2005 NOFA Summer Conference

Spirituality in Everyday Life
by Satish Kumar

You have opened this conference with great humor and great spirit. This humor and spirit is the only real inspiration that we have which is going to take us through the difficult times that we are passing through. Without humor, and without spirit, we cannot move in the right direction. Even when you are gardening, you are farming, you are taking care of your family, you are taking care of your communities, please remember, all that has to be done, not as a duty, not as a chore, not as to earn a living, not as to make ends meet, not as to pay the bills, not as to pay the mortgage. But for Joy. Whatever you do, do it with joy. When you are gardening with joy, the gardening becomes a spiritual practice. When you are taking care of the soil, you are taking care of the soul as well. Care of the soil and care of the soul are not two separate things.

When I was a monk at age 18, I came across a book by Mahatma Gandhi: it was his autobiography. In the book Mahatma Gandhi says that there are some people who leave the world and become monks. They live in monasteries. They live in caves in the Himalayas. And they see the world as a dirty place. For them the politics is dirty, the business is dirty, the industry is dirty, and they think that they should not make their hands dirty in the world. And so they live in a monastic order of spirituality. And the people who are living in the world think that spirituality is only for the saints. We cannot practice spirituality in the world. We have to pay the bills, we have to pay the mortgage.

Gandhi said this division must come to an end. We must bring spirituality in everyday life. Spirituality is not reserved for somebody who worships in a church. Spirituality is not in the temples and mosques. We have to practice spirituality in politics, in industry, in business, in farming, in gardening, in raising children, in bringing up a family. When you can bring spirituality in everyday life, then it is true spirituality. So when I read that book as a monk, I was shaken, I said what Mahatma Gandhi is saying, it totally makes sense, and what I am doing is totally the opposite of it. But once you are a Jain monk, you are a monk forever; you are not allowed to leave the monastic order. But I could not sleep that night. I kept turning and tossing and keeping awake. And, after midnight, when all the people were asleep, I escaped from the monastery. And I joined the Ghandian Ashram. I said now, I must try to practice what Gandhi is trying to say. How can I practice spirituality in everyday life?

One of the things people in the Gandhian Ashram do is to do manual work. Physical bread labor. Now, in the modern world, we have been turned into consumers. Not makers, but consumers. We consume everything. But making anything by hand is considered backward. Like making bread (holds up round loaf of bread given to him by Eron Sandler, who introduced him). Eron gave me this bread, baked by her own hands. This is a simple example of spirituality in everyday life. If we don’t know how to bake bread, we don’t know how to live. And people say, ‘I have no time to make bread,’ I say to them, ‘if you have no time to bake bread, you have no time to live’. In Christian society, if people don’t know how to bake bread, how can they be Christians? When Jesus Christ, at his Last Supper, gave the bread to his disciples, he said this bread is my body, I am the bread. Now sometimes we go to Christian churches and there we get a wafer, that white, factory made, mass produced, wafer! Wafer to celebrate the Mass! Is wafer the body of Jesus Christ? And sometimes I’m told instead of wine, now people are celebrating Mass with Coca-Cola! So how can you be a Christian if you don’t know how to bake bread?

When you bake bread, then you know where the wheat came from. You know whether the wheat was GM-produced or organically-produced. Whether it is whole grain flour, or factory produced, bleached white flour. You know it. When you knead the bread you have spiritual connection with the soil. When you are baking the bread, and waiting for the dough to rise, you are in meditation. That’s a true spiritual practice. And when the beautiful delicious smell comes from a kitchen, and your children say, ‘Mommy, Mommy, is the bread ready?’ You say ‘yes it is’. That is a time of family. That baking of bread is a symbol of home, family, the care, the awareness, and spirituality.

At Gandhi’s Ashram, I learned that baking bread and tending the soil, not just to produce more food, that of course will happen, but to serve the earth. Gardening is hard work, farming is hard work, making bread is also hard work. Sometimes people say, ‘Oh Satish, you say, bake bread, so I will buy a bread-baking machine.’ I say ‘no, that’s cheating, you have to go through the physical process.’ So it’s hard work, but in our modern society we have come to believe that making anything, producing anything, or doing hard work is bad and a chore. Everything should be done by machine. And when you become addicted to a machine you end up with the war, with climate change, with oil running out, and with society breaking down. Therefore, what I learned by cultivating the land, baking bread and making things with my hands, is that you do all this not only to produce the vegetables, or eat the bread, or use the cloth you have spun or woven, or wear the shoes you have made, but as a creative expression of your imagination. In other words, it is a spiritual practice. The work in itself is an education. Work in itself is a service to land, service to the soil. And when you are serving the land and the soil, you are serving God.

God is not a person. God is not somebody in the sky looking down on us. God or the divine is in everything. In bread, in the soil, in the mountains, in the universe, in everything. When you can see the life as sacred, earth as sacred, and land as sacred then you are filled with awe and wonder; what I call an ecological humility. In our modern, western, scientific, humanistic way of thinking, we think that human beings are somehow in charge of the earth. All the land is created for human use. All the trees and the forests are there for our benefit. But in the Gandhian way of thinking, we are not in charge of the earth. We are part of the earth. We are not the rulers or the governors or the managers. We are servants of the earth. Earth is sacred. Life is sacred. And therefore, with gratitude, we thank the earth, the soil, the trees, the fruit that we receive from earth. The earth is a gift.

When I sit down to eat my meal, I thank the gardener, I thank the cook, I thank everyone, and then I say also thanks to the earthworms. However good a gardener may be – and sometimes some gardeners claim to have green fingers – whatever they touch grows, but if the earthworms were not working under the soil day and night, twenty-four hours, without any payment, without any wages, I would not have any food on the table. And therefore, I say ‘long live the worms’! At the Gandhian Ashram I learned that nature is our greatest teacher. Nature is not there for consumption. Nature is there to learn from. I am an apple grower. I have an apple orchard. And I planted seedlings about twenty-five years ago. Seed is a wonderful metaphor. That little seed, you see, that quarter inch thing that when you are eating an apple, and the pip comes out in your mouth and it’s bitter, and you don’t like it, so you spit it. That seed, goes into the soil and comes out as a plant, that seed sacrifices itself, it lets go of its own life, its own body, its own ego, its separate self, it’s completely gone, dead, biodegraded, becomes part of the soil, but out of that sacrifice of the self or the seed, grows the tree. And in a few years time, you get apples. You may not believe in reincarnation, but just observe the apple. Eat that apple which you have grown. That seed which went into the soil and died is now in that apple. The seed is reborn. That’s reincarnation. And not one, but two or three or four seeds are reborn. From one seed, hundreds even thousands of apples. Can you imagine the abundance of life and of the natural gifts that we have? That one apple seed went into the soil, and died for us. You say Jesus Christ died for the salvation of humanity. That seed has died for the benefit not only of humanity, but of all creatures.

Look at the unconditional love and generosity of that apple. Anyone can go to that apple tree and have apples free. The apple tree will never ask you, have you come with your American Express card? Or with your wallet with money? Otherwise you cannot have the apple. The apple is so unconditionally generous and loving. That spirituality you can learn from the apple tree. It never discriminates; you are a saint or a sinner. You are educated or uneducated. You are a man or a woman, old or young, black or white, Christian or Muslim or whatever you are, whether you are human or a bird or a wasp, whoever you are, have it, help yourself. President Reagan used to say, “There’s no such thing as free lunch.” In the market economy, no such thing as free lunch. But in the world of nature, the only thing is free lunch!

It is because human beings see everything monetized, everything commodified, everything bought and sold, land is bought is sold, even water is bought and sold. Everything we have is valued in terms of money. But in nature, 99.9 percent of the creatures on this planet are getting free lunch everyday. They don’t buy or sell, they don’t need any supermarket, they don’t need companies like Monsanto or Cargil. All creatures are fed and watered and sheltered without any monetary exchange. So that is the self-organising spirituality that we can observe and learn from nature.

My mother was a farmer, and in those days there was no distinction between an organic farmer and a chemical farmer. In my mother’s days, there were no chemicals, so all farming was organic. My mother also loved bees. She would say to me that bees are the greatest teachers. Even greater teachers than the Buddha. And that is saying something in India. Because Buddha was the greatest teacher for us. Mother would say, if you want to learn the lessons of transformation, and the lessons of restraint, you can learn from the honeybee. What does the honeybee do? It goes from flower to flower collecting a little nectar here, a little there. Never too much. Never ever a flower has complained that the honeybee came and took too much nectar away. And what do we humans do? We humans go to a place for mining or oil, and we take, and take, and take until it is completely depleted and destroyed and finished. But honeybees never do that. Then what do honeybees do with that nectar? transform that nectar into sweet, delicious, healing honey. How many humans can do that? If we can take something from nature and transform it into something better, then that would be something. We will say then humans have eco-intelligence, they have that spirituality, that generosity. But we don’t. We are the greatest waste-makers upon the earth. We are filling landfills with our waste. Waste is a sign against nature. In nature there is no waste. Even those apples that don’t get eaten either by humans or by birds or by wasps fall back into the soil and become compost and nourish the soil. That is the beauty of nature. And while honeybees are taking nectar from flowers they pollinate. They are the true networkers, they are the matchmakers. You want to find a matchmaker? Look for honeybees.

When you are able to look around and practice ecological humility, then your gardening, your farming, your baking bread becomes a spiritual practice. Spirituality in the heart, it is in the consciousness, but, just in your heart and just in your consciousness is not enough. It has to manifest through our hands in everyday ordinary activities, and those ordinary activities are transformed into extraordinary activities because of your spirit in your heart and in your consciousness.

Spirituality can manifest through hands but also through our feet. Yes, walking is my passion. And walking is a very noble way to get around. The Buddha walked, Gandhi walked, my mother walked long distances. I was inspired by Bertrand Russell to walk for peace, because he walked for peace. He also went to jail for peace in the world, he was protesting against nuclear weapons. One day, I read in the newspaper that Bertrand Russell, a 90-year-old philosopher in England, had been imprisoned, because of peace actions. I read about him and I said, ‘here’s a man of 90 going to jail for peace in the world? What am I doing, a young man sitting here drinking coffee?’ And so that was the inspiration. And with a friend of mine, we started to walk for peace. And we said we will join the movement for peace and nuclear disarmament led by Bertrand Russell. We will go to Moscow, to Paris, to London and to Washington; the four nuclear capitals at that time.

Our teacher, Vinoba Bhave said, ‘you are walking for peace, where does peace start? And where does war star? It starts in the mind. When you have fear of the other, that is the beginning of war. And when you have trust in your heart, that is the beginning of peace. And so I will say to you that you walk around the world for peace, but go without any money in your pockets’. I said to him, ‘not any money?’ He said, ‘not a single cent, not a single dime because if you have money in your pockets, you will think that when you are tired you will sleep in a guest house, or you will eat in a restaurant, then you will meet nobody. But when you have no money in your pockets you will be forced to find someone kind and hospitable to give you the hospitality for the night. And you are vegetarian, so when they give you food you will say that you are vegetarian, and they will say, ‘why vegetarian?’ Then you can talk about non-violence, you can talk about making peace with nature. Because peace with just humans is not enough, you have to make peace with nature, you have to make peace with animals’.

With that advice, we took no money and we started to walk from Mahatma Gandhi’s grave in New Delhi. We went through India and Pakistan. Then we came to Khyber Pass. Khyber Pass is a 4,000-feet high pass in the Himalayas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. We were going slowly with our rucksacks on our backs and walking up a narrow road. Walking up and up. Suddenly a car passed by us and after about 50 or 100 yards, the car stopped, and reversed. The man opened the window of the car and said, ‘gentlemen, do you want a lift?’ I said, ‘no thank you, we are walking.’ ‘Walking! Aren’t you glad that in this wilderness of the Khyber Pass we are offering you a lift? Where are you walking? We will take you wherever you are going -- we are going that way.’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact, we are walking to the United States of America.’ The man was very puzzled. He opened the door, came out, and said, ‘gentlemen, do you know where the United States of America is?’ I said, ‘we have never been there, but we believe that it exists because we have seen it on the map.’ (By the way, these two people in the car were U.S citizens and that’s why I was making a joke.) The man came out of the car and said ‘I don’t know if you will make it to America but if you ever do here is my card. Give me a ring.’ His name was Dr. Scarf and he lived in Philadelphia.

And so after walking through Afghanistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Moscow, Berlin, Paris and London we met Bertrand Russell. He helped us to get across the Atlantic with two tickets on the Queen Mary and we arrived in New York and from New York, through walking, we came to Philadelphia. And I remembered Dr. Scarf. I had kept the card very safely. When you are walking and have no money the address is very valuable! I phoned him and said, ‘Dr. Scarf, do you remember you met two Indians in Khyber Pass. He said, ‘yes I do where are they?’ I said, ‘we are right here in your city and we have made it.’ After two and a half years when he received our call he was absolutely surprised. He came and met us and took us to his home and he invited his friends and gave us a big dinner and we had a wonderful time.

So walking is spiritual practice, even if it takes you two years, because while walking you touch the earth. When you are sitting in the car, the journey is no longer important for you – you are obsessed with the arrival, with the outcome. Like gardening and making bread is a spiritual activity, walking on the earth and touching the earth and saying that Mother Earth, it’s you, you hold me and you hold the whole life, you are and therefore I am.

Rene Descartes, the French philosopher who is the father of western philosophy and science, said, ‘I think therefore I am,’ Corgito ergo sum, and that is the beginning of the dualistic and separational thinking where nature is out there, separate and the mind is here separate. You are therefore I am, is a relational and holistic philosophy -- earth is, air is, fire is, water is, food is, my parents were, my ancestors were therefore I am. Who am I? Am I just an Indian, a writer, a man? Or something greater? I am made of the entire evolution of the earth. You and I are microcosm of the macrocosm. There is nothing in the universe that is not in you and me. The entire universe is encapsulated in us like the whole tree is encapsulated in one seed. The whole universe is encapsulated in one body. There is nothing out there in the universe, which is not here in you and me. Earth, air, fire, water, time, history, consciousness. Everything is in you. You. In the beginning of time, in the beginning of the earth, the first moment of the Big Bang, you were present there at that time. So you carry the entire evolution of the earth in you. And you carry the billions of years of evolution to come. So you are past and future. Our identity is not that narrow identity of, ‘I am an American’, ‘I am an Indian’, ‘I am Christian’, ‘I am Muslim’, ‘I am Hindu’, ‘I am Buddhist’, ‘I am this’, ‘I am that.’ Those identities are only a shorthand. For a convenience. Our true identity is universal. It is cosmic. When you are aware of that cosmic identity then you see your place in the universe in the proper context. And then your every action becomes a cosmic action, a spiritual action.

When you are an organic gardener, when you are baking bread, you are manifesting that beauty, that enormity and that abundance of the universe. And you are like the honeybee. You are transforming something which was just inedible wheat into bread. This is honey! When bee makes honey, Eron makes this bread. And every one of us has that possibility, that imagination, that creativity which our industrial, mechanized, chemicalized, centralized system has destroyed. If you want to awaken that creativity, that imagination, that human spirit, then you have to become a baker of bread, a grower in the garden, a maker of sculptures, a writer of poems, a painter of paintings, a maker of pots. Move from being a mere consumer to a creative maker. Bring the joy into what you make.

In India the word for joy is ‘ananda’. When you become a Hindu monk you are given a new name which always ends with ‘ananda.’ Yogananda, Muktananada, Shivananda. Why ‘Yogananda?’ You are doing yoga everyday – morning, evening, weekend, yoga day after day, but you are miserable. What’s good about doing such yoga? So yoga must come with ‘ananda’ -- with joy. The same goes with gardening, with farming, with baking bread. Whatever you are making, make it with joy, with pleasure, with love, with creativity. You can’t be a good painter if you do not enjoy painting. You cannot be a good poet if you do not enjoy the writing of poetry. Baking of bread is a poem, and growing of flowers and vegetables is a painting. We need to transform our day-to-day work into a work of art, and a work of spirit. There was a great artist from Sri Lanka, called Coomaraswami. He said, ‘an artist is not a special kind of person, but every person is a special kind of artist.’ So whatever industrial, mechanized system does, it takes away our creativity, our artistry and our spirit. So we need to return to our daily lives in which we can transform ourselves and our work, into a work of art, and of poetry. Work in poetry and poetry in work. So gardening, baking, walking - all of that has two dimensions, the physical dimension and the spiritual dimension. Those two dimensions should come together.

Satish Kumar is the editor of Resurgence www.resurgence.org. His autobiography “No Destination” is distributed by Chelsea Green.

This page was last modified on September 29, 2005 at 11:37:52 AM.

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