A Buddhist view

The Buddha speaks:
The rain falls everywhere
coming down on all four sides.
Its flow and saturation are measureless
reaching to every area of the earth
to the ravines and valleys of the mountains and streams
to the remote and secluded places where grow
plants, bushes, medicinal herbs,
trees large and small,
a hundred grains, rice seedlings,
sugar cane, grape vines.
The rain moistens them all
none fails to receive its full share
the parched ground is everywhere watered
herbs and trees alike grow lush.
What falls from the cloud
is water of a single flavor
but the plants and trees, thickets and groves
each accepts the moisture that is appropriate to its portion....
and each is enabled to sprout and grow....
I appear in the world like a great cloud
that showers moisture upon all the dry and withered human beings....

The Lotus Sutra transl. Burton Watson, in S. Kaza & K.Kraft (eds) Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (Shambhala, 2000) pp.65-66. Photo: Hannes Schleicher