Shades of Being Alive

  The compartmentalisation of the human being.  On one side, each of us can access the entire universe through ourselves, on the other side, we are forced into a system which makes us part of a mega-machine extracting and violating the Earth. These opposing forces create burnout.

This survey  named " Will our children's education be affected?" provoked a certain line of thought on possibilities before educators in these interesting times.  What have schools been doing all this while for the last 200 years, if they haven’t equipped children to own their learning? With humility I felt, the survey seems to be assuming a premise already - the worldview of industrial schooling that we all inhabit in our society. And from there all questions flow. I have challenged that premise and offered different perspectives. We need to ask right back upto Lord Macaulay whose well thought out colonial principles of domination still form the bed-rock of schooling of our children today. Can us educators, interpret this pause as a way to contemplate how has the education pursuit of our world / country doing? Source: Google Can this be seen as an opportunity to enable children and adults around them to Learn local From local material,...

More and more, its becoming visible to me- what’s the work for us. Perhaps, our life’s work. Over 8 years into Youth Alliance, it seems we are just beginning.  Humanity faces a civilisational crisis - that is made up with ecological crisis because we are consuming twice more than earth can regenerate; economic inequity because less and less people own more and more wealth in the world; political polarisation because nationalistic identity based division is rising world over and even spiritual crisis, because we feel more and more alienated from our own selves.  Or perhaps, as human beings we are in a stage of transition. From an industrial society to a life sustaining one. From a story of separation to a story of interconnectedness or interbeing.  From Google Last 8 years, in our work - we have created spaces for young people to get in touch with their own selves, with nature and with people whose realities is completely different from their own. Initial...

8 days into 2020, I have been reflecting on the year gone by as much as I seed for the year that has come. Writing this reflection made it more accessible for me and revealed certain aspects of me that I am so fulfilled about for 2019. This in a way also gives a closure to 2019 and letting me open myself to embrace 2020. What shifted? Friendships - Somewhere in the middle of the year I intended to un-plan my life - learn to ride with emergence and give spaciousness to friendships and relationships. Through the last 6 months of 2019, I found myself unwinding in relationships - taking space and rushing through. I experienced warmth, joy of togetherness and a sadhana of discovering deeper together.  Primary Relationship - One key change that I notice is in my primary relationship. Several miles covered with parents getting involved. Feels its way more rooted - we are coming together in deeper ways to engage with life while creating space for each other too. I feel grate...

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 displ...

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...