattvic mind and culture. Sustainability relies on withdrawing the support of rajas and tamas entering the individual and collective mind.
Dana and Vedic Sustainabiility.
Becoming a society which actively supports a collective sattvic mind is an aspect of what is called dana in the Vedic and Yogic tradition, and what a Buddhist might call ‘right giving.’ The tenets of dana are found throughout the Vedic literature, especially in the Puranas, for instance the 11th to 13th chapters of the Narada Purana.
Giving food, water, wisdom, lore, money and land all are recommended in the Puranas, and this is not particularly surprising. What may be surprising, however, is that strict rules of who you should give to are also clearly presented. The foresight and wisdom put forth 5,000 years ago could not be timelier than now. Consider some of these tenets.
Giving to the worthy accrues merit while giving to the unworthy is a crime that depletes merit. Those who have ample resources but do not give at all are considered thieves.
If just our attitude toward trees could shift to match the Vedic view then our present world would snap into sustainability like a person waking from a bad dream.
Highest on the list of the worthy are the keepers of the wisdom traditions that support a life in harmony and cultural and environmental sustainability. Highest on the list of the unworthy is the violent and the hypocrites. We must be clear about to whom we are giving.
In the Vedic view of sustainability, giving to an institution that studies or promotes greater harmony with the environment is meritorious while giving anything to a violent and/or hypocritical person, institution, corporation or government is criminal. It is easy to determine the difference but not always as easy to make the right choices.
Here in the West, we have almost an entire ‘season’ devoted to giving, and millions of Americans run themselves into debt making sure they have lots to give. We are often more concerned about having a gift to hand or send to someone, than what that gift represents in the long view. Unconscious consumption is growing at an unpredecented rate, particularly during our annual season of giving that usually spans the six week period of Mid-November through December. But even if we are to be mindful of our giving during this season, the truth is, what we do on a daily basis, for long-term results, is far more effective.
Dana, this ancient knowledge and rules about giving, combines well with Vedic recommendations for daily conduct (dinacharya). Among many other things, dinacharya says that small actions done daily are greater than large actions done rarely.
Every dollar that you spend everyday goes to support something. What is it? Does the food that you eat come from a farmer whose techniques support the entire ecosystem? What pollution comes from the factory that makes your carpeting?
The most powerful vehicle of change might not be a government with a trillion dollars, but rather an individual with one dollar, because what is likely to survive in our world is who or what you give that dollar to. Give the dollar to buy a product of a rajasic corporation and it and its destructive agendas survive and thrive. In the Vedic Tradition, a stanchion of sustainability, you would be labeled a criminal. Give the dollar to buy sattvic sustainable products from a sattvic corporation and you support sustainability and not only will you get beautiful and sane products in your home, but you will actually accrue good karma. This is market driven sustainability and it is achievable through sattva and dana.
Awareness is the only thing that spans every moment, and the only thing we really have to give is our awareness. We can learn how to channel the power of our awareness through a sattvic mind to a focused awareness on an intention. When we do, we are practicing the Vedic principle of sankalpa. Sankalpa or intention is like the steering wheel of sustainability.
Our sankalpa, then, can be to cultivate a sattvic life. Although there are many common- sense ways to do so a sattvic diet is key. When the Puranas, for instance the 57th chapter of the Markandeya Purana, talk about very successful and sustainable races of terrestrial humanoids who have lived all around the planet, those who live in health and wisdom to be hundreds if not thousands of years old, it is almost always mentioned what they ate. Most of the time they lived either on raw fruits or on fruit juices and drank the pure water from powerful mountain rivers, both of which are among the most sattvic ‘foods’ possible. There is an unquestionable connection between a sattvic diet, a sattvic mind and cultural and environmental sustainability.
Sattvic attitudes, too, can be learned if the intention (sankalpa) is present. Compare the Vedic attitude toward trees with our corporate culture’s attitude. Contemporary attitudes of the powers-that-be view trees and forests as items to cleared away and permanently destroyed. This, of course, is one of the leading factors of the excess of greenhouse gases causing the global warming crisis.
The Vedic people, however, worshipped trees as the providers (poshaka): mothers, protectors, teachers, pharmacies, etc. Sacred groves of trees were often considered more powerful and sanctified than most temples. Trees linked the underworld, the world and heaven; one of the main fruits of the trees was the symbol and reminder of Oneness and interconnectedness of all things.
Whole races of beings lived in trees – and as trees – for instance many types of Yakshi, who were like dryads, tree spirits. Some of the most sattvic foods are the fruits of those trees. Trees are vital players in the Vedic view of sustainability. If just our attitude toward trees could shift to match the Vedic view then our present world would snap into sustainability like a person waking from a bad dream.
In these stories of these Elven-type races, there are occasions when attachment or greed started to sneak into these long-lived cultures. When this happened one of the first things that changed is the Divine food sources. The special fruit trees would become extinct, would disappear, would simply vanish from their world. Then the people would start eating less sattvic food, their lives would shorten, and they would become like us.
small actions done daily are greater than large actions done rarely.
I walk through the forests around my home in Marin and notice these things happening here and now. Every year there are more dead Oak trees. The Oaks have always been a symbol of truth, which is why banks were always finished in Oak. But now as truth disappears from our culture, perhaps there no longer is the psychic terrain for the Oaks to live.
So often the quality of the water and food is tied with the quality of consciousness. When one of them goes, they all go, and conversely, as we focus on improving one, they all are uplifted for the benefit of all beings. It is not necessary to have lived in a mythic or ancient time to create consciousness. We have the opportunity, through dana and choices we make every day to act in a way that is sattvic.
If the mind of sustainability is sattvic wisdom, and its heart is compassion through dana, then its belly is organic agriculture and its hands are surely market driven sustainability while its home is a grove of sacred trees.
