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Wonderful new Green Hindu Temple Guide

December 21, 2015:

The Bhumi Project and ARC have created a wonderful new Green Hindu Temples Guide: a beautifully-designed, resource, first published in December 2015, on how to make your temple or ashram greener and better and more Hindu in its relationship with the world around it.

It contains inspiring sections on teaching, recycling, energy, food and protecting wild animals. For each section it includes both environmental and Hindu reasons for making changes, as well as helpful lists and action points. Including:

Ten things your temple can do to make worship, pujas and celebrations greener

1. Create eco-themed sermons and celebrations: add statements, prayers, meditations, songs about caring for nature

2. Centre your celebrations around environmental themes and on special days such as Earth Day and around the annual Hindu Environment Week in February

3. Make sure waste is disposed of effectively at all your festivals. Make this part of the early planning rather than something thought of at the end

4. Get young people involved in the clean up; give them eco banners and sashes or branded T-shirts, and get them to contact local stall holders during procession to explain why they need to be eco and make sure they have rubbish bins outside their stall

5. Make the cleaning up a celebratory and holy activity in itself. Get important people to clean up after celebrations to show that this is not something for street sweepers

6. Be mindful of ways that noise, lights and traffic can be limited during your celebrations around environmentally sensitive areas

7. Use environmentally friendly paints (and not lead paints) when painting statues of deities

8. Perform blessings over cows and other threatened wildlife and wild places

9. Source the majority of food locally to minimize fuel use for transport

10. Plan outdoor services and spiritual outings in nature

Link here for the full Green Hindu Temples Guide

Link here to learn more about Hinduism and Ecology



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Hindu ecology
An outilne of Hindu teachings on the environment
Hindu quotes and stories
Quotations, prayers and stories from Hindu traditions
December 16, 2015:
Pilgrim to Santiago writes about how the Way taught him to be green
A three times pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain reports about his experience being a green pilgrim, and about how the "camino" has taught him the importance of living sustainably. Landon Roussel's book The Camino Primitivo is published this month.