What is the meaning of right relationship with nature?

Question: What is the meaning of right relationship with nature?

Answer: I do not know if you have discovered your relationship with nature. There is no ‘right’ relationship, only the understanding of relationship. Right relationship implies the acceptance of a formula, as does right thought. Right thought and right thinking are two different things. Right thought is merely conforming to what is respectable, whereas right thinking is movement, it is the product of understanding, and understanding is constantly undergoing modification and change.

If one really loved the earth, there would be frugality in using the things of the earth.

Similarly, there is a difference between right relationship and understanding our relationship with nature. What is your relationship with nature? Nature is the rivers, the trees, the swift-flying birds, the fish, the minerals under the earth, the waterfalls and the shallow pools. What is your relationship with them? Most of us are not aware of that relationship. We never look at a tree, or if we do it is with a view of using that tree, either to sit in its shade or to cut it down for lumber. In other words, we look at trees with utilitarian purpose; we don’t look at a tree without projecting ourselves and utilising it for our convenience. We treat the earth and its products in the same way. There is no love of the earth; there is only usage of the earth. If one really loved the earth, there would be frugality in using the things of the earth.

That is, if we were to understand our relationship with the earth, we should be very careful in the use we made of the things of the earth. The understanding of one’s relationship with nature is as difficult as understanding one’s relationship with one’s neighbour, wife, husband, or children. But we have not given a thought to it; we have not sat down to look at the stars, the moon or the trees. We are too busy with social or political activities. These activities are escapes from ourselves, and to worship nature is also an escape from ourselves. We are always using nature, either as an escape or for utilitarian ends—we don’t actually stop and love the earth or the things of the earth. We don’t enjoy the rich fields, though we utilise them to feed and clothe ourselves. We don’t like to till the earth with our hands—we are ashamed to work with our hands. There is an extraordinary thing that takes place when you work the earth with your hands. But this work is done only by others; we think we are much too important to use our own hands!

Since we do not love nature, we do not know how to love human beings.

So we have lost our relationship with nature. If once we understood that relationship, its real significance then we would not divide property into yours and mine; though one might own a piece of land and build a house on it, it would not be ‘mine’ or ‘yours’ in the exclusive sense; it would be more a means of taking shelter.

Because we do not love the earth and the things of the earth but merely utilise them, we are insensitive to the beauty of a waterfall and have lost the touch of life. We don’t sit with our backs against the trunk of a tree. And since we do not love nature, we do not know how to love human beings. We have lost the sense of tenderness, that sensitivity, that response to things of beauty. It is only in the renewal of that sensitivity that we can have understanding of what is true relationship. That sensitivity does not come in the mere hanging of a few pictures, or in painting a tree, or putting flowers in your hair; sensitivity comes only when this utilitarian outlook is put aside. It does not mean that you cannot use the earth; but you must use the earth as it is to be used. The earth is there to be loved, to be cared for, not to be divided as yours and mine. It is foolish to plant a tree and call it ‘mine’. Only when one is free of exclusiveness is there a possibility of having sensitivity, not only to nature but to human beings and to the ceaseless challenges of life.

What we have created between human beings is also a reality but a reality in which there are conflict and struggle. Everyone is trying to become something, both physically and inwardly. Spiritually, if I may use the word, we are all struggling to become something. When one is trying to become—ambition, competition, trying to achieve status politically or religiously—then you have no relationship with another, nor with nature. I doubt many of you who live in cities with all the crowds, noise and dirt, have come across nature often. You have this marvellous sea, but you have no relationship to it. You look at it; perhaps you swim there; but the feeling of the sea with its enormous vitality and energy, the beauty of a wave, its crashing upon the shore, there is no communication between that marvellous movement and yourself. If you have no relationship with that, how can you have relationship with another human being? If you don’t perceive the sea, the quality of the water, the waves, the enormous vitality of the tide going out and coming in, if you are not aware of that, how can one be aware or be sensitive to human relationship? Please, it is very important to understand this, because beauty, if one may talk about it, is not merely in the physical form, but beauty, in essence, is that quality of sensitivity, the quality of observation of nature.