Buddhism and Environment

Our Buddhist people believe that if we wish to save the environment, we must first analyze our lives to determine how our self is destroying the world by depleting, overpopulating, and polluting the environment.

And our Buddha also thought us that respect for life and natural would is essential. And I can recall one Vinaya rule Bhutagama sekkhapada in Pacittaya, that the Buddha lay down it say monk cannot cut off any trees and break any tree’s branch so that what I understanding is environment is a really important for our life. We should not destroy the environment and we should try to promote to new generation better understanding on environment. And we can see clearly our Buddha true story that mostly staying at forest and we can consider about Buddhism. 

Buddhism is a religion that places great emphasis on environmental protection. Sakyamuni Buddha was born at Lumbini Garden. He engaged in spiritual practice in the forest, attained Buddhahood under a tree, and first began preaching at Deer Park. The major monasteries where he taught his disciples were all gardens or woods, such as Jeta Grove, Bamboo Grove, Amravana Garden, and he passed into pari-nirvana between two Sal trees near Kusinagara. He exhorted his monastic disciples, when spending the night under a tree, to regard that place as his home and take loving care of it.

The Buddha told us in the sutras and precepts that we should take loving care of animals, and that we should not harm the grass and trees, but regard them as the home where sentient beings lead their lives.

The name of this temple is Wat Pho and it is a famous and tourist attractive place in Bangkok and we can say it has a very good environment because as we can see the ground of this very clean and there are many trees that gives peace shadow for visitors.  

This is a stair to reach up golden mountain Wat Saket. Although this is manmade mountain. Many tourists and local people come to visit every day. There are many kinds of big trees and various kinds butterfly living there. Just like small forest. We can also say it has a very good environment.

These are all individual meditation buildings at Wat Dhammakaya. You can see how environment is nice and peace. This area is quiet but there are many kinds of birds living just like forest. And this is one of the best example to show off good environment. So I can probably say that this is the best place for meditators and the environment is excellent. 

And another the best example to show good environment is Chinese temple in  Singapore where I paid visited last year. This temple is the center of Chinese garden. The garden is very huge and very clean. In the morning many people come and do exercise in this temple area. This is the best one of to show good environment.

This is Wat Chiang dao in Chiang mai province. Behind of this temple has very high mountain and there has a very long and deep cave that I visited last year December. It is very far from Changmai city but there are lots of foreigners just for visiting this cave and to see good environment.