Spiritual Leaders Must Now Lead

Humanity finds itself in an Ecological nightmare of its own making.  Much as a person who, having passed out with a lit cigarette, now awakes from the fog of sleep to find the whole house burning down around him.  We are just rousing, and we haven’t figured out how to put out the fire.  For by every measure, the destruction to our planet—our very life support system—is gathering speed.    And still, we continue our destructive behaviors.  We beget more children than warranted and consume far more than necessary.  So far, we have put our collective faith in human innovation and a growing economy, which, in great part, is what got us into this predicament. Clearly, we—individually and collectively—need to radically change our ways.  But our ways are too entrenched, the culture of materialism still too strong.  We have accumulated much knowledge about the outer world but little wisdom of the inner one.  

We need help. We need the characteristics of courage, wisdom, generosity (non-selfishness), inner honesty, humility, mindfulness, gratitude—characteristics that have been taught for millennia by the wisdom traditions, and are being espoused today in every church, temple, mosque, ashram and sangham.   But the voices of our spiritual leaders have as yet been quiet, maybe not silent, but far too quiet, on this most important ecological crisis.  Scientists and analysts of every type agree that we are at a point of crisis, that our window of opportunity may be small.  It is time that the leaders of wisdom speak out forcefully about the plight of our planet and the power of the spiritual solution.  They need to stand up and to truly lead, and show us how the inner transformation brings about external harmony.