Earth Day

Following on from our recent post about Earth Hour, Wednesday April the 22nd. will mark Earth Day, an annual event celebrated around the world as the greenest of holidays. Established in 1970, it was created to call attention to the environment.

Earth Day is always on April 22nd and is a day when the whole world can come together to celebrate the earth and try to build and make it a safer, healthier and cleaner world for everyone.

All people have to do to take part is do something that helps the earth in some way, that could be anything from organising a festival to litter picking to installing solar panels or changing your light bulbs to energy saving ones.

Buddhism is a religion that embodies the spirit of environmental protection. The sutras not only advocate loving our neighbors, they teach us to love our environment, too. The sutras say, “All living beings have buddha-nature.” “All beings, sentient or not, have the same perfect wisdom.”

Talking of Earth Hour, the Chinese government was turned off celebrating it after officials realised the event fell on a newly created holiday to commemorate the ousting of the Dalai Lama from Tibet.

Chinese journalists and student groups were told to scale back their participation because images of cities and campuses turning dark did not fit the upbeat propaganda message that the authorities wanted to convey by declaring March the 28th "Serf Liberation Day" in Tibet (you can see a liberated "serf" in the picture above).

The Chinese authorities declared Serf Liberation Day as a holiday in Tibet to bolster domestic support for Beijing's policies in the Himalayan region after a storm of international criticism in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. It marks the entry into Tibet of the People's Liberation Army and the fleeing of the Dalai Lama into exile.