Great miracle of bond between humans and nature

THE link between earth and man is a seamless fabric which wraps life and death ina swath.

- By Surya VisHWA

Although this is an everyday fact, it is however only after a serious confrontation with nature that most humans realise this.

Sri Lanka is still recovering limbs and decomposed bodies from beneath the collapsed mountain rubble. The number of those dead is estimated to be around or over 600. The technical reason given from a geological perspective is that the rainfall this year was the highest in recent times and that the continuous rain for over three days, recording over 500 millimetres per day, caused the destabilisation of the deep soil. The entire Central Province saw hitherto unthinkable phenomena where human eyes witnessed massive mountains come tumbling down, dragging humans and houses with them. Amongst the mayhem, however, there were some incredible stories of how nature acted in some instances. Before we narrate one such incident, let us contemplate the linguistic difference between two words that describe the natural world.

We have the word ‘Soba Dahama’ in Sinhala that encompasses the ancient-most understanding of what nature is — and is linked to how we understand the spiritual. ‘Soba’ means natural and ‘Dahama’ means a path of wisdom/understanding, generally linked to the ‘religious’. It is strongly connected to the Buddhist perspective of cause and effect (action/karma) as understood in the Buddhist path. A layman’s interpretation of ‘Soba Dahama’ could be the ‘natural cosmic law’ that encircles all of consciousness in this universe. In comparison, the parallel word ‘parisaraya’ ~ ‘environment’ — describes natural surroundings in a rather impersonal sense.

This is, however, not how some humans see the natural world.