Alliance of Religions and Conservation
ARC and our Dutch partner EMF have helped Daoists build an Eco-Temple and Training Centre at the foot of Taibaishan sacred mountain in Shaanxi Province. The temple was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution and was rebuilt in 2007 using traditional, sustainable materials and techniques.
The Eco-temple has about a million visitors a year, and provides many of them with information about caring for the environment - just at a point when they are open to new ideas. It hosts regular environmental training programmes for monks and nuns. The first, in 2006, inspired attendees to create a Daoist environmental organisation on issues such as solar energy (see right) and water conservation.
The second, in 2007, was attended by 18 of China’s most prominent abbots and abbesses. They not only pledged full audits of their land and resource use, but also agreed to adopt their most important sage, Lao Zi, as the God of Ecological Protection.
Master Ren, head of the mother temple Louguantai, says the process of building the temple awakened him to the ecological role of Daoism. “It made me think quite differently about the environment, and how we, as Daoist monks, can protect it,” he said. Daoism has a unique sense of value in that it judges affluence by the number of different species,” the report stated.
If all things in the universe grow well, then a society is a community of affluence. If not, this kingdom is on the decline. (From the Daoist Statement about the Environment)