Man not Measure Of All Things

22 February 2002, 12:08am IST
Kailash Vajpeyi.

Man is no longer to be the measure of all things, the centre of the universe. he has been measured and found to be an undistinguished bit of matter, different in no essential way from bacteria, stones and trees. his goals and purposes, his egocentric notions of past, present and future; his faith in his power to predict and through prediction to control his destiny — all these are called into question, considered irrelevant, or deemed trivial. when leonard b meyer yanked man down from the exalted status assigned him by the judeo-christian tradition in his 1963 book, the end of renaissance?, he triggered off a radical shift in the relationship between man and nature. today, that understanding goes variously by the name of gaia or deep ecology. traditional indian hypothesis also postulates that planet earth is a living organism that adjusts and regulates itself like any other organism and that for 3.5 billion years, microbes, plants and animals have co-evolved with the environment as one globally integrated superorganism. gaia hypothesis, propounded by lovelock, suggests that some parts of the earth organism are vital organs which if disrupted would cause the whole earth (gaia) to malfunction. interestingly, in ancient scriptures of india we come across of a number of such examples. the bhumi sukta has plenty of such verses: ‘‘o purifing earth, i you invoke /o patient earth, by sacred word /enhanced bear of nourishment and /strength of food and butter /o earth we would approach you with /due praise.’’ (atharva veda xii-1-29). we hardly realise that there are cosmic forces which are working in cyclical patterns, and that the most fundamental pattern which governs our life is the movement of the earth on its axis. one shudders to think what would happen to life as we know it if the earth stopped spinning on its axis or the sun failed to ‘rise’ in the morning. to the vedic seers, the idea of subjugating or exploiting the earth was incomprehensible. to them it was an object of worship and not of exploitation. its conquest was tantamount to dissecting a mother’s body to study its heartbeat or chopping her breasts to isolate the gland producing milk. the prime concern of deep ecology is to develop a holistic view and to know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. ‘‘a severed hand is an ugly thing and man, according to the poet robinson jeffers, dissevered from the earth and stars and his history...for...contemplation often appears atrociously ugly’’. integrity is wholeness. buddha’s religion is the religion of inner management or mental culture. according to ancient buddhist thought the way the world is, it couldn’t be any other way. it is neither well nor not well. it simply is. if you are a happy person then that is what you perfectly are — a happy person. if you are an unhappy person then that is what you perfectly are — an unhappy person. if you are a person who is changing then that is what you perfectly are — a person who is changing. whatever is, is. everything is that which is. there is nothing which is not that which is. the idea of non-violence in jain philosophy can easily be compared with the basic tenets of ecotopia or deep ecology. it is so subtle and deep that it includes every form of life (visible and invisible) which needs the attention of homo sapiens. cause no unnecessary harm to others is the teaching of jinas. jinas are entirely free from attachment or aversion to any person or thing; they have neither love nor hate; nor have they delusion. influenced by this vision, the indian way of life was integral, its purpose — the well-being of all creation. in the western hemisphere martin heideggar — the famous philosopher and the author of being and time got interested in ecotopia near the end of his life. he concluded that all anthropocentric development paved the way for the technocratic mentality which espouses domination over nature. he requested his readers to dwell authentically on this earth — and to dwell with alertness to the nature processes. david ehrenfield, the author of the arrogance of humanism was perhaps one of the first major ecologists to systematically look at the world view from a perspective that is close to ecotopia. the basic laws of deep ecology are: everything is connected to everything; everything must go to somewhere; nature is our mother, she knows best and we are earthlings. as early as in 1250 ad baba farid in one of his sardonic notes had said: ‘‘do not despise the earth, though you tread it underfoot. when you pass away, the earth on you they will put’’.