didn’t you guys ever feel bad about taking three buses to New York City?” my classmate at Princeton asked me following the People’s Climate March last September. “Think about all of the greenhouse gas emissions you could have avoided by simply not going.”Taken more broadly, his question touches on a seminal dilemma faced by all who care for Mother Earth: should humans retreat from engagement in nature, in an attempt to leave no footprints, or step forward to take action in a mindful way? Though taking mindful action seems like the natural winner between the two, it is not always obvious that this is the case. Many religions preach nonviolence at their core. Yet, the essence of human action is violence—violence in the sense that every action we take has tangible negative consequences for the environment and for our fellow living beings. If we cannot safely traverse the proverbial lawn without inadvertently crushing an ant, why cross it in the first place? Shouldn’t we retreat instead of step forward?The environmental movement almost exclusively deals with this question from a utilitarian framework. However, I have always found it instructive to delve into my own religious tradition—specifically, the Bhagavad Gita, an explicitly non-utilitarian text—for answers. In the third chapter, Krishna says to the warrior-king Arjuna:Not traversing the lawn, then, is not an option. While eschewing action in a given situation may exculpate us from the negative consequences associated with it, a retreat from engagement with nature is impossible, even in the relative sense.Within many Hindu traditions, Brahman (God), is all-pervading, literally enmeshed in all things, both within and without the cosmos. Hence, we are all inextricably linked in a network of karma (force created by a person’s actions), where action is not only inevitable, but inevitably has tangible consequences toward everything in nature. Thus, as Rajiv Malhotra notes in his book Being Different, the dharmic philosophy of ahimsa (“not to injure”) does not demand absolute nonviolence but rather advises taking action so as to minimize harm to others. Thus, taking action is not only “permissible” but also a moral imperative—the only means through which we as responsible citizens can fulfill our dharma (our duty toward the environment and those around us).It is from this framework of dharmic responsibility rather than from utilitarian frameworks that I derive my conviction toward environmental stewardship. It’s striking, however, that both frameworks converge on the principle of least harm: in this way, these disparate ideologies can find common ground within the environmental movement. Finding common ground will be a major part of the climate struggle ahead. As the diversity I experienced firsthand during the People’s Climate March aptly demonstrated to me, the opportunity for constructive engagement with people of other faiths, worldviews, and communities presents itself promisingly amid the slogans, symbols, and rhetoric of climate actions. We will need to cultivate as much cooperation, mutual respect, and continued engagement as we can in order to reverse the troubling pattern of crop failures, human-made “natural disasters,” ocean acidification, and increased greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our food security, economies, ecosystems, and livelihood.Being committed to the climate justice program is important but not enough. Whether we act on that commitment is the true litmus test of whether we are fulfilling our dharma toward the environment. Ahimsa doesn’t just mean practicing vegetarianism—“nonviolence” in quite a literal sense—but also cutting down shower time, purchasing clothes created from post-consumer recycled plastic, reducing consumption of what we don’t need, and, for me, shedding my introvert exterior and continuing to speak up on climate justice issues.Fulfilling one’s eco-dharma requires going beyond merely lifestyle changes. It requires sacrificing personal time to ensure that local government makes decisions in the best interest of the environment—like my friend at Princeton did by meeting with Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert and advocating against a proposed natural gas pipeline through this pristine town. It means exhorting the institutions we are a part of to be more energy efficient, something I did during high school by spearheading an energy audit of my school district. It also means engaging in community organizing, joining mass movements and protests like the People’s Climate March, writing to elected officials on proposed environmental regulation, and much, much more.By guiding us to minimize the violence we perpetuate in the world while acting to fulfill our dharma, the idea of ahimsa has the power to steer religious communities within Hinduism toward constructive engagement in both spiritual practice and environmental stewardship.I have always thought of Hindus as generally forward-thinking on issues concerning the environment. It is not in every faith-based community that vegetarianism is practiced in a quasi-organized way (various surveys would place the proportion of vegetarian Hindus at 40 percent to 50 percent worldwide). This is obviously a positive practice that should be nourished: contextually, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations notes that over 18 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are due to factory farming, and most believe this estimate is woefully conservative.But a deeper engagement with ahimsa could challenge Hindu communities to commit to vegetarianism and other ecological practices intentionally, from within the heart, rather than following these practices in a mechanical way. I was stunned when a peer in my student religious organization (the Princeton Hindu Satsangam) informed me that many of her friends could not quite place the finger on why they were vegetarian—they were simply practicing vegetarianism as a sort of imbibed cultural practice. Although intentionality never emerges as a variable in the utilitarian calculus, it clearly matters.Mahatma Gandhi was once asked where his undying belief in satyagraha (nonviolent insistence on truth) came from when the Bhagavad Gita itself—superficially, at least—hinged on the question of whether or not Arjuna should engage in actual physical warfare. Instead of pointing to a text or guru, Gandhi pointed to his heart. The relationship between conviction and action is tangible because how we care often translates to how we act on multiple fronts.If our approach to the world remains narrowly issue-based rather than guided by a larger philosophy of ahimsa, inconsistency in action is bound to occur. Within the Hindu tradition, the unfortunate practice, for example, of disposing plastic bags containing vibhuti (sacred ash) and other religious offerings on the sites of temples leaves many sacred Hindu spaces in squalid condition and is a testament to the lack of mindfulness many bhakts (devotees) take with them when they leave. Reflecting more deeply upon the demands of ahimsa reveals the inconsistency of actions such as these. Ahimsa calls us to a deeper mindfulness about the environment and a community-based commitment to environmental stewardship.One Hindu-led environmental stewardship effort in which I had the pleasure to partake is the campaign surrounding the “Bhumi Pledge,” an oath affirming young Hindus’ commitment to taking better care of the environment. Supported by the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies, this campaign encourages young Hindus who sign the pledge to then involve others by hosting an event to raise awareness of environmental challenges and possible solutions. The pledge’s simplicity and open-endedness are perhaps its strongest assets. In asking us to make a commitment, it invites us to rethink our learned behaviors on our own, thus allowing environmental stewardship to become rooted in the way we organize our daily lives and calibrate our choices. It is this relearning, rethinking, and reinvigorating of a broader concept of ahimsa that could plant the seeds for a spiritually rooted Hindu environmentalism to flourish in the future.