OpinionThe theme park of Buddhism in Cáceres and the defense of biodiversity in the secarrales

The Kung Fu series, broadcast between 1972 and 1975, had a great following on RTVE despite its slow pace. The protagonist, whom his spiritual teacher nicknamed "little grasshopper", emerged successfully in different situations in the wild West of the late 19th century thanks to the inner strength of his philosophy and his skill in martial arts. It is difficult to associate that austere staging with the Buddhist center project on Monte Arropez in Cáceres, so linked to business marketing and situations of political leadership in which the size of the Buddha statue becomes a claim.

Away from the grandeur of the temples with giant Burmese bronze statues, we can find other communities in Extremadura not exempt from another type of splendor: one is “El Olivar de Buda” in Acebo, run by Maestra Yotika, abbess of the monastery that provides support, spiritual guidance and teachings to the lay community. It was founded in 2012 thanks to the Chenrezig Foundation and the International Buddhist community, on farms donated by his neighbor from Acebo, Philippe Camus, creator of Lalita, a place of retirement, which without being attached to any specific religion offers, among forests, meadows and mountain streams that surround some buildings of great creativity and inspiration, the opportunity to learn about the common values ​​and the basic message shared by traditions, wisdom and spiritual practices from all over the world that help a profound transformation of the human being to build a more balanced, fair and wise.

Lalita is an admirable place, with a hostel that simulates an eagle with its wings spread, provoking the instinct of play and awakening the soul of the child we were; The dining room, with capacity for 80 people, is crowned by a roof that represents the scales of a sleeping dragon and its amazing and emblematic circle of 220 open square meters with a roof supported by beams, rafters and chestnut wood shingles, a mixture of techniques Norman and Tibetan Together with other buildings, they all made up the “Lalita Albergue Rural y Granja Escuela”.

Another Buddhist center in Extremadura territory is “Tierra de Budas”, in Villanueva de la Vera, part of the “Thubten Dhargyle Ling” project (The garden in which Buddha's teachings flourish). This place, located near the Minchones gorge, is a retreat and training place where emotions are educated through the development of the altruistic mind with the 37 practices of a Bodhisatva. In this center a 9 meter high Peace Stupa will be built, a structure that represents the mind of Buddha and inside there will be a multitude of mandalas, thousands of rolled printed mantras, hundreds of Buddha statues and all kinds of offerings.

The third Buddhist center is “Shorin-Ji” (Temple of the Awakening Forest), located on the slopes of Almanzor, about 10 km from Villanueva de la Vera, a retreat place of the Taisen Deshimaru Zen Association, in whose temple its members can deepen the Zen practice in a very natural environment.

Many will say that these gathering places are unknown and that they contribute little to the people who live in Acebo or Villanueva de la Vera. Seen from another perspective, we can appreciate that Extremadura is a very extensive territory where small sustainable initiatives scattered throughout its territory are possible without having to go through the social, religious or political influence peddling that has become so fashionable in Extremadura with the Extremadura Law of Large Leisure Facilities (LEGIO) and that is related to the project of the Lumbini Garden Foundation, a business project that includes politicians and spiritual leaders in the Information tab of its website along with access to offers of Tourism, Pashminas , natural energy drinks.

We are not going to be scared by this type of thing in the world of business and politics either, but we have not yet overcome the crisis of COVID-19, nor that of climate change, nor that of the energy collapse and it would be desirable that politics will focus on safeguarding the health and future of citizens.

After finding out more details about the business activity of J.M Vilanova, I think that when he came to Extremadura he found a more favorable environment for his projects. He is a businessman whom Carmena trusted because of the proposal for cultural diversity that the temple would bring to the city of Madrid and with whom she collaborated to try to process the exchange of half a hectare in the north of the capital, where to build the temple with the giant buddha statue But the project did not bear fruit with the change of government in the consistory and, unfortunately, the new mayor Almeida commented on the subject: "Come on, we did not allocate that public land to put a Virgen de la Pilarica, we are going to allocate it for a Buddha" .

My poor bb's back is hurting him, so I spent the morning learning how to make a homemade heating pad out of antisep… https ://t.co/pjmxflVgKe

— Greta, G-r-e-t-a Sun Aug 11 16:20:44 +0000 2019

Vilanova promoted the Nature and Sustainable Tourism Fair in 2018 and 2019, and is linked to the tourism sector in several countries with Buddhist faithful interested in learning about their cultures, and therefore they would invest in this project. The no to the Buddhist temple, by the Madrid City Council, discouraged many of the investors who considered that location more interesting for their purposes than that of Cáceres, but Vilanova found the last match in Extremadura, as Fernández Vara and Salaya were now going to encourage him to win back those skeptical investors from Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, India, Nepal and Japan, along with Asian bankers and investors in general, with his bet for the project and his trips to Nepal to twin, as Madrid had already done, with the city of Lumbini, the Nepali city, a World Heritage Site, where Buddha was born in the 5th century BC and where his relics are preserved .

And it is that Buddhism is the fourth religion in the world that, with 500 million adherents, 7% of the population, includes a set of teachings that seek, through practice, the vision and end of human suffering , not being able to consider a doctrine in identical terms as Christianity or Judaism, since their followers do not worship any god, but follow the teachings left by a human being: the Buddha Siddharta Gautama.

As Manuel Gonzalez Campos points out in "The World Tree: a vision of nature and ecology from the perspective of Buddhism", for this religion, nature is not something external to the human being, but part of him and of his devotion. The Buddha rejected the existence of an individual and separate self, but not the relative existence of the human being with responsibility to influence his own and collective evolutionary process. He encouraged us to get involved in ecological and social problems, such as emissions that promote climate change, the extinction of animal and plant species that can affect the global balance of the planet, the alteration of the nitrogen cycle due to the excessive use of fertilizers in industrial agriculture (which, in addition to increasing the effects of climate change, pollutes aquifers and water courses) and other limits exceeded by our excess of development, such as the level of ocean acidification, the excessive demand for fresh water, the changes in the use of land from forestry to agricultural and an extensive list of problems that happen to us by living with our backs to nature, prioritizing business. For Buddhism, the first noble truth is that nature suffers from these problems because it is a living being, a living, coherent, self-regulating and self-changing whole; a kind of immense organism in which beings are connected to each other.

The task ahead of us to address all these problems requires the agreement of the different countries and cultures of the world. We have spent years with global climate initiatives, for the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement against the climate crisis, etc., and the degree of commitment necessary to reduce carbon emissions is being negotiated in the EU. In the European Parliament, although according to the calculations of the scientists, in order not to exceed 1.5 degrees of warming, CO2 emissions would have to be reduced by 65% ​​by 2030 compared to 1990 (at a rate of 7.6% per year), reached a joint agreement to request a 60% reduction. The Commission had proposed 55% and now it is necessary for the Council of Heads of Government of the EU to decide accordingly with the serious climate situation on the planet. It is known that one of the drastic changes to reduce CO² emissions is to stop subsidizing the 150,000 million euros that are allocated to fossil fuels, with the aeronautical sector being one of the large recipients, and invest these tax revenues in the promotion of clean energy, in the protection of biodiversity and in the prevention of health, taking care of the nature of which we are a polluting but also contaminating part, as we are seeing due to COVID-19, which It is just one example of the new pathogens that are going to haunt us in the future.

All these measures, between now and 2030, affect the Buddhist complex of Cáceres. On the positive side, the project could unite peoples of the world and weave ties between cultures that value the balance of nature of which we are a part, but absolutely nothing has been heard in the proposal about climate issues or the defense of biodiversity (Although we already know that Fernández Vara thinks that Extremadura has too many environmental protection zones). It is even more serious that there are environmental groups that have said that they are not going to oppose it because Monte Arropez is an area of ​​low natural value, and this despite being part of the aforementioned area of ​​the European Natura 2000 Network by virtue of the European Habitats Directive (1992), for the protection of EU biodiversity from the impact of human activities through the conservation of natural habitats and of Europe's wild flora and fauna. Belonging to this Network, in fact, makes the area undevelopable, according to ruling No. 134/2019 of December 19, 2019 of the Plenary of the Constitutional Court.

It seems that, legally, they want to introduce the activity of the Buddhist center as a compatible recreational activity, among which ornithological tourism, hunting, rural tourism or the sale of ecological products would be included, but that exception would make sense when referring to the isolated impact of any of these activities. In this case, a group of them are grouped together, as we can see in the promotional videos: parking lots, sidewalks, shops selling products, restaurants, residences for monks, residences for tourists, temples of different religions. Everything is beautiful, yes. , and very landscaped, but it is proof of urbanization and that contravenes the established protection figure. Waiting, as ADENEX says, for the Environmental Impact Assessment and for the project to serve to apply an environmental restoration of the area without serving to allow other activities with a greater impact or the proliferation of other constructions that may affect protected areas seems, at least, stand in profile and wash your hands.

Ecologistas en Acción alludes to the Jurisprudence that prevents urbanization in Red Natura 2000 and to the fact that a repopulation of quercus is underway that would return to the territory the ecological and natural value that it should not have lost. They maintain that Monte Arropez should be part of the green belt of the city of Cáceres, so necessary to mitigate the climate crisis, so that there would be a protective forest that would serve as a shelter and brake against extreme atmospheric phenomena. They also wondered last August where the developers would get the necessary water to maintain what aspires to be the largest Buddhist temple on the planet when, just that same summer, the city council had launched the "Drought Monster" campaign. , acknowledging the mayor of Cáceres that the city has a serious water problem, the biggest in the last 20 years.

It seems that the defense of biodiversity is at stake in a dry area to the south of Cáceres —which is, on the other hand, the environment we have in a city like Cáceres, with water supply problems— and we naively think that the money from investors are suddenly going to turn it into a garden with fountains in which the lotus flower floats. As Fernando Valladares, a biologist and CSIC researcher specializing in the defense of biodiversity, says, climate change affects drought, on the one hand, due to changes in rainfall, and on the other, in water demand when it is hotter. , more evaporation and more use by humans. This is a cocktail of at least two factors that makes water resources even more difficult to manage. The tensions with the transfer of the Tagus are old and this, with climate change, is amplifying and will increase.

We know from studies of biodiversity in deserts that the fauna and flora of arid lands take advantage of ephemeral springs fed by rain. The small grasshopper or cactus does not need as much water as the gardens of a complex that wants to open all year. Wouldn't there be a place more in keeping with this usage? If you want to take care of this project, perhaps you should start there.