As I turned the page of the Wall Street Journal, there were three articles on current natural disasters: Pakistan’s floods, China’s mudslides and Russia’s fire. So many natural disasters at one given time…I wondered if there was a feng shui message.
The question when something so devastating as these is usually: “Why did this happen? Could it have been avoided?”
As of now, the death toll of the Gansu mudslide in China is over 1,000. Officials site that unremitting rains caused the banks to break. However, according to the WSJ, many activists say the “decades of deforestation and over reliance on dams contributed to the situation.” “Environmentalist Wen Bo says, ‘this shows the law of nature has to be respected…'”. There it is – feng shui!
In Pakistan’s floods, “some blamed the flood on the failure to build a new dam, yet others say landowners have illegally built farms on Indus floodplains. ” There again – many of these areas were originally floodplains where people built their homes. Over the years the river banks have been changing.
The Russian fires were caused by a heat wave and drought that brought upon forest fires. This has created a thick blanket of smoke throughout Moscow and has affected the health of many especially the elderly.
Feng shui is living in harmony with nature and teaches us to obey nature’s laws. China’s and Pakistan’s natural disasters were a cause of nature that most likely have been instigated by man. So, even if the feng shui of a site is good at a certain period of time, we know that if the environment and surroundings change, the feng shui changes. In the Chinese province, Gansu, with the forest in place there was no fear of a mudslide. But, through deforestation the situation was no longer the same and these are the unfortunate consequences. With the flooding in Pakistan, if only a few farms were built along the river banks maybe this would not have happened, and maybe a dam may have mitigated the problem. Know one knows for sure. But over the years probably many forgot that the farmed land was originally a flood plain. As for the fires in Russia, it is a natural disaster and I can’t think of how man has helped caused something like this. It just happens. Or is it a sign of global warming?
From a feng shui perspective it is important to “respect nature”. As my master always says, “man cannot control nature”. If we change the landscape it changes the energy of the space. Therefore, in a city, the older homes have more settled qi because they have been there for a long time. The land hasn’t been disrupted for a long period of time and the vegetation is mature. But, even in a city, old buildings are torn down and new ones are being built and the landscape can easily change too, so nothing is constant. However, when compared to a new development, it is more settled. Any time the earth is moved, there are changes to the qi of the space: some may be good, some maybe bad. Of course when we are developing the space, we never intend to do bad but we may forget to look at the big picture. How will affect the neighbors, how will it affect the area, how will it affect the environment? This is where the study of feng shui can be used as a guide and tool to help us make a good decision.
Photo: Pixabay
