The Environmental Protection of Our Mind

A clean natural environment is directly connected to a happy life. Thus, no one desires the pollution and destruction of our natural habitat. If our singularly inhabited planet, earth, is destroyed by environment pollution, the survival of our descendants, as well as of our own, is threatened. What is as important as our external environment is our internal environment. However, much less people worry about the internal pollution of humans, despite the numerous sources that surround us and continually pollute our inner environments. These sources include prejudice, unilateral reporting, fake news, violence, and sensational impulses pouring out from newspapers, broadcasting media outlets, and social media. Additional factors further include the myriad of frustrations and disappointments experienced from today’s fierce and competitive society, resulting negative emotions, as well as hatred and contempt. When our internal environment is polluted, all kinds of terrible thoughts arise, clouding our judgement and surroundings. Jesus knew this and sharply noted, “For from the heart come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander. These are the things that make a person unclean” (Matthew 15:19). Visible pollution in our nature and world can be said to begin from invisible inner pollution. The ancient Christian monks willingly separated themselves from the spaces of their daily lives in order to purify their inner environments. They retreated to the solitude of deserts in order not to pollute the world with their internal negative emotions, aggressive tendencies, unconscious desires, and excessive passions. These monks did not turn away from the polluted world to save themselves, but they did so in order to improve themselves prior to changing the rest of the world. As they knew the destructive power of negative thoughts and emotions in humans, they willed to purify their internal environments first and foremost. Then, by reappearing in the world, they hoped for the world to become healed and brighter. 

To make this world a better place for humans to live, shouldn’t we attempt at a similar approach to the monks? Even if we cannot access physical spaces of deserts, we can still enter into “a desert of daily life” to spend some time away from the crowded, daily life. For instance, we can turn off the television in our rooms, turn the volume of the radio down in our cars, put our smartphones down on the bus or subway, and have some quiet time to cleanse our inner hearts. How about we work on this project of frequently accessing these “deserts of our daily lives,” even if for short moments, for internal cleansing? In 2020, I hope that our inner environments can collectively be purified through the times of silence, meditation, and prayer, for good deeds and clean words can overflow from the streams of our inner-selves, like clear water.