“When we look at Mother Earth in the Buddhist way, you don’t see that the Earth is matter. You don’t discriminate against matter and mind. And that is the better way to touch the Earth. The Earth transcends matter and mind. And when you look deeply, you see Mother Earth is a real bodhisattva because she has many virtues of a great bodhisattva.

A bodhisattva can be a person but can be a planet or a star. And when we look at the Earth we see that she has the virtue of perseverance. She has a lot of stability. She has the capacity to embrace. She has the virtue of non-discrimination. She’s very patient. She has a lot of talent to create. She’s a wonderful artist. She’s a wonderful painter.

She offers life, she’s very creative, she is the mother of all the Buddhas in the form of humans. Shakyamuni Buddha is a son, is a child of Mother Earth. She is the mother of many buddhas, saints and bodhisattvas. Not only she is the mother of the Buddha, she is the mother of the mother of the Buddha, Mahamaya. She’s the mother of the Virgin Mary. She’s the mother of Jesus Christ. So if you see the Earth like that you have a feeling of admiration, a feeling of love, a feeling of respect.

You don’t deal with the Earth as matter. And when you approach the Earth like that with the feeling of admiration and love, you have a better connection with the Earth. And soon you will realize that the Earth is not the environment that you have to protect. The Earth is yourself. You are a child of the Earth and the Earth is in you. If you know how to protect you, you protect the Earth. If you know how to protect the Earth, you protect you. And you no longer discriminate. And in that kind of communion you are free from the state of alienation that you have been.

We have lived in such a way that we get alienated from the Earth. Alienated from our own body. We spend many hours every day forgetting that we have a body. You are caught in your computer, your problems. You forget that you have a body. The practice is to breathe in, stop the thinking and go home to your body and relax your body. And if you can touch your body as a wonder, you have the opportunity to touch Mother Earth in you as a wonder and the healing begins.”

This Buddhist teaching presents a profound perspective on humanity’s relationship with Earth, emphasizing three key interconnected ideas. First, Earth is viewed not as mere matter but as an enlightened being, a bodhisattva, possessing divine qualities of patience, creativity, and non-discrimination. Second, it establishes Earth as the universal mother figure, connecting various spiritual traditions by presenting her as the mother of Buddha, Jesus, and other spiritual figures. Finally, it addresses the modern crisis of environmental and self-alienation by asserting that Earth and self are one – protecting one means protecting the other, and healing begins with reconnecting to our bodies and, through them, to Earth.