|
FANA-FI-GAIA
August 1, 2023
8th Quarterly from the Ziraat Council
| |
Note from the Council - Ecovillages | |
|
It is possible the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.
Taken from an Inquiring Mind article: The Next Buddha May Be a Sangha
By Thich Nhat Hanh
| |
Dear family,
More than 20 years ago I embarked of the biggest adventure of my life, creating an ecovillage. An intentional community where friends and family could eat, dance and pray together whilst entering in ever growing layers of communion with nature in a specific piece of land in the countryside. The Global Ecovillage Network (www.ecovillage.org) has around 10.000 affiliated projects in the world and we self organize in 5 regions: Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. The Latin America branch was relaunched and renamed in 2012 in a very special gathering of +500 people from many countries in which everyday we gathered in the Maloka (the ceremonial house as it is named in the Amazon) to close the intense program of the days with 2 hours of Dances of Universal Peace (DUP).
| |
Atlantida Ecovillage, the location of that 2012 gathering and the community I co-founded in 2003 in the remote mountains of southwest Colombia, with its 111 acres of native and restored forest, has become the main training center for DUP in Latin America and each year, at Easter, we have gathered with dancers, dance leaders and mentors from the entire region for 7 days of celebration and retreat. The ties between ecovillages and DUP are growing increasingly, in part due to the alliance between DUP International and GEN to foster the Beyond Initiative (bringing the Dances to Middle East, Asia and Africa).
Ecovillages offer unique opportunities to LIVE the message of spiritual freedom and harmony, and specially to fully EMBODY the message of the ZIRAAT, the interdependent and interconnected nature of ALL LIFE, and do it through a permanent practice reflected in the daily life regarding your way of relating with the land and the people. Let’s hear some more voices from our global family who are also involved in ecovillages and DUP.
Big hug,
Arjun
| | |
|
I’m Kaia. I live in Auroville, South India, which was founded in 1968 by a French woman called The Mother. With 3,300 residents from 55 countries living on 20 square kilometers, this is the world’s biggest intentional community. The heart of the community is Matrimandir, a golden orb, containing a powerful meditation space surrounded by landscaped gardens. Our lives are about personal and collective transformation, and being in service, each in our own way.
The community is like a small town with housing, farms, shops, schools, concert halls, workshop spaces and innovative water management, often using local, environmental building methods. Dedicated early pioneers have reforested what was once desert, creating shady forests that cycle paths and roads weave through.
| |
|
Often referred to as “The City of Dawn” , Auroville is an experiment in new possibilities based on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. He saw that bringing divinity into all our actions aligned our everyday lives with spirit in a way that negating life to transcend into light is unable to. Yet, unlike most places of spiritual practice, Sri Aurobindo made clear there is no one way everyone should follow. So early mornings in Auroville see people silently in Matrimandir, walking barefoot in the woods, doing yoga or just Being. During the day we are in service — farming, teaching, creating things — according to our skills or learning interests. Later in the day there’s ecstatic dance, kirtan, various classes, concerts, and recently we have started the periodic meetings of Dances of Universal Peace.
We have a long way to go to reach Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s aspirations for Auroville, but even as we are, this is a high concentration of interesting spiritual yet practical people dedicated to this experiment. There are many challenges, such as factions of the community that disagree with other factions, creating long meetings and decisions to be made, so this is no utopia. But for me, life is varied and steeped at all times in Presence which brings peace and fulfillment.
| |
|
I'm Thao Kin, a member of Project Awe - an aspiring ecovillage (currently just a small community of 6 people) in the North of Vietnam. I'm also involved in the core team of the Global Ecovillage Network Oceania & Asia (GENOA) as the network weaver; and part of the REGEN-Nations education project (which is the GENOA's online ecovillage design education). I am also involved with the Beyond Initiative of the DUP and currently organizing the first DUP Caravan in Vietnam and a Regional Training Camp for Dance leaders in Asia. Click here for the Caravan flyer.
I’m here to share a bit around sustainable and regenerative economics in ecovillages and similar projects. First I need to admit that the economic dimension is a challenging one for me (and my team) - as a very young community (started last year 2022), we are still learning ways to heal our relationship with money and also to be financially sustainable.
I'd love to share one of the first practices we did together as a community - we had in-depth discussions with each other about 8 forms of capitals (not only money, but yes about money too). We had a moment of awe when Trang, one of the team members, raised the question during one of our team meetings last year - "What does prosperity mean to you?". We took turns to share what "prosperity" means for each of us. Then, we took a silent moment to look back and reflect on our relationships with money since childhood, before sharing with the whole circle. We all have our own stories and struggles when it comes to "money". However, the moment of awe struck when our answers on prosperity all evolved around well-being, quality relationships, having enough for basic needs with more to share, and most importantly, the "feeling that we can trust in the support and abundance of community (our community and larger community)".
| |
|
My name is Douglas Stevenson, and I am a member of The Farm, an intentional community and Ecovillage located on 1750 acres in Southern, Middle Tennessee. Founded as a spiritual community in 1971 on the principles of non-violence and respect for the earth, its members have actively promoted positive, social change with projects around the world and outreach through media, workshops, and events.
Over the years, I have served on its various boards, been a volunteer with its nonprofits, a spokesperson, and a host for festivals, retreats, and conferences. One period of service that has been especially dear to my heart was my time with Swan Conservation Trust, a nonprofit land, trust organization that established a 1400-acre nature preserve that surrounds The Farm Community. Altogether, we raised $1.5 million dollars over a period of 10 years to purchase the land.
One of the most important things I learned was the power that a small group of dedicated individuals can have, accomplishing so much more than any one of us could do alone. We came together as a diverse set of friends and acquaintances, each sharing their individual talents and strengths. It was a living example of the whole being much more than the sum of its parts.
At the same time, we had to work it out. We did not always agree with each other. But we were committed to our common goal and had to keep talking things out, while staying friends. It was important to remember that this work is not for us, but for the earth, and for those who come after us.
Living in community gives you the leverage to make real change in the world, and to find connection with something greater than yourself that fills your heart and carries you forward on a path toward greater joy and fulfillment. We hold DUP camps at the farm every year now.
If you want to bring community into your life, or find an Ecovillage where you can build a life, take advantage of the resources to be found with the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) www.ecovillage.org and the Federation of International Communities, and their website www.ic.org.
| |
|
Hello dear Sufi Family, I am Michael from France, my regenerative journey began in 2018 with the organisation of specialized courses in the growing field of permaculture. The main purpose of these activities was to improve the relation we have with ourselves, with the other living beings, with mother nature. This process took me to systemic design, agroecology, bioconstruction and community building workshops, discovering how to regain autonomy and freedom, understanding how people can transform the world through their own transformation, myself as first! Currently living in a community in the south of France named Lou Neïssoun, I joined GEN as ambassador in 2020 and co-organized in 2021 the first Ecovillage Design Education course held in France at Sainte Camelle, now preparing the next edition ! We have been organizing DUP circles and camps in France with my partner Vanessa from Peru, and the next one will be held at another ecovillage near Montpelier.
Passionate with the living world, as a permaculture designer I currently work on several innovative projects to experiment regenerative solutions applied to local context. One of them is the seeding of a syntropic agriculture edible forest in a Mediterranean context as a way to address the challenges we are facing regarding water management, food sovereignty, economical resilience, soil erosion and the evolving role of a farmer in a healthy ecosystem. My intention is to keep supporting actions that help humanity to align with the planet's balances and to allow all life to be respected and valued as is it, a miracle!
| |
Excerpts from Ziraat Reader and our Ziraat Webpage | |
|
We learn by preparing the soil of the heart, planting the seed of intention, watering the soil of our efforts with flow and ease, weeding the soil of our confusion, composting it into more fertility for the Message to bloom, gaining strength and working together through our interdependence with the rhythms of day and night, the seasons and climates of other beings, and offering up the fruit of our experience for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Pir Shabda.
More here https://www.ruhaniat.org/index.php/ziraat
| |
|
“Man’s need for oneness with nature is not fulfilled simply by hiking or camping in
nature, but by penetrating into the consciousness of the trees and the flowers, of the planet and the atoms, experiencing what it would be like to be that flower or tree and getting into the spirit of the wind on a landscape or of amusical note: in fact, switching to a totally different focus of consciousness, tuning into a transfigured world which, as the Sufis say,‘transpires through that which appears.’”
—Introduction by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan to the Nature Meditations. More here https://www.ruhaniat.org/pdf/ziraat/Ziraat-Reader-low-res-part-1.pdf
| |
|
New Economics:
WEB 3.0, the next GEN Internet is here. Is a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, and token-based economics. What do ecovillages, permaculture farms, natural reserves, cooperatives, community based agriculture networks, re-wilding initiatives, ecosystems restorations and indigenous communities in the Amazon have to do with WEB 3.0. Here is an mind blowing example:
https://youtu.be/WXWBSffxT88
| |
|
Repeat 99 times using your favorite Tasbih : Mitakuye Oyasin.
Repeat aloud, declaring your absolute interdependence and interconnectedness with all life. Remember your microbiome, thousands of millions of microbes and fungi in your guts and skin. Remember life depends on the light of the Sun, on the magnetic field produced by the Earth’s core, on the balance of climate and on harmonic social structures. Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related, Mitakuye Oyasin, I exist with all my relations, Mitakuye Oyasin, I am because everything else IS.
| |
|
Then go into the Fikr, just breathing in and out Mitakuye Oyasin. Remember you are breathing in the oxygen that trees give as a gift and breathing out the carbon dioxide they so much hope for. Mitakuye Oyasin, I’m just a fiber of a bigger tapestry, Mitakuye Oyasin, humans are just an organ in a bigger organism.
Then drop the words and just rest in the realization: Mitakuye Oyasin, This One Life, this One Existence, THIS IS IT.
Arjun
| | | | |
