Psychologists have pointed out that Hong Kong citizens have become more and more easily agitated and short-fused because of the over-crowded living conditions and lack of contact with the natural environment.

Indeed, humans' love for nature came after we tamed it and spoiled it. That's not only true of the English romantic poets after the Industrial Revolution but also applies to the poets of ancient China.

Early poets in China in the Han dynasty and before were not in favor of the wilderness such as the swamps and jungles in the south. These were seen as dwelling places for desperate ghosts and harmful beasts. Nature undiscovered and untamed was no place for pastoral romance, which was mainly restricted to the cultivated gardens and parks.

With migration to the south and its consequent opening up of the wilderness, swamps were drained and crocodiles and rhinoceros were annihilated and went into the list of mythical animals. Chinese poets began to write of their yearning for unspoiled, pristine nature and took that as inspiration for humaneness and contact with hermits and Taoist deities.

Ancient sages often characterized the external environment as a reflection of the micro-universe of the human body, maintaining that our relationship with our own body generally bespeaks our attitude towards nature.

In the modern era, after we tamed and over-regulated our bodies, we began to respect the body and listen to it for inspiration, as if it spoke. However, such penitence often occurred too late after we abused our bodies with indulgence of one type after another.

Whether we can sidestep these cynical or hypocritical approaches to nature in our time, both outer and inner, remains a major challenge to rebuilding our relation with nature.

And when we examine that relationship further, we begin to recognize that heaven is not so remote as we might first have assumed, for as the Buddhists and others have long known, it lies within us, at the core of our spiritual being. Inner peace is a state of mind.

Finding inner peace can be as simple as the state of being untroubled by anything else. Any kind of agitation and emotion, especially anger, hurt, self-pity, and fear, is merely superimposed over this, our natural way of being.

One way to bring this deep awareness into the everyday aspect of our lives is to pay attention to our feelings and to realize that we can control our mood and therefore our attitudes.

To be one with heaven, with nature and with all things, is to be one with ourselves, to acknowledge that we are the microcosm of the greater cosmos.

Inner peace can be taken to yet another level - that of finding bliss and enlightenment. This experience is the condition of perfect joy, the greatest of happiness that occurs in certain states of blessedness.

The ultimate nature is human nature, the nature within every one of us. The final, profound lesson then is to be at peace with ourselves, before we can be at peace with others, and at peace with our external environment, or Mother Nature.

The author is former secretary for home affairs of the Hong Kong SAR government

(HK Edition 02/24/2010 page1)