Universal Holistic Definition of Environment in Five Words

Universal Holisti Definition in Five Words

Universal Holistic Definition of Environment in Five Words by Saint-Poet Tukaram

Saint-Poet Tukaram (17th century AD), of Maharashtra, India, defines “Environment” without mincing words.

It is unparalleled by any other definittion anywhere anytime. He doesn’t use adjectives or poetic embellishments to prove his point.

The definition combines Environment, Ecology and Energy in one go, in just five words.

It also proves that an environmentalist must be a spiritual person beyond professionalism, or a spiritual person must be an environmentalist; the rest is hypocrisy; there is no other way.

Environment is separated from Ecology and Energy by the technological capitalist society. Each of these is further broken into several compartments.

More advanced a civilised society more are divisions and subdivisions of its castes, classes that lead to fragmentation of society, consolidation of centralized power, but above all, the loss of holistic reality: LIFE is forgotten.

Tukaram reminds us that all living beings are interdependent. Hence there is need for moderation, particularly in ‘work’ to restore ‘leisure’ in daily living, irrespective of anyone’s place in any hierarchy – a president or a prime minister in the world of political environment, or a pauper in urban environment, or a peasant in the desert environment, or the "masses" in the social environmet.

LIFE – call it God of Creation or Nature of Evolution – is ruthlessly indifferent to arrogance, antics and assumptions of humans in general and the technologically advanced societies in particular.

Pollinator (Source: Nature)

NOTE: The relationship between forests, wildlife and pollination-dependant crops is crucial to increase the yield. Four hundred years later science is now developed with external aids/tools to see what Saint Tukaram says.

The recent scientific report finds that “…a pollination-dependent crop surrounded by plantations and natural forests, which comprised the matrix. Our analysis revealed a clear positive effect of the natural forest on the pollinator abundance, but the plantation forest had little effects" (Plantation vs. natural forest: Matrix quality determines pollinator abundance in crop fields | Nature Scientific Reports 28 October 2011)

Remigius de Souza

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Let A Billion Faiths Bloom

Let A Billion Faiths Bloom
by Remigius de Souza

Could there ever be a billion faiths, not one?
Could there ever be a billion gods, not one?
Could there ever be a billion incarnations?
Could there ever be one in love of Sovran Good?

Rather than in love of gods or ‘no-god’,
Or could I ever be relieved of loads on my head
Of history that grows with Ages with my growing age?
Let the billion faiths bloom in love of Sovran Good.
 
I met several cultures in places and among peoples
Like water that takes on colours of soil and skies
Putting my sole possession – my life at stakes
Beyond barriers of time and space, hell and heavens

Breaking loose, my life ether in flowering and fruition
Be a witness of the billion nameless in turmoil.
Let me be inside outside in love of Sovran Good.
Let the billion faiths bloom in love of Sovran Good.


Remigius de Souza | 27.04.2002 | Mumbai, India
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Hunger of Body and Mind & Sustainable Living

Hunger of Body and Mind & Sustainable living
by Remigius de Souza

Image - Engineer's Safety Key

(Author of this famous graphic not known; the interpretation is by Remigius de Souza)

We eat food to nourish body and also our mind by default. Hence wholesome food is elementary input to nourish mind.

Learning from books, as is mass education system, makes one dogmatic. It isn't enough also to see the world through media / Internet / books alone all the time.

We need to feed our mind also by watching down-to-earth reality under our feet, to feed and develop our perception, than merely on Virtual Reality.

With our entire senses alert, we put them to use that begins to watch self and around us; never to miss a detail as well as the whole, without bias.

Thus watching dispassionately we may witness reality as is. The Present, which is also the residue of the Past, then becomes all pervasive.

We then loose the shackles of the bygone past, as well as speculation of an unknown Future.

By actually holistic living here and Now, responsibly, we could spare a better tomorrow for the posterity, and enjoy ourselves wholesome Present. This is sustenance and Sustainable Living.

Living beyond the life of hydroponics

Food is considered our Basic Need. But like breathing, we are hardly aware of our action during eating-drinking.

We take Food for granted like Air that we breathe to keep us alive, more than our likes, dislikes and taste. This is a result of our prosperity – surplus economy – made possible by machine and market.
This also makes our thinking, working and thereby living a grand mechanical act, by default?

Are we either capable to produce even one percent of what we eat, or are we intelligent enough to perceive who produce our food? We are too busy to stop and think.

Are we not concerned about a large number of seven billion fellow humans go hungry?

Are we aware of our lifestyle on fast track that splurges resources taken from the earth on trivialities, which are actually 'external aids', particularly, in cities?

All this is in the name of “Our Lifestyle”: Indeed we live a life of hydroponics!

As Wealth and Waste grow in direct proportion, neither the rich nor the poor are spared from problems of heath – physical and mental. The rich suffer, for example, from obesity, while the poor are victims of malnutrition that cause sicknesses… Today’s story on BBC News Magazine, ‘India loses stomach for the pot belly’ gives a comprehensive picture.

Also read more on this issue: Civilization Trap In Our Era
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Civilization Trap In Our Era

Civilization Trap In Our Era
by Remigius de Souza

(CIVILIZATION TRAP was originally published in the Fourth World Review (FWR) | Editor John Papworth | Nos. 133 & 134, 2005, UK, p 16. The archives of FWR issues are available on http://www.4thworld.co.uk . This is an updated version.)

Quote: 

"…misapplied science has brought to the world's richest virgin lands a desolation compared with which the ravages of all the wars in history are negligible", (Jacks and Whyte, 'The Rape of the Earth').

MIGHTY CIVILIZATION AND EMPIRES have vanished, however, people prevail. Huge species like dinosaurs vanished, bacteria prevail.

But Industrial Civilization, from ‘Jenny’ to ‘Dolly’, monopolizes resources of the earth that belong to all the living beings.

It seems Industrial Civilization is in a great hurry to wipe out all living beings including 'other' humans (who don't subscribe to industrialization).

It takes on a role of God-the-creator to create enormous wealth and enormous waste with tools of science and technology, economy and market.

It, of course, shall vanish by its “over-specialization”, whether in big nations or small nations or societies. It is the lesson of history.

Thankfully, ‘the majority of the world still sustains outside the capitalist /socialist economy’, says Shanin, sociologist, in an interview (Teodor Shanin, How the other half live| New Scientist | 03 August 2002 | issue 2354, p 44). However the industrial civilization, through its puppets, tries hard to bring them into its dragnet.

It has created enormous number of institutions to control almost every aspect of living of an individual and the collective, which causes to end up loosing their autonomy of decision-making and action, therefore, their identity.

'Identity Crisis' is the result of mass type of civil society that reflects in today's worldwide unrest and in various forms of violence.

It is apparent in five autonomous functions of the living: Work 1, Leisure 2, Health 3, Learning 4 and Propagation 5. These functions are given by Mother Nature to all the living beings – from bacteria to plants and animals, including humans – to sustain. Morally there is no authority – an individual or an organization – to control these autonomous functions of living-beings – mosquito or man.

Now Industrial Civilization has taken over these functions, from the collective and an individual, of course, to capitalize for power and profit, through legal means.

Unfortunately, for example, the doses of 24x7 non-stop opium of Entertainment, called Leisure Industry, do not work! (A Great Epoch flies at a Tangent)

Some recent Examples:
WORK: 1. Farmers Strain to Hire American Workers in Place of Migrant Labour,but no takers for brown collar job in the US (Kirk Johnson | New York Times | October 5, 2011)
WORK: 2. UK unemployment total hits 17-year high (BBC NEWS, 16 March 2011)
HEALTH: Trillion-dollar brain drain: Enormous costs of mental health problems in Europe not matched by research investment. (NATURE | 4 October 2011 | Issue 478, 15)

Read More>> Michael Jackson is an epitome of great epoch

These are few recent stories of highly industrialized and wealthy nations. What could be imaginable condition of the Third World Nations?

Religion of science-technology, which is not universal phenomenon, failed to bring promised salvation to entire humanity globally or locally!
 
And the experts, who work in their boxes of specialization and have blinkered view of the world, find no answer/s.

In such a situation, can I be autonomous? Not until I reflect upon what I eat and wear and patronize, and why; until the end of all rationale beyond the most publicized term ‘Global’. Then there is possibility of creative action/ inaction. That’s what “Local” means.

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Quote:

...the social and finacial development which is called 

the industrial revolution. — H. G. Wells, 

A Short History of the World. 1922.

(Read: development 'of/in' inequality — my correction )

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Big Nations, Small Nations or Community Republics

Big Nations, Small Nations or Community Republics:

Aborigine Republics as Model for a Million Nations

Srishtiyoga means Reunion with Mother Nature

John Papworth often and rightly acclaims the Fourth World of ethnic communities... and small nations: Indeed 'small is beautiful'! That is, the autonomy – self-empowerment – of communities.

He, also, often says large nations will break up (which may include India). We saw break up of the USSR, and, also, coming together of European nations, the formation of EU. Perhaps both have been victims of economy in the present era!

Every region has its own natural, cultural, and prevailing political / economic conditions. The West grew with industrialization. However, the First World India, which often depends upon external aids, cannot be put on the same rank that of the EU or the US. The difference is it has no physical borders.

Even Urban India today cannot be called the First World India, because of the widespread presence of slum dwellers and the squatters, who are displaced and migrated from rural India.

There are more than 600,000 villages in India, where 70% Indians live, even after many have migrated to urban areas; no one knows 'how many'. (The Census Surveys miss the data of squatters in urban areas and along transit lines.) This is where the mainstream India is.

The Fifth World India

In Mumbai, they – the slum dwellers – are about 60 to 70 millions. So also in other metropolitan cities and towns.

The slum dwellers and squatters in urban areas belong to the Fifth World India -- the world of the marginalized, displaced and destitute in their homeland.

In this age of Information Technology, a very few may, or may not, perceive what ‘India’ is beyond the word Nation and the related dogmas. Even the idea of ‘Swaraj’, the self-rule, is fashioned after the British Raj, faces the same dilemma.

India may be better understood by an example of plants. Because plants have fewer needs than even animals.

In a patch of virgin forest several plant species coexist, so also wildlife, but certainly not the humans of advanced civilized societies. For them forest is for ruthless consumption or aesthetics of visual hedonism (tourism industry).

A large banyan spreads over centuries, over a large area and by its adventitious roots supports and balances itself. India is somewhat like that, now, of course, affected by the parasite of mega-cities -- the icons of centralized power in the civilized society.

Plants / forests don’t recognize the notion of 'nation'; so also many Indians. This idea of 'nationhood' cannot be measured by the ‘standards’, set by any authority or the so-called superior cultures. Their superiority, even in this age, is based on power of wealth, science-technology-economy-market and/or military! Isn't it barbarism!

Small nations or big nations! The quality of their citizens' personal and collective life at micro level remains to be assessed. It is impossible even at a town level.

Sample surveys at regional, national or international level are merely eyewash. They only pamper the ego of various vested interests - local or Global.

Nationhood needs to be tested on continued basis at micro-level of every individual's wellbeing in the functioning of the State! Indeed a tall claim! Any of the most efficient technology today is not capable to do this task. It is not as easy as sending a spaceship.

Clearly the Industrial Revolution, through science and technology, has failed to deliver the promised 'Utopia', called social and economic development, to mankind.

May be it has strengthened the powers of a miniscule minority section of Industrial Society. There is nothing to deify them, as the elite tend to do.

The science and technology are still in incubation stage — five thousand years of civilized society is pittance in geological time!

"For they know not what they do." And to know, what kind of and magnitude of calamity should befall upon them?

There is still a way out for the educated ignorant. There still exist numbers of republics of Aborigine Communities that hail from remote ancient times. They still exist in India and rest of world. Their time-tested wisdom helps them to sustain in spite of the onslaught by civilized societies. Their life-line is, in one word, Srishtiyoga, i.e. continued "Reunion with Mother Nature".

Aborigine Republics as Model for a Million Nations

Aborigine communities are "republics". This is not a concept but their millennia old unwritten practice.

These republics do not relate to the civilized concept or notion of 'nation', which is based on "ownership of land" and "centralized power" in civilized societies from beginning, or the start of "Urban Revolution".

The very civilized idea of "ownership of land" is most evil concept and is the "root cause" of all the strife mankind has been going through for 5000 years.

This statement will certainly not be palatable even to the atheist, agnostic or socialist sects, or not even to the so-called religious who believe in any branded God, or not even our friend John Papworth!

The suggestion to give-up "Ownership of Land" would amount to worst sacrilege of all; worst than "Original Sin".

There is lot to learn about a few fundamental things of living in harmony with Nature for us from the aborigines.

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.