EARTH JUSTICE: DOES THE EARTH HAVE RIGHTS?

"The earth is alive...The soil is her flesh, the rocks are her bones, the wind is her breath, trees and grass her hair. She lives spread out, and we live on her. When she moves we have an earthquake." Okanogan Creation, Native American nations

"Wonderful are the animated beings and their distinctions, their forms and colours. Wonderful are the creatures that go about naked. Wonderful are the winds, and the waters, and the fires that play wonders. Wonderful is the earth, and the sources of its production."
Asa Ki Vaar, Guru Nanak

Would we be able to survive without the care and provisions that EARTH gives to us ? The earth provides us with air, water, food, soil, moisture, warmth, cold, rain and endless more things. Should we take the earth for granted? Should we treat the earth as a material commodity, and expect it to provide endless quantities of food, water and air for our endless consumption and waste? Is the earth a slave to the human desires and whims?

Humans need the earth more than the earth needs them. Despite our infliction of constant selfish violence on the earth's body, in thought and action, the earth has continued to cradle and hug us, feed and water us, and provide for all our needs and well-being. How can we describe such as profound relationship of supreme and infinite benevolence service? How should we modern day humans consider this intrincate, yet unequal, uneven, relationship. Does the earth deserve our appreciation and respect?


Why do human show arrogant superiority over all things that move and exist around them? Why do human's declare themselves the supreme species? From where do they authenticate this self-declared supremacy. Does the human have the power to control night and day?Does the human have the ability to provide water, food and air? No the human creates none of these essentials of life. The human conquers and self-proclaims that he is a great cook, a great thinkers, a great architect, a great writer, a great photographer, a great footballer, a great this and a great that. "this world is false and fraudulent" - page 580, Guru Granth Sahib.


The human is consumed is the disease of his own individual ego and collective ego. Blinded by this callous ignorance and self-superiority, he roams in a chaotic pursuit of self-seeking pleasure - sex, drugs, material accumulation, status, fame, money, etc. He does this individually and collaboratively with many other self-seeking members of his 'society'. In his pursuit of any and all of these; he falls into the condition of depression, confusion, frustration, anger and, ultimate, mental collapse. He is encaged by the disease of his man-mat, the freelancer who has separated from the rhythm and path of sacred creation and sacred law of life (hukam). The human lives in delusion. He has no connection. He has no source. He has no one-ness. No unity. He floats chaotically in this competitive, unfriendly world of greedy individualism. He cannot comprehend why the conscious and pious are caring and sharing. Why they have connection and feeling with an unseen, invisible power. Why they live according to a sacred trust and law of INTIMATE KINDNESS, RESPECT, AFFINITY.

The human mind is conditioned to treat the earth as a physical commodity - at school, at work, on television, in the family. A place where we walk and sit, and from which we take what we like. The modern day human mind is not nurtured and educated to realise a relationship of respect, friendship and equality with the earth. Indeed, the earth is not equal, but higher than us! Unlike us, the earth provides the essentials for life and the natural equilibrium which makes life functional and sustainable. The earth does not need us, as much as we need the earth. We take all that the earth provides, for granted. We take, take and take! The earth does not need us, as much as we need the earth. The earth can happily and healthily continue without us, indeed very much better! We can cannot survive without the water, air, food that the earth harmoniously provides. We are dead and extinct without it. According to Sikh thought, the 'EARTH IS A SHRINE' . Its is a 'sacha dharamsaal' - an authentic abode of true existence.

The ordinary mass humans are kept suffocated in a state of ignorance and abiding conformity to the dominant structures of the human elites. We eat, buy, do and watch what we are told to do by the messages we get from our government, television, education systems, workplace and general official systems. Our minds and bodies are constantly saturated and de-activated with Mcdonald junk food, Big Brother disrepect, celebrity egos and mass consumerism promoted by governments and companies. Conformity is key to that kind of life. No space for natural independent living.

The earth is a living breathing life. It is a soul, an energy, a power of care and benevolence, an equilibrium of life and sustenance. It is not a machine for us to switch on and off. It feels pain and poison. It falls chronically ill when we pollute and poision its air, rivers and soil. It feels loss and mutilation, when we kill and bulldoze its forests, its green lands, it mountains. It feels emotional devastation when we kill its creatures, its birds, rabbits, lions, badgers, elephants, whales and endless more animate and inanimate children.

Today, the earth stands battered, scarred, bruised, poisoned, choked and diseased by the debilitating violence of the dominant human. We human's - individually and collectively - run riot, raping, killing, burning, wasting and bulldozing at will.

Today and for the last hundreds of years, the white-European world has been inflicting its greedy pursuit of material pleasure on the body of the earth. Through it's global commerce, military conquests, territorial carve ups and partitions, mass productions, construction of cities (human zoos and concentration camps); it has destroyed and bulldozed over the earth's natural landscape. It has torn apart the earth's natural equilibrium - tearing aside it's rivers, it's trees, it's animals, it's soil and more. It has inflicted large dominant buildings, built huge motorways, huge factories of material production, nuclear bombs, nuclear power stations, military centres, chemical centres, animal slaughter centres on the landscape of the earth. Human-kind's dominant elities have run amok over the natural laws and processes of the earth. They have enslaved and subjugated the earth, as an object of their perverse pleasure. "this world is false and fraudulent" - page 580, Guru Granth Sahib.

For this cruel, unrespectful, uncaring treatment; the human world will pay the just price. Natural justice will ensue. If we refuse to show the same protection and security that we receive from the earth, then we cannot expect it from the oppressed earth. "What we sow, so shall we reap" (Guru Nanak, Japji). "The human inflicts cruelty and injustice, and yet expect ambrosia in return" (Guru Nanak, Asa ki Vaar). When the bleeding, aching, broken world reacts to the humans' torturous violence, with storms, tornadoes, upheavals, floods and tsunamis; the arrogant human dismisses and decries by declaring it a 'tragedy' and a 'natural disaster'. Humans continue callously to condemn the very movements and feelings of nature, which keep us alive and healthy in the first place. Instead of understanding the hurt and voice of pain of the benevolent earth, we dismiss and shut it out. We continue with our ignorant and uncaring lifes; expecting the earth and its natural systems to settle down and serve us like an obedient slave.

"Peace comes within

the soul of men,

when they realize their oneness with the universe."

Black Elk, Ogala Sioux Spiritual Leader

The earth, like the birds, fish and animals that nest in its midst, has the RIGHT to justice. Natural justice, sacred justice gives the earth sacred rights to respect, care and protection. The right not to be tortured. The right not to have its limbs torn apart. The right not to be choked by toxic poisons and pollutants. The right to breath without constant pain and injury. The right to enjoy complete life and being, without threat and attack of human greed and murder. The EARTH HAS INTRINSIC NATURAL RIGHTS! These are rights endowed by the creator, not by humankind or the United Nations, George Bush, Tony Blair or any other such human system or personality. These rights come from a supreme, paramount source, higher, more powerful, more complete, more ethical, more total than any of these visscitudinous entities.

"The praanic wind, water and fire singh...The planets, solar systems and galaxies, created and arranged by your hand, sing. They alone sing who are pleasing to your will...The One created existence, with its various colours, species of being, and the variety of maya. Having created creation, the One watches over it by intrinsic Greatness." Jaap Sahib, Panna 6, Guru Nanak

"WADAHANS, FIRST MEHL, DAKHANEE: The True Creator is True, know this well. True Sustainer. The One Self fashioned One Self. The True is invisible and infinite. Brought together and then separated the two grinding stones of the earth and the sky...Created the sun and the moon; night and day, they move according to the One's Thought.... You created the Universe; You are the Giver of pleasure and pain. You created woman and man, the love of poison and emotional attachment to Maya. The four sources of creation and the power of the Word are also of Your making. You give Support to all beings. You have made the Creation as Your Throne; You are the True Judge. You created comings and goings, but You are ever-stable, O Creator One." page 580, GURU GRANTH SAHIB