Our modern world of old story is completely failing humanity. This is the reason that increasing numbers of people have become and are becoming disillusioned from politics. People don't like voting. Whoever you vote, government gets in. Whatever they promise, they never fulfill.

The children are being conditioned to think that the purpose of life is to get a good job. You get paid but you don't get satisfaction from your work.

That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.

Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever

If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today.

That was my real education in the world - I learned politics, the social and cultural life of India, Hindu tradition and religion, and Buddhism.

Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature.