Living Routes: Auroville 2007 Fall

Solitude Farm

This is Annie's blog entry... I believe that my experience at Solitude taught me about a multitude of components intrinsic to running an organic farm with a clear vision for social- and self- sustainability. Being present on a daily basis and open to interactions with whoever happened to also be there gave me the chance to engage with both travelers from around the world � who shared their stories � and with the local Tamil villagers � who shared their love and language. I loved being able...

Pitchandikulam Forest

Pitchandikulam Forest is a 63-acre patch of land on the outskirts of Auroville, India. Founded in 1973, Pitchandikulam�s mission was, and continues to be, the revival of the bits of Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF) that are still in existence. Throughout the centuries the TDEF has been almost completely wiped out by the many civilizations that have occupied the area. Today no more than 500 acres of undisturbed TDEF remains. Today Pitchandikulam Forest is an environmental...

Discipline Farm

Auroville is an intentional community in southern India. People from all over the world come to live here with the notion of realizing human unity. Auroville has also become a place for people to develop innovative ways to live sustainably in a holistic sense (spiritually, ecologically, personally). The working units that have sprouted up in this community reflectively promote different aspects of sustainability. Living Routes is a study abroad program that has for the last ten years...

My Work as A Pale Male at WomenPower

Throughout this semester I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with Auroville Village Action Group, specifically the WomenPower program. WomenPower uses microlending clubs as a basis for economically empowering Tamil women. With over 700 clubs and nearly 3,500 women in all of the clubs, WomenPower has built a strong reputation and becaome a powerful social force around Auroville. WomenPower also hosts many seminars, workshops, and Women's Days to introduce health issues,...

Martuvam Healing Forest

Martuvam Healing Forest began in 2002 by a man named Sivaraj, with help from the Netherlands based Isaimayam Trust, along with the Pitchandikulam bio-resource center. The healing forest was planted with herbs, bushes and trees that are used in the Siddha-system of medicine, a traditional form of south-Indian healing that is similar to Ayurvedic herbal healing. According to Sivaraj, his intent in creating the healing forest was to revive traditional healing practices by providing...

Pete's Solitude Entry

This is Pete Wackernagel's blog entry. Solitude is a farm who's primary vision is centered on self-sufficiency. This is vastly important to our studies of sustainability because self-sufficiency is effectively the apex of the pyramid of sustainability. They do not talk about sutainability at Solitude as a goal or as something that they are working toward, because this is irrelevant. Self-sufficiency lies beyond sustainability, and thus it is not even an issue. Sustainabilty is...

Yo Mind, Body, Spirit...Yeah Baby!

The most important thing this program taught me was awareness. I gained an awareness of myself, my body, my mind and some more options for the different spiritual paths that could save my soul. I've found some peace of mind. I've found some more of my authentic self. I've found out and saw and experienced for myself how wide the world really is and how much is actually going on. I've also realized that what Mother Teresa said was very right - "There are no great things, only...

Designing the Future through Devotion

When I choose to work at Upasana Design Studio I was thinking in terms of the future. But the most important thing I learned at the studio, and on this program, in general is to think in terms of the present. Upasana means "devotion." To design devotion is a task we partake in whether we realize it or not. We all choose to be devoted to something whether it be the Divine, money, freedom, academics, our family, friends, work, peanut butter and jelly. We choose to use...

Ecological Design

For the Sustainability in Practice Paper I wrote about ecological design and my thesis was: One of the most environementally sustainable methods is the ecological aproach to the design of our infrastructure in which design attempts to integrate into the natural environment's processes. Here are some sources for that: Rocky Mountain Institute http://www.rmi.org/ Ecological Design Institute...

Thesis: Water Scarcity

Most people turn on the tap, the shower, the washing machine or the hose with a steady stream of fresh, readily available water. Some never think twice about where the water comes from, or how lucky they are to have this wonderful amenity. Many do not understand how much water gets over-used. Globally, humans have used far too much water without thinking, and our most vital resource is quickly depleting. Due to inadequate water distribution to countries in need, poor policies and...

Conventional vs. Organic Farming ... My Study on Local and Global Sustainability

My Local and Global Sustainability paper is on the issue of hunger and food security. It's a debate between the conventional farming that the Green Revolution kick started and Organic or Sustainable Farming methods that are now being put into practice since the 1990's. My thesis: Hunger has been a world issue since the beginning of mankind, but now as a more advanced populous we have greater control over the issue. The Green Revolution was supposed to be the �panacea� for...

Ayurvedic Medicine and Yoga

When people from the west hear the term “Ayurvedic medicine” they either have no idea what it means, they associate it with a place like India, or they think of a resort/massage center. The main principle of western medicine is focused on treating symptoms as opposed to finding the underlying cause. Treating symptoms can work, but usually it is temporary. An aspirin for a headache might not be as sufficient as a glass of water. Ayurvedic medicine is making its way into the west but...

Solitude for Service Learning

For the three weeks of the service learning project I chose to spend my time at Solitude Farm. The site functioned as a restaurant, working community, and living commmunity for me, for I worked, slept and ate my meals there. For several people from a local Tamil village it served as a working community only. And, for the "guest" who came for lunch, Solitude served as a restaraunt. In my experiences there I was fortunate to meet a wide range of people of many different walks...

New Friends and Great Food

For the past three weeks I have been working at Naturellement, a small food production company that always smells like freshly baked cookies and is run entirely by women. Naturellement was started in 1991 by a Swedish Aurovillian woman named Martina. The company makes jams, marmalades, syrups, baked goods, and several other products for distribution throughout Auroville. Martina employs 19 women from local villages around Auroville, giving them self-empowering work and training...

MatrimanDEAR to My Heart: Making Gold DISCoveries

This Is John Huston's Blog My first day was full of butterflies and cold feet. I really had no idea of the work I would be doing or the people I would be working with. As they dissipated on the bike ride into the workers gate I was accepted into the community of the Matrimandir. Strict rules are engaged upon those who are newcomers or visitors of Auroville especially around the Matrimandir and the use of it as a tool for meditation, but those restrictions are lifted when you pass...

reflex on Sadhana

Sadhana forest was an experience that was less about the actual work but more about the people. But that�s just me. Each member from a different place in the world, but all could all communicate in the language that is becoming the lost language of Babel. English. Traveling here and there only stopping off to rest and experience a different way of life. Each thinking it would be that of just forestation and living a simpler less consumptive way of life, but no. We all experienced tenfold...

forging at solitude farm

Solitude is a farming community where I have been doing my internship. The fields range with a variety of crops, from peanuts, bananas, papaya, rice and various indigenous millet grains. Occasionally helping with the farm work, my focus has been learning the art of blacksmithing. Under the thatched roof structure behind the kitchen (see picture 1), Lowell has taught me the principles of forging and how to repair basic tools and make knives. The metal used were old truck springs (picture 2)...

Maratuvam Healing Forest

Passing through the tiny village of Annai Nagar, herds of goat and various cattle block the small winding roads that lead to the Maratuvam healing forest. Upon entering the herbal garden one is greeted by Shivaraj, the founder of the forest, and his family with welcoming hearts. We soon learned that the healing forest promotes all kinds of healing practices. From drinking mint tea at the first sign of sickness to working with the mentally and physically challenged children through song...

Maturvam Healing Forest

During our three weeks at the Maturvam Healing Forest our time was spent in various places. We spent days with mentally handicapped children from Pondicherry, painting the clinic-to-be, helping Shivraj organize the foundation of his herbal garden, and pursuing our yoga practices. There were four of us working at Matuvam, two of the girls chose to live there while we commuted every morning and afternoon. It was one of the most memorable parts of the day. Our ride took us through the...

Service Learning with Auroville Village Action Trust

One of the most interactive ways which Living Routes students learn about and contribute to Auroville is through the three week Service Learning project. My Service Learning project was to help create the 2006-2007 Auroville Village Action Trust (AVAT) Annual Report. AVAT began in 2000 and consists of eight individual units which promote interaction with villages and Auroville as well as strive for sustainable development. Each separate group has its own focus, ranging from...

Sadhana Forest

Sadhana Forest is an Auroville community that was established on 19 December 2003. The mission of Sadhana Forest is multifaceted. The main focus of the community is reforestation, with a focus on planting edible, indigenous tree species to replace the invasive species Acacia auriculiformis that has taken over much of the forested land. Another important function of Sadhana Forest is that it is a place for travelers, mostly young adults, to come and experience alternative ways of living,...

Sadhana Forest

The sun rises over Sadhana Forest(1). The wake-up bell rings, as usual, at 6:00 in the morning. Today, as usual, it takes the second bell a half an hour later, signifying work is starting to pull the majority of Living Routes students out of bed, blearily grabbing for their delicious neem toothpaste on the way to the main hut. This morning Chris and Page are making breakfast- today it is ragi porridge and fruit salad! It is always ragi and fruit salad. Ragi is a brown gloppy porridge made...

Natural Farming at Solitude

For the last three weeks I engaged in organic/natural farming at Solitude Farm. The foundation of this farm was influenced by the writings and applications Masanobu Fukuoka's farming methods. He is a Japanese natural farmer who wrote "The One Straw Revolution." I highly recommend this book for anyone that is interested in natural farming and its simplistic philosophies . Krishna is the "father" or "manager" of Solitude and founded the farm 15 years ago. At...

Hey, it's been awhile I know, but hey, I'm in India!

It�s MOONSOONING! Rain, here, there and everywhere. Clothes moldy, shoes wet and life flourishing all around. My days at Sadhana forest which is where I�m doing my service learning, are spent indoors reading and talking and contemplating the thoughts that come with the beating of rain on a keat roof. The past four days, I�ve been put up from the daily routine of planting trees to help reforest on the greenbelt of Auroville or helping with the earthen-clay oven, because of infected exposed...

Collectivism vs individualism

As the semester progresses and the students move out of the first phase of community building - the romantic phase - struggles over different visions of sustainability and learning strategies start to emerge. It is a difficult period but one which we know is essential for the transformation of the group. A clear division emerges between those students who appreciate and are seeking the challenges of community and simple sustainable living and those who are looking for individual answers...

One Third Along the Path

Week four of the Living Routes program has just come to a close. Last week we started our Cohort (half the group) and Base Group (5 or 6 students) meetings and this week we had our first individual meetings between academic staff and students. The students for the most part enjoyed these meetings. Though some expressed dismay at the way some base groups were further along in their ILP (Individual Learning Plan) and their preparation for their SLP (Service Learning Project) than others....

The �Logic� of Eco-Logic-al Education

In the last blog entry I introduced the concept and practice of experiential education, and started to explain the process of learning in the Living Routes (LR) program. This blog entry picks up with the same thread of inquiry but moves in the direction of describing the curriculum of LR. Here we will briefly discuss the actual nuts and bolts of class topics as well as the methodological approach. If I could boil down the curriculum of this program into one word it would be:...

A long Landing

The digital rendering of the plane on the screen stuttered forward, like glitch over the map of India closing in on Chennai. 32 miles left to go. Estimated time until the end of a 20 hour journey, approximately 19 minutes left to go. The info screen cycling through its rounds landed on German, reading (something in German, probably miles) and then 24. With the seat belt undone and my legs bouncing underneath me, perched atop seat 42A, 14 minutes left to go. Scanning the faces of my...

Education and True Learning

�You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.� - Buckminster Fuller Educational systems, at all levels from kindergarten to post-graduate, tend to become entrenched in certain patterns of behavior. Like any institution that is funded by certain interests and centers of power, the agenda is reflected and perpetuated in the practices that comprise the entire process of learning. Whether you look at the...

A long haul

Greetings friends, families, lovers, and all other browsers! A week and a half after getting here I write this for you all: an account of my trip here. It would be wrong to talk about the present without first setting this foundation. I wrote this the morning after arriving and will leave it that way to keep it authentic. Enjoy! It's about 7:30 here and I've been up since about 5:30; I had my best night of sleep yet and had a nice complete meditation for the first time since...

A Moment of Peace

As I sit here in an open soccer field, watching the clouds majestically pass overhead and listening to the layers of bird songs coming from all sides, I lose touch with my location. A universal peace pervades, one which transcends any geographical or political boundaries. I begin to notice the lush tropical vegetation forming the field edge, the brick-red color of the soil, and again so persistenly the songs of birds, all which I have never heard or seen before setting foot...

An Auspicious Beginning

The Fall 2007 Living Routes program in Auroville started yesterday, when all of the students arrived in the early morning, nearly at dawn. After a few hours of sleep, we had breakfast and started to meet each other, slowly adjusting to surroundings - new sounds, smells, animals, languages. After lunch we had our first orientation, learning about health and safety in Auroville and life in India. Right as we were starting the session, a pre-monsoon rain caught us by surprise, with wind...

Spiritual Sustainability

In preparation for the Auroville program I have embarked on my own search for a mentally sustainable lifestyle, and I have found myself in the perfect pre-place for such an endeavor. I am so curious to start the program and see to what approach the classes, especially the personal sustainability one, will take, but instead of waiting for an excuse to start I have started to make my own preparations. Pre-traveling in another country before coming straight to India was a good idea because...

Anxious Transient

Lying in bed, my head rocks incessantly waiting for the clock to turn from 11:59 to 12:00 marking one less day I have to wait until I meet my new friends, experience a nation so unlike my own that the paradigms I have come to relay on for support will be shattered replacing them with stronger ones that no one but my fellow travelers will have experienced. Twenty days, several seconds, minutes and hours until I�m slated along with about twenty-three others to start the Living...

It Goin' down - in the O'hare Airport

I's here - the adventure of a lifetime begins today. There has been so much planning and packing up to this point that I'm just ready to begin the unexpected. That's really what it is - an adventure into the mysterious realities abroad. I've learned how to prepare from my own experience overseas, and from those who have gone down this road before. To be prepared is I feel an insufficient statement because you can never really be completely prepared, and that's the fun of it - things...

Reflections and speculations about going to a very new place

With my hands on a keyboard and my eyes on the computer screen, the whole world seems easily accessible to me. And yet no matter how many pictures and stories my head digests about a place, there is no equivalent to actually being there, in the present. I'm just beginning to educate myself about a place called Auroville in a place called India and I don't daresay that that beginning will end until I am actually alive and awake at that place for some time. I'm awaiting to see how my...