The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way.
If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.
Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food.
So, at the age of nine, I became a monk, and from then on I was there practicing that kind of nonviolence.
In spite of nuclear weapons, large numbers of American citizens feel totally insecure. And in spite of so much wealth, industry and technology, many Americans are living under deprivation and anxiety. So happiness is not in accumulation of material goods, it’s in sharing and caring.
I was pursuing the inner path at the expense of the rest of my being and the rest of the world.
That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to beg for food.
I and a friend of mine called Mannon talked together, and we both decided to walk this journey.
Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.
That was my real education in the world – I learned politics, the social and cultural life of India, Hindu tradition and religion, and Buddhism.
We then came to the Soviet Union. One day we were walking and carrying our banner and distributing a few leaflets in Russian to people, and we met two women on the road.
The children are being conditioned to think that the purpose of life is to get a good job. You get paid but you don’t get satisfaction from your work.
You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession.
It doesn’t matter where or how it is grown as long as it is packaged in plastic, put on the supermarket shelves, and bought as a commodity. In the New Story food is not commodity. Food is sacred. We need to be connected with soil, with animals that we take care of.
When you come to the spiritual needs, the emotional needs, the needs of our inner life, then politics and business and technology are completely impotent. They are completely unable to meet and address the needs of human beings.
Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living.
People are increasingly becoming disappointed and disillusioned with politics and business, and especially with the market economy. They are meeting the physical needs of human beings, maybe. They are providing food. But not good and healthy food.
It is only an illusion that time is running out. This is where the problem of fear arises. We become anxious that “I don’t have enough time and I have to do everything quickly.” We need to turn our attention away from results, achievements and outcomes.
In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values.
People are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the ‘transition town’ movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power.