Claudia Gaspar Soares Martins

We must dare to reexamine our longstanding preference for history over nature. The celebration of "historical monotheism" is a fierce attempt by thinkers to distance Guru from the world of Hinduism. Nature is faulted for the primitiveness and decadence of pagan religions and the moderm Sikh is saddled with a reading of his tradition that is one-dimensional. Sikhism has been made to dull our sensitivity to the awe-inspiring power of nature. Preoccupied with the ghosts of other religions, it appears indifferent and unresponsive to the supreme challenge of our age: man's degradation of the environment. Our planet is under siege and we as Sikhs are in silence. What a monumental disservice to Sikhism and human kind!

For, properly understood, Sikhism pulsates with reverence for God's handwork. Man may embody the highest form of consciousness in the universe, but hardly merits the limitless power of an absolute monarch. His unique ability to unravel the secrets of nature does not make him the equal of its creator. In the tart words of William Blake, the unrepentant critic of Newton and the Enlightenment: "He who sees the infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the ratio only sees himself only." Sikhism is a religious tapestry designed to sharpen our eye for the divine, in nature as well as in history, and thus is laced with universal motifs relevant to our contemporary crisis.

Sikhs must recover, even symbolically, the harvest festivals. Despite the historicizing Sikhs never lost their agricultural roots. No matter how urban Sikh life became, the ancient harvest festivals have echoed liturgically and ritually with an undertone of anxiety. The fertility of nature is the most basic condition of human survival.

What has become so shockingly clear of late is that our own reckless assault on the environment -- whether stemming from indescribable poverty or ever more industrialization -- is part of the sentence. The rhythm of the natural year might undulate through the Nanakian calendar, which in turn yields an annual rendition of Sikhism vision of balance and harmony. We might keep a day of rest reminding man of his earthly status as a tenant and not the overlord. To rest is to acknowledge our limitations. One day out of seven we cease to exercise our power to tinker and transform. Willful inactivity is a statement of subservience to a power greater than our own.

Once a week, following the path of nature, the world, so to speak, is restored to God, and thus man proclaims, both to himself and to his surroundings, that he enjoys only a borrowed authority. The the day of rest, to rein in our lust for grandeur and gratification, then, addresses the environmental issue head on.

For the first time, a species has the power to render this planet uninhabitable, either cataclysmically or incrementally. We are not free to act indifferently or selfishly. Our mission is to tend to this cosmic oasis, to perpetuate an islet of consciousness in a seemingly mindless universe. More immediately, how salutary for the environment if one day a week we turned off the engines to walk rather than drive, to cultivate our inner fives, to relate to family and friends.

Errant and powerful, like the awesome potential of a gifted natural athlete, human nature needs to be focused, disciplined, and trained. The awareness of God's dominion, a proprietorship anchored in creation, is the ultimate constraint erected that a Sikh could embrace to stay the hand of self-destruction.


Copyright ©2002 Claudia Gaspar Soares Martins. About the author