Ecological Happiness with Dr Vandana Shiva

hello my name is Mark Williamson and a very very warm welcome to all of you joining us from all around the world for this very special live action for happiness event uh it's fantastic to see so many of you joining us and welcoming each other from all around the world and I'm particularly delighted that we're joined today by Dr Vandana Shiva and uh well welcome to you Vandana and particularly delighted because today is international women's day and I couldn't think of a more inspiring and uh amazing and you know incredible woman to have with us to share this time together today so Vandana thank you for um being with us thank you Mark my video has to be enabled at your end ah well I look forward to seeing you hopefully moment now now they've just started there we go welcome thank you for joining us today happy Women's Day to everyone indeed well today's theme is ecological happiness and of course uh Dr Shiva you've got such a wealth of experience in relation to ecology but also I think with what we care so much about with actual happiness the the idea of how to create a world where people can really Thrive and what I'm looking forward to exploring with you at today's event is this idea of the connection between our own happiness and the happiness of our wonderful planet that we're all living on a very warm welcome to anyone who's joining us for the first time today just say a few moments about this so London and I will have a conversation for about half an hour there'll be some interactive things for you to get involved in wherever you are in the world and there'll be a chance for a q a where you can ask your own questions to Vandana a bit later on thank you for being part of the chat and please do use the Q a and let's keep all of the conversation kind supportive and relevant as I know you always do um London and maybe we could start though I know many people will be very familiar with your amazing work but perhaps you could say a little bit about your personal journey and why this topic is so important to you well my my personal Journey began in the forest of the Himalaya but from there you know because of the sculpting of uh Einstein I've done myself because he's been the inspiration for me to to you know find a path in physics and I did a PhD in Hidden variables and non-locality and quantum theory which actually teaches you exactly the same thing that ecology teaches you uh but before leaving for Canada why I did my PhD I went to visit a favorite forest and the forest was gone and streams coming from it were a trickle and that's when I heard of this movement called chipko where women came out to embrace the trees and said you can't destroy these trees because these trees are alive and from that time onwards you know um I've responded to to disasters the pain of nature the pain of people the Bhopal disaster the uprisings in Punjab so I looked at the Green Revolution and then because of my studies on the Green Revolution I got invited to biotech meetings where they said oh now we want to own the seed I said but you don't create the seed seed is not a machine it's not an invention so I started to save seeds in the movement of Daniel uh grew out of that 1987 I started my journey of saving seeds um realize how important biodiversity was and um you know both the scientific understanding of biodiversity as well as the conservation are beautiful Farm where we've just had a celebration of diverse women for diversity uh every one of them left saying it's been such Joy not only because people were together but because the farm is a biodiversity Farm where diversity thrives different crops are working together the pollinators are pollinating the earthworms are fertilizing and um and we're growing right now 250 varieties of wheat next season we'll grow 750 varieties of rice but across the country we say four thousand varieties of rice wow in 150 community seed banks that we have started so I feel very grateful that I've been I've dedicated my life to Nature first in studied through physics but then through activism and I've done it for 50 years now it's amazing and what a fantastic combination of the science the the practice and uh the sort of wisdom that you can bring and I love the joy that you share there in that in that example because I think that brings us to this topic of happiness and many of us that care deeply about um you know people's well-being in the broadest sense I guess have a sense that we somehow have become a bit separate from the earth we see our our own well-being as perhaps dependent on ourselves and each other but actually we in many ways especially in the modern Western World we we seem to be increasingly disconnected from the natural world so I wanted to start with quite a big question and I know it's something you could talk deeply on but what do you see as the connection between our happiness and the happiness of our natural ecosystem in our world well the connection is that we are part of nature we are not separate the illusion of Separation was constructed very deliberately the rise of colonialism the rise of industrialism it wasn't by accident that Mr bacon the chancellor of England created a science which he called the masculine birth of time that till then the relationship with nature as a living relationship was an effeminate relationship and now domination Mastery subjugation of nature torturing her enslaving her that was going to be the future of Science in the hands of a few Supermen and if today you hear the word science with a capital S to shut down diversity of knowledge but that's what's going on um the witch hunts continue and even the witch hunts were a silencing of knowledge as part of nature because nine million people were killed in Europe most of them women which women women Healers women Elders women who knew how to live as part of Nature and guide people in that wisdom so the separation was very violently imposed and Indigenous people even today don't even look at the world that way yeah they look at pachamama in the Andes uh in India we call her vasundhara um we call the Earth family you're going to hear a lot of it because it's been picked up as the slogan for the G20 this year but it's very much more in a political sense than an ecological sense but sundara is the name of the earth is the name of her family and all beings are our relatives so just like in a family when there's friction and conflict and unhappiness even one member of the family the whole family is unhappy so if we create unhappiness for other beings we will be unhappy but more importantly than that you know the natural world is not something out there it is not an object outside US nature earth life we use different words nature was the word that was picked up for objectification because more difficult to objectify the Earth even though a jurisprudence was created to transform Tera Madre the living a Mother Earth into Terra nalius the empty land just raw material empty of Rights empty of knowledge empty of care and and what's you know ordinary people know they breathe and when the air is polluted that air is all you know the air has been harmed but we are harmed look at the number of respiratory diseases result of pollution of a H we and you know in when we do yoga and you all meditate um oh pranayam the deep breathing breathing in and breathing out the Mantra that said is so hum you are therefore I am where is our breath coming from the photosynthesis of the green beads they're giving us food they're taking out the carbon dioxide and they're giving us oxygen as a gift and when we destroy and when the women of chipko said you cannot destroy these forests they give us Soil and Water and oxygen they said breath village women who'd never been to school were teaching the highest classes of ecological relationship or take water when we destroy water systems there is no water or we get waterborne diseases five billion people are going to be suffering for lack of water because we've abused it we've destroyed it with pollution extraction mining everywhere and producing food in ways that is wasting water and polluting water but food itself you know in in our philosophy and I mean as a scientist I know a fundamental side two fundamental Cycles psychological Cycles the water cycle and the nutrition cycle the nutritional cycle is the cycle of food so what connects us to the world is food as the currency of life as the dialogue between different beings it is not a tough to be stuffed in it is not a commodity it's not a thing food is life in fact we say when you eat real food it's creating your health so the illusion that we are separate from nature is at the root of the old ecological disasters we face but it is also at the root of the violence against indigenous people you know when boy who also been in the boys equation but he was the governor of the Church of England he was the first director of the Royal Society to implement Mr Bacon's masculine philosophy and he said I mean he was a church of England and he said the church should destroy the idea of a sacred nature and let native people think that it's just mechanical raw material and they are primitive because they think they're part of Nature and they must be civilized to think of a dead nature so that's how we separated ourselves and every time we breathe every time we drink water every time we eat if every time that act is a meditation on our relationship with the Earth of course we will act in the right ways yes well said thank you for that context and I think in in summary you're reminding us that there is no human health and happiness without health and happiness of the planet and I'd love to take a pause because you also shared so many reasons for us to feel gratitude towards this amazing sort of ecosystem that we all rely on I wanted to turn to our lovely Community who are always very engaged here and just invite each of you listening wherever you are around this beautiful planet right now what's one thing that you feel grateful for to our natural world and maybe if you'd like to share a few words in the chat Brandon I can read out some of these and we can reflect on them together so what do you really appreciate about nature so I'll read some of these out sunlight the wind Beauty peace bird song water Life trees sunsets rain animals the sea snow flowers and trees the smells that colors The Silence of Tranquility diversity mountains life Seasons dogs Sunrise Woods Nature grass under my feet bees Spirits life nature skies and the list goes on and on how are you feeling as you hear those words Vandana well I I my mind is looking at all the diversity and richness of life um because you know in the natural world as I said earlier is not a static piece material nature is life it's all gifts of the earth and receiving the gifts gratitude has to be our relationship so obviously there are different dimensions in this topic uh around the connection between our well-being and the planetary well-being and a bit later on I want to come on to the idea of being a social activist because you've been an inspiration to so many of us with the way that you you know you're forced for good to try and change things and I think in our own way we can all make things better but I think before we get into the changing the world I think there's something about changing ourselves that also helps and so I wanted to explore this idea of our relationship individually to the natural world and I think I would say personally it's something that I have at many times in my life taking for granted and actually your work and others have helped me really reconnect and I now love to be out in nature and I and I think the evidence now shows that when we spend time in nature it actually really nurtures our own mental well-being we're more likely to make calm wise decisions to care more for the people and other living beings around us um I wondered if you had any personal practices or Insight around you know our individual relationship with the natural world well you know my life is both intellectually and in terms of practice a daily practice of Consciousness awareness of both the living systems as well as their laws their processes their creativity um and yes when we go into a forest there's enough research that shows that mental you know people with mental problems feel calm but there's so much research that shows that when people with mental problems or people who are violent starts to become one with the earth when they guard it the account I have seen you know I started a movement called Gardens of Hope because in you know the 2000s 1998 onwards the GMO BT cotton was brought into India illegally I won't give you the big story about that high cost High failure Farmers got trapped in debt and Farmers committee started to commit suicide we've lost 400 000 Farmers to Suicide since 1995 when these systems were changed the you know Farmers having their own seed caring for their seeds sharing their seeds and the big giants you know the four corporations that control all the seed of the world that's commercially sold that's the reason I started to say it same the the suicides of farmers left widows but the farmer committed suicide because they'd lost their land because the agents of the seed and chemical company said now your land is ours because you haven't paid the debt and so here we're not just women without their husbands they were women who were now landless and so you know I'm sitting with them one of them in a heart and so but you've got a little piece of land around your heart and let's start a garden of Hope and I said it only because I said you know her crying would stop and she'd have some food to give her children and this movement has spread so big during covet not only did the women who had started Gardens provide their villages with food many of them are now Growing Seeds to distribute to others they've started organic vegetable businesses in their local villages and the children are getting food and the women have realized there's an economy are working with nature because just as science was distorted science means to know when you torture nature you are making sure you don't know because you're killing what you know yeah violence is not the way to know but in the same way economy which means it's derived from oil cause the Earth our place on the Earth management of our household oil course means a household uh both the bigger household of the Earth but also the local households and as Aristotle said economia is the Art of Living and the Art of Living is what we've forgotten because we've been at war with the Earth you know the economic models they're telling us competition is the way the science models telling us we are separate from nature and nature is inert and nature is dead all of this has declared war against the Earth but that has bounced on us look at climate change what is it a result of that we ignore the life-giving energies of biodiverse biospheric systems which have regulated the climate of this planet can you imagine over four billion years this Earth which was which was initially not fertile and abundant through the microbes and the plants the photosynthesis brought life on this planet brought us you know 200 years ago 200 000 years ago reduce the temperatures from 290 degrees to 13 degrees reduce the carbon dioxide to 98 from 98 to 0.03 percent but we are not even looking at the Earth as our teacher on how to address climate change that's the work I do that's why I wrote the book soil not oil but in navdhania what we do is grow biodiversity from all the functions not just of addressing climate change but also regenerating biodiversity because biodiversity loss is such a big problem 93 biodiversity Bond because of industrial Department 50 emissions come from industrial Agriculture and globalized systems of food which are also making us sick and and think of that the same system that making the Earth sick is making us sick 75 percent of the chronic diseases that we suffer and show me a person who's a happy person with sickness if you've got a irritable that's syndrome and you're running to the lou all the time or children have a leaky gut that's not a happy place to be or if you have diabetes and you get complications you have to be amputated not a happy place to be or toxics have given you cancer glyphosate have induced cancer the key issue is the biodiversity in the soil the biodiversity of the plants and the biodiversity in our back to my probiome is one container of well-being help we have a hundred trillion fellow beings in our gut I call it the forest within is nature within when we DeForest it and desertify it with monocultures and chemicals that's where sickness begins and now in the last 10 years all of science is starting to recognize the link between the soil and the gut I'm so glad you mentioned that because I I had a huge transformation when I started to nurture my own microbiome to use the terminology and I and to open up my eyes to a whole new inner World um but I also love what you said about The Gardens of Pope Vandana because many of those things you've mentioned are a source of great fear for I'm sure for you but for many of us about the the state of the world and the climate and the biodiversity and it's difficult to stay hopeful we had a wonderful event with Dr Chris Johnson recently about active hope um and how we can cultivate that and in a moment I'd love to come on to the idea of us us as activists for change but just on this Spirit of Hope I wonder let's imagine I would imagine there are some people with us in this community today who don't have your level of connection to the Natural World perhaps feel a bit disconnected what would be your advice to all of us really about how we can as individuals do do more to to feel connected to to nurture to care about this wonderful ecosystem all around us what would be your advice I never give advice I think it's a arrogant place to be you know how do I know more than you know um but I can check what I've learned in my life the first is hopelessness is not a luxury we can afford just because not only because it blocks us from filling feeling fully human for having full potential it blocks us from action and you know because of of the vehicle that climate message has been handled so many people have climate trauma you know they call me for talks and they talk about climate trauma and I go through the science of climate change and I said there's every place in that broken system where you can play a role and of course my Quantum training has been a big blessing psychological training is what allows me to cultivate Hope on a daily basis but by Quantum training has given me the world view that there's uncertainty therefore there's no inevitability of predictability of collapse just that gives hope uncertainty is a basis of hope so use the openings of uncertainty to play your little role plant your little seed grow your little garden create your little community and then other things grow from there I just started to save seeds I didn't realize we'd be protecting bias the biosphere we'll be bringing back the polony to six times more than in the forest next door soil organism three thousand six hundred percent more fungi just like gratitude and giving back to the Earth and loving the Earth so careful you don't have to have every detailed knowledge of the soil food web no soil is living love the soil work in the soil plants are living say thank you to them just every day and and the more you do it the more the soul will teach you and the plants will teach you and the bees will teach you I love that thank you that's so inspiring um but it feels to me that we should also talk about Community because um well in action for happiness we have this uh aim to create a happier and Kinder world together and that together world is really important because we're all part of one big Human family and of course one big family of living beings on this wonderful planet and I I think that the modern world in particular is isolating us it's leaving us feeling as individuals and losing that sense of connection how do you see that link between our our connectedness and this natural world and maybe how can we harness that power of community and togetherness to help make some of these changes happen I think the very natural way to appreciate connectedness is to give up the mechanistic thinking because when we think mechanically we think of food as something we pick up from a supermarket shelf we forgot forget it's linked to the soil that grew it the seed that gave gave the plant that we eat so the mechanistic philosophy and mechanistic thinking reduces everything to stuff and to objects but life is about flows the flows of water through the system the flows of food and nutrition through the system the flows of love and compassion true life and through community and I want to share with you you know on his Holiness his 60th birth anniversary there's a big conference in Delhi and they'd ask me to come and give a talk um for him and you know of course that's the peak of that 1995 you know peak of my involvement with the question of seed and GMOs and patterns on life and patterns to see so that's what I talked about and this is what he wrote and I show it to you he scribbled it for me this is the talalama yeah he writes this is my talk on GMOs and patterns this is a holiness's response all sentient beings including the small insects cherish themselves all have the right to overcome suffering and Achieve happiness I therefore pray that we show love and compassion to all that's beautiful um thank you for sharing that I I feel a real connection to that because of your work but also because we're very honored to have his Holiness as the patron of our action for happiness community and have done various events with him as well Brandon I'd like to come from there to this idea of each of us being sort of agents for change here we are on International women's day you've done so much to inspire and influence others we may not have your reach or your experience but I believe that we can each be a ripple for change wherever we are in the world in our own small ways are planting our own Seeds of Hope to use your metaphor but could you tell us a bit about how to be effective social activists how can we help create a world that is more connected to the Natural World connected to each other more Humane more caring um less mechanistic and less individualistic if you like what I think each of us eat and we can begin by conscious eating we can begin by shedding this very artificial identity we've been given to be passive consumers of a society of an economy that's devastating there and forcing us to participate in that destruction the word consumer consumption you know what surrogens are people died of consumption it's the name for TB in the middle middle ages and in a way we are making the planets die and our own systems die by consumption as consumerism so you know just think every time you have to get something do I really need it you know reduce your pressure on the planet by reducing your you know I learned Simplicity from my parents and they were amazing they gave us the best Legacy but lived so simply my father I saw him in one suit throughout his life senior Forest officer before that a senior major in the British army my mother two sorrys and they would tell us well if B you know dressed up where would you be send you to school and the best of us about schools so Simplicity for me is revolutionary I think Satish Kumar is written a lovely book called elegant simplicity and he was with me in the world economic Forum when they said oh much you know people want color TV people want cars people want fridges and he replied and said yeah but they don't get happy and happier with all that consumption you know in fact they get into debt they get miserable because someone else has the latest model of the car I have watched India you know create multiple unhappinesses chasing the car we want to automobile Society and will be made and every other models change every year you have to change it second remember every time when you eat that you're eating the soil you're eating the gifts of the earth well you you're eating the gift of the bee without which your the seed wouldn't have become the food you're eating um every time you feel you you start to feel isolated and lonely go out and reach out to someone and overcome their loneliness and through that your loneliness will go form community and as I said earlier there is nothing like growing a garden it doesn't matter how small it could be your windowsill it could be just two pots on your windowsill but the discipline of care an identity with the soil and the plant is the cultivation of happiness and Hope um thank you that's so wise and I'm I'm I'm really it warms my heart to hear you mentioning Satish Kumar who's a another friend of ours and I believe it was the tissue actually connected the two of us as well so very great yes wonderful work um wow we've we've got um some lovely questions coming up in the Q a already so if you're listening into this and you'd like to ask London a question please do use the Q a and you can also vote on each other's questions and and that will help them rise up the list but before we we uh move to that I just wanted to do two other things but one is just to reflect on what you've said bandana about simplicity so I believe there was often ways that that can both help reconnect us with the natural world and also be a force for good at the same time and you've given many examples my personal one is cycling I'm a keen cyclist I love being out in nature on my bike and also that means I don't drive and I don't you know use sort of more polluting forms of Transport um so it helps me and I hope and it's in my own small way it helps the natural world so I I love your encouragement for all of us to see the that aspect of what we're doing but the other thing I'd like to do on that note is to encode just to turn back to this lovely Community we have with us today and ask if you would um if anyone wanted to share something that they would like to take away from this conversation today as an action that their own little seed if you like so what's your little action your life you're going to take to help nurture and feel more connected to the natural world let's just see a few of these in the chat and then we'll come to a question so please share your own ideas for reconnecting with nature for making a difference so let me see I'm going to grow my own garden of Hope eat more mindfully have my allotment choose an area in my garden to be more hopeful connect to my community not buy food from far away think before buying plant more trees have a discipline of care show gratitude to Nature have a plant-based lifestyle Forest breathing loving my plants riding my bike eating salads picking up litter uh being more aware of seasonal eating getting into nature more often planting more seeds encouraging Simplicity and everything that's just some of the things that are flying up on my screen Vandana that sounds to me like a a lovely set of actions how are you feeling about those yeah very inspiring great um let's come to some questions well Mark may I may I just say one thing yeah of course don't say get into my mind bike and go to Nature you are in nature sitting at home sitting there you you know if you're alive you're alive because Nature's giving you life thank you that's very very true and also another reminder of how much I take for granted and perhaps many of us do so thank you I I completely agree and that was misspoken but actually that's I'm really glad that came up because that's a really important Point um to the question then so Stuart has said Dr Shiva what do you think it will take to encourage Western governments to make this shift away from cozy relationships with environmentally damaging corporations to embrace a more ecologically sensitive approach to policies in society big question you know I've been through so many stages I've been through in the pre-globalization days where actions like chipko changed policy we know we shifted the idea that forests are Timber mines to recognition that foreign conservation forests and then I've been through the period of globalization and reorganized as the international Forum on globalization I will also witnessed how how big money you know I have a book called Oneness versus one percent which you know which is I'm trying to understand what what's going on how are the billionaires ruling the world because they are they are telling our governments now you do this now you do this so I don't think the car the you know that in any dynamic system there's always a place where openings can happen yeah and there are other places where there's closure at this point of history in this particular phase governments of most of them have closed themselves I mean the Mexican Government just said we won't take GMOs because we are the country of corn we've got to protect our heritage and our health and they're being bullied on a daily basis so as women of the world who gathered at nathania you know letters have been sent to leaders of the world that hey we don't want GMO food and definitely governments that stand by their Citizens need to be supported and governments that bully other governments and Bully other citizens really are not behaving very democratically so I think at this point change will come by communities growing in the awareness and their practices and the awareness and practice will become increasingly more necessary not just for reasons that we have an obligation to the Earth but they will become more necessary for survival itself the cost of living crisis big issue what's the solution if we leave it to the big agribusiness and the big supermarkets people are going to stop that's why the garden of hope that in in one context is Hope in another context is your food security and food sovereignty and we will have to start creating new ways to do Community Kitchens to do community already I know about 80 percent of the food system is not running through government it's running through People's Community efforts getting food to the hungry um but the other really big issue is a massive you know just like at the time of industrialism and colonialism nature was defined as dead in outmatter just raw material for industry you know the word resource used to mean that which resurges on its own renews on its own and then it became that which is raw material for industry so everyone is nervous about the use of the word resource but it's originally meaning was beautiful right now they're trying very hard to Define nature as a financial asset to be gambled on on Wall Street and they're looking at four thousand trillion dollars for the billionaires the stock markets the rock the black rocks and the vanguards and that's why love for nature unconditional love for nature care for nature protection of nature as the very basis of our life is something we have to do because the other way the future is very very dark you know a million species are threatened 200 go extinct every day but humans too are part of the threatened species and we need to defend the infrastructure of life rather than participate in this infrastructure of destruction of life and for that every day is a day of increasing our Consciousness and relationship but everyday finding our little place yeah and let me just spend a sentence on this because we you know we've celebrated bigness so much you know industrialism was about bigness colonialism was our bigness it's always about you know how big a cooperation is how big a superpower is and Gandhi dealt with the Empire of Qatar the British Empire by pulling out a spinning wheel and that's where I got my inspiration to save the seeds I said seeds are the spinning wheel of today and when he was laughed it said how can you deal with an Empire with a spinning wheel and this is what he said it's precisely because it's so small and it can be made by anyone that the last woman the poorest women woman in the smallest heart will be part of our Freedom Movement and when we start making our own cloth that's when we'll be free because we won't depend on the Empire and every you know for everything you live you know you're the water you drink don't buy Kinley don't buy Coca-Cola I have worked with women who shut down popular plants because Coca-Cola bottles told in water so no matter what life is about there's a place in your smallness to do the big things that make a difference because as I said my work is on non-locality and therefore small actions impact the big you don't have to be big to impact the big you can be small in the right way with the right action that's what Dharma is the right action the right likelihood and we're hearing from you here on International women's day lots of little micro examples of women changing the world and of course you yourself have been such a an inspiration it strikes me that part of the response to that previous question might be we have quite a lot of men in positions of power that do quite a lot of destructive things and quite a lot of the female leaders that we have been lucky enough to have have been again this is in risk of generalizing but have been more likely to care for and respect the natural world and I wonder if the increasing influence of female leaders can help um continue to put us on a on a better on a better path and that sort of links into a question here from Karen in Dublin in Ireland she says first of all she would happily listening to you this wonderful human for hours which is nice to hear um she said Dr Shiva what are the most important actions each of us as individuals can do today and going forward to move towards a sort of healthier happier cleaner environment towards a more positive nature natural world you know as a mentioned you know pulled in agriculture wasn't my chosen field I've had to respond to it because of disaster after disaster after disaster and then study and then action um if 50 of greenhouse gases come from an industrial food system and you care about climate change then you have to get out of that industrial food system if 75 of The Disappearance awarded there's a testification of soil comes from the system you care about water give up industrial food if you care about your health and you want your well-being looked after then you have to start eating healthy food it's not a luxury health is not a luxury especially when you look at you know you save money on cheap food and then you pay a fat Bill to a doctor for all kinds of sicknesses so I always say you know start treating the earth and the soil and the plants and the bees and the farmer as your physician they are bringing you health so uh you know I think that's the place where everyone can participate on a daily basis and unlike you know unlike saving the whales where a few people can be passionate about it eating for your health and the health of the planet is the same action of conscious eating it's something everyone can and should do and even more important today because fake food is the future just like chemical agriculture was the future at one point fake food is the future where the thinking money will be made real food should be banned so do the right thing it doesn't matter who has another idea of what you should be doing Ultra processed food uh 75 of the health problem get out of ultra processed food whether it's lab made cellular meat or whatever it is you know turn to the Earth and receive her gifts with love and knowledge and thrive on her gifts and I can say personally and I have no expertise in this in the way that you do Vandana but I of all the things I've done personally that have affected my own mental well-being and and sort of health and happiness you know I thought it might be the meditation or the relationships all of which are really important but actually giving up Ultra processed food um which I did some years ago has been enormously transformative so it's sort of this idea that food is medicine and nature is medicine in a way which is so powerful now um one of the things that inspires me but also gives me pause for thought is thinking about the Next Generation I'm the father of three young children and Darcy's asked a question here how do we engage with the youth to share these ideas especially when some of them feel there's no future or no hope for them is risking sounding like a broken record everyone should plant a God I said this to Greta you know when she came to me when she met me and I said you know a strike on the Fridays is very impactful and you young people have done such a good job but one I was your age when I was involved in chipko but now I'm an old woman and uh and your age is not static either so prepare for a lifetime of this kind of work and second strike Fridays the rest of the week is available to plant Gardens including begin in your school school Gardens community garden Church Gardens you know I I've advised a few universities and all and I'd say you know this this shouldn't be a cemented parking lot and I've gone back 10 years later and it is not a cemented parking lot it has become a bad so all these are possibilities and it depends on where is the space for us to act I don't think we should bang our head against the wall and say oh oh I can't Lobby government forget it which you can Lobby yourself aren't you you can change yourself and that's where you begin and I don't think you know the idea of the mechanical idea was also an idea of not just separation from the earth and nature but separation from ourselves who are we really we are Earth beings we are inter beings we are not just human you know like I said the hundred trillion microbes in our God you know our real identity is the microbes yeah so humility you know rather than the arrogance that came with anthropocentrism that not only are we Superior to other beings uh not only are we separate from other beings and disconnected from them but we are superior that anthroper as arrogance must go because without other beings we wouldn't be here we wouldn't be alive without their well-being we wouldn't be happy and uh and so we should have the Consciousness constantly of inter being both at the ecological level of the non-human species but at the human level I mean our time is a time where Society is being divided further and further and further through hate and fear I mean look at your government's decision to not allow those who are seeking Refuge to enter I mean that's that is inhuman because you know welcoming guests and then finding Humane arrangements for refugees has always been the role of every Humane Society you know when when Bangladesh was created hundreds of thousands of bangladeshis were given shelter in India when his Holiness had to leave Tibet 25 communities were given land in this country and that's the way that that to me is the measure of being civilized not Conquest not anger not hate not exclusion well said and I I feel that in a world where so much is being driven by a sort of fear of the other you're reminding us that we are more interconnected than we realize and actually pursuing that common Humanity I hope is a solution so that much of that Division I also love that Greta um example and the idea that you know you can be an activist uh some of the time but you can also make little changes in your own life I'm in danger of paraphrasing other people badly but I guess it's important to call for change but we can also be the change as well yeah Mark I I see growing the garden as activism too yeah okay because activism is not merely the resistance component Gandhi differentiated between creative constructive action which is activism because you act and the resistance but that too always coming from Love and non-violence that's why satyagre the power of truth always working from Truth and Love to challenge brutality to challenge Injustice and to challenge cruelty of every kind and violence of every kind so I I you know I think we've stopped we have to stop thinking activism only as those who go out on the streets and protest people who are shifting the world's practices are activists too they're constructive activists well said I love that so that's really I'd not thought of it that way before that's really helpful um I'd like to move on to the theme of Education briefly we've had two questions that relate to education in different ways first of all Esther who's from who designs educational programs for an NGO in Spain um sort of asks what educational activities have you found to be most sort of helpful for helping people feel connection to Nature and and related Carlotta has said how can we shift education Beyond anthropocentric schooling and move from well as she says from ego to Eco which I like um yeah what do you think about education and nature well you know I I sent a link to send to a thing and everyone they're in a very organic way from saving seeds and growing a biodiversity Farm and a Learning Center grew which we initially called the beach vidyapeeth and part of it was you know Satish visited and said you'll be myself Institute here but their people is a bit heavy bijuana is the school of the sea where the seed is your teacher so we now call it Earth University where the Earth and nature are your teachers but also those who work with the Earth i o teachers and practice being you know practical and participatory work is education and two people who really contributed to this in a big way for us in India was Gandhi who created a system called naitali and he said bookish learning to be clerks for the Empire will not set us free what will set us free is doing the right thing learning vocations you know learning how to read and write but if you are a pastoral Community Learning about your sheep learning about your cow learning about your camel if you're in weaving Community Learning about weaving not to give that up because that skill is where your freedom will come from and most importantly table tagore who said education in the west has come from brick and more to Encompass and our learning always came from the forest we learned democracy and diversity from the forest so he said I'm going to create a Forest University and that's what the Shanti Nikita in his university will actually spend some time because my PhD guide was moving around changing universities because he was you know sleep sober he was being asked to start a physics department here in a physical Department there but tengor is the reason there's a Schumacher College the dartington trust you know he basically said to Alma go and start something like Shanti Nikita in in the west now so Schumacher college and everything that sabish has done there and please you're so welcome to come to Earth University at any time but the particular courses that list has been sent to Mark and we look forward to your coming because it's a learning of mutuality it's a learning of symbiasis the learning of life I'm just sharing that link that you sent me in the chat here so we will send it around via email to everyone as a follow-up but if you're listening live right now I've just popped the link that Vandana sent me into the chat so you can access that thank you so much for sharing that we we haven't got very long left together but we've covered so much and this has been enormously helpful London I wanted to ask you a more personal question you've shared some of this already but could you share this some of the things in nature that bring you personally a real sense of joy and connection what do you really what uplifts your soul as you look around you in a natural world well you know like I said I grew up in the forest and the forest gave me such joy and The Disappearance of the forest gave me such pain that I became an activist it's that pain that propelled me to act but since I started to work in biodiversity and Seed you know just the miracle of the little seed knowing what it has to become it doesn't need an external control to say a wheat grain must become a wheat plant a rice variety of this kind will retain its distinctiveness to become a Basmati and aromatic rice so the self-organized capacity of nature the beauty of nature inner fullness and her self-organized evolution the symbiosis the coexistence when plants grow together because the violence of the industrial agriculture is chemicals require monoculture so you never see coexistence every plant that wasn't sold by a corporation is treated as a weed to be wiped out by glyphosate so the joy of self-organized systems that are organic you know not not violently designed in a pageant to serve extraction you know for me beauty comes in diversity beauty is diversity beauty is not linear imposed order and even in human communities you know beauty is the diversity of cultures beauty is the diversity of languages and not everyone dressing in the same h m and the same libis and everyone eating the same McDonald's I mean that makes me sad that monoculture invasion is a loss a cultural loss and an ecological loss to the world um something in what you've just shared with that image reminded me of my dear grandmother who passed away many years ago but she had a garden this is in England but she had a garden where she just let it run wild not because she didn't care but because she cared deeply she knew the names of all the birds and all the plants and all and how it all connected and to others it looked like natural chaos rather than a beautifully manicured Garden but to her it was just this beautiful source of diversity as you said and she cared for every plant of every type and every animal that was there and knew about it and it it had a profound impact on me at the time but I had forgotten about it until you shared that and actually I think that's something that we've let go of and lost and Mark I think we've also misconstrued the idea of the Wild because if you take the facts and the evidence eighty percent of the biodiversity today is on 20 land which is still with the indigenous people what do the engineers people have they have care knowledge and love that's what has protected the biodiversity so I repeatedly say wild is not the absence of humans it's a colonial construct wild is the presence of caring humans and the absence of colonizing humans well I'm incredibly grateful to you but also to all the other caring humans that are part of this community many hundreds here live together many thousands more watching this at whatever time works for you and wherever you are in the world and I feel really um grateful that we've managed to have this time together and a sense of connection to people all around the world in different countries and so much love and respect for you that I'm seeing in the chat and in all the questions Vandana we're so grateful for your time and for your wisdom and for all the work you've done I wondered as we as we end this time together is there a sort of final closing thought you'd like to leave us all with well one happy Holi today of colors in India lots of noise outside uh Happy women's day and for the men who think women's day is only about women it's about the caring qualities Gandhi every day said a prayer make me more womanly make me more compassionate make me more caring and that quality anyone can cultivate with them themselves it's about equality it's not about a sex what a wonderful note to leave us with and I try to embody that in my own life and I really appreciate you sharing that and everything else you've shared today Vandana please keep up your wonderful life-changing world-changing work and we will try in our own way to plant our own little seeds and contribute to that Vision you've laid out so beautifully thank you everyone for being here today and thank you particularly Von Dunham again for your time thank you Mark and thank you all bye bye bye-bye thank you foreign

Channel: Action for Happiness

Views: 16,108

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Id: HRk9bwJeNs4

Length: 56min 28sec (3388 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023