Global Recovery: - United Nations Day of Vesak 2013

Global Recovery :
through Buddhist Ecology
Forest Conservation and Dhamma Development
Aung Shing Marma 1
Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University
Introduction:
For the past three years, I have attended the United Nations Day of Vesak
celebrations, and as a student I have listened to the voices of many learned
Venerables and Professors. Last year, the United Nations Day of Vesak
Celebration’s main theme was related to global crisis, and in particular, there was
the sub-theme that addressed the Environmental Crisis. I have read some of
the contributions and have thought deeply about these Buddhist offerings. This year
our theme is recovery from the previous global crisis, so this is an advancement from
our current stage of merely recognizing problems. We must now talk about recovery
or actually, recover from the previous crisis condition. Inaction should turn into
action and results. Again, the theme of this session is Global Recovery through
Buddhist Ecology, and I would now like to address the theme. The terms: “global”,
“recovery”, “through”, “Buddhist”, and “ecology”, all seem very straight-forward,
but do we really know what these terms mean? We shall see 2 :
Global: (i) affecting or including whole world, (ii) considering all parts of
a problem or situation together.
Recovery: (i) the process of getting better after an illness, injury etc,
(ii) the process of returning to a normal condition after a period of trouble or
difficulty.
Through: by mean of a particular method, service, person etc.
Buddhist: follower of Gotama Buddha.
Ecology: the way in which plants, animals and people are related to each other
and to their environment, or to the scientific study of this.
Now that we can anchor ourselves around the definitions, the main issue I will
discuss is the three aspects of ecology: 3
1. How do living creatures affect each other?
2. What determines their distribution?
3. What determines their abundance?
1
Venerable Aung Shing Marma is a 3rd Year Student in the International BA Program at MCU, from
Bangladesh. I thank my professor, Dr. Dion Peoples for his editing and insights for improvements upon
my paper.
2 Bullon, S. (managing editor), (2006), Longman Exams Dictionary, Person Education Limited, UK.
3 Arthur Getis, Judith Getis and Jerome D. Fellmann: Introduction to Geography, 10 th Edition (New
York: McGraw-Hill International Edition), p. 507
27