Earth Day

[Guest guest]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Sai, Sai Ram.

 

Every year April 22nd has been designated Earth Day, as I am sure you are aware. Our Mother Earth is suffering greatly from the lack of care and respect with which we guests have been choosing to treat her. We have steadily and continuously been enjoying her gifts which our Bhagwan Sathya Sai Baba endowed her with for our sustenance and well-being. We have been greedy and selfish, and we are still being greedy and selfish in spite of all the warning messages she has sent to us through earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, eruptions, unseasonal and extreme weather conditions, melting ice, to let us know that she is not happy and we must change our ways.

 

We continue to waste and pollute water, and expect to use unlimted amounts of treated water whenever we wish. We continue to use billions of tons of plastic. We continue to destroy trees without planting new ones. We pour chemicals and pollutants into the air, onto the earth, into the rivers and the sea knowing we are doing harm, without being bothered. We destroy the delicate and sensitive eco-systems which Swami put into place to sustain life and growth, and we don't care. We breed more and more animals in cruel and desperate conditions simply for the dubious pleasure of enjoying their meat and fur, ignoring the consequences to ourselves from the pain and fear we cause to innocent creatures, ingesting their pain and fear in the process and feeding our egos.

 

In spite of warnings and appeals and information and proof we continue to hide from the messages, and even our own knowledge, about where we are going wrong. The Five Human Values are spoken about with great ceremony but seldom practiced towards our fellow human beings, or towards animals and creatures, or towards trees, plants, vegetation, or even towards water without which we know no life can exist.

 

How many of us and to what extent do we make efforts to save water, to thank it after every use and to be grateful for it? How many of us make efforts to reduce the amount of plastic used, or to choose environmentally friendly products and food? Are we willing to reduce the amount of electricity we use and to change to energy saving bulbs, even to choose eco-friendly cars when we are changing our old ones for new ones? Do we harvest precious rainwater for future use when there is too little rain, and to choose alternative forms of energy wherever we can, including solar panels?

 

Have we not noticed that problems are increasing everywhere in all aspects of life, that we are facing ever more challenges and changes? Are we not supposed to learn from where we have been going wrong during the Kali Yuga? How can Swami finally take us into the Golden Age if, in spite of the decades and millions of teachings during His presence on earth, we continue to resist and reject every opportunity to change? Surely self-realisation is not only about meditation, about prayers, about rituals, about journeys to Puttaparthi, but just as much about the choices we make every moment about how to give our own love to all the manifestations of Swami's Love that He blesssed us with, but which instead we continually destroy.

 

Love is not conditional on convenience or pleasure, it is unconditional towards everything and everyone everywhere, and so I appeal and implore and urge each one of my Sai family to chant "Samastha Lokha Sukhino Prabhantu" throughout Earth Day in prayer to Swami to make the world happy, but also and equally to make a commitment to do our own absolute utmost each moment, every day, in every way towards playing our own part in making the world and Mother Earth happy.

 

Om Sai Ram.

Thank you.

Gene Yakub