Shades of Being Alive

Recently I was part of a gathering called ‘Inner Dimensions of Climate Change’ with about 55 other people, healers, climate activists, community builders, practitioners from at least 30 countries. To my mind, its difficult to put them under any label - rather an intuitive sense brought us all together. It was the culmination of almost 4 years of work of Global Peace Initiative of Women and Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association. Here’s what struck me: Making the spirit, conscious - For long, I have felt it and for long the spiritual has guided my being and actions - however it acted like a side eye. In the process of this gathering, I was exposed to spiritual fields of other beings and gently I sensed the spiritual to be the central core of my life. All my pursuits, I am beginning to see are to rise higher or go deeper into this spiritual journey. I am beginning to come to realise that while action of any form is very important, the spiritual / inner space from where it

The Interconnected Crisis  The world today is at the cusp of multi-fold crisis:  Ecological Crisis where we are consuming 1.5 times the rate at which Earth can replenish Socio-Economic Crisis where 26 individuals own as much wealth as bottom 50% of humanity and inequity is only getting skewed each year (Oxfam Inequity Report)  Spiritual Crisis with a remarkable self-alienation whose one of the consequences is rising number of suicides.  The crisis we believe, is civilizational. It asks of us some fundamental questions about dominant way of being, way of thinking and organising.  The Core Problem  The crises are created by a web of factors – like mono-cultured education, globalisation, industrial modernity and so on. However, one of the most significant phenomenon that has led to these crises is dismantling of communities particularly in the last 30 years at a rate unprecedented before. Because of (a) economic mobility (including displacement due to development),

The world is at the cusp of multifold crisis:  Ecological Crisis where we are consuming 1.5 times the rate at which Earth can replenish  Socio-Economic Crisis where 26 individuals own as much wealth as bottom 50% of humanity and inequity is only getting skewed (Oxfam Inequity Report)  Spiritual Crisis with a remarkable self-alienation whose one of the consequences is rising number of suicides.  The crises are created a web of factors, we wish to name the roots as we see it:  Firstly, our monocultural factory like schooling system produce consumers and workers whose humanity is layered with fearful pursuits of material excess. And that has created a system that work for only a few humans at the cost of other human beings, other beings and the environment. The education system was developed for a particular socio-cultural context where Industrial Revolution was rising, colonialism was the order of the day and the paradigm of man’s relationship with nature was to control i