The Vrindavan Heat Wave and Vrindavan Consciousness

Vrindavan summer temperatures are hitting record breaking highs as a month-long heat wave strikes the north of India. This is an annual occurrence towards the end of the hot season as everyone anxiously waits for the monsoon to come. But it appears this year that things are a bit more severe and the heat wave is getting worse with new record temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. Global news services are taking note and counting the deaths.

Global warming means extreme weather events such as this.

We spend a lot of time worrying about the forlorn state of the Yamuna: More and more water has to be taken for agriculture and the teeming millions of the capital region metropolis, while the city's filth drains into the Yamuna. Water scarcity, drought, desertification -- these are among the very real dangers that accompany the warming of the planet.

These effects of development and global warming are now inevitable, "locked in" as the scientists like to say. We do not hear much about this issue in India itself because no one really wants to think about it. In fact, like many other developing countries, India is in total denial about the effects climate change will have on it, or about how its own actions exacerbate global warming..

India is committed to the path of development. It came late to the party, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when everyone suddenly realized that the Soviet model of communism was finished and that different forms of capitalism were now the only game in town.

Powerful nuclear neighbors like China and Pakistan made it impossible to avoid entering the global wealth creation competition.

And so India adopted the American capitalist model of development: cars, highways, concrete buildings, consumption, plastic packaging.. and so came increased garbage, environmental degradation, pollution and the production of greenhouse gases, the very source of the global problem.

It is a shame that India could not have learned the lessons the progressive West was only beginning to learn as it began its descent into the fever pit of global competition and consumerism, and drawn on its spiritual traditions to recognize the dangers that lay on this path, but how could it avoid the spirit of the age?

India is so committed to blindly following the development model that there is no turning back. And indeed, only the most committed people have been able to do anything, but a bit of recycling, solar panels and driving an electric car are only a drop in the bucket and don't really represent a solution.

I wish I had faith that this tendency could be stopped. The fact is, as says pessimistic climate scientist Guy Macpherson, that civilization is itself a heat machine. Even if we were to suddenly go back to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide, it is unlikely that humanity will be able to survive because of all the feedback loops that have been set into motion.

But even if it were possible, there is no will in humanity to set aside the comforts that it has acquired in this age, where human reason has been so effectively engaged in the service of sense enjoyment and pointless accumulation.

Human successes in hygiene and health have led to increased population, generating more heat and helping to inch the fateful moment closer.

In the West, consumerism has been baked into the system. In India, people run towards the vision of a consumerist society where all material desires can be fulfilled, where everyone can live "the American Dream." It is impossible for the Earth to handle people with an environmental footprint the size of the Americans', but who can stop the ambition to enjoy as they do?

For us who have faith in the shastras of almost every world tradition, we have been headed in the wrong direction for some time. Krishna says clearly,

asatyam apratiṣṭhaṁ te jagad āhur anīśvaram |
aparaspara-saṁbhūtaṁ kim anyat kāma-haitukam ||8||
etāṁ dṛṣṭim avaṣṭabhya naṣṭātmāno’lpa-buddhayaḥ |
prabhavanty ugra-karmāṇaḥ kṣayāya jagato’hitāḥ ||9||

The asuras say the world is not true and has no ultimate foundation, that there is no God.
They believe it has come about randomly and its only purpose is sense-enjoyment.
Adopting this attitude, these less intelligent souls are lost to themselves
and engage in horrific works that bring harm to the world. (16.8-9)

How appropriate that we finally see the truth of this statement. It is time for at least some of us to wake up to this reality.

Maharaj Parikshit knew he had seven days to live. We do not know how much longer humanity has left, Guy Macpherson has been the most gloomy of prognosticators, with an almost unbelievable short time -- less than ten years -- is left before all the feedback loops lead to an exponential increase in temperature that makes human life -- and in all likelihood most life on the planet -- unsustainable. But more and more other climate scientists are beginning to beat the drums of doom for humanity.

Nevertheless, our task is much the same as that of Maharaj Parikshit, at least we can focus on Krishna and the nitya-Vrindavan in our minds, even if we cannot join him by the banks of the Ganges to pass our remaining days in hearing Krishna katha..

In Vrindavan, however, I would say that the eternal task of service to the Dham should continue on unabated.

Sewak Sharan, Vrindavan's first modern environmentalist, like so many prophets, was ignored. We might not be able to stave off the coming global disaster, but at least we would have been true to the spirit of the Dham, which would be to honor it as Nature in its divine form, where human beings live in perfect harmony with the natural world, serving it in the knowledge that this is the Divine Couple's playground.

For Sewak Sharan, Vrindavan Dham represents an ecological consciousness, a combination of spirituality and nature. The world's environmentalists once said that we should think globally but act locally. So what better place to act locally than at the very point where the spiritual and material worlds meet?

Whether humanity's fate is sealed or not, whether we believe in these dire warnings or not, we have at least to recognize that the great advances of science have clouded humanity's collective intelligence as to its true purpose.

So let us on an individual level try to exemplify the ideals of bhakti; jnana and vairagya, take satisfaction in a simple life in harmony with nature as far as is possible in the current situation. It may be too late to have an effect, even locally, but we can still promote a Vrindavan consciousness, i.e., a bhakti-based environmentalism.