New Indraprastha Dham, a Gitagrad Community in Russia

 

Outdoor kirtan at New Indraprastha

During the first two weeks of April I visited the New Indraprastha community in north Rostov Oblast, almost due east of Lugansk, Ukraine. The winter snows were finally gone and there was a slight hint of spring in the air. After the first spring rain the hint of green was visible in the gently rolling hills to the south. The New Indraprastha community was founded by Vaikunthanatha Dasa and his wife Kisori Murti Devi Dasi along with their daughter Nama Rasa some three years ago. 

I first met Vaikunthanatha and Kisori Murti in May of ’09 at the vyasapuja ceremony of their spiritual master His Holiness Indradyumna Maharaja. They had approached Maharaja for his blessings for their endeavors to establish a Krishna conscious village according to the vision of Srila Prabhupada. By Sri Krishna’s arrangement I was with Maharaja just at that time and he instructed them to work with me. We sat and talked about community development and I was impressed by their understanding and approach. And to my delight they not only understood the concepts of Spiritual Economics better than anyone else I’d discussed them with, but they had genuine realization on the subject. We immediately became very close.

I had wanted to get to New Indraprastha last October. It was my desire to settle in there for the winter and write volume two of Spiritual Economics. However, there were repeated delays in our efforts to get a proper invitation that would allow for a one-year stay in Russia. As it turned out I obtained the visa only in January this year, and made a brief first visit to New Indraprastha during the snowy and cold month of February before going to Rostov for another two weeks.

New Indraprastha in February

After studying Srila Prabhupada’s books for almost two decades Vaikunthanatha concluded that the most important thing needed push on Srila Prabhupada’s vision was to create a village community. At that point in time the immense country of Russia had but one village community at Kurgenova, further to the south, but it was something of a retirement community where devotee pensioners retired. Vaikunthanatha saw the need for a dynamic spiritual community dedicated to living the principles of the Bhagavad-gita for giving shelter to the Lord’s devotees. Daringly alone, they set out to establish New Indraprastha in a village that they had visited before, about 3 hours drive north of Rostov-on-the-Don.

The cows are coming home

At New Indraprastha there is a very well developed program for introducing potential members to the community. First of all they have a great deal of introductory material at the website. Upon reading over the website if someone expresses a desire in the community they are given access to further information at the website and they begin a dialogue with Vaikunthanatha and/or Kisori Murti. Progressing from that step, they are then asked to listen to a number of lectures on specific aspects of Krishna Consciousness, Srila Prabhupada’s desire for village communities, Varnashrama Dharma, etc. If after that step interest continues then the candidate is asked to view several videos giving yet further detail about village communities as the solution to problems at many societal levels. After all of this, if the candidate desires he is invited to spend some time at the community for some real life experience.

The Nature Sprites of New Indraprastha

New Indraprastha is a Daiva-varnashrama community, meaning that they follow the Isavasyam principle, that everything belongs to God, and the members are caretakers, not owners, of whatever is in their possession. They follow the principles of Spiritual Economics in that all work is done as devotional service without consideration of fruitive results. And as the community grows they intend to fully implement the Daiva-varnashrama culture, including the establishment of the social orders of life, the varnas.

As with almost every new community the membership waxes and wanes. Last summer there were as many as 25 people staying at New Indraprastha . This spring there were seven members present with an additional family coming from Israel after their infant child is a bit older. Additionally, a family from Germany that has been receiving training via the internet visited early in April and decided that, yes, this was the place for them. So they will be returning later this year to make New Indraprastha their home.

I am personally enthusiastic about New Indraprastha community because their leaders are serious about implementing the philosophy of Krishna Consciousness as a matter of daily living. I look forward to spending more time there to help these dedicated devotees become well-established in both theory and practice of Daiva-varnashrama dharma as an example for the rest of the world how to live a happy life in Krishna Consciousness.

 

From right: Dhanesvara, Vaikunthanatha, Anton, Kishori Murti, Andrei, 

and in front are Tanya and Nama Rasa 

Check out their website: www.pravednost.net. Although it is in Russian Google translator will give English-speaking people a bit of a glimpse into what the community is all about, and the wonderful devotees of Krishna who make it up.

Gandhi on the Future of the Village And The World

"In the future set-up we shall have only two things, the village and the world. We have the names of the countries on the map for the sake of convenience, but in reality, there will be no intermediary between the world and the village.  All the authority concerning the material side of life will rest with the village. The village will have power to order its own life. The power of moral advancement of the whole world will rest in the world center. The districts of the States will only be the agents of the Village community. Thus we shall have the village at the base and the World Authority at the Centre. Human society will be organized on the basis of small village communities, of, say, 2 to 3 thousands souls each. There would be no private ownership. The village will be a model of corporate life. The world centre will be the ultimate co-ordinating link between these primary communities." -- Mahatma Gandhi

This is my vision also. As the world increases in sattva-guna, artificial and impersonal political structures will fall due to being superfluous. It is only due to the demonic nature of increasing control that "countries" were created to begin with (please see chapter four of Spiritual Economics for more details on this). Some NWO hack has even been quoted as saying something to the effect that "countries were never that good an idea anyway." Of course he has it in mind that we shall do away with countries and have a global government under the control of a demonic oligarchy. 

Well, if we do not have a spiritual revolution, that is indeed what will happen. But, it is Lord Chaitanya's desire that the world will swim in the nectar of the holy names of the Lord, and if He wants it, that's what we shall have. Still we have to do the work. 

After we clean out the crud of Kali-yuga and sattva takes hold, what need is there for a political structure that is beyond any persons ability to participate? None. And so we shall see villages, wherein everyone has a voice in those questions that affect him or her, as the standard of life everywhere. It is our  business to create these villages in the standard of the Bhagavat culture. This is what we call Gitagrad -- the place where everyone lives according to the standard of the Bhagavad-gita.

Just a few days ago a friend introduced me to the concept of the "Chaordic organization," created by Dee Hock, the man who created the concept of the VISA credit card. He is an extraordinary man as you can read briefly in Wikipedia. Chaordic is a word that he created to describe systems that are both chaotic and ordered. It is worth the time to read and learn these concepts and I am now studying them to see how they apply or describe the varnashrama social system. My gut tells me that what he is explaining is the varashrama system, or at least that the concepts can be applied to create the neo-varnashrama that we will have in the future. 

For example, here are a few of the characteristics of chaordic organizations. They:

• Are based on clarity of shared purpose and principles.
• Are self-organizing and self-governing in whole and in part.
• Exist primarily to enable their constituent parts.
• Are powered from the periphery, unified from the core.
• Are durable in purpose and principle, malleable in form and function.
• Equitably distribute power, rights, responsibility and rewards.
• Harmoniously combine cooperation and competition.
• Learn, adapt and innovate in ever expanding cycles.
• Are compatible with the human spirit and the biosphere [and Bhagavat principles :-)].

 This is a great match with the varnashrama ideal and Gandhi's statement: "All the authority concerning the material side of life will rest with the village. The village will have power to order its own life. The power of moral advancement of the whole world will rest in the world center. The districts of the States will only be the agents of the Village community. Thus we shall have the village at the base and the World Authority at the Centre." 

Daiva-varnashrama, Gandhi's statement and the chaordic method all turn the present world order on its head. And that is how life should be. And, except for those who now run the world for their own pleasure, the world would run like this, and it the future it shall.

I invite you to read and learn about the chaordic way from the Permaculture Institute's Wiki. They see the chaordic principles as a natural harmonious fit with the ideas of permaculture and are endeavoring to apply them to practicing and teaching permaculture practices. There are very good articles there from Dee Hock and others. Please check it out here. You will find not only permaculture, but many ideas that can be applied now and in the coming post-modern world.

Another Reason to Spend More Time with Your Favorite Cow -- Bacteria Found In Cow Dung Can Make You Smarter

Researchers from the Sage Colleges in Troy, NY, reported today their findings that specific bacteria common to our environment may increase learning behavior. Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks, who conducted the study, shared their findings with those in attendance at the meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

The bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, is well known to scientists, as the dead bacteria is being tested as immunotherapy for asthma, cancer, depression, psoriasis, dermatitis, eczema and tuberculosis. M. vaccae, so named because it was first discovered in cow dung in Austria, is naturally found in soil, and it is inhaled when people spend time outdoors, especially where there are plants and trees.

It was found in previous research that heat-killed M. vaccae had anti-depressant effects on mice by stimulating the growth of neurons and levels of serotonin.  Mathews and Jenks, however, were curious about the effects of live M. vaccae, and fed live bacteria to an experimental group of mice to see how it would effect their navigation of a maze. 

The mice that were fed the live M. vaccae learned the maze twice as fast as the control group, which had not received M. vaccae, and the experimental group exhibited less anxiety as well.

Some time later, the experimental group was taken off the bacteria and tested again against the control group.  This time, the experimental mice did not learn the maze as fast as when they were given the bacteria, but they were still faster than the control mice.

In yet a third maze learning experiment, conducted after the mice had rested for three weeks, the experimental mice ran faster than the controls, but not fast enough to make a statistically significant difference. This suggested to the researchers that the effects of M. vaccae are temporary.

"This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals," says Matthews. "It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks."

Take a walk outdoors when you take a break.  You'll return more relaxed and smarter! 

Original article is here

A New Trend for the Cow Conscious

Fashionable or Freaky Hoof Footwear- Cloven Hoof Boots

Bovine footwear helps bring out the mooo in you. Check it out here.

The Peasant Commune in Russia: Rural Anarchy and Feudal Socialism

This is a fantastic article that I wish I would have had when writing the first volume of Spiritual Economics. Johnson explains in some detail how the communes of 19th century Russia functioned, and reveals that they functioned very much like that reported in other cultures. We are not surprised. What is surprising is how different the village life actually was from what we think it was. Please take time to read the entire article. It is well worth it.

By M. Raphael Johnson

The Russian peasant commune was an example of a real rural and Christian anarchism at work. The commune protected the peasantry from want, alienation, poverty and tyranny. By the end of the 19th century, the nascent capitalist classes were screaming for the commune to be destroyed, for peasants could not be dragooned into the cities or to work on the railroads or factories while protected by numerous layers of communal obligations, immunities and rights. In England at the same time, the capitalist ruling classes had already succeeded in tearing apart rural society, turning it over to landlords to exploit for personal profit, eliminating the small holdings and self-sufficient communities that were a threat to the stage, as well as to capitalism. By the beginning of the 20th century, English and American working class kids were being mutilated in the robber baron factories in huge numbers, with no advocacy or protections of any kind. The formerly protected rural peasants were turned into miserable proletarians. In Russia, the trend was precisely the opposite, as the Russian royal state introduced even more protections to the commune and immunities for workers. 


The institution of the peasant commune in pre-revolutionary Russia is one of the world’s unique institutions; and also one that is almost unknown. As Americans continue to work long hours for comparatively less pay, continue to see unions disappear, and see any kind of job security dissipate, maybe it is time to look at other models of economic organization.

It need not be said that the commune, for American historiography, is basically derided. This is largely for one important reason: the architects of liberalism and capitalism in Russia were the elite: the elite political and economic forces. For them, the commune was an irritant, a set of protections that permitted the average peasant a great deal of protections against exploitation. The destruction of the commune, then, was absolutely necessary for the Russian neo-Jacobins to impose constitutional capitalism on royal Russia. (cf. my The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy for a more detailed argument in support of this thesis.)

In the commune, the Church calendar was the primary medium for telling time. This meant that the work year was extremely short, for the calendar of traditional Christianity saw four fast period yearly as well as hundreds of feasts, either local, national or pan-Orthodox. One of the main reasons the liberal bourgeois in Russia hated the commune was that it sanctioned the traditional agrarian practice of only working about 2/3 of the year. The rest was made up in fasting, feasting and cultural pursuits. Therefore, the protections, immunities and traditions of communal life were absolutely incompatible with capitalism, “constitutionalism” and liberalism.

In a powerful and seminal article from Boris Mironov, “The Russian Peasant Commune after the Reforms of the 1860’s.” (Slavic Review, Vol. 44, Number 3 (Fall 1985)), is extremely important for the understanding of the peasant commune. Its significance lies in the fact that it takes its data from the survey of 816 communes between 1878 and 1880, sponsored by the Russian Geographical Society and the Russian Free Economic Society. Its results were astounding, and largely supported the claims of the pro-agrarian and pro-monarchist elements in Russia, then and now. The Russian peasant had it better in Russia than likely anywhere else in the world. This data proves it.

It is important to keep in mind the structure of the Imperial Russian state around the middle of the 19th century. The tsar’s power was basically limited to foreign policy and general taxation. He, of course, was the chief spokesman for the nation and the defender of the Orthodox church. However, at the agrarian level, where 90% of the population lived, royal authority was basically invisible. The peasant commune was the only relevant authority the peasant had to deal with.

Therefore, it is accurate to say that Russia was not a single, unitary state, but rather a collection of thousands of independent agrarian republics, held together by rather weak cords to the central monarchy. Professor Charles Sarolea, who visited Russia regularly, wrote in the 1925 issue of the English Review:

On closer examination we find the [Imperial] Russian state was a vast federation of fifty thousand small peasant republics each busy with its own affairs, obedient to its own laws and even possessing its own tribunals of starotsas (elders). The Russian state was not undemocratic, on the contrary if anything, there was too much democracy.

What makes the peasant commune such a unique institution is the power that it had. Each commune was a completely self-contained unit, answering to no other authority than its own body of elected elders. All police functions were discharged by the communal authorities, all legal matters were dealt with by the same. Any damage to property, any criminal offence whatsoever, was dealt with at the communal level. All public works besides were also within the jurisdiction of the commune. It maintained stores of grain during famines and assisted poorer members who suffered during the lean months of the spring. It controlled the cultural life of the people as well as all education. It even built its own parish churches and trained many of the rural clergy. The commune maintained all schools and hospitals. In short, it was absolute.

Now, the state’s interest in this was clear. For the commune to be self governing, yet still loyal to the monarchy, it was necessary for it to be completely independent of the state. Mironov writes “The government did not risk appointing its own people, who would have been independent of the peasant, to official positions in the commune; that would have been too expensive and ineffective at the same time” (445)

However, to make sure any village executive (specifically its chief executive) was loyal, he could be removed by the royal-appointed district governor. This, however, rarely occurred, largely because irritating the peasants, the great bastion of loyalty in the country, would not be in the interests of the royal state. Mironov continues in this vein:
If however, one analyzes how these officials actually functioned, it is clear that the government did not reach its goal: elected officials did not stand above the commune but operated under its authority, and all administrative and police measures in the commune were taken only with the consent of the village assembly. Only very rarely did elected officials become a hostile authority standing above the peasantry: they had to be periodically reelected, had no significant privileges, did not break their ties with the peasantry (elected officials were freed from taxes and other obligations, except those in kind, and continued to perform all forms of peasant labor), remained under the control of public opinion of the village (and in the event of malfeasance faced the threat of retribution), and shared the common interest of the peasants, not the interests of the state. As a rule the elected officials acted as the defenders of the commune, as petitioners and organizers. Frequently they emerged as leaders of peasant disorders despite the threat of harsh punishment. (445-6).

Many liberal Russia scholars might counter this by claiming that the elected village heads were required, after the 1860s, to faithfully carry out the will of the district authorities. However, though this is true, it was also true that no decree of the district authorities had validity in the commune unless it was approved by the village assembly.

According to the data collected by the Russian Geographic Society, the Russian peasant assembly consisted of all male heads of household. Decisions were not finalized until unanimity was reached, or, as Mironov has said, disagreement was brought to a level of silent sulking, which, at this level, was considered agreement. It is important to note, therefore, that each peasant had a specific stake in communal affairs as well as a corresponding voice. Any specific peasant, therefore, could not afford to be alienated from the community, as all decisions could be vetoed even by a relatively small group of disgruntled peasants.

In her “The Russian Peasant Family in the Second Half of the 19th Century” (Russian Studies in History, vol. 38, n.2, (Fall 1999)), Svetlana S. Kriukova sheds some more light on the structure of the family in the peasant commune. Now, though this article is not nearly as rigorous as Mironov’s (and is geographically limited to the black soil region), it is still very useful.

Because all legislation needed to pass the communal assembly, which was a function of direct democracy, the family became a far more important institution than the modern bourgeois understand. The structure of the peasant family was headed by the oldest male, though women would have that title if she was unmarried, and her sons were also unmarried (39). The wife dealt with domestic affairs and supervised the female members of the house. The wife had substantial authority in ordering marriages and the timetables concerning various economic projects. Now, the family acted as sort of a mini-commune, it was rational for the male to cast the deciding vote. However, a “mistress of the house,” that is, the mother of the wife, had relatively equal authority with the husband. Generally, disagreements within the family were solved by any elderly living within the neighborhood (41). But, regardless of who made the final decision, all functions of the household ultimately were under the scrutiny of the commune. Interestingly, the communal structure (at least in southern Russia), invented an innovation called “women’s weeks,” which were times during the year where the females of the household would be released from family or communal obligations in order to work purely for themselves. This was done both to raise more money and goods for dowries as well as provide the women in question with sufficient resources for old age or infirmity (45).

This, in many respects, was to maintain domestic solvency, for the assignment of tax duties made it imperative that each household maintained a proper standard of living. If the head of household was a drunk, or was incapable of keeping the family money properly, he was publicly berated by the communal authorities, often beaten and, in many cases, deprived of his status as head of household. It is clear that those who developed bad reputations as head of household either reformed quickly or lost their status. Many wound up in the army, with the commune then resuming care for the family until the minor male children came of age.

Those members of the family incapable of working, such as the elderly, the mentally ill crippled or sick, were guaranteed support. Whatever the family could not provide was provided by the commune. The communal courts rearranged debts and taxes, as well as the more important area of land allotment, for those families who dealt with sick or invalid members. No one was permitted to enter severe poverty.

If the state desperately needed the communes to pass certain forms of legislation, they were in no position to force the matter on them. Russian peasants are rebellious; they are fanatical traditionalists, the worst threat to any bureaucracy. The state, then, would resort to every sort of preaching and begging of the village males and elders in general to get things passed, largely in the realm of taxation. But even here, only the commune was capable of assessing tax burdens according to the ability to pay. The royal state, allegedly absolute, had no clue how much money each peasant was making or how wealthy any commune might be. All taxing decisions therefore, were made by elected elders and the assembly.

The commune, through its assembly and elected elders, decided on a periodic land redistribution, where peasant families with many children were granted more, while those with fewer were granted less. The point of work for the communal peasantry was to reach a balance, to maintain a standard of living that could provide all objective needs of the family itself. Profit was unknown, distrusted and, even until the revolution, scorned. Need was the key, and all forms of exploitation were condemned not only by law, but also by the common law of communal custom.

The communal system was based around basic subsistence agriculture as well as the periodic redistribution of land, tax duties and public works. All of this was done within the village assembly in respect to the state, the informal structure of older men in the village who exercised quite a bit of moral authority (men retired at 60 and all dues were forgiven at this time) and the elected executives. This constitutional structure permitted the wealthier peasants to pay the dues of the poorer, which was considered a moral obligation taken from Byzantine times. Poorer households were maintained in lean times largely due to the communal virtue of charity, a virtue maintained not necessarily by law, but by the strong hand of communal custom, which, if it might be said, was actually the basis of the constitution of any commune. In other words, if such ancient virtues were violated, it was not uncommon for severe punishments to me meted out by the people as a whole. Chronic violations were usually punished by banishment or, if the criminal was of the proper age, induction into the army.

As Mironov reports, one of the astonishing and revisionist aspects of communal life as the 19th century began to draw to a close was its amazing vitality. It is common in the Russian history literature in English to paint a picture of the oppressed peasants chafing at the commune (when they mention it at all) waiting to escape to take advantage of the money economy. This is nothing more than bourgeois, Whig history.

There is every reason to believe that the peasantry looked upon the bourgeois with disdain, as well as their competitive money economy. The date collected clearly proves this. When the reforms of Petr Stolypin made it easier for peasants to remove themselves from the commune and enter the bourgeois economy, very few actually did. According to the data, by the end of the 19th century, almost 90% of peasants were functioning within the communal structure. By Stolypin’s reforms in 1905-06, “only an insignificant number of peasants found an alternative to the commune in trade, industry or in the sale of their labor. As in the past, the great majority placed their hopes for a better life in the commune and a new agrarian reform. . .” (464). This shows, without question, that the peasantry had no use for the liberal capitalist parties, westernizers or western socialists. It was the commune that maintained the peasant’s loyalty to tradition and the tsar. It was only those at the extremes of the communal structure that actually left the community for the city. Those who became wealthy and sought even more wealth moved away, and those extremely poor who, for whatever reason, could not function were the two elements that left, but these never amounted to any more than 4 or 5%. Those that were criminal, slow or just plain uncooperative were inducted into the army where the famous harsh discipline of the Russian infantry would solve those problems.

The peasant commune is likely one of the greatest supporters for family liberty devised. But its superiority to western models exists not merely in the results of such organization, but also because it was no “devised.” It was perfected over 1,000 years of often hard experience. The communal structure, the tightly organized extended family and the traditional peasant love for communal and family liberty kept the state at bay right up until the revolution. The destruction of the communes, naturally, came immediately under Lenin’s rule.

The dishonest “radicals” saw the commune s a threat. Many Russian populists (narodniks), such as Alexander Herzen, believed the communal system to be the means whereby a native Russian socialism would challenge the western, Marxism brand. However, for these liberals, the communal structure was to be completely denuded of traditional culture and be largely a dependency of the New State. All that the socialists wanted had already been part of peasant life for a millennium, but the socialists simply lied as to what they wanted. They sought a non-Christian, secular state run by urban elites who treated communes as departments of state. Ultimately, this is largely the reason the Bolsheviks liquidated large segments of the peasantry. Comparisons of the peasant communal system and modern socialism are pedestrian, they have nothing in common. This is why the Russian New Men of the 20th century ultimately destroyed the commune while publicly professing devotion to it. The commune was a Christian anarchist collective, based around ethnic tradition, the church and the extended family, all interacting on the level of basic equality. Anarchists sounded ridiculous to the peasantry largely because their secular ideas, to be imposed by force, already existed, and where the virtues of charity and mutual self-government not only existed, but were part of the traditional mindset of the peasantry. The bizarre nature of Russian Masonic “radicalism” was that they were advocating what already existed. The catch was, however, that their new society was to be run by them, on secular and materialist principles with the state, of course, being all -powerful. Peasants then would be truly mere chattel at the service of the New Men.
From: http://www.rosenoire.org/articles/Peasant_Commune.php 

Kangacow Now?


Did you hear? The cow is under criticism for global warming because of the methane produced by the dung and digestion. So the fools in Australia are trying to improve on God's creation and make the cow more like the kangaroo. Oh my God! From the Taipei Times: 

Both animals are herbivores and both eat grass that is fermented before entering their main stomachs. But while cattle belch enormous amounts of methane to digest food, kangaroos release virtually none — they burp only harmless acids that can be turned into vinegar.

Athol Klieve, a (so-called) expert on bovine stomachs, has fiddled around with the ruminants’ diet to make them less gassy. He is leading a team of microbiologists and genetic researchers to make cattle guts behave like kangaroos’.

“Feed additives can lead to incremental decreases in methane,” Klieve said, standing inside a nearly complete high-tech chamber where cattle will be brought in to have their methane burps measured precisely.

“But we’re trying to do other things that might give us a quantum leap, and that’s why we’re looking at kangaroos,” he said.

At any given point, after munching and regurgitating grass, tens of millions of Australian cattle, as well as sheep, are belching methane gases nonstop. With methane considered 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere, the burping has given ammunition to environmentalists, vegetarians and other critics of beef while initially putting the meat industry on the defensive.

Now the industry is fighting back. Along with the government, it is financing a US$24 million campaign to reduce burping. Researchers are looking at measures like adjusting diet, managing manure, recalibrating stomach organisms and selectively breeding animals that burp less.

Tragically modern people have not heard of, or perhaps don't believe that this world is already perfect and complete. Om purnam ada purnam idam. It was created that way by the Supreme Intelligence, Sri Krishna. There is nothing else needed in this world and nothing that can be taken away without upsetting the balance. What kind of horrible creature will they create? 

Even more unfortunately this is all being done following a ruse: global warming is simply a myth. A lot of hype created for ulterior purposes. We pray to God that these clowns will have no success with their research.

Jurassic Park here we come! Google "kangaroo cow" and you will find too many hits :-(

The Taipei Times article can be found here. And an Examiner article is here.


When I tried to add the following comment to The Examiner article it triggered the spam filter and was not accepted! What don't they want to hear? That global warming is a scam or that not eating meat will help the environment?

"The cow is NOT a problem. Global Warming is a ruse to increase control by the powers-that-be, and to make more money for Al Gore and his friends. A kangaroo cow is the work of atheists who can't imagine that God created a wonderful world that does not need improvements. Fiddling with nature is simply going to destroy the good qualities of the cow and the wonderful milk that she produces. 


"For those that really want to reduce methane simply stop eating the cow. That is the SINGLE most valuable thing that you can do to help the environment due to the huge environmental costs of meat production."

What We Can Learn From The Bulls

"All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajïa [sacrifice], and yajïa is born of prescribed duties." (Bg. 3.14)

"One who performs his duty without association with the modes of material nature, without false ego, with great determination and enthusiasm, and without wavering in success or failure is said to be a worker in the mode of goodness." Bg 18.26

Bhakta Petras, is the teamster at the Gitagrad community New Gaudadesha, in Lithuania. He has made a commitment to simple living and has focused his attention on growing grains by utilizing the bulls. Krishna Earlier in the year, Katha Dasa, the leader of New Gaudadesha, purchased one cow and two bulls, all newly born, and of a breed indigenous to the region. Padma, the cow arrived first. She is cared for by Bhakta Narada. In quick succession, about a month apart, came Balai, and then Kana, who are cared for by Petras.

When the bulls were about four months old Petras began training them to respond to voice commands. Every day he would take them to a ring and sitting in the center instruct them to walk around the perimeter, gently encouraging them with a touch to their flank with a branch.

In October this year ISKCON’s minister of cow protection, Balabhadra Prabhu (ISKCOWP) visited for three days to give Petras and Narada further lessons in caring for and training the animals. Around this time Petras began to yoke the bulls together and train them to work as a team. Most recently they have begun to pull a wagon or sled, with an increasingly heavier load.

Last week I asked Petras what he was learning by working with the bulls. Here is his reply:

1. they do not learn quickly; he must go slow as they learn slowly day-by-day
2. therefore great patience is required. A local man told Petras early on that he would have to be patient, but that man himself did not even know how patient one must be. Srila Prabhupada has said that patience is the most important quality.
3. as you are training them, they are also teaching you.
4. because they are very regulated in their actions, they force you to be regulated in yours.
5. the bull teaches you sattva; he is an animal of a sattva nature, and he will not go to rajas—you cannot make him get passionate. Instead, you yourself must come to sattva if you want to work with him. Moreover, he will bring you to sattva.
6. working with the bull may be compared to working with children or women, in that, if you get angry with them they will refuse to cooperate with you. If you are calm and reasonable they will work with you.
7. rajo-guna (increasing speed) and tamo-guna (negative reinforcement—hitting them) does not work with these animals.
8. Petras recently read from very old records how if a person had been drinking and the bulls smell that they will refuse to work with the man. Indeed, they will even try to gore him. They don’t want to associate with such people.
9. the bulls and man are a team; they work together. Unlike driving a car or tractor, where the driver simply controls the machine. With the bulls one must learn to cooperate and work as a team.
10. there is mutual dependency between the bulls and the teamster; the bulls depend on the man to feed and care for them, and the man depends on the bulls to provide necessary power for accomplishing things.

Petras’ comment gave me many realizations. The first is that Petras himself is not just training the bulls but they are training him. By his effort he is receiving valuable personal training in sattvic qualities, conditioning him to sattva-guna. Such training is difficult to come by in a world that is driven by passion and ignorance. Srila Prabhupada has taught us that we must come to the platform of sattva before we can progress to suddha-sattva, or the transcendental plane. How valuable are the cow and the bull to help us stay fixed in sattva-guna.

I also realized how our dependence on the cow and the bull teaches the entire human society sattva, and keeps them in sattva. Having abandoned the bull we have lost our tether to sattva and are the entire human race is drifting inexorably to rajas and tamo-guna, with the attendant terrible consequences that we are now beginning to reap, economically, socially, politically, etc.

Next I realized that the reason that Petras has had so many wonderful realizations because he made room for, and a commitment to Dharma (the bulls) in his life. He gave the bulls a place in his world. Giving them a place means giving them a duty, and that is the birth of yajna (yajna is born of prescribed duties), as stated in the quote from Bhagavad-gita above. Only interested in what they can take from others, modern man does not realize what the cow and bull have to give to us. Neither does modern man understand sattva-guna or the tremendous benefits that accrue to society as a whole by giving these animals their place in human society. Indeed, that is the case with all living beings in this world since, Om purnam ada purnam idam, this world is perfectly equipped as a complete whole.

Instead they think they can do better by killing the bull and exploiting the cow. You may know that we have a very old bull here, Nandi. The neighbors ask why we bother to keep an old bull. They tell us we should kill him. Such an  impoverished mentality of selfishness does not allow them to recognize the value of the bull, dharma, or reap the benefits of associating with these animals.

Bhakta Petras has found a goldmine—following the instructions of Sri Krishna Himself, as well as that of our acharyas, protecting dharma by giving the bulls engagement. There is no question that he will receive the blessings of that Supreme Cowherd. Later, in his maturity, after decades spent in learning from the bulls, he will have a wonderful future traveling around and instructing others how to heal the damage done to Mother Bhumi by employing the services of Dharma, the bull. There is no other place in today’s world to acquire such benefits.

Srila Prabhupada instructs us: "What is their economic progress? That means busy fool. Fool, they do not know how to satisfy the economic problem. That is recommended in the Bhagavad-gita, You grow food grains. Then all economic questions are solved. But why you are not producing food grains? Why you are producing iron stools and instruments and motor and tire and collecting petrol far away from Arabia? That is... Krishna never says that “You do all this nonsense.” He said, “Grow food grains.”. . . No, that is waste of energy. Because you are eating the bulls, therefore you require a tractor. Otherwise you don’t kill the bulls. This animal will do the business of tractor."

October 19, 1975

My Path to Simple Living

My having become accustomed to simple living, it is sometimes easy to take for granted the changes that one must go through to get there. This was brought home to me by Suresvara’s response to the earlier post “Simple Living – the Path to Happiness and Personal Fulfillment?”  (See the last post).

In response I was considering some things that might be helpful for those trying to make the transition, and reflecting on that began to think of my own progression. The transition to simple living is as much a story as how we came to Krishna Consciousness, because it is indeed a transition in our ways of thinking and living.

  

Typical Indian village scene

As recently as 2003 I never thought of leaving the United States to live somewhere else. But that changed when I met someone from India online that wanted to create a spiritual alternative to modern culture. I wanted to be a part of that work. So I organized myself to leave for a year in India. Now India in and of itself is an immense cultural shift. The density of people, the noise, the smells, the very stuff of life is all open to plain sight—life and death, all of it. And it is nothing if not a huge contrast to America. As it turned out I was not condemned to live in the midst of all of all, say in mid-town Mumbai, but managed to find accommodations in a village not too far out of Jagannatha Puri. Quite an idyllic place actually. I stayed on the second floor of a house, and outside of my room on the flat roof, was a coconut tree that provided a shady respite from the sun. I called it my “coconut office” and would spend hours on the roof reading and writing. The village, as all villages, was relatively quiet, save for the blaring speakers of distant revelry or worship, and the language barrier kept me from distinguishing precisely between the two. And life in the village was s-l-o-w.

My "bathroom" in Puri

The rest of it was quite like other Indian villages. There was no running water, the kitchen was what people in America would call a hallway, with most preparation done on the floor, and cooking done over a gas stove supplied by a balloon tank. Neither was there a bathroom, and bathing was done in a ghat, a small pond. That provided one of my first major cultural challenges: they don’t use soap to cleanse themselves but fresh cow dung! Hmm, intentionally take the stool of an animal and smear it all over your body just as you would do with soap. Wow. Too much for me, and for a good while I purchased and used soap. However the idea was brewing within. Still...it took some time for me to warm up to that idea, despite the fact that that was what everyone else did, and that the Vedic literature states very clearly that the dung of that amazing animal, the cow, is purifying. But I did it, holding my nose at first, and then in time, after experiencing that the result was the skin felt very clean and fresh, and becoming accustomed to the odor, I was able to handle the daily bath with the gusto of any native.

Why did I do that? Very simply I was motivated to experience a different culture, and the best way to do that is by doing what the others do, eating what they eat, wearing what they wear—actually, living as they live.

You can see the "steps" to the chariot
in this photo. 

A important aspect of India that was essential to my journey to simple living was the cleanliness, or lack thereof. In America we live at a particular standard of cleanliness. Everything must be clean. That’s how I was raised and that typified the majority of my living experiences. But in India I learned that a little dirt was not a death sentence, nor even a certain infection. During Jagannath’s Rathayatra in 2004 I was blessed to be able to ascend the Lord’s chariots and embrace the Deities along with a crushing throng of other select devotees. On the way up the roughly-hewn wooden ramp I bashed my foot and took a large sliver in the sole. My shoes were long-since gone and I had no choice but to walk the streets of Puri with an open wound on my foot. Gangrene was certain I supposed, but the loss of a foot was perhaps a decent trade for the opportunity to embrace the Lord of the Universe. Much to my surprise the anticipated infection never arrived! Food and water were another matter however, since thousands of people do die each year of infections and diseases from these sources. Through it all I learned that I could indeed live with other than the ideal cleanliness of America.

After being in India for almost a year I decided to go the countries of the former Soviet Union to preach my message of Spiritual Economics. I had no idea what was there, what to expect, or if I could survive. But having managed in India I figured I could handle most anything else. There I was given lessons of a different sort. The countries of E. Europe (Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova) are all quite similar to each other in that the Soviet legacy was everywhere visible. Most of the buildings, and especially the low and hi-rise apartment buildings are quite depressing in appearance. Although the tenants did their best to improve their own flats, the common areas were sorely neglected. Going up the stairwells of any building was like visiting the slum areas of America. It was repulsive and many times I chided the devotees that they had to clean and improve the appearance of their stairways. But that was not, and still is not, apparently, a part of their culture.

The contrast with America was particularly striking during my first year, and to be honest it was, and is, hard for me to see such neglect. My natural instinct is to want to fix things—but, it’s the whole country! This experience did however have one advantage—I no longer needed so much eye candy as is present in America. Less than perfect became the normal sight, but if something was decent or even  nice it was definitely noticed and appreciated.

My first village house in Ukraine was rather nice

This is not to say that everything was bad. Indeed, there are many nice features in every city. For example, the main streets are almost always divided and lined with trees and strolling lanes. Additionally there are many nice parks to walk in, and they are always filled with people out to enjoy the day or evening. And gradually, since people have been freed from Soviet central-planning and authority, attractive buildings were being built everywhere, until the economic bust of 2008 that is. One cannot expect such things to change immediately, or even in just one generation. They take time.

The villages in those countries however are much more reasonable. There are not so many depressing sights, and although the houses is simple and of a lower standard, they are adequate. One of the major challenges in the villages however, like India, is cleanliness. It is harder to be clean without cement walks, electric washing machines, and running water, and in most cases one must settle for less than ideal circumstances. Of course this all depends on how much of the city is brought to the village. I have been to villages in Hungary, Belarus, Lithuania, France, India, Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova. They are all reasonably similar in their construction (save for India), and in the manner of living that they support. Having had such a variety of experience there is no longer an immediate shock due to the contrast of city conditioning when going to such places. I now understand it as “village life.” The mysteries have been solved and I know how life works there.

A typical village kitchen
in India

Undoubtedly my experience is far different from that of the average city dweller. I have gone through many experiences that have allowed me to now easily adapt to village circumstances of almost any standard. Unquestionably everyone who determines to take up the village way of life has to “downsize” their expectations and adjust to the circumstances of their proposed new way of life. Unless they are bringing the city with them to the village, most people cannot do that “cold-turkey,” in one step. I dare say that I could not have either. The best approach is to make periodic visits to the village for several days or weeks. It’s like going camping. The differences in living are appreciated and tolerable as long as one knows that it’s only for the weekend.

The village log house in Ignalinus, Lithuania where I am staying now
(and it looks exactly like that, snow included!)

The idea is not that we have to learn to live with dirt, or with a standard inadequate to meet our needs. We need to find the balance between what is necessary and that which allows time for life. The idea is to simplify our lives, become group-dependent,* to make time for the things that are most important to us—our relationships to God, family and friends, and our personal growth and development. And, as we make progress along our spiritual journey simplicity will automatically manifest within our lives. It is a concomitant factor of spiritual growth. As that happens we want to be able to reduce the demands of the body, but, let us note, that is much easier to do in the village but almost impossible in the city.

One thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that I am no less happy when I live in the villages. Indeed, it is now quite the opposite. Free from the crowding, pressure, turmoil and noise of city life I am much happier in the village, and yes, despite the dirt. Real happiness, after all, comes from within. **

We want to create in the village community the circumstances that support our needs for growth and spiritual development that don’t demand too much of our time. Moreover, village life affords us the opportunity to grow our own healthy food, something that is becoming almost an impossible luxury in the city. The villages give our children a place to grow free of restraints and undesirable influences and characters. And, everyone can find a place from which to grow and develop in the village community. These benefits are much more subtle and less immediately noticeable than the difference in household facilities, the dirt, or the increased labor, but they are the things that make life better.

We need to find the balance, and finding that balance is an art, the art of living.

* self-sufficient is impossible. The ideal we want to strive for is to be group-sufficient, or group-dependent—dependent on the members of our community.

** (although I do confess that my quality of life does increase with a hi-speed internet connection J)

Comment by my friend Suresvara Dasa, who wrote

Thank you for your latest piece on the Varnasrama conference about village life. As a survivor of several attempts to "live simply"--from New Vrindaban to Gita-nagari to the Bhaktivedanta EcoVillage near Udupi to Prabhupada Village in North Carolina--time and again I've born witness to the "guna test." We always flunk. As an Amish friend near Gita-nagari once remarked: "We started with horses and never left 'em. You started with cars, and you're trying to go to oxen? Whoa!"

My comment: Indeed Suresvaraji, the transition of the gunas is something that must be anticipated and dealt with. After all, we are souls conditioned to the modes of passion and ignorance, and from that perspective goodness is "well, nice, but not for me." Going from traveling at 60-80 mph down to 2 mph is not something that everyone can deal with, without becoming very impatient and bored. Perhaps a horse is a good interim step! Counseling would also be helpful for those moving to the simple life, to help them understand what to expect both at the beginning and the end, and to work through it. Additionally one should have a transition phase to phase in adjustment to the simple life over a series of months, or even years. This would help to us to focus on and appreciate what the simple life gives instead of what it lacks. Hmm...although I didn't plan it this way, it seems this is a good segue to the next piece I want to write for this blog - my own transition to simple life. Coming soon.

Simple Living – the Path to Happiness and Personal Fulfillment?

In response to the recent posts about people living simple lives, one of my friends, the devil’s advocate, wrote to me to ask how “living in a one room cabin off-grid relates to the performance of devotional service and the development of Daiva-varnashrama Village? Without such commentary, the reader may think that living off grid in small cabins will somehow solve the greater problems of the day, which, of course, won’t.” Well that is a fair question. It brings attention to the fact that I have yet to write much about Varnashrama Dharma or Daiva-varnashrama on this blog, and that is way over-due. But since Daiva-varnashrama is a long and deep discussion we won’t get into it fully here, but will use the question as a segue to the discussion.

To begin with, let me answer by saying that without the Daiva-varnashrama culture, simple living cannot be established in a significant way in the present world. And without simple living there is no solution to the problems resulting from concentrating millions of people in densely populated areas, that threaten the ecosystems, and everyone’s mere survival, what to speak of their mental health or happiness. In other words, the Daiva-varnashrama culture must be established in order to save this world from its present suicidal course.

Daiva-Varnashrama Culture

In order to make that connection I will first summarize the idea of Daiva-varnashrama and then explain the relationship between it and simple living. Please note that I use these terms Varnashrama Dharma, varnashrama culture, and Daiva-varnashrama interchangeably herein. While there are differences between them those differences are not pertinent here.

One of the objectives of Gitagrad is to create a place of transcendental culture, where all activity is done for the pleasure and satisfaction of the Supreme Lord. In fact that is the meaning of the word “Gitagrad” – the place where we live according to the Bhagavad-gita. Such a way of life, due to its connection with the Supreme Fountainhead of all that be, should be satisfying, abundant, rewarding, and the ticket to spiritual emancipation at the end of life.

That culture, the Daiva-varnashrama culture, is the culture given to us by God for our well-being and a spiritually progressive life. Many aspects of that culture are prescribed in what are called the dharma shastras. Shastra means scripture. Dharma can be translated as duties. The dharma shastras thus prescribe the many do’s and don’ts for human beings, and those duties are best carried out in the context of the complete varnashrama culture. Acharya Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur explains the function of varnashrama culture in his “Sri Chaitanya-sikshamrita”:

The social rules are divided into two parts: varna and ashrama, or varnashrama. People in such a society have two aspects: their basic nature and their stage of life. Their nature is fixed by their mental and physical qualities, and their stage of life determines their role in society. From the individual’s nature arise the rules of varnas, and from the progressive stages of life comes the ashramas. As people act in these roles their individual mental and physical qualities do not disappear [as some may think is the result of spiritual practice], but rather, are nourished.

When bodily and mental tendencies gradually develop by cultivation, they attain a fixed stage, where one quality dominates all others. That quality is the human being’s nature. There are four natures [varnas]: brahmana, ksatriya, vaisya and sudra. These four varnas have arisen on the basis of the positive qualities of men. With the display of negative qualities, the outcast from the social system arises. [In a fully-functioning, widespread varnashrama culture] A person in such a situation has little alternative but to give up those negative qualities [in order to be accepted into society].

Formerly the varnashrama social system was soundly established around the world, and remnants of it are known to us in the West as the medieval social system. However, due to the degrading influences of this age the varnashrama culture has been lost. Details of how the past social order was deliberately replaced, and how society came to be organized by money alone is explained in Chapter Four of the first volume of my book on Spiritual Economics.* But, it has been the desire of the recent Vaishnava acharyas to reestablish that social organization for the progressive benefit of all society. Srila Prabhupada has said that it is one of the aims of his Krishna Consciousness Movement is to establish this Daiva-varnashrama culture.

There are several significant aspects to note in our efforts to establish the Varnashrama culture. The first is that the economic basis of the varnashrama culture is agriculture and cow protection. Not money, nor industrial enterprises, because these act to undermine the culture itself. (For further details on this subject please see my post “Money and Varnashrama Culture” at http://spiritual-econ.blogspot.com, or www.dandavats.com). The second point is that the varnashrama culture that we seek to establish will be significantly different from the varnashrama culture of the past in terms of spiritual practices. Instead of following the Vedic-marga, with the rules and regulations given in the four Vedas as was formerly done, we will incorporate the spiritual practices of the pancaratrika-marga and bhagavat-marga, the practices of modern day Gaudiya Vaishnavas. Specifically we shall incorporate the yuga-dharma, or religion for the age, the chanting of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. These practices give very quick results to the serious practitioner allowing the supreme objective of spiritual emancipation to be achieved in just one lifetime.

It was Srila Prabhupada’s desire to establish the varnashrama culture, and it was so significant to him that he considered it to be fifty percent of his life’s work. That work is left for us to do as he was not given time to accomplish it. In his books and teachings to his disciples he spoke endlessly about Varnashrama Dharma. He gave many instructions to his leading disciples to establish Varnashrama colleges in each temple leading to the implementation of the varnashrama social system and culture. Despite his many admonitions to that effect the work has hardly been pursued within the society, and we speculate this is because it is not well understood. The fulfillment of this desire of our spiritual master is the goal of our efforts within our Gitagrad communities.

In his instructions to his followers for how to live in this world Srila Prabhupada often used the phrase “simple living and high thinking.” He wanted us to live simply, constructing simple dwellings with local materials for habitation, produce our own food directly from the land, and, combining that with delicious milk products from the cow, to have delicious and satisfying food. With the time saved from having to run hither and thither as everyone must in modern society, one can hear the sacred texts, chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra, and participate in the spiritual culture with drama, dance, singing, music, art, sculpting, woodworking, weaving, writing, etc.

The Spiritual Aspect is Paramount

Above all other aspects of the culture, the spiritual aspect of the varnashrama culture is its most significant, because it can give the participants the happiness and satisfaction so desired by all people in life, without which people cannot be satisfied with simple living alone. The Srimad-Bhagavatam states (1.2.6-7): “The supreme occupation [dharma] for all humanity is that by which men can attain to loving devotional service unto the transcendent Lord. Such devotional service must be unmotivated and uninterrupted to completely satisfy the self. By rendering devotional service to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna on immediately acquires causeless knowledge and detachment from the world.”

Thus when properly performed devotional service brings about not only detachment from material objects, but also gives the practitioner full satisfaction. This is a paramount point and the connection between Daiva-varnashrama and simple living—It is due to becoming detached from sense gratification and being satisfied within oneself that one can live a simple life. Without this we see in practice that it is next to impossible for people to live the simple life for any length of time. The villages of the former Soviet Union have been emptying out since the fall of communism and the end of the collective farms that once sustained them. People are enticed by the sense gratification available in the cities with its alluring passionate influence. That is to say that simple living, in an of itself, is not sufficient to give people a satisfying life. Of course the Western countries are so much more “advanced” in this regard that 97 percent of the people now live on 3 percent of the land, urban and suburban.

Because internal satisfaction is so essential to simple living, and because simple living is so essential to solving the devastating impacts of the consumer culture, it is crucial that we create the circumstances that will allow that pure devotional service to develop quickly. Fair enough, you say, but why does it necessitate simple living in a village?

There is a growing worldwide recognition that the consumer lifestyle constitutes a big part of our modern day problems—environmental and social especially. And with food prices escalating quickly, causing food riots around the world, consumers are hostage to the moneyed interests that profit by causing food prices to rise. The key element to note here is that city dwelling requires consumerism. How else can one live in the city? Therefore the “back to the land” movement that began in the late 60s and early 70s after fading is coming back. There are large numbers of people seeking ways to make village life a pleasant and happy experience. In Russia and central Asia the books of “Anastasia,” written by Vladimir Megre, glorifying the natural life have given rise to an entire movement of living close to the earth. This movement is spreading across the Asian continent, Europe, and continuing to America as well. Then there are the Transition Towns, who, taking Peak Oil as a very real threat, are attempting to alter their lifestyles to be able to live with less oil. They also are beginning to recognize city life as “the problem” to oil dependency. There are also many people who see a real and present danger of one form or another in modern life and who desire to be independent and off the grid, like Bill Powers (see earlier post) who go it alone in a simple 12 X 12 cabin based on their own inspiration.

Getting to the Village is Easy. How Do You Stay There?

There is one question that arises in relationship to all of these efforts, quoting the old song: “how you gonna keep them down on the farm?” Rural living may appear to be attractive, and the contrast with city life is at first exciting and pleasing. But how long can it last before it becomes boring and nothing but a lot of hard work? After some ten years the back to the land movement became a back to the city movement, albeit with some survivors—Steve Gaskin’s “The Farm” in Tennessee made it to the 21^st century, and of course some of the Hare Krishna farms, although many lost much of their previous vitality through the years. Some of the Anastasia settlements are even losing their once enthusiastic members after just a few short years. Let me give a few suggestions as to why this occurs.

Typically we see that most people don’t actually move to the country—they move but bring the city with them. That is they do not change their lifestyles, their economic support, or their culture. They keep their city jobs with its income despite the longer commute, they import the city culture via satellite dish or internet, and because they do not produce their essentials, they must continue to shop in the city for them which requires money, which is of course obtained in the city. Money thus becomes a city-village umbilical cord which people continue to depend on to survive. To become free from money altogether requires a fairly well-developed group of people who have the know-how, skills and tools to provide for themselves.

With my hosts Vyacheslav (Slavik) and Tatyana (Tanya)
the co-founders of the Dolyna Djerel community

An example of this city dependence is the Anastasia settlement Dolyna Djerel (Spring Valley) on the outskirts of Kiev that I visited several weeks ago. Of the fifty homes there, none of the people who lived in them were even trying to be self-sufficient, or even free from city life. Everyone commutes to the city to work. Although some of the homes were simple, judging by the other rather nice houses, they were not even attempting to live a simple life. It would best be described as an effort to create a comfortable community and “gentleman’s farms” where gardening is done as a hobby but is certainly not the main economic basis of living. This is also the case with several other Anastasia communities that I have visited, as well as many of the Hare Krishna farms.

There are some very important philosophical points that will help us to understand the inability of people to sever their city connection completely.

The first of these is what are called “the gunas” or modes of material nature. Again, in “Spiritual Economics” I treat this subject in detail, and here give only a very brief introduction. There are three modes of nature, goodness, passion and ignorance, under whose influence this entire material world functions. Things are created in passion, maintained under the influence of goodness, and destroyed by ignorance. Passion is very pleasing initially, but after some time brings distress and suffering. Goodness is unpleasant initially, but later is actually joyful. And ignorance is trouble from beginning to end. The city is under the influence of passion and ignorance, but the village is situated in goodness. It is very important to note that practically the entire world is now habituated to, or conditioned by, the modes of passion and ignorance (including our Hare Krishna devotees) due to city living. Due to conditioned behavior we feel comfortable with those modes of nature, and it is therefore very difficult to be satisfied in the village where those gunas are mostly absent.

So here is one of the big problems that stand in the way of successful transition to village living: a failure to becoming conditioned to the qualities of goodness, especially since goodness is unpleasant in the early stages, or until we become conditioned by it. Initially this new lifestyle may be pleasant due to the contrast with city life. Kind of like going on a camping trip. But after some time that euphoria wears off and the differences become magnified. The newcomers may be living in older dwellings, and in a house without plumbing, electricity or gas it will likely be impossible to have the same standards of living that they were accustomed to in the city. Especially if money is difficult to get, shopping is inconvenient and they must learn to do without, there will be at least some dissatisfaction. In these circumstances any appreciation of the benefits of the new lifestyle may be easily overlooked. Unless the newcomers can make it through this adjustment period and the shift in gunas, after some time they simply conclude that the country life is not for them and head back to the city where they feel “normal” again. Solving the necessary problems so that the contrast is not so great will do much to ease the transition in lifestyle. It will also help if our expectations can be adjusted before hand, since when our expectations are unmet we generally become unhappy.

The second thing to understand about the move to the village is that we all must have culture. We are social beings and as such we cannot do without culture. The question now is: where do we get culture in the village? Typically, as stated above, people bring the city culture to the village with them via the airwaves, satellite dish, electronics and recorded media. People have a cultural dependency that is typically not recognized and therefore not dealt with properly.

The best way to deal with this is for the villagers themselves to create their own culture, although there are challenges to this as well. In our modern lives we typically enjoy vicariously—through others. We are entertained. We are passive enjoyers of others’ performances. Thus we often lack the skills for entertaining ourselves, especially at the quality of the superstars that we are accustomed to hearing and seeing. But village culture is not vicarious, and that means that we must learn to enjoy by doing and participating in activities, rather than watching or listening to others. In order for such a village culture to develop there must be leadership that recognizes this need and encourages or even directs the effort. The villagers themselves must also take responsibility for dedicated practice to develop reasonably satisfying skills. The nice thing about this is that it can be great fun.

The next question that arises is: what is that culture going to be centered around? People generally do only what they know, which are activities of passion and ignorance, not goodness, which further maintains the ties to those influences. However our devotees are learning how to center such activities around Sri Krishna and His pastimes, thus helping them to stay on the transcendental platform of Krishna Consciousness.

In conclusion my thesis is that the simple life, in and of itself does not give the lasting satisfaction that will sustain a person’s effort, what to speak of sustaining a significant social movement away from consumerism. Only the Daiva-varnashrama culture has the ability to accomplish this. And thus, only Daiva-varnashrama has the ability to solve the consumerism problem, the environmental problem, the social problems and the economic problems of this world. It is therefore essential for the future well-being of this entire world. The only people who can bring this culture about are the followers of Srila Prabhupada, and it is therefore imperative that they take it up to lead the world out of their foolish ways of living under the influence of passion and ignorance. But are our devotees also too heavily influenced by these lower modes of nature? To averse to the initial unpleasant nature of sattva-guna in order to take up the simple life? Thus far it seems to be a serious challenge given the numbers who take establishing the varnashrama culture seriously. Indeed, I am often told by city devotees that village life is too difficult and unpleasant. Srila Prabhupada indicated that our Krishna Consciousness Movement can bring about a cultural conquest. But that will only happen when the devotees themselves begin to create, and live, that complete culture.

* “Lessons in Spiritual Economics from the Bhagavad-gita - Part 1 Understanding and Solving the Economic Problem” is available from www.spiritual-econ.com.