Where the Earth is Sacred
Sustainability, to me, had always been sort of a theoretical concept.
I could memorize concepts, define regenerative agriculture, and explain circular systems well enough to pass an exam. But I had never actually seen them. The more I think about it, though, sustainability wasn’t the only thing that felt theoretical. So did my purpose. So did the future I was supposedly working toward.
Looking back now, it almost feels as though I was waiting for my life to begin. It wasn’t until I traveled to my home country that my perspective began to shift.
Growing up in America, India had always felt like this intangible, distant place that belonged to me and yet didn’t. I never felt particularly connected to it. As a kid, my mother would force me into traditional clothes while tears streamed down my face. What if people saw me wearing this? What would they think? As I got older, what I saw online only further complicated my relationship with my culture. On hateful corners of the internet, my eyes hovered over words like “dirty,” “disgusting,” and “backward”—the kind of casual racism that had become normalized. The same images and commentary resurfaced again and again, as if they represented an entire country and the more than a billion people who live in it.
For the first time, I had the chance to define India for myself rather than through someone else’s portrayal of it.
After landing in Mumbai, we drove a few hours into rural Maharashtra toward Govardhan Ecovillage, an ISKCON[1] community rooted in the Hindu tradition of devotion to Lord Krishna, who is worshipped as the Supreme God. Ecovillages are intentional communities built around the possibility of living in greater harmony with the natural world. At Govardhan, where we would be staying for four days, this idea extends beyond environmental sustainability into something deeply spiritual. The community describes its mission as creating a space for the “transformation of hearts” through a way of life rooted in spirituality and sustainability (Govardhan Ecovillage, n.d.). We passed villages and farmland, brightly colored clothes hanging to dry, motorbikes with children precariously perched along the sides, jugs of water balanced atop braids of well-oiled hair.
By the time we reached our destination, it was 8 a.m. I stumbled out of the car, my eyes squinting from exhaustion and jet lag, but I could not mistake the feeling that came over me as we made our way inside.
Spirituality seemed to gleam off every surface. Cows enjoyed the warmth of the shade, their clean bodies shining in the sunlight. Paths curved through dense greenery, pink roses trailed over quiet archways, and temples emerged between the trees. It felt like a kind of paradise. Not because everything was perfect, but because everything felt alive.
Eventually, we climbed the steps toward the largest temple at the center of the ecovillage. Monks lay with their bodies pressed against the ground in complete surrender to God. People danced joyfully before the deities, a sea of moving hands, feet, and voices. From the temple grounds, the land seemed to unfold beneath us, fields stretching toward the horizon as animals wandered lazily through patches of tall grass.
An electric shuttle drove us to our cottage; we chanted “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna” as it wound through narrow roads lined with trees and plants. Every few minutes we would pass another sign pointing to one of Govardhan’s sustainability initiatives.
“Vermicompost Plant.”
“Soil Bio-technology Plant.”
“Plastic Pyrolysis Plant.”
I tried to remember all of them, reading the descriptions quickly before they passed. It wasn’t until I encountered some of these systems for myself that I began to understand how they fit together.
At the vermicompost plant, a woman explained how worms and cow dung were used to create compost. I ran my hands through the soil, feeling worms squirm beneath my fingers. Something I would have immediately dismissed as waste was instead being returned to the earth, replenishing the soil it had once come from.
The cows themselves intrigued me even more. In many of the environmental conversations I had been exposed to in the United States, cattle were discussed largely through the lens of industrial agriculture and their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. At Govardhan, I was seeing them within an entirely different system. Cows held deep religious and cultural significance, but they were also woven into the agricultural landscape around them. Their dung became compost, the compost nourished the soil, and that soil could then be used to grow food.
Weeks later, while watching Kiss the Ground, a documentary about restoring soil through regenerative practices, I heard Ian Somerhalder say, “cows can be good”—a phrase that once might have sounded contradictory. I began to wonder whether the problem was ever quite as simple as the cows themselves.
That same cycle seemed to echo throughout Govardhan, each part feeding back into a larger closed loop system. After every meal, we scraped our leftover food into composting bins. At the soil biotechnology plant, rows of green stems rose from pools of wastewater as our guide explained how the plants helped filter and treat it naturally. The plastic bottles we dropped into separate bins were transformed into oil at the plastic pyrolysis plant. Even the water that disappeared down our toilets could, in another form, find its way back to the fields. We passed rainwater harvesting ponds where swans glided peacefully across the surface, their purpose almost concealed within the landscape.
Now, when I think of regenerative agriculture, my mind brings me back to Govardhan. I think of land that feels alive, not the barren, over-tilled landscapes stripped of their fertility. I picture fields where growth is nurtured from within it, instead of forced upon it.
If you are spiritual then you are sustainable.
-- Thakur Prabhu, an ISKCON monk at Govardhan Ecovillage
At the time, I thought I was simply visiting an ecovillage. I hadn’t yet realized I was stepping into a place where spirituality and sustainability weren’t separate ideas at all, but two parts of the same way of life.
Over the next few days, Thakur became our unofficial guide to Govardhan and, in many ways, our window into understanding the place beyond what we could simply see.
The Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text centered on a dialogue between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna, describes earth, water, air, and ether as energies of the Divine (7.4). From this perspective, nature is not merely “natural capital.” It is divine energy. We do not conserve nature simply because it is useful to us, but because it is sacred. When the Earth’s resources are understood as gifts from Krishna, exploitation begins to feel like a violation of that relationship. The Isopanisad, an ancient Vedic text exploring the relationship between the Divine and the material world, carries this idea further: “One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself” (Mantra 1). Moderation, then, becomes more than a response to scarcity; it reflects the understanding that what surrounds us was never entirely ours to possess in the first place. According to Thakur, if sustainability is ultimately an issue of over consumerism, the message is surprisingly simple—take what you need, but no more.
In the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna introduces the concept of yajña, or sacrifice. As Thakur explains, sacrifice is about “purifying your interest for the collective interest.” It asks us to look beyond what serves us individually and consider our responsibility to a higher cause. The Gita places this idea within a larger cycle of yajña, rain, food, and life (3.14-15), each sustaining what comes next. There is something remarkably ecological about this way of seeing the world. The question shifts from How much can we take from nature? to How can we live in a way that allows the larger system to continue to flourish? Yajña reframes sacrifice as a responsibility to sustain the very cycles that sustain us.
Govardhan left me hopeful. If this small community in rural Maharashtra, tucked away from the bustle of Mumbai streets, could build a life so deeply intertwined with the natural world, maybe there was more possibility than I had imagined.
I traveled to India with preconceived notions of what I would find—how much of what I had seen from afar would prove true. What I found instead was a country that continued to surprise me. The teachings of the Gita did not feel like remnants of some distant past; I was standing in a place still deeply shaped by them. Here, sustainability was no longer theoretical. It was something lived—taking form alongside traditions that had endured for thousands of years.
In the country I had spent much of my life trying to understand from a distance, I started to see a different kind of future taking shape; I want to be part of what pushes that progress forward.
[1] International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Comments