A challenge of a lifetime

News that the land on which the Leisure Time Spring Water has been leased to Chesapeake Gas Drilling Company and that the Canadian company, Boreal Water, to which the waterworks has been sold has no real concerns about the development, has me chuckling in a sinister sort of way. It’s an activity that I really should consider to be a dubious at best and probably not something to indulge in any sort of an active way.

I come to this criticism of my sinister glee by way of Buddhist teacher Sharon Lovich, who teaches at the Kadampa Buddhist Center in Glen Spey and who was the speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship this past Sunday. Whenever she explains the Buddhist practice, in this case of giving and receiving, I am always reminded of my highest aspiration. Specific to this news and paraphrasing at best, it is never a good idea for your own karma or for peace in the world to sneer at people who are oblivious to the losses that they haven’t discovered yet.

It’s an ironic position for a sustainable someone like me to take, this being compassionate for corporations that have no clue of their losses, because the bottling of water, from springs in Livingston Manor as well as everywhere else in the world, into little plastic bottles is about as wasteful, and unsustainable an activity that can be imagined in this post-modern race to oblivion. Still, in my Unitarian Univeralist interpretation of Buddhist practice and ethical principles throughout the ages, it’s probably never a good idea to be smug about what you know to be true. That attitude, as well as other cynical activities, is just the kind of thing that will bite you in the butt when you realize that you probably participate in perpetuating the system yourself.

Like I was never thirsty and never bought a bottle of water? Like it doesn’t drive a stake through my heart to understand that Chesapeake now has access to a pristine artesian well that has the capacity to provide millions of customers with millions of liters of spring water? Like it doesn’t really matter to the economy of Sullivan County that a company, Leisure Time Spring Water, is going bankrupt and has sold its asset of access to spring water to a Canadian company, even if a gas drilling company will vie for the precious resource?

Nationalism and sinister glee aside, there’s a multitude of losses piling up and how we turn them into personal assets, or even a heart of gratitude and goodwill, I don’t know.

And therein is the challenge, dear ones, the challenge of a lifetime.