Thank you for participating in our contemplative Compassionate Universe activities last month! It's been lovely to have a great discussion going. We're happy to be continuing our environmental theme for the month of April also.
Easwaran often shared about the balance between needing to go inward in meditation, in order to gather resources to do good out in the world. This week, we’ll look at how we can make small contributions to the natural environment in practical and subtle ways.
As you read the excerpt below from Easwaran’s book, The Compassionate Universe, are there lines or paragraphs that are inspiring to you, or that strike you?
Is there a small action which you would like to take this week to live out that inspiration?
Feel free to try Easwaran’s suggestions, or make up your own. We’d love to hear about what you plan to try or what you’re already doing!
Upcoming Satsang Activity
Join the “Mantram Relay for Earth” on Sunday April 22, 2018 in honor of Earth Day. As a community, we’ll take turns to fill as much of this 24-hour period with mantrams.
To participate, choose a time, and fill out your name and location on the sheet. During this time, we invite you to write your mantram in honor of Mother Earth.
Reading Study
This is an excerpt from The Compassionate Universe, by Easwaran.
On March 12, 1930, when the British still had a firm grip on India, Mahatma Gandhi and seventy-eight of his disciples strode out of Sabarmati ashram toward the sea. In the twenty-four days that followed, they walked two hundred miles, picking up more and more companions as village after village turned out to cheer the Mahatma and raise the new Indian flag. By the time they reached their destination, the seashore at Dandi, the group numbered several thousand.
Earlier in March, Gandhi had sent a letter to the British viceroy protesting the Salt Act, which forbade Indians to make their own salt and left them dependent on a British monopoly for what is, in a tropical country, a necessity of life. The viceroy did not reply. To Gandhi, this was the “opportunity of a lifetime.” On the morning of April 6, before a huge crowd including reporters from around the world, Gandhi walked to the edge of the sea, picked up a pinch of salt, and set India free.
It was Gandhi’s genius to recognize that although the British had the power to establish a monopoly on salt, they could maintain that monopoly only with the cooperation of the Indian people.
With his inspiration and guidance, millions of ordinary individuals changed their lives in a small but powerful way: they stopped buying salt from the British and began making it themselves. Almost immediately, Indians along the coast and across the country were making, buying, and using homemade salt. A hundred thousand were jailed, and many more suffered great hardships, but throughout the campaign, millions of Indians refused steadfastly and without violence to depend on the British for salt. This brilliant campaign, which restored India’s confidence in herself, was the turning point in her long struggle for independence. Afterward India knew she was free, and nothing the British did could halt her march toward freedom.
Today, in a modern industrial society like the United States, our most pressing need is not for salt or clothing or shelter. For most of us, all our basic needs have been met. But there remains a hunger for something more. We want to be somebody. We want to feel secure. We want to love. Without any better way to satisfy these inner needs, we end up depending on possessions and profit – not just for our physical well-being but as a substitute for the dignity, fulfillment, and security we want so much. Because we still believe happiness lies in remaking the world around us, we look for inner fulfillment outside ourselves, and this makes us easy prey for manipulation.
My grandmother, if she were here to comment, might say, “If you have lost your freedom, what does it matter if you have a big car? What does it matter if you are a millionaire? You are not free.” It seems to me that Americans, with their long history of freedom, should be especially sensitive to this loss. America’s success at throwing off the shackles of colonialism was a great inspiration to us during our own struggle for independence.
Indeed, at the height of the salt campaign, when people were making salt and selling it on every street corner, Gandhi went to negotiate with Lord Irwin, viceroy of India. At teatime, Gandhi brought out a paper bag and, before the viceroy’s astonished eyes, dropped some of its contents into his cup. “I will put a little of this salt into my tea,” he explained mischievously, “to remind us of the famous Boston Tea Party.” Despite all the trouble Gandhi was causing him, Lord Irwin could not resist joining in his laughter.
How, then, shall we free ourselves?
Let’s start in little ways, by trying to make the connection between what we know to be healthy for our planet and what we do in our daily lives. As many environmentalists have suggested, we could walk instead of taking the car, or carpool or use mass transit instead of driving alone – that would be a small salt march in itself, with the added benefit that the commute would not be so lonely or expensive or long. We could start buying organic vegetables; if possible, we might even grow them in our own backyards, using no pesticides or other harmful chemicals. That would be the modern equivalent of making salt. We would be healthier, and so would the topsoil.
Today, even small changes like these seem very difficult. We all have so little time to spare; and we ask ourselves, what good would it do anyway? This is understandable. Without Gandhi’s example, I think few Indians could have been persuaded that the British would be ushered out of India peacefully and gently and that a new independent nation of India would be founded – all by the power of salt.
How could one man have accomplished so much? From what hidden source did he draw his inspiration, his perseverance, his creativity? My visit to Mahatma Gandhi had only deepened my curiosity about this man who called himself an ordinary individual but who, by changing himself, had sparked such courage in a nation discouraged and frustrated for more than four hundred years. I could see now that it would take more time and work than I had expected to even begin to grasp his full significance. “My life is my message,” Gandhi once wrote, and to all of us who wanted to share his work and ideals, that message was a resounding challenge:
The only way to understand me, he was saying, is to go this way yourself.