Satish Kumar is an Indian British activist, speaker, and former Jain monk. He is the founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College and Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
That was my childhood. I grew up with the monks, studying Sanskrit and meditating for hours in the morning and hours in the evening, and going once a day to the temple to give thanks to the monk.
Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world.
Human happiness, true prosperity and joyful living can only emerge from a life of elegant simplicity, embedded in the arts and crafts.
Earth is a living entity. And if it’s a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.
If you can kill animals, the same attitude can kill human beings. The mentality is the same which exploits nature and which creates wars.
Instead of seeking success we should look for fulfillment. And fulfillment is giving total attention to the process of living.
If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today.
We are not slaves of the market. Our human life has a greater meaning than making money, making profit, and working for the market or for multinational corporations.
The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning.
Quality and perfection are achieved with time. You do not create a perfect painting or a perfect poem by hurrying. Time is always coming.
The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way.
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth; Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust; Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace; Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred.
We need to learn to live in the here and now; this moment is the best moment. Live it fully.
We are dependent on each other. Therefore, replenishing the soil, replenishing society and being part of one continuum – that’s the new story.
If individuals start to walk on the path of spirit and feel a sense of the sacred connectedness, then social, economic and political problems will also begin to get resolved.
The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air – to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude.
I want to see a New Story education, which is not only about intellectual knowledge – not only about measurement – not only about academic achievement. It is also about heart, feelings, emotions, relationship, love, compassion, generosity, beauty. All these values are part of the heart.
Multinational corporations and a market economy have transformed human beings into instruments of making money. Human beings should be the end. And money should be the means to an end.
Each of us needs to eliminate our anger, fear and greed. The roots of social conflicts and political tensions are in personal anger, fear and greed.
Large numbers of young people are waking up. And they are saying, “We are not here just to work for multinational corporations and make money for them. We are here to live. We have to find the meaning of life.”
In addition to world conflicts, the most challenging problem we face today is hunger, deprivation and social injustice. Because we’re ruled by separate self-interest, we go on accumulating personal wealth, ignoring the well being of the others.
How much I can learn from a tree! The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer.
Education provides you a profession. But not vocation. You do it only because you need to work to earn money to buy your food, buy your clothes, pay the bills. Our life has a greater meaning, and a greater purpose.
Your children are not your children. They are lives longing for itself. They come here with their own destiny. Give them your love. They will find their own way.
I was pursuing the inner path at the expense of the rest of my being and the rest of the world.
If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers.
If happiness was in money or power, then America should be the happiest country in the world, but it is not.
Through yoga, meditation and other spiritual practices, we can learn the ways of personal equanimity. We can also learn how to use language in beneficial ways.
It is only an illusion that time is running out. This is where the problem of fear arises. We become anxious that “I don’t have enough time and I have to do everything quickly.” We need to turn our attention away from results, achievements and outcomes.
Monks will have three begging bowls for their food: one for water, one for liquid food, one for dry food.
In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values.
Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.
You have no skills in your hands. You have no education of understanding the meaning and the purpose and the compassion and the relationship. You have just a profession.
Of course, we all need to have basic necessities met, such as good health care, good food, good education and good housing. But what is good? Having too much is bad, as having too little is also bad.