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)