Earth Spirituality - A New Paradigm
March 7-9, 2015, Fireflies Ashram, Bengaluru.
Thank you for your interest. We'd love to have you at the event. Fireflies is happy to take care of the hospitality of the participants, and we would also be able to reimburse train travel of those coming from other parts of the country. Please get in touch with Naveen (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) if you'd like to participate.
Thank you.
Event Invitation
"This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come" - Joseph Campbell.
It will be obvious to the casual observer that human beings have made enormous progress. There are the marvels of technology that are very visible to all of us. What is not very visible is the price that is being paid for this progress. Where is the raw material for the things we take for granted as the basis for a 'good life' coming from? If I live this way, am I enabling other humans to live his way too, or am I enabling a few to make extraordinary profits and impoverishing the many? Will future generations have the wherewithal to live well? Or even live at all? Yet, the present discourse has very little space for a serious discussion and dialogue on these questions. The discourse takes for granted many basic concepts, and therefore limits ones enquiry to a small area defined by the flat one lives in and the information fed by media. What do we really mean by the following?
- Modernity
- Progress
- Development
- Man as having the divine right over other forms of nature
- Utilitarianism
- Externalities
- Extractivism
- Growth
- Sustainability
The key questions one must ask to enable 'right livelihood' are
- Are there alternatives to the idea of growth and development as it is currently held?
- If these alternatives have to be enlivened what will it involve at the level of individual world views and collective ways?
When one takes up this enquiry seriously, one is confronted with the challenge of including the voiceless, both in terms of the dispossessed as well as the environment. We must question our world view and delving deep within, ask searching questions of oneself.
A sensitive person living in the midst of this global context ought to engage with this enquiry. At the time the Spiritual traditions were seeded, there was no global crisis. The Dharmic way of life offered in the perennial wisdom texts spoke about sensitivity to all of nature. Today, we study Spiritual traditions in a life context where the various aspects that impact us are held in fragmented compartments. To reclaim wholeness and mindfulness, the aspiring seeker must engage with an enquiry into all the aspects of the world that sustain her life.
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At this confluence we hope to explore together with like-spirited friends the various dimensions of the ecological crisis and what could be meaningful responses to it. We especially hope to delve into aspects/issues like the psychological roots of the crisis, the environmentalism of today.
How does it need to change for it to be relevant? How do the various spiritual traditions approach the ecology? What is Earth-Spirituality? What are the new forms of action that we need today? etc.
More articles and essays on Earth Spirituality can be found below.
You are welcome to share your reflections, responses to these if evoked to do so.
We at Sumedhas place a strong emphasis on the praxis of meaningfully relating to oneself and the context one is embedded in, and the self-reflective examining of this praxis in the light of constantly emergent new realities within and without. The annual ‘Research & Contemplation (R&C) Dialogues’, is one of the ways we try to strengthen this objective through the facilitation and co-creation of new knowledge about oneself and the multiple contexts we inhabit, through dialogue and self-reflection.
Articles :
'Hinduism and Climate Change' by Makarand Paranjape
'Engagaed Islam' by Asghar Ali Engineer
'Spiritual, social and ecological liberation' by Sebastin Painadath
'Gandhian values for sustainable futures' by Jeevan Kumar
'Social Dimensions of Yoga' by Raghu Ananthanarayanan
'Earth Spirituality - A New Eco-Social Paradigm' by Siddhartha