Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh

Author:Thich Nhat Hanh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Right Fuel: Guard Your Mind, Nurture Your Aspiration

What Are You Feeding?

In order to be able to really protect the environment, you have to be able to take care of yourself. The base of our operations is our daily life and our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. The well-being of the planet depends on the well-being of your own body and mind, just as the well-being of your mind and body depends on the well-being of the planet. And so protecting the planet has to do with our way of consuming. If you cannot deal with the problem of pollution and loss of balance in yourself, how can you deal with the problem of pollution and loss of balance in nature? The teaching of interbeing here is very important.

We suffer because we have been consuming the wrong kind of food. We are ruining our planet with our way of consuming, and our children risk suffering deeply. So, the way to save our planet is to practice mindful consumption. Otherwise, humankind will continue to ruin our planet and create a lot of suffering, not only for other human beings but also for other species on Earth.

The Buddha said, “Nothing can survive without food.” And he also said, “When we suffer, we blame the outside, and we blame other people we think make us suffer. But, looking deeply, we find out that our enemy number one is ourselves.” We are the ones who make ourselves suffer the most, by the way we consume, the way we eat, the way we drink, the way we organize our life, the way we behave—even by our way of chasing after our ideas of happiness. We are the ones who create our own suffering; we are our own worst enemy. That’s what the Buddha said. In many ways we are responsible for our own suffering. We may have thought that something is good for us, and yet it makes us suffer a lot.

It is possible to end our ill-being. That’s good news! Depression can be ended. Your fear, anger, and hatred can be ended. We can train ourselves to see our ill-being in terms of nutriment. As soon as we can recognize whatever is the source of nutriment for our ill-being, we just cut it off and our suffering will cease; it has no more fuel and it will die.

In Buddhism, we speak of four kinds of nutriments: edible foods (what we eat and drink), sense impressions (everything we consume through our senses in terms of images, sounds, music, movies, websites, and so on), volition (what we consume in terms of our deepest intention), and consciousness (what we consume in the collective energy around us). All these sources of nutriment can be healthy or toxic.

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