Jiddu Krishnamurti: What is your relationship with nature? Nature is the rivers, the trees, the swift-flying birds, the fish, the minerals under the earth, the waterfalls and the shallow pools. What is your relationship with them? Most of us are not aware of that relationship. We never look at a tree, or if we do it is with a view of using that tree, either to sit in its shade or to cut it down for lumber. We treat the earth and its products in the same way. There is no love of the earth; there is only usage of the earth.

We are always using nature, either as an escape or for utilitarian ends – we don’t actually stop and love the earth or the things of the earth. We don’t enjoy the rich fields, though we utilise them to feed and clothe ourselves. We don’t like to till the earth with our hands – we are ashamed to work with our hands. There is an extraordinary thing that takes place when you work the earth with your hand…we do not love nature, we do not know how to love human beings. We have lost the sense of tenderness, that sensitivity, that response to things of beauty.                        

       Krishnamurti in Poona 1948, Talk 8