Every month the B.L.I.S.S devotees put together a Krishna Conscious magazine of the name Matchless Gift. There is a variety of different pieces, ranging from recipes, funny stories, health advice and world news. Below is the World News feature, 'Water: A Slippery Problem,' written by Maitreya Rsi Dasa. You can find this article and many other wonderful discourses here, in the 11th edition of the Matchless Gift Magazine.
And you can check out our online store for all the other editions of Matchless Gift, PLUS books, prasadam and more.
Darfur. 16 years. Hundreds of thousands of people killed. Many millions displaced. Why? A lack of water. It might not come as a surprise that without the most basic of survival needs, the problems in almost every facet of life increase. When people don’t have access to water, hell breaks loose. Interestingly enough, it was only in 2010 that the UN recognized water as basic human right.
In Darfur, droughts over a period of twenty years made life difficult, to say the least. Land became nigh unusable for the growth of crops, and famine was an ever present threat. The people of the region and those nearby as well started migrating to find habitable land. At the same time, the population naturally grew, and the lack of arable land meant that the increasing population faced even more difficulties, scarcity of food, and drinkable, if any, water. Alongside these environmental factors, immigrants from neighbouring countries who had similar climatic conditions but different religious views increased the population density further, and the aggregate of all these factors led to tension between the increasingly diversifying groups. The Sudanese government paid little heed to the cries of the people, and in 2003, conflict broke out between four factions of the region. The root cause of the following bloodshed which continues up to the present day can be traced back to a lack of drinkable water, expediting increasing tensions between societal groups.
Water is an essential part of life. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the refreshing taste of water represents Him: raso’ ham apsu kaunteya (Bg 7.8). It is so important that it represents God. And indeed, a human being can go little longer than a few days without this precious fluid. And yet, in countries that are not at brutal civil wars and who do not experience devastating droughts, water is taken as something for granted. Every year, the United States uses more than 22 trillion gallons of water. That’s 333 million Olympic swimming pools. I don’t know if that’s a helpful analogy, but, it’s a lot of water.
What’s more surprising than the overall quantity of water consumed by a single country is which sectors are responsible for consuming it. Six percent of the usage can be attributed to residential purposes. For many, this number doesn’t come as a surprise, since the idea that companies overuse water and resources is widespread. Those same people may then be surprised that only eight percent of the water usage can be contributed to commercial use. Indeed, 86 percent of water is used for another purpose. That purpose? Many of those reading this article will have never heard of it before: Alfalfa. Alfalfa is a particular kind of grass fed to cattle. That’s right: 86 percent of water use goes into maintaining the beef industry. Just one quarter pound hamburger alone takes 1,650 liters of water to produce. To put that in perspective, the average person is meant to drink 3.7 liters a day (although that number is not supported by Ayurveda). So for killing and eating our mother, the cow, who gives the all-substantive food of milk, we are willing to put at great risk the quintessence of life in material bodies: water. Modern civilization has it’s priorities ad absurdum.
At the present rate of water consumption, the world literally does not have enough usable water to sustain this usage rate for than 50 years in some of the major cities, according to Arnoldo Matus Kramer, the chief resilience officer for Mexico City, Mexico. Recently, the enormous city of Bengaluru in South India announced restrictions due to a complete lack of water.
This has many of the big minds of the modern era racking their brains for solutions to a surmounting global threat. However, the events and patterns previously described are not at all random, as some worldviews may have it believed. And yet, it is also not dependant on our fossil fuel consumption, as another would postulate. Rather, the lack of basic necessities is a consequence of a lack of God-consciousness and an increase of vice, or sinful activities. The symptoms of the age of Kali-yuga are precisely described in the Shrimad-Bhagavatam, an ancient text predating 5000 years. In the 12th canto of the great work, we find the following predictions:
“Harassed by famine and excessive taxes, people will resort to eating leaves, roots, flesh, wild honey, fruits, flowers and seeds. Struck by drought, they will become completely ruined.”
SB 12.2.9
Certainly, the startling predictions of this ancient scripture ring true in today’s arid climate. It is, of course, not only a great credit to the authenticity of the Vedic scriptures, but an alarm to change our patterns of behaviour and social, political, and personal trajectories in life if we want to avoid these ominous sufferings. There are various solutions emerging for the present water crisis, and one of the desalination; the process of extracting water from seawater, purifying it, and making it readily accessible. However, the process creates a harmful by-product waste called “brine”: an extremely salt-dense mixture that suffocates living organisms in the water it is dumped from the processing plants employing desalination. It seems that no solution will be able to fix the problem unless we find the root cause of the issue, lest we resort to metaphorically filling one hole by making another continuously. Shrila Prabhupada, a revolutionary in solving all world problems, and the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna movement, offers the following sagacious advice:
“So we are receiving heat from the sun. Similarly, we are receiving rains. Don't you think that we have to pay some tax? That is required. That is enjoined in the Vedic literature. You must. Therefore so many sacrifices are recommended. If you do not offer those sacrifices, then there will be irregularity of rain, irregularity of heat, excessive heat, excessive cold, and people will suffer. This is the process. They do not know it.”
Bhagavad-gita class 3.11–19 – December 27, 1968, Los Angeles
People are familiar with the concept of paying taxes: you use some resource, and that resource is provided by the government, who create the facilities for extracting that resource. People generally do not stop to think about how little of the resources around them are available, and the effects of their irresponsibly using them. How much less, then, do they think about where the resource itself comes from in the first place? In fact, all the resources of the material world are managed by the demigods, powerful personalities ordained by Krishna who administer the natural materials according to the sacrifices performed by the people. Much like if we don’t pay our taxes and dues, the government will no longer maintain the water line to our houses. Fares fair, as they say. “Offering sacrifices” doesn’t mean dragging people or goats up a large flight of stairs and taking their heart out, triumphantly holding it above your head. At least, this magazine wouldn’t be very popular for very long if that were the case. The process of sacrifice as enjoined in the Vedas means giving up a portion of our wealth and/or energy for the satisfaction of Vishnu, or Krishna, who is the original and actual proprietor and enjoyer of all that be. In bygone eras, sacrifice was a costly affair; unimaginable quantities of ghee (clarified butter), grains, and other valuables would be offered into fire. But now, the process has been made simple by the introduction of the harinam sankirtana yajna. Harinam sankirtan yajna means chanting and dancing to the Holy Names of Krishna, the supreme Lord, and the most efficacious names of His Lordship are Hare, Krishna, and Rama. Combined, these comprise the hare krishna maha-mantra⎯Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare⎯a far more economically viable alternative to the modern day water crisis than the costly job of desalination, plants costing around 300 million pounds to start up and thousands a day to maintain. Such short sighted projects become redundant in light of the knowledge of the Vedas: In charge of the various necessities of life, the demigods, being satisfied by the performance of yajna [sacrifice], supply all necessities to man. But he who enjoys these gifts, without offering them to the demigods in return, is certainly a thief.
(Bhagavad-gita 3.12)Even if we produce such plants, we will be nothing more than highly technological thieves. Exploitation the resources of material nature doesn't just mean irresponsibly wasting them, or extracting them in ways which are unsustainable; using the elements of creation without acknowledging and appeasing the creator, Krishna, is just as reprehensible. It’s not at all an impossible task for people to gather together and united chant Hare Krishna, at the very least for the benefit of not suffering drought and famine. The chanting of Hare Krishna is actually meant for spiritual upliftment, not to solve any material problems, but material problems are solved as a natural consequence of people acting in accord with the laws of nature; principally, to live their lives in a way that is pleasing Krishna. In fact, recently, in 2015, South Africa’s Cape Town underwent unquenchable drought, and subsequently appropriate water sanctions were put in place. But as time progressed onwards of 2017, the drought also continued, and the sanctions only increased. On the first of January, 2018, the then-mayor of the city announced that they would be forced to shut off most of the municipal water supply if usage did not change. Shortly thereafter, residents being pushed into severe rationing of water, city-wide efforts were made on behalf of all the inhabitants to restrict the use of water. At the time of impending death and calamity, people learn how to work cooperatively.
But these threats are always present, whether or not we solve the problem of the worldwide water crisis, because the nature of the material world is that it is temporary, and we can be subject to it’s perils at any moment. Droughts, fires, earthquakes, storms, floods, wars, pestilence, and many other colorful unfortunate events await us if we do not urgently take up to the Hare Krishna movement.
“In these days of drought, people can gain relief from scarcity of rain and food by the simple method of the Hare Krishna yajna. Indeed, this can relieve all of human society. At present there are droughts throughout Europe and America, and people are suffering, but if people take this Krishna consciousness movement seriously, if they stop their sinful activities and chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, all their problems will be solved without difficulty.” (Shrimad-Bhagavatam 9.1.17)
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