But even small changes can make a big impact. Here are a few things that we can do—as individuals, families and communities—to save the environment and ourselves.

Ditch the plastic toothbrush

In the US itself, discarded toothbrushes amount to one billion pieces per year. That is one followed by 12 zeroes! Most toothbrushes we use are made of plastic handles and nylon bristles. These contaminate our oceans and stay there forever. Switch to wooden/bamboo toothbrushes that have bristles made of cellulose. These toothbrushes are bio-degradable. An even better option would be to use twigs of meswak and neem; you won’t even need commercial toothpaste if you use them. Twigs are usually available at a local store that sells Ayurvedic herbs.

Say no to plastic shopping bags

Nearly two million single-use plastic bags are distributed worldwide every minute. These again pollute our oceans and landfills. Buy sturdy tote bags and shopping bags of different sizes so that you never have to depend on plastic bags. Keep a cloth bag in your car, in your handbag and in your office drawer; these come handy as you never know when you might need one. You can even make your own cloth bags out of used bedsheets. To buy groceries and vegetables, there are cloth bags available that have smaller compartments within them. This saves you the trouble of sorting veggies once you get back home with your shopping.

Who needs plastic straws anyway

Every year 100,000 marine animals die from ingesting plastic and most of this happens due to straws. A plastic straw is used for a few minutes and then discarded. Each straw takes about 200 years to be completely decomposed. So the next time you get a drink, remember to specify that you don’t want a straw. Some establishments now use paper straws, which is a great step. If you think you can’t do without a straw, buy a stainless steel one and carry it with you in your car or your handbag. These straws often come with tiny brushes that can be used to clean them from the inside.

Use eco-friendly option for periods

Besides the health impact of commercial sanitary napkins and tampons there is the impact on the environment. Each sanitary pad comes with a plastic wrapper to wrap the used pad, the cumulative polluting effect of this is massive. If you’re willing to make the change then there are eco-friendly options like reusuable cloth pads, eco-friendly single-use menstrual pads and menstrual cups. The reusable pads come in various sizes and are leak proof.

Cloth diapers are the way to go

Diapers have an impact on the environment too and take a lot of space in landfills. Switch to using cloth diapers for your baby. These are leak proof and could also save your baby from nappy rash.

Your food choice matters too

If you care about the environment, choose your food consciously too. Eating organic, local and seasonal produce is healthy, promotes the local agri-economy and reduces one’s carbon footprint. Grow a kitchen garden, no matter how small.  If you consume meat and dairy, choose free-range alternatives as factory-farmed animals have a huge environmental cost. Lastly, do not waste food and start composting your waste.

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To me, life is an infinite expanding energy. Don’t make any choice! That’s why I don’t put sannyas against the world. I say be a sannyasin and be in the world, because a sannyasin, if he chooses the life of the monk and escapes from the world, will be poorer for that—because the world has many things to give to you. It is a tremendously beautiful device of God’s—to help you grow, to give you challenges, to give you new adventures; to give you opportunities to test yourself, your awareness, your being.

If you escape from the world you will be escaping from all these opportunities. Sitting in a cave in the Himalayas you will be very poor—poor in the sense that you will not have richness of experience. And by and by you will become stupid. You will become silent—that’s true—because there will be nothing to distract you. But that silence also is of the Himalayas, it is not yours. Come back to the world and in the marketplace you will see your silence has disappeared. It was not yours—it was part of the Himalayan silence. You were deceived by yourself.

Silence in the marketplace

When silence happens in the marketplace then it is true, then it is yours—now nobody can take it away. Now no distraction can be a distraction to you. You can remain anywhere; whatsoever the situation, your silence will remain there as a deep substratum to your being. It is inner.

So I don’t say leave the world. I say be in the world and yet be beyond it—so that you can have both—the experiences of the sansari, the worldly, and the sannyasin, the otherworldly. When both are possible, why choose? Make life as big as possible. Don’t narrow it down.

The whole orchestra

All the centres, all the seven chakras of the body, have to function well. All the centres of the body have to function in a unity, in an organic unity. From sex to sahasrar, from the first to the seventh, they should vibrate like an orchestra.

You can choose one centre. That’s what people have done: some people have chosen the sex centre. Their whole life remains just a process of sexuality—very poor. I don’t call them sinners; I simply call them very poor people. And poor by their own choice—when more was possible. It is as if you have an airplane and you yoke bullocks to it and use it as a bullock-cart. You are poor—not a sinner. You are simply foolish, stupid! Or you can use the airplane like a truck, like a bus—a little better than the bullock-cart, but still you are foolish. Such a costly vehicle, and you are using it as a bus! A vehicle that can fly into the skies, you are using it as a truck on the road.

That’s what is happening. You have a beautiful orchestra within you, the full range, all the colours, all the notes—all that is possible is possible within you, but you cling to one centre: the sex. Somebody clings to some other centre, somebody to some other. And then there are people who think: “Leave all this, and we should just remain in the ajna chakra—in the third-eye centre.” That too is narrowing down your being. Better than being a bullock-cart but still you are a truck on the road.

Then there are a few who think that they have to use only the sahasrar against all the six—then again you are confining your being. Then you have an airplane, but you never get down on the earth. You are going to have a big accident sooner or later because sooner or later you will run out of fuel. Flying continuously is dangerous.

Heaven and earth

Sometimes come back to the earth, down to earth; refill the petrol, rest, relax; get ready to fly again. That’s the way. And the earth is beautiful—as much as the sky. The stars are beautiful, but have you watched, sitting in an airplane? You cannot look very long in the sky, it is boring. It is beautiful, but it is monotonous. People start falling asleep sooner or later. They look outside the window for a little while and then they feel bored—it is monotonous.

Earth is tremendously beautiful, never monotonous. So many flowers, so many trees, so many birds, so many people. My emphasis is to live in all the seven centres together. Never lose contact with the lowest, and never avoid flying with the highest. Use all the centres! Then your wings will be in the sky and your roots will be on the earth. And a perfect man is a meeting of heaven and earth—that’s what Taoists say: a meeting of heaven and earth. That’s what a perfect man is: meeting of the physical and the spiritual, meeting of the body and the soul, meeting of the world and renunciation, meeting of prose and poetry.

Excerpted from A Sudden Clash of Thunder, Courtesy: Osho International Foundation; osho.com

This was first published in the March 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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