On Sustainable Living

Tags

compassion, discipline, ethics, giving, sacrifice, self control, sustainability

Sustainability. It was the central theme of the annual Aerospace conference called SciTech that happened this week. I attended virtually, along with thousands of other professionals, academics, students, policy makers and more. Five days of new ideas and conversations about how to create sustainable solutions for earthly aviation and beyond-earth exploration.

New technologies, new vehicles, new fuels, new investments. These were all proposed, to meet the challenges that climate change presents to the (aerospace) world. It did not take long for me to ask the question – what sustains, what creates sustainability for the humans creating the sustainable solutions?

I had to wait till Friday evening for the answers to emerge. As is often my wont, I return to the library upstairs, pick a book from the ‘spiritual’ section, and open it to a random page. I landed in the middle of a chapter titled ‘Ethics’, and the author was speaking to the three core virtues of a life of value.

Self-control (or dama) is the first virtue that sustains us. It is when we offer resistance to our desires that we develop strength, discipline and resilience. Each act of resistance adds another layer of sustainability to our spirit. Solitude and silence are two practices to develop self-control. “Progress in silence is progress to realization by connecting us to the creative power of the divine.”

Self-sacrifice by letting go (or daana) is the second virtue that sustains us. Letting go is the practice of giving or providing assistance to those in need, and also freedom from greed. What is the sustainable way of letting go? “Give with faith, do not give without faith, give liberally, with modesty, with sympathy.”

Compassion (or dayaa) is the third virtue of sustainable living. Compassion is the practice of being at peace, of forgiveness, of avoiding ill-will and cruelty. “It is through compassion that we can overcome selfishness and develop patience and forbearance.” If we can tune into the extent of suffering in the world, we can remember to live a compassion-first lifestyle.

Self-control, self-sacrifice through letting go, and compassion — three sustainability keys given to me — and I share them with you. Sustainable and simple habits are easier to integrate into our lifestyle, aren’t they? With sustained practice, we can transform our heart to a kinder, gentler, lighter, quieter, and healthier version of itself. With a transformed heart, we can discover a well-spring of love to create a brighter world for our life here on earth and beyond.

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat, Sunday January 9 at 9amET / 730pm India in #SpiritChat. We will gather and talk about sustainability on our journey ahead. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

Ref for the ‘three keys’: ‘Ethics – An Idealist View of Life,’ by S. Radhakrishnan, The Hibbert Lectures, 1929.

Harmony with the elements… a key to sustainability

On Healing and Service

Tags

healing, mathematics, sacrifice, service, simplicity

The upcoming week will be the week of September 11th observances across the USA. The events of seventeen years ago, and the heroic acts of courage and service that transpired on that day, and in the weeks and months that followed, will be recounted and remembered. The countless stories of those who answered the call, chose to serve and respond in order to rescue those in need, will forever remain with us and inspire us.

The healing continues to this day. Some of the first-responders, volunteers and health personnel who served in the immediate vicinity of the towers suffer long-term health consequences. Many others who were witness to the events, in person or in cities across the USA, are perhaps still healing. The ones who personally lost friends and family and acquaintances – their need for healing is perhaps the greatest.

Regardless of the breadth and depth of healing required, it is perhaps our commitment to remembrance which has the greatest power to heal. Remembrance does not mean that we dig up old wounds with anger, hate and recrimination. That only serves to reverse our healing progress. Remembrance can mean a re-commitment and a re-affirmation to walk in loving action of the path of those who inspired us to serve.

One hundred and eight years to the day before September 11 2001, there was another event in Chicago, where a hitherto unknown monk representing India said:

As the different streams having their sources in different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

– Swami Vivekananda, September 11 1893

It is often that the mind tends to forget the stream of love and goodness that runs through the hearts of those who serve for the sake of purity of service. When the mind’s focus is on those who use arithmetic progression to increase evil, the heart tends to forget the embrace and sacrifice of those who employ service as a means of geometric progression to propagate healing goodness.

Geometric progression of healing begins with you and me. Progress is sustained by our orientation towards serving with an attitude of gratitude – gratitude for our ability and awareness to serve, and for being given opportunities to serve the greater good. It is through our loving attitude towards service that we can plant the seeds of healing in those we serve, and equally importantly, within ourselves.

I often wondered what my high-school motto of ‘Service before Self’ really meant. The history of two events, on September 11th, one hundred and eight years apart, have given me a better understanding. Service before self is an opportunity to heal. Service is a geometric progression whose common ratio is greater than one, and whose sum brings us closer to the infinity of Self with every action.

Kumud @AjmaniK

P.S. Join us for our weekly conversation with the #SpiritChat community – Sunday September 9th at 9amET / 630pm India on twitter. Share your thoughts on service, healing and (geometric) progression… Namaste.

Nature heals… through ‘service’

A Spirit of Service

Tags

freedom, sacrifice, service, spiritchat, spirituality

In lieu of the weekly post reflecting my views, I researched the views of some famous (and not so famous) servers in history on this week’s topic of “Service”. I share them with you, in the hope that they will inspire thought, reflection, and service through action.

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. – Albert Schweitzer

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy. –
Mahatma Gandhi

When we help we do not really serve… . Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time. –
Rachel Naomi Remen

The highest excellence is like water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving, the low place which all men dislike.
– Laozi (Lao Tzu)

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
– Anne Frank

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
– Leo Tolstoy

To the wrongs that need resistance,
To the right that needs assistance,
To the future in the distance, Give yourselves.
– Carrie Chapman

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
– Emily Dickinson

He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.
– Confucius

Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
– Edmund Burke

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world. –
Ramana Maharshi

We will draw inspiration from the above quotes, and have a conversation dedicated to those who have served, and continue to serve the greater good, in whatever capacity they can. Please join us, Sunday, May 24th at 9amET (Memorial Day Sunday in the USA) on twitter in #SpiritChat.

Namaste,

Kumud