Saving The Economy By Saving The Planet

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to cater and perform kirtan for a student environmental symposium on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.

It was a celebration of a global awakening that is happening, based around sustainable environmental principles and the awareness that we are all connected together as living beings, and how to put this awareness into practice.

One interesting initiative was the Global Marshall Plan, which aims to redirect and reform the global economy in order to stabilize and improve the precarious environmental and social state we find ourselves in today.

Greenpeace has also offered a similar thought-provoking article that proposes similar calls-to-action for governments and common folk alike. The key theme is the urgent call to redirect our precious financial resources to saving and preserving the environmental heritage of the human species.

Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the science behind climate change, as spiritual and progressive personalities it behooves us to support the initiatives that will reduce the physical and mental pollution that currently engulfs this earthly planet.

With the incredible and timeless potency of Vedic wisdom at our grasp, we must connect our realizations with the realizations of the people behind this "global awakening" movement. We can provide the sturdy spiritual framework that can lift a "greener" world to even greater heights.

If we can make this connection, then the benefits can truly end up being limitless and eternal.

"Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!"

One side-benefit of the current economic crisis may be that it becomes easier for locally grown, organic foods to find their way onto the school lunch menus of our kids.

Click here for more info and how to even get your own hometown school hooked up locally and organically.

Actual Sustainability

What is actual sustainabilty?

Is it the ability to create and sustain a consistent supply of foodstuffs locally and organically grown for your family and community?

Is it living by responsible environmental codes and practices that properly respects and doesn't denigrate the earthly planet we live on?

Is it driving your hybrid, drinking your soymilk, voting for Obama, or donating to Greenpeace or Sierra Club?

Is it all this, or is there something more?

Within the Iskcon movement...we do have the philosophical foundation to explain why and how spirituality is connected to sustainability and that there is no such thing as sustainability without spirituality. It is nothing but understanding the movement of the modes of nature, the permutation of goodness, passion and ignorance moving around. But the actual sustainability is that you are doing it for the pleasure and service of God. Therefore by Gods grace and his expansions or assistants, that arrangement makes everything co-operate with your effort to make nice devotional offerings. Thats actual sustainability.
Tapahpunja Das, 2008 Festival of Inspiration, New Vrindaban Dham