Spoken
by Supreme Master Ching Hai,
United Nations, New York, USA,
June 26, 1992
(Originally in English)
Q:
Thank you, Master Ching Hai, for sharing your wisdom with us. I have
a question about the escalating world population and its accompanying problem
of further environmental abuse and the greater demand for food. Would you
like to comment on the escalating world population? Is it world karma? Or
is this going to create a certain kind of karma in the future?
M:
It's not that we are overpopulated, really. We are just not spread out evenly.
People are just condensed in certain areas of the world and do not want
to move to another area. That is all. We have many vast areas of wilderness
that have not been used, many virgin islands, many vast plateaus that are
only green with forests and there's nothing there. People just like to concentrate
in New York, for example, because there's more fun here.(Laughter) Yes,
because if a government is able to create jobs and industry and employment
of different kinds in different places, people will go there also to work.
They just get condensed in certain places because it's easier to find employment
there, or safety. If the safety, security and employment opportunities presented
themselves in those other different places, people would go there also.
They would go for security, for their livelihood. That's very natural.
So,
it's not that we should fear overpopulation. We should be more organized
to give the people of the world more benefits of employment opportunities,
housing and security. Then everywhere will be the same. We will never be
overpopulated.
And
about your question concerning food, you should know better. Because in
America, we have so much information concerning how to preserve the world.
The vegetarian diet is one of the best ways to preserve the world's resources,
and to feed the whole population of the earth. Because we waste a lot of
vegetarian food, energy, electricity, and medicine to raise animals. Whereas
it could feed other people directly. And many countries of the third world
nations sell their protein-enriched vegetarian food for cheaper prices.
But that is not a help to the other world nations' populations. If we spread
out all the food evenly the vegetarian diet will help this, not only for
ourselves, not only for the animals, but for the whole world.
One
of the research magazines has already said that if we eat vegetarian, the
world will not be hungry anymore. And also we have to organize. I know a
person who can make rice bran into nutritious food and milk, even. And we
talked last time about that. He said he spends about three hundred thousand
dollars and he can feed six hundred thousand people in Ceylon-the poor,
the undernourished, the mothers, and all that. It was fantastic! It's because
of the way we do it in many parts of the world; it's that we waste the natural
resources, and not that we don't have enough.
God
wouldn't put us here to starve. Actually, we starve ourselves. So we have
to rethink, reorganize, and that needs the blessing of many countries' governments.
They have to bless us with their absolute honesty, cleanliness and dignity,
and the will to serve people instead of serving themselves. If we have this
blessing from all the countries' governments, we'll have no problem. We
have to have good leadership, good economic organization and ruling talents,
and honest governments. But that can come about more rapidly when most of
these people or all of these people become spiritual. Then they will know
the discipline; they will know the precepts; they will know how to be honest
and clean; they will know how to use their wisdom. They can think of many
things to do and reorganize our lives.
Q:
That seems to be very difficult because as I see it, much of the
environmental abuse today has to do with a growing population's demand for
more living space, for homes, for living the way we in the 20th century
know and want to live. Look at the jungles in Brazil, the environmental
abuse there, the destruction of the forests there, the rain forests. The
land is being defoliated and that results in floods. And these are not unrelated
to the problem of overpopulation.
M:
Yes, everything is related to each other, of course, in this
world. And the only solution is to solve it from the root, not the branches.
And the root is spiritual stability. Understand? (Applause) So all we have
to do is to try to spread the spiritual message, what we know, and keep
to the spiritual discipline. That's what people don't have. It's OK to plug
yourself into an electric machine and have some lights and some buzzing
music and get samadhi. But if you don't have moral discipline, then you
only use the power for bad things sometimes, and you can't control it. That's
why, in this group, we teach people the precepts first. Precepts are important.
We have to know where we go and maneuver our power. If we have power without
love, without compassion, without proper understanding of the moral value,
then it's no use. It becomes black magic. That's where black magic comes
from. So, it's easy to get enlightenment, but it's hard to keep it. In our
path, if you are not truly disciplined and morally equipped, the master
will take away some of your power so that you cannot abuse it and do bad
things to the society. That's the difference. Master has control of the
master power.
I
am very happy with all of your intelligent questions, very intelligent.
People do these things because they are not wise enough, like abusing the
land that you have mentioned, or doing something just because of their lack
of wisdom. So the root is wisdom, spiritual practice, getting enlightened.
