There is No Better Time for This Book May 28, 2018 – Posted in: Reviews – Tags: agriculture, Asia, Asian community, Asian ecology, Asian environment, biodiversity, Buddhist, Catholic, culture, Ecology and Environment, environment, Hindu, Malaysia, Muslim, Nature, Shinto, Spirituality, Sustainability, sustainable development, tropical rainforest
After reading Living Pathways, my first response was “This book should be placed in the hands of every head of state around the world.” Clearly, deeply and beautifully, M. Nadarajah brings us face-to-face with of the most pressing global issue of our time: the urgent need to take responsibility for the precious resource belonging to all of us, our Mother Earth.
I love how Nat takes us on his path, as he talks with villagers, academics, elders, and politicians. His journey brought me to realize, as he did so poignantly, that I can no longer think of “sustainable development” as if it were a nice project for someone else to take up in the future, but that I, like every other human being, embody Spirit and Nature, and the many questions the book raises are ones that I need to answer. Responsibility, as the “ability to respond,” is something which I need to own.
Nat is a scholar, philosopher, historian and artist. He holds the mirror up to Nature and Sprit through his remarkable collection of photographs. I looked for captions but found none, only to realize that Nat is saying, “Don’t look for, just look.” Beauty surrounds us, and we are its stewards. The richness of this earth—its people and its resources—are not to be captioned but to be lived.
There is no better time for this book. It should be required reading the world over, challenging each and every one of us to remember that we have only one home, our planet Earth. And that we ask every day, individually and collectively: what are we doing to sustain the great gifts of Nature and Spirit that will only be available in the future if we take responsibility for them now.
Ben Bernstein, Ph.D
Clinical Psychologist, Educator and Author (USA)
http://testsuccesscoach.com/
This review first appeared in livingpathways.weebly.com
