Birthday of Satish Kumar | Naming the Days

Satish Kumar is a peace and environmental activist who joined a brotherhood of wandering Jain monks in India when he was eight years previous. He has given recent which means to the phrase “pilgrimage.” Kumar walked the size and breadth of India with Vinoba Bhave, thought of by many to be Mahatma Gandhi’s successor for his Bhoodan Motion which distributed land donated by homeowners to the poor.

In his e-book Earth Pilgrim, Kumar ponders the internal and outer dimensions of pilgrimage: “To be a pilgrim is to be on a path of journey, to maneuver out of our consolation zones, to let go of our prejudices and preconditioning, to make strides in the direction of the unknown.”

In 1962, this peace activist and a companion launched into an 8,000-mile journey to advertise world peace visiting the 4 nuclear capitals of the world — London, Paris, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. This trek is the guts and soul of his audio e-book Noble Ideas, Noble Life; he talks about what it was wish to depend on the hospitality of others and to deepen his connections with the nice earth.

In 1973, Kumar settled in the UK, taking on the submit of editor of Resurgence & Ecologist journal, a useful useful resource that promotes ecological sustainability, social justice, and religious values. In 1991, he based Schumacher School, named after the economist who introduced collectively simplicity, economics, and ecology by way of the “small is gorgeous” motion. Since then, Kumar has taken different pilgrimages and continued his explorations of religious politics lurking in unusual locations.

To Identify This Day . . .

Quotes

Savor these three quotes by Satish Kumar which categorical his imaginative and prescient of the world.

“Being in a safe, homey, and comfy setting is nice to the physique and the feelings. Being on the street is tough on the physique however is a state wherein the soul can take wings and the spirit might be free.”
— from Path With out Vacation spot

“The rose and the thorn are a part of the identical plant — we can’t have one with out the opposite. The analytical thoughts at all times makes an attempt to separate the nice and evil, the ornamental and the ugly, the helpful and the nonuseful, the weed and the flower. I’ve seen throughout my journey individuals pulling out foxgloves in a single space and thoroughly planting them in one other. If we’re to reside in concord with God’s household, we have to love the wilderness, the weeds, and the moist.
— from Path with out Vacation spot

“Fragmentation is on the coronary heart of contemporary consciousness. You divide information into topics, you divide individuals into classes. However I believe there’s something extra to the world than what you’ll be able to measure, analyze, and quantify. In religious consciousness there’s a dance between what you realize and what you do not know. The place of thriller is a vital ingredient.”
— from an article “Patron Saint of Religious Ecology” by Jay Walljasper

Private Exploration

For the e-book Visionaries: The twentieth Century’s 100 Most Necessary Inspirational Leaders, Satish Kumar and one other editor of Resurgence, recognized individuals they admire for all kinds of causes. They launched their endeavor this manner:

“The 20th century was a century of wars: wars inside human societies in addition to a struggle on nature. These two sorts of struggle will not be unrelated. The mindset of conquering, controlling, dominating and subjugating others for one’s personal slender self-interest results in wars. Tens of millions of human beings had been killed in these wars; and human beings have additionally wrought havoc on the pure world, inflicting the extinction of species, the destruction of biodiversity, the depletion of pure capital and the diminishment of atmospheric sustainability, resulting in local weather change and world warming.

“In fact the ability of cash, the media and the army has been directed to wage and maintain these two sorts of struggle. But all through the 20th century there have been people who noticed the folly of such human vanity. These visionaries raised their voices, typically at nice private price to themselves. They had been typically ignored, and worst of all, suppressed, imprisoned and tortured. However nonetheless they had been the salt of the earth: they saved the torch of humanity burning, they gave hope to hundreds of thousands, and so they restored confidence within the enduring human qualities of compassion, generosity, concord, reverence and peace. In addition they achieved concrete outcomes, comparable to the top of colonialism and the event of sustainable life. It’s due to them that now now we have a thriving social justice and earth justice motion all over the world.

“In direction of the second half of the 20th century Resurgence journal was launched to offer voice to those visionaries, and remind folks that small internal voices have extra energy than may first seem. Resurgence introduced a imaginative and prescient of society articulated by these nice thinkers and activists who believed that each one wars on people and on nature are finally futile. Resurgence advocated that one other world — a world of mutuality, reciprocity and solidarity — is feasible; and {that a} world of sustainability, spirituality and frugality is extra joyful than the world of consumerism, materialism and militarism.

“Out of an extended checklist of sturdy contenders, now we have chosen 100 visionaries for this e-book who’ve made the best influence in creating and projecting a holistic world-view, the place creativity, creativeness and human well-being needs to be the idea of social, political and financial actions. . . .

“We provide this anthology to the world within the hope that the that the twenty-first century may very well be completely different. It may very well be the century of peace and ecology, a century of co-operation slightly than battle, a century of mutual respect slightly than condemnation, and a century of residing in concord with the pure world slightly than the countless exploitation of the earth.”

We’re almost 20 years into the twenty-first century. In your estimate, who’re the individuals “holding the torch of humanity” burning in our instances? Who conjures up you? What concrete steps do they mannequin which you would undertake to make sure a century of peace and ecology?