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Our Mission
The Caitanya Ecological Foundation is
a
non-profit organization whose primary objective is protecting the
earth's fragile, natural environment by cultivating and promoting
ecologically sound principles and insights expressed in or implied by
some of the
world's great spiritual traditions.
Caitanya (aka
cit) means
"consciousness" or "awareness." That
caitanya is the fundamental datum
of all spiritual and intellectual life is commonly recognized by
religious and philosophical traditions all around the world.
Caitanya or consciousness
presupposes existence (
sat)
and leads to or at least provides the necessary conditions for joy (
ananda). It is the belief of
the founders
of the Caitanya Ecological Foundation that those who are fully
conscious of the intimate connections and intricate dependencies
existing between living organisms and their environments will act in
ways that are not harmful to or exploitative of those natural
environments. It is therefore the work of the Foundation through
its various programs and sub-organizations to raise human consciousness
on matters of personal and global ecology. This raising of
consciousness will lead those so illumined to more joyful and
peaceful forms of existence in harmony with themselves and nature.
While the Foundation is open to and
appreciative of ecological insights from all religous and spiritual
traditions as well as from modern humanistic thought and scientific
discovery, it has drawn particular inspiration from the Krsnaite
tradition of India. Krsna (pronounced "krishna"), shown above in
his natural habitat, is to our knowledge the only divine being in the
world who is represented as having come not just to save a small
portion of mankind or to enlighten mankind or to give mankind some new
skill or knowledge. Rather, Krsna came (as an
avatara, descent)
in large part to save the earth from its burden of exploitation,
represented as various
asuras
(anti-gods). Along with saving the earth he came to save its innocent
inhabitants, life forms of all types, who were being oppressed by the
arrogant, self-centered
asuras
who were in power at the time. The Sanskrit word
krsna,
in addition to referring to a kind of antelope (
Rig Veda 10.94.5) and a
kind of bird (the
kokila in
Ramayana, 2.52.2), means
"dark-blue." This dark-blue is often associated in India with the
rain-laden clouds of the monsoon season which bring life-giving waters
back to the parched earth after India's hot summers. However one
reads the Krsna narratives, their ecological threads are
unmistakable. The Caitanya Ecological Foundation seeks to foster
and apply those insights while at the same time drawing on compatible
ecological
understandings from other traditions.
At the top of its list of goals of the
Caitanya Ecological Foundation is the raising of funds for the
acquisition and preservation of undeveloped, wilderness lands.
Such lands once acquired will be protected from unnecessary development
and exploitation. Moreover under the management of the Foundation
those lands will be cared for in
ecologically sound ways so that the natural habitats and wildlife on
them may flourish. On each tract of land eco-guardians will be
placed to care for the land and occasionally conduct tours of the
natural habitats on those lands. The eco-guardians will be
primarily drawn from practitioners of the world's meditative traditions
(Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Mystical Christianity and Judaism, Islam
and so forth) whose meditative practices would be enhanced and
strengthened by
residence in natural settings of beauty and peace.
Why use meditators in robes instead of armed guards to keep off
poachers and lumberjacks? In the first place the foundation's
methods are non-violent. Non-violence,
ahimsa, is very important to
us. Violence has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective.
It merely provokes more violence. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi:
if one practices the biblical dictum "an eye for an eye," before long
the whole world will be blind. Foundation's major aim is
therefore educational and the preferred educators are those who through
their meditative practices are able to experience a sense of oneness
with the world or, to put it in the words of the
Bhagavad-gita (9.4, 9.6, etc.), to
see the divine in all beings. In addition to placing meditators
on the lands protected by the foundation, the foundation also intends
to create small eco-villages on some of the lands, peaceful and
beautiful habitations where interested people can learn and practice
meditational techniques so that more and more people are brought to a
higher awareness of our fundamental unity-in-diversity with the world
and its beings.
In parallel
with this concern for the preservation of wilderness lands the
Foundation
is interested in building new buildings or renovating older buildings
in
cities, outfitting them with state of the art
eco-technology such that they are able to generate their own
electricity from the energy of the sun and/or the wind, to recycle the
water used in
them, and to be heated or cooled in ways that are efficient and not
harmful to the
environment. Once so redesigned, the buildings will house shops,
theaters, apartments, schools, libraries and galleries and will be
offered as
examples of fully eco-conscious design for future city planning and
construction.
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