If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.
Interpretation
Disconnecting from nature leads to a loss of humanity and compassion towards all living beings.
This quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti emphasizes the importance of our connection with nature and how losing that connection can result in harmful behaviors towards the environment and its inhabitants. When we disregard our bond with the natural world, we may become desensitized, viewing other beings merely as resources or targets for exploitation, thus severing our deeper relationships with both nature and our fellow humans.
In practice
Discussing environmental issues at a community gathering.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change.
Nature is a tropical swamp in sunshine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dewdrops, - but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles.
What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.
Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.
The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.
When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
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