It’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?¹
—Drew Dellinger, poet.
“Why the jam this time of day!” Fearing for my event at the University of Melbourne, I appealed to the anxious driver—as if an explanation would levitate the car over the bottleneck. The unexpected gridlock did, however, grant me more time to contemplate the assigned topic of my talk: “Yoga,meditation, and heroism.”
Then we saw them: throngs of kids everywhere. Thousands of them–marching in the street, halting traffic, startling bystanders. Jolted and baffled, the business-as-usual central city succumbed to this boisterous sea of young ones holding high waves of colourfully creative placards and banners:
Climate Change Is Worse Than Homework
Don’t be a Fossil Fool
Save Our Planet
The Climate Is Changing—Why Aren’tWe?
Ten minutes late for my university presentation, I hurried to the front of a packed lecture hall–the waiting crowd abuzz with enthusiasm for the youngsters’ protest. They saw the kids as valiant crusaders—venerated in Aussie lore as “battlers.”
Agreeing, I proposed to the university students that the kids’ gutsiness could drive us deeper, into the all-encompassing valour of bhaktiyoga and its heroes.Hearing about a perfected child-yogi who incited his schoolmates against materialism—surely that would raise the bar for lionheartedness.
Can a mere five-year-old stand up to an extraordinarily brutish father? The bhakti-yoga texts tell of an ancient tyrant ruthlessly wielding power and terror–on a mass scale that makes today’s malefic leaders appear trivial. His young son, however, was the model of gentleness, sense-control, and yogic smarts.
Confronting reality: destiny’s children
Though the campus in Melbourne was lively that day, the primary and secondary schools throughout the nation were unusually quiet. An estimated 15,000 preteen and teenage students, from more than two hundred schools had skipped class to amass on the streets.
Defying an order by the prime minister to stay in class, the youth demanded an end to climate inaction. The inheritors of tomorrow wanted their voices heard today. They “get it.” They know the most severe consequences of future environmental havoc will hit their generation. Their baby, “Strike 4 Climate Action,” has now merged into an international movement. More of the marchers’ provoking placards:
‘System Change, Not Climate Change
Don’t Burn Our Future
The Sea Level Is Rising–So Are We
There are No Jobs on a Dead Planet
Their nation hit by historic wild fires, unprecedented floods, and record droughts, no wonder the kids campaigned to capture the government’s attention. Some kindergarten-age children, although living in normally farmable parts of Australia, have never even seen rain in their life.
Top level federal government officials quickly condemned the nationwide protest, instructing the kids to stick to their classes and trust environmental issues to their politicos. But parents supporting the march countered that their children are indeed getting stuck into their studies—which happen to include what science says about the climate crisis.
The next generation sounded off with renowned Australian aplomb: “The prime minister says we should return to our classes; we say, only if he comes with us—to study ecology.”
“If the prime minister wants children to stop acting like a parliament, then maybe Parliament should stop acting like children.” Another sign taunted the federal crew of government ministers: “I’ve seen better cabinets at IKEA.”
Rich in natural resources,Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal, and second for liquefied natural gas. No doubt the government’s resources minister felt entitled to offer the juvenile marchers his vision for the environment and their future:
“I want kids to be at school to learn about how you build a mine, how you do geology, how you drill for oil and gas . . . these are the type of things that excite young children.”
Outdoing the resources minister, other government leaders launched the ultimate counterattack: the fearsome sugary snack stratagem. “Instead of skipping school to protest, if you kids are really worried about lowering emissions, then, for two months, you should swear off ice-cream!”
Sifting the rubble: where is humanity?
The incomparable yoga text Shrimad Bhagavatam presents an in-depth account of the pre-eminent child activist, Prahlad. Although his father embraced materialism and hedonism to the extreme, the spiritually gifted little boy radiated divine knowledge and transcendental qualities—he was truly conscious of Krishna, yoga’s ultimate goal.
At first, naturally, the iron-fisted tyrant did love his boy. But upon discovering Prahlad’s intense nonmaterial focus, the despot raged endlessly, even plotting to kill his own son. Finally, rather than murder, he settled on education, as the most practical solution.
His plan was for special tutors to reformat Prahlad’s intelligence—erasing all his spiritual aspirations and installing materialistic determination. The child, once secularly single-minded, would become his family’s future hope for expanding the depraved dynasty’s economic power, political control, resource exploitation, and sensual indulgence.
Although only five, Prahlad knew how to strategise. School strikes were not an option, but he took advantage of recess time.While the teachers relaxed during break, the students would play outside. Ignoring his schoolmates’ request to sport with them, Prahlad gathered them together to give his own lessons.
The children, setting aside their playthings, surrounded Prahlad, their hearts and eyes fixed on him, earnestly ready to hear. Relishing the precocious child-yogi’s radiance, they showered him with affection and respect.
Smiling upon them, Prahlad knew that their materialistic upbringing and education was distorting their life, blocking the path to real happiness.As their peer, while teaching them, he could lovingly laugh at them.
Because of childish innocence, Prahlad’s friends were not yet steeped in the zealous materialism of their fathers. Therefore, Prahlad, desiring their greatest welfare, saw the opportunity and seized it. He began instructing them in the futility of their family’s hallucinogenic brand of human progress and civilisation.Always kind-hearted, he addressed his little friends with sweet yet profound words:
“From the earliest age possible, even in tender childhood, someone genuinely intelligent begins bhakti-yoga, the science of the ultimate connection. The human body, a rare asset in nature, bestows upon its owner a special mandate. Although temporary like other material bodies, the human form is uniquely valuable, because it awards the special gift of fully developed consciousness. That unique capability has only one main purpose: self-realization, enlightenment.” (Shrimad Bhagavatam 7.6.1)
Even more challenging, cutting to the heart of humanity’s 24/7 problems, Prahlad urged his schoolmates to cast off the economic mania their parents feverishly embraced:
“The fanatical emphasis on economic growth, for the sake of magnifying material happiness and gratification,must be abandoned. Such a distorted prioritization leads to a tragic wastage of human time and energy. Beyond a temporary, superficial gain, where is the actual substantial benefit—essential profit that will endure? Better aim for bhakti consciousness, the spiritual lifestyle of the Love Supreme. Worshipping economic growth yields absolutely no comparable benefits.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 7.6.4)
Think of Prahlad whenever you hear the motto “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Even as a child, Prahlad exemplified the complete holistic transformation required for rescuing the planet. “Activism is my rent for living on the planet,” said the American literary luminary Alice Walker. Although from childhood a perfected yogi and meditator in devotion, Prahlad demonstrated the most essential and universal activism.
“O my little friends, fellow sons of the depraved! In material existence, even those apparently advanced in education like to consider, ‘These resources are almost exclusively mine—what may remain can be for the others.’ Like uneducated canines and felines, they focus on fulfilling wants and needs according to their restrictive material conception of family, community, nation, and bloc of nations. Bewildered, unable to assimilate spiritual knowledge, they submerge deeper into ignorance.” (Shrimad Bhagavatam 7.6.16)
After the sudden violent death of his brutally oppressive father, Prahlad would inaugurate a new regime, fulfilling the people’s ordinary needs while facilitating their gradual progress beyond bodily and mental demands. He knew that the high road to transcendence must begin with ending the exploitation of nature and stopping the unnecessary suffering of all living beings.
His legacy famous in yoga circles, Prahlad’s system of spiritual governance is important for everyone today, especially leaders.To hope we can achieve the correction and rejuvenation of the planet, we need at least shades of his superlative combination: bhakti-yoga mystic, transcendental philosopher, and chief executive.
₁.From the poem “Hieroglyphic Stairway.”Drew Dellinger, Love Letter to theMilkyWay (Whitecloud Press, 2011)
