Sustainability: is it just mindfulness of environmental issues?

The concept of mindfulness as a Buddhist principle for awareness has been around for at least 2,600 years. In simple terms it means being present, being aware of yourself and immediate surroundings rather than away with the fairies of your thoughts.

Buddhists even believe you can do the washing up mindfully by being totally absorbed in the process without allowing the mind to wander. Try it sometime, it has an uncanny ability to still the mind and produce great calmness.

'Right' or 'correct' mindfulness is one of the central pillars of Buddhist practice and, enhanced by the use of meditation, is said to lead to enlightenment. Today, our Westernised society is increasingly using this valuable discipline as a treatment for improving both mental and physical health but I believe it could be taken a step further.

Not only could it be used for the health of people but also for the health of the planet, thus providing another, more immediate, form of enlightenment.

The shower has certainly been invaluable in improving our misuse of water statistics being the least water profligate method of cleaning our bodies but even so this is still being abused.

Despite the warnings that even in rainy Britain we are still using too much of this precious resource the 20 minute shower is still the norm for some people and, whilst not really wanting to point the finger, it must be said that it is mainly younger people who still live at home and are therefore not liable for the bills. What takes them so long? Maybe it is the fact that they are not mindful of much outside of themselves at this age.

However it is necessary, vital even, for young people to realise that the day of reckoning will come and that it is they who will have to pick up the tab for the present day squandering of the planet's resources. It is a sad fact that whilst many youngsters talk up a storm about environmental issues most of them don't seem to have any awareness that it relates directly to them, much less realise how to turn such knowledge into useful action.

Perhaps it does seem a little unkind to have to remind them of the planet and its dwindling resources in the heady, thoughtless days of their youth but the other option is worse, the heavy price they will have to pay as adults for such mindlessness. They will, of course, blame us, despite our constant reminders, our water meters, our 5 minute showers and watering of the plants with washing up water.

It is not often that old people are a problem as they have a horror of big bills which leads to a natural parsimony with resources. They are usually good at conserving if only from a fear of debt but they do tend to think of ecological sustainability, if they think of it at all, as someone else's problem which it will indeed be but this is hardly a generous note on which to leave the world. Both viewpoints are extremely self centred, casually destructive and, pretty obviously, far from mindful.

Do we have to be so damn clean?

The other issue with water is the washing of clothes. There are people who wash their clothes after only one wearing, and they often have several changes of clothing a day, especially if there are teenage girls in the household. It is likely that a great proportion of these clothes are clean but the washing machine still goes on at least once a day.

Knowing that even the fastest cycle is usually just under an hour long, it is not hard to imagine how much water and electricity these households use. We don't hand wash our clothes for that length of time so why should it take so long in a washing machine even allowing for heating the water. The reason some of us wash clothes so much is that we just don't think, we are not being present mentally. We just allow our children to drop a once worn teeshirt, a once used bath towel in the laundry basket and we bundle everything up and stuff it in the washer because that's what we always do. We too have become automated; we are not mindful, either of what we are doing or its long-term consequences.

Luckily this may become less of an issue now that a new washing machine with a 12 minute cycle has recently been invented. These will no doubt save substantial amounts of both electricity and water. Even so, this is still the inventor taking the need to be mindful out of our hands. It's helpful but not entirely so.

The other big issue is our over-reliance on fossil fuels. Most parents will be aware of the every-light-in-the-house-on syndrome. It's the time when you can't wait for the kids to grow up and have the reality of their own electricity bills. It's the time when inexplicably they turn the light on when they go into the bathroom in broad daylight. Or when they insist on sitting with the light on and the curtains closed during the day as if they have some sort of troglodyte complex.

It is true that most of us squander our hard-won electricity with little regard for how it is produced. But what happens when all the oil, natural gas and coal is gone?Our dabblings with wind and wave power have so far produced only a small proportion of the actual electricity we use. So, do we turn to nuclear generated electricity with all its apocalyptic overtones?

What would happen if every power station had to turn to nuclear resources to satisfy our electricity dependence and something went wrong with one or more of them - the ones built near fault lines or in areas of popular unrest? And how would we deal with the enormous amounts of dangerous waste that would be produced by so many nuclear reactors?

Doubtless, better minds than mine will be pondering those issues at this very moment. All I, and others like me, can do is to keep on reiterating the well-worn idea of using what we have already but learning to do it more mindfully in the hope that it becomes an inbuilt habit of conservation.

We need to be constantly aware of the fact that when we are using finite planetary resources we must not only use less of them but we must also use them with much more deliberation and to greater effect. It is a sobering thought to realise that the need for mindfulness is now perhaps more important than it ever was in the Buddha's day.