Where I am and How I got Here

After a long time of blogging my wanderings around India at onewaveintheocean.blogspot.ca, I have accepted the inevitability of change and migrated (as they say) to this new blog. I am not closing the door to the past, but I am acknowledging that I have changed and begun walking along a new path in my life. This is the most ordinary and the most extraordinary thing about being human, isn't it? I suppose that is why there are so many cliches for the experience of the changes that we human beings experience over and over again.

Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat

 

"It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis." Henry Miller.

 

Saying something so often that it truly disappears into the background noise and becomes banal is one thing; but then finding just the right words to say it again so that it re-emerges from the cliche and we see it again as extraordinary---well, that is a good talisman for this first reflection on the power and limits of language.

 

As it turns out, words are the very thing that has been preoccupying me lately, words and their workings through and on human beings. Marshall McLuhan saw language as the first and archetypal 'technology' and that is a clue I have been trying to follow.

But I am forgetting where I am and so let me start with the words right here and now, (on words and their power to transform): today is the first day of the holy month of Ramadan (2015), the time that recalls the long ago time of the divine dictation of the words of the Holy Qu'ran to the Holy prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). When that occurred it created (or re-created) something utterly unique, a new beginning, a new people. Christians imagine something like that when they say, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God". Words beyond mere words, then. Holy words, words that act and create.

 

And still further: I am living in the western desert region of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, formerly called, with an ominous simplicity, 'the empty quarter' (Al Gharbia). It is also being 'renamed' slowly and meticulously with trees and grass and mines and oil wells and solar power plants and peoples, of course, from all over the subcontinent . In this garden blossoming in the desert, there are still echoes of that word that was heard by the intrepid English explorer, Wilfrid Thesiger (author of Arabian Sands) --'the empty quarter'--but they are only echoes now. This too is an act of re-creation, but of a very human kind. It is a filling up and transforming of the empty places by virtue of human vision, desires, technological ingenuity and of course, wealth. It is something to behold, and shows words in action ovGercoming what was once named 'empty'.

The desert is the landscape I see everyday and which surrounds me. There are also landscapes of the mind, however, those we carry around inside us (and which carry our spirit around and around in them). I am thinking not of the desert but of the forest, now, like those Canadian forests in which I walked and wandered and sometimes even got lost as a child. This forest is a good metaphor for the world of ideas or the mind, I have always thought. There are many paths that open up as one walks and possibilities of turning in many directions. Although it is also very true that 'the mind is a dangerous neighbourhood", as a friend used to say. Buddhists are well aware of that. It is full of words and ideas and fantasies and when we follow them around long enough it is very easy to be completely lost in a kind of labyrinth of the ego, or, of course, and to 'miss the forest for all the trees'.

 

It was one thing to explore and discover yourself there in a new found territory then, but there is also always the risk of being unable to find your way back. And in that sense 'dangerous' things also lurk in the darkness of forests, as the myths all tell us, things that may change everything and shake you to the core. If for example, like Hansel and Gretel, you are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch and led into the dark deeps of her forest, it would be wise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs in order to find your way out again--should you ever escape and return to yourself again. That fairytale ends happily as most of them do: the children escape the witch, find their way out of the forest and, you guessed it, live happily ever after.

 

What's missing in the fairy tale is the impact of experience as it changes us, transforms us so that there is no way back and we will never again be what we were before.We can remember, of course, we can follow the trail of crumbs and come out of the forest into a clearing but when we arrive where we began we realize that something is very different. And that is the person that we are and the way we see the world. For experiences--at least the ones that overwhelm us--also transform us. Words may describe these changes only indirectly, and that occurs when we find ourselves suddenly and surprisingly speaking and thinking in a new way.

 

This shows us a another and deeper power of language with which we human beings are intimately entwined. We use it to create a house for our consciousness and then we inhabit that house we have made. Words cloth us in a story, our story, and give us countless orientations to the world that we come to know through them, and they help us find our way about in it. And when that world shifts dramatically, the foundation of the house crumbles; we search quickly for new words, try speaking them in different ways and begin building a new house for ourselves. So words and ideas shape views of the world and of our self--in a thousand deep and hidden ways. We wrap ourselves around in them like the double helix of our DNA and become one with them. It is only when we wander off into the forest, find ourselves at a loss and then, to mix metaphors, open the door into a surprisingly new and spacious room of the mind, that we realize we have changed. And so has our world, the foundation has shifted, 'up' is 'down' and 'left' is 'right'. There are surprises at every turn for we are speaking a new language and coming to live in a new house of words.

I am and have always been a man of words. I write blogs. I think by writing and my thinking is wordy, grammatical and argumentative: it moves from here to there like the lines on a page. I begins at a beginning and ends at an end, like a Victorian novel. It tries to move slowly and surely filling in all the blanks. In India and now again here in the desert, I have made the most startling discovery, however. I am a child of the print culture of the west, my mind formed and informed by its logic and laws.

All of that just doesn't work here, in the east, much as our culture has become the exemplar of technological primacy for the rest of the world. And so, since I cannot jump over my own shadow, I must make the best of it with the resources that I have, that I am.

 

 

 

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Paul Schwartzentruber Speaks on Experiences in India and Ekta Parishad

Paul Schwartzentruber Speaks on Experiences in India and Ekta Parishad

Teaching Peace…Learning about culture

It was typical, I think, of the work of my friend JPji--expansive, optimistic and hugely collaborative.

He has been encouraged and partially funded to develop a series of curricula for non-violence and peace training for the schools in Tamil Nadu. The curriculum here is largely secular and career-focussed (there is high competition among students for higher education and equally high levels of depression and even suicide). He and Ananthi had already hastily put together a book of lessons about peace and peacemaking for the elementary levels but, in part since I was here, he decided it was now time to take the next step and produce a work for the high schools.

So he convened a two day meeting and invited the young Swiss (Steiner Trained) pedagogue Georg as well as David (the architect), Ananthi and several local teachers to develop the basic materials. Three of the teachers are form a network of Montessori schools run in Madurai, another was from another private school in the city. We spent the first day brainstorming on lesson possibilities from the expansive list of topics that JPji (and I) had generated: Holistic Health and Individual Excellence, Interrelationships, Environment and Nature, Nonviolence and the Spiritual Dimension, and The Contemporary Challenges.

I must say it was wonderful fun and enlightening. The Montessori school is obviously working at a very high level, and its curriculum already contains many lessons and ideas in these areas. The young principal told us, for example, of the many uses of circle teaching with students. One is called 'open house' where students identify a problem in their school and then try to generate solutions. The girls recently spoke of the poor condition of the washrooms and, with the janitor present, worked out the details of how it could fixed. A small but wonderful example of student democracy! But they also have highly developed curriculum on bullying, diversity training (Indians really are masters of this) and general health and well-being. On the later, they send the students first to interview their grandparents and parents on their eating habits and food from the past, then identify the changes in what they eat today, developing a critique of commercially produced food. Their cafeteria has only homemade food and the children are allowed to work in it, learning practical skills. When the teach on the environment they assign students to research and then role-play the various animal species, convening what Joanna Macey calls a "Council of all Beings"

So the brainstorming led to some very positive lesson ideas. Tomorrow we will each present a couple of sample lessons on one of the sub-topics and then we will try to collectively write the book over the next month.

I thought of so many possibilities during the conversation and was so stimulated by their enthusiasm, I am still reeling a bit. I would not normally have thought of writing curriculum but the enthusiasm was so strong and the desire to have an impact so real that I feel quite taken up with it.

I will never use the word, padayatra/footmarch again without thinking. I have just returned (to Delhi for one hour in transit) after being with Rajaji on a padayatra in Rajasthan. On the last two days we walked 8 kilometers each day. Each day we ended with a large rally. About two hundred of us were walking. Each day's walk was about 5 hours. I have done fifteen marathons, I have done four ironman races. None of that even comes close. This was something deeply spiritual and overwhelming in many ways. To walk with the people I was walking with, to feel their strength and courage...I am still a little speechless. I will reflect over the next few days at Cesci and try to give a better account of this experience. It was an amazing way to spend thanksgiving... More soon.

In and about the Thieves’ Market.

I have been in a decompression chamber since arriving in Delhi; learning that night is day and day is night. I find myself suddenly awake at one in the morning and hungry for supper, or nodding of at 8 in the morning over my morning coffee. As Jill, speaking from years of experience, said, ‘just take a few days and arrive. After all you go back in time coming to India.’

Ekta Parishad has a third floor office in the Janpura Extension, an area of New Delhi near Nizamudeen Station and the Bhogel (or Thieves’) Market. It also doubles as a living space. When I was met at the new terminal, it was by Jill and Rajaji (who had just come down with a viral fever). Both were living in the back room of the office. Ramesh Sharma was also staying here and so, since the place was full, I was put in a room across the Market in the West End Guest Home. That is where I have been waking up at three in the morning suddenly expecting supper and generally decompressing from the time change.

I have not run into any thieves yet but have enjoyed watching the street awake and wind down at night from my window. It is hard to describe--so much takes place out on the street here ( as opposed to inside the houses)--a jumble of living and working and playing. Animal, vegetable and mineral in a lively kaleidoscope. The vegetable seller walks up and down with his cart of produce and distinctive chanting call. Four young men are sitting on the sidewalk and with a hammer and tongs, rhythmically breaking off pieces from some kind of mysterious metal plating. Saried women are everywhere sweeping up the nights’ refuse, hanging wash, shooing neatly uniformed children off to school. Two young men are carefully washing a new car on a street that is mostly rutted with mud and rickshaws and piles of abandoned bricks. And dogs. It is a wonderful jumble of the life and its smells that is urban India.

During the days, I have been happily following Jill around on various sorties in networking and advocacy work, uptown and downtown. Yesterday we went to India’s famous ITT campus (a bit like MIT) to visit Prof. Upadhyay, an economist involved in publishing the annual “Alternative Economic Report”. We had a nice tea and chat about the alternative economic possibilities and families. Today we went south of Delhi into the so-called industrial area of Hockla (?) driving with a man called Arvind, who knew another man called Arun, who runs a large PR firm with an office in the area. Arvind believed that Arun could help EP with its PR preparation for the march in 2012. The industrial area has become something quite other than was originally envisaged; there are factories (proudly acknowledging that they have no child labour), but there are small shack-like houses, working spaces and offices scattered along the almost impassable mud roads.

Our meeting unfolded slowly and unexpectedly in what I now have come to think of as a typical Indian fashion. Arun’s BMW broke down and he had to wait for them to pick him up, and he called to give us progress reports on his progress. So we met for several hours with two younger staffers, highly professional ad-men and asked for their advice (all of which was very good). Our friend Arvind eventually had to leave, but we were urged to wait for Arun himself and treated to many coffees and lunch at his desk by his staff.

Arun arrived with a flourish and much charm and we had an hour of his undivided attention and advice. Clear, decisive ideas about what should be done and a real nobility of spirit. Jill spoke to him at length about Ekta, Rajagopal and her own life while Arun himself decided to drive us all the way back to the Thieves’ Market, noting how rare it was for him to meet people who are working for a social justice cause.

As I come out of the decompression chamber this is all quite a wonderful reintroduction to the India I am coming to know: above all, this large- and warm-heartedness for what is noble and good. A kind of spontaneous generosity that is beyond expectations. I am sure there is the other, darker side about as well, and no doubt many thieves, but I have not run into them yet.

Rajaji has gone off to Kerala with his viral fever to an event he just could not miss (which is the only kind of event he attends) Jill and I will travel to Bhopal on Sunday morning.

FREEDOM WALK 2012

Ground Reality: France and India: The Beautiful Farms are all but dying

Ground Reality: France and India: The Beautiful Farms are all but dying
I cannot recommend the blog of Devinder Sharma too highly. This is a wonderful article on the reasons behind the death of the life of farming in India and France, two nations whose culture was shaped by rural life, local food and the community that went with it.