Everyone knows the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. They wanted to know what an elephant was. So they approached one and felt it with their hands. One touched a leg, another the tail, a third an ear and the last the trunk. Each one described his experience which was very different from that of the others and they fought over their differences. A passerby with sight had to tell them that the elephant was all that they described and more than that. Pooling their experiences rather than fighting will get them a little nearer the truth.

Religions are like the blind men. All of them have some experience of God. Their experience is true, but limited. The Absolute is infinite mystery, beyond all ‘name and form’, and all that anyone can grasp is only an aspect of its fullness. One’s experience is limited by one’s own limitations and the limitations of one’s cultural and historical circumstances. This will be true even when the Divine reveals itself. I think that this is what was meant by the Rig Veda when it said that Truth or Reality was one, but that the sages speak of it differently. It is not giving different names to the same thing, but speaking of different, but true, dimensions of the one Reality. The wise thing would be to pool experiences and learn more about the same unfathomable Reality. This is what advocates of interreligious dialogue are proposing today. All religions have their truth claims. But while the Truth is absolute, their various claims are not.  To realize this is to be open for dialogue. Or we might say that if we start dialoguing we will discover the limitations of our own perspectives and their complementarity. A book like this, with quotations from different religious traditions on the same theme, illustrates this. We not only grow deeper in our understanding and appreciation of each theme. We may also grow to understand and appreciate each other. Such a coming together may eventually lead us to work together in making these themes more real and relevant to our lives.

Vincent Sekhar has done us a real service by bringing together in this book texts from various religions on the theme of Ecology and the Environment. There is a new awareness today in the world about the need to protect the environment.  The urge for this may come from various directions. At a purely material level, some see the environment being destroyed by abuse and overuse. They see their quality of life threatened and their needed resources depleted. They want to protect the quality and comfort of their lives by protecting their environment. For some others, protecting the environment is an issue of justice. The world is God’s gift to all peoples. But today a small group of people (20%) are exploiting and (ab)using 80% of the world’s resources, depriving not only the other 80%, but also future generations. So it seems an urgent task to save the environment and make it available to all now and in the future. For a third group, ecology and the environment are spiritual issues. They would echo the cry of Isha Upanishad: “Behold the universe in the glory of God; and all that lives and moves on earth!” For them to protect and live in harmony with the environment is to be in harmony with the divine, because creation is seen as a divine manifestation. Religions can offer us perspectives on ethical and justice issues concerning our use of the environment. They can also inspire us to live in harmony with it, helping us to experience the Divine in the process.

A look at the table of contents gives us some idea of the vast area that Vincent Sekhar is covering. The Bibliography witnesses to the amount of work that has gone into the project.  I am sure this collection of texts can be used for individual reading and meditation. They can also be used for reading, meditation and sharing in interreligious groups. They can inspire common action to protect the environment and to live in harmony with it. Our thanks to Sekhar for this fine collection of texts. It is also good news that he is planning similar collections of religious texts on other themes. May they help us to promote harmony with creation, with each other across cultural and religious divides and with the Divine, the environment being the context of this harmony.