In today's post-post-modern, post 9/11, post Vietnam (or the whichever country is the lastest victim, post-existential crisis of identity, we are really so conforming and blindly West-driven (i.e.headless driven) that it is shocking. Now the West has some genuinely good things to offer us but few people take those up. My non-Indian friends agree. And if you don't agree with me, good. Let's now talk of being a bit more self-aware.
From clothing to choice of careers and homes we live in, we have moved beyond creating 'Little India's' in California or Sydney. We are creating 'Little America (as if there is only One America)' while in India!!
It doesn't occur to us that most of our current clothing (yes, trousers, collared shirts, jeans, closed shoes ...) is genuinely unsuitable to our climate or what it is costing The Earth to provide us with the granite counters and floors which cost the earth!
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| If you brought the ingredients from a regular store, this is inedible |
We believe we are educated, hard-working, ethical, aware, upstanding global citizens but we close our eyes and noses at the our own toilets and garbage and 'delegate' this personal responsibility to the less unfortunate or the nameless workers of municipal corporations.
We go to great trouble to find the one great love of our live, our future spouses. Then go to greater trouble to refrain from coffee, alcohol etc to deliver healthy babies and then promptly 'schedule' their arrival into the world as per Leaves offered by our faceless corporate giants and modern medicine. We then promptly find 'Child care' facilities with people and establishments doing so clearly as a business to make money. And our consciences are salved. If we even believe such a thing as a conscience exists. After all has it been scientifically proven? Can you see it? (sure, just like you can see the oxygen you breathe).
So what can we do about it? Should we stop eating altogether?, should we rip off our clothes and hold candle-lit dharnas at India Gate?, should we go off into almost extinct Wild with our families, eat roots and berries and live like primitives?...
On an aside, that last primitive bit is very interesting. I don't know if I can identify anything edible in a forest or make my own swiss knife and underwear!!!
What we can do, while we continue with our lives is first change our thinking, change how we do the little things (like what we first do on waking up), then our children's education, along with growing herbs and so forth to what we dream of. Discussed not so long ago by Pujya Saimaster in this unique Speech for children given at Mahanandi in Telugu.
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| Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja Enlightening Listeners |
Mahanandi Speech by Pujya Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja PartB
Anyone who does listen to these is missing something in life!
So that was Permaculture being discussed by Mastergaru!!!
As Babugaru (Dwarakanath Ekkirala Jnaneswar) puts it, the basis of spirituality (as in 'living life correctly') and Permaculture are the same. It all begins with the Three Ethics of
1) Earth Care
2) People Care
3) Fair share or Return of Surplus
Unless and until we understand these completely and make that it it our prime directive as one founder of Permaculture, Bill Mollison says, '...to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children', we do not live. We exist as parasites and the world has no Future.
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P. S. so many gems and all in Telugu!!! What a loss to us English speaking world. Praying for the day when these will be available in English transcript.
