As we approach the darkest day of the year

an article via . . . http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Bliss11.htm in honor of the darkest day of the year.

In Praise of Sweet Darkness 
by Shepherd Bliss

In recent years I have written articles with titles like “Dark Clouds Over America” and “Torture Memories.” Our nation’s war-making and other threatening behavior have disturbed me.  My study of Peak Oil and Climate Change has convinced me that we are in for a dark time as we run low on fossil fuels and over-heat this special planet.  At first, I found this depressing.  I have come to see that the loss of cheap energy can also be a great opportunity, depending on how we respond.

In addition to our external responses of doing things such as conserving energy and being more efficient, making a transition to renewable energy sources, and relocalizing, there is much that we can do mentally to prepare for post-carbon societies.

One opportunity is to re-consider the role of darkness and down times as part of a natural cycle. Everything that lives perishes — individuals, relationships, nations, empires, species, even planets.  Other living things combine from what remains of the departed to replace them.  It’s a natural cycle.  I see it everyday on my organic Kokopelli Farm in Sonoma County. My lively compost piles are full of spent plants, chicken manure, kitchen scraps, and a wide variety of once-alive but now-decaying organic matter. That compost nourishes my berries, apples, and other fruit and plants, giving them life.

Endarkenment is an essential, often-maligned aspect of that cycle, which frightens some.  What goes into my compost pile has many colors, including green, yellow, red, and even purple.  What comes out is darker — brown or black. I regularly bring in manure as fertilizer to feed my soil. “Shoveling shit,” as farmers call it, has been a pleasure.  This “brown gold” will bring forth tasty fruit. Darkness can be fruitful, in various forms, which some people shy away from.

I write in praise of certain kinds of darkness, which the Welsh-American David Whyte describes in his poem “Sweet Darkness.” Darkness can be many things, including a passageway from one thing to another. Whyte’s poem enabled me to see more deeply into the possibilities of sweetness in a time of darkness — literal, seasonal, political, and figurative. I do not mean to deny that evil forms of darkness also exist.

“The night will give you a horizon/ further than you can see,” Whyte’s poem assured me, providing me something to look forward to. A full moon was scheduled for that night, so I went to check it out.  Indeed, there was much to see with the benefit of that diffuse, less-focused light. I felt a larger context within which we humans dwell. In addition to the guidance of our daylight logic, we could benefit from the insight of night-time’s more diffuse lunar light within its ample darkness.

This essay began as I prepared to make my way back to visit Northern New Mexico during the darkest month of the year.  I used to hang out there with a Chicana curandera (folk healer) who glowed in the dark.  I have unfinished business in New Mexico, as well as in old Mexico and Chile — darknesses that I left behind, rather than integrated.  I’m on a soul retrieval. Integrating one’s own darknesses and those that have come toward one is essential para vida (for true life).

Industrial societies tend to light up the night with headlights, streetlights, houselights and many other lights, rather than relish the dark’s unique gifts. In contrast to contemporary Western attempts to ignore and deny the dark with its abundant refreshing qualities, indigenous people and some religious traditions tend to embrace it.

In Semitic languages and early Christianity “black” and “wise” were associated. St. John of the Cross wrote about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” a journey which was difficult but ultimately restorative. When one is called to el mundo subterraneo (the underworld) or is dragged there by a dark force, he or she may return with rich stories to tell.

But in the United States today, darkness has taken on a negative, even racist tone.  “Dark” is even used to label that which is allegedly inferior. Malevolent forms of darkness do indeed exist.  But my concern in this essay is with benevolent, or sweet, darkness.

Whyte’s poem stimulated me to seek more poems about darkness. “Night cancels the business of day,” the Persian poet Rumi declared back in the thirteenth century.  “Be refreshed in the darkness,” he added. “Midway along the journey of life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood.” Dante begins “The Divine Comedy,” which many consider the greatest European poem ever written.

“You darkness, that I come from and love so much,” Rilke wrote, once again describing that wider context within which we live.  Scientists describe it as dark matter and dark energy, which is still mysterious to them, such as how gravity works and holds us on the orbiting Earth. “If I reached my hands down, near the earth,/ I could take handfuls of darkness!/ A darkness was always there, which we never noticed,” Minnesota poet Robert Bly writes.

Kentucky farmer/poet Wendell Berry encourages us to “know that the dark, too,/ blooms and sings,/and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.” Theodore Roethke adds, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see,/ I meet my shadow in the deepening shade.”  He reminds us that we carry our personal darkness, our shadow, with us all the time, casting it behind as we walk, usually unaware.

Boston poet May Sarton celebrates the dark Indian goddess Kali and reminds us that “without darkness/ Nothing comes to birth.”

Maybe this darkness is not as bad as I originally thought that cold, wet morning when Whyte’s poem arrived and lead me into myself and to other poems.

“Nothing makes the light, the wonder, the treasure stand out as well as darkness,” writes Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves. She describes “night-consciousness,” noting, “Things are different at night… Night is when we are closer to ourselves, closer to essential ideas and feelings that do not register so much during the day.”

In darkness we can dream, revealing parts of ourselves that are otherwise hidden. “We need to dream the dark as process, and dream the dark as change, to create the dark in a new image. Because the dark creates us,” social activist Starhawk writes in her book Dreaming the Dark. Starhawk later adds, “How do we find the dark within and transform it, own it as our own power? How do we dream it into a new image, dream it into actions that will change the world into a place where no more horror stories happen, where there are no more victims?”

Sometimes I conceive of the Dark as a dance partner; it feels more feminine than masculine.  I do not try to lead, but rather to follow.

Weaving the multiple benefits of darkness into my life (and avoiding its pitfalls) seems to be my main Winter task here at the end of 2006, as 2007 approaches.  In the darkness one can rest and be renewed. Spring may come again, with a different set of abundant gifts.

Shepherd Bliss is a retired college teacher who now farms in Sonoma County, CA. He has contributed to 19 books, most recently to Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,” edited by Maxine Hong Kingston (www.vowvop.org ). He can be reached at: sb3@pon.net.

How to put time on your side

www.odemagazine.com http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/43/how_to_put_time_on_your_side

Jon Kabat-Zinn | May 2007 issue

How to put time on your side

Our world is changing radically right under our noses in ways that have never before been experienced by the human nervous system. In light of the enormity of these changes, it might be a good idea to reflect on just how they may be affecting our lives. My guess is we notice what’s going on. We have been too caught up in adapting to the new possibilities and challenges, learning to use the new technologies to get more done and get it done faster, and in the process becoming completely dependent on them, even addicted. Whether we realize it or not, we are being swept along in a current of time acceleration that shows no signs of abating. The new technologies, touted as producing gains in efficiency and leisure, threaten to rob us of both, if they haven’t already done so. Do you know anyone who says he has more free time than he did 10 years ago? It is said that the pace of our lives now is being driven by an inexorable exponential acceleration known as Moore’s Law (after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who first stated it), which governs the size and speed of integrated circuits. Every 18 months, the computing power and speed of the next generation of microprocessors doubles while their sizes are cut in half and their cost remains about the same. This combination increases the seduction of computer systems (for work and home), consumer products, games, and portable electronic devices, which easily leads to the loss of all sense of measure and direction as we respond willy-nilly to the increasing volumes of email, voicemail, faxes, pages and cell phone calls coming in from all corners of the planet. True, much of what comes to us is from people we care about and with whom we want to stay connected. But where is there a sense of balance? How do we regulate the pace of ubiquitous connectivity, and the expectation of instantaneous responses? With our mobile phones and wireless Palm devices, it’s now possible to be so connected that we can be in touch with anyone and everyone at any time, and do business anywhere. But have you noticed that in the process, we are running the risk of being out of touch with ourselves? We easily forget that our primary connection to life is through our own interior realms—the experiencing of our own bodies and all our senses, including the mind, which allow us to touch and be touched by the world, and to act appropriately in response to it. To take advantage of that gift, we need moments that are not filled with anything, in which we do not jump to get in one more phone call or send one more email, or plan one more event, or add to our “To-Do” lists. Moments of reflection, of mulling, of thinking things over, of thoughtfulness. With all this talk about connectivity, what about connectivity to ourselves? Are we becoming so connected to everybody else that we are never where we actually are? When we are at the beach we are on the cell phone, so are we really there? When we are walking down the street we are on the cell phone, so are we really there? Have we given up the possibility of being present in the face of the accelerating pace of life and the infinite possibilities for instant connection? What about calling ourselves up for a change, checking in and seeing what we are up to? What about just being in touch with how we are feeling, even in those moments when we may be feeling numb, or overwhelmed, or bored, or disjointed, or anxious or depressed, or needing to get one more thing done? What about being more connected to our bodies, and to the universe of sensations through which we experience the outer landscape? What about lingering for more than an automatic moment and becoming aware of whatever is arising in our minds: our emotions and moods, our feelings, our thoughts, our beliefs? Much of the time, our newfound technological connectivity serves no real purpose; it’s just habit, and pushes the bounds of absurdity as with the joke about commuters all exclaiming into their mobile phones at the same time, informing family and friends, “I’m getting on the train now.” What is wrong with just getting on the train without that piece of information being communicated? If we were simply telling ourselves that we were boarding the train, it might be an experience of mindfulness, and therefore useful in cultivating awareness of the present moment unfolding. I am getting on the train (and knowing it). I am getting off the train (and knowing it). That is true wakefulness. But tell someone else all about it? What’s the point? It can annihilate the magic of the moment through distraction and diversion. Somehow, being alone in and with our experience is no longer deemed sufficient, even though it is our life in that moment. This is not to say that much of the technology we are developing is not extremely useful. Cell phones allow parents to stay in touch with their children, and everyone to co-ordinate the day’s activities in useful ways. Computers and printers and their powerful software capabilities, coupled with the capacity to exchange documents instantly by email anywhere and access information instantly, allow us to get more work done in a day than we might have gotten done in a week 15 years ago. I am not by any stretch of the imagination advocating a Luddite-like condemnation of technological development, or romantically wishing to turn the clock back to a simpler age. But I do think it is important for us to be mindful of all the new and increasingly powerful ways available to us today to lose ourselves in the outer and forget about the inner so that we become even more out of touch with ourselves. The more we are yanked into the outer world with all these new technology-driven habits that our nervous system has never before encountered, the more important it may be for us to develop a robust counterbalance in the inner world: one that calms and tunes the nervous system and puts it into the service of living wisely, both for ourselves and for others. This counterbalance can be cultivated by bringing greater mindfulness to our bodies, to our minds, and to our experiences—including the very moments in which we are using the technology to stay connected. Otherwise, we may wind up at a very high risk of living robotic lives, no longer even having time to contemplate who is doing all this doing, who is getting somewhere that looks more desirable, and is it really a better place to be? Excerpted from Resurgence magazine (March/April 2007), an English journal of spirituality and social change. Jon Kabat-Zinn is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, well known for his teachings about mindfulness and meditation as a way to help people overcome stress and disease. This originally appeared in this book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness (Hyperion).

© 2007 Ode Magazine USA Inc.

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 1 of 6)

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 2 of 6)

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 3 of 6)

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 4 of 6)

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 5 of 6)

There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads (part 6 of 6)

TV and internet effects on sleep

From the Vancouver Sun http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=27995160-bde1-4421-9796-fb7e2c6e5047&k=84897

 

More late nite web surfing = more yawning

Joene Hendry

Reuters

Thursday, August 23, 2007

NEW YORK — People who spend more pre-bedtime hours using the Internet or watching television are more likely to report that they don’t get enough sleep, even though they sleep almost as long as people who spend fewer pre-bedtime hours in front of a computer or television screen, survey findings show.

“While many people use electronic media, such as the Internet, it should be noted that the longer media use before sleep can trigger (self-perceived) insufficient sleep,” lead researcher Dr. Nakamori Suganuma, of Osaka University, Japan, told Reuters Health.

He and colleagues obtained data on self-perceived sleep problems and the use of electronic media prior to bedtime from a total of 5,875 Japanese respondents to two separate Internet-based surveys. Their findings are published in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms.

Nearly half of the respondents associated their lack of sleep with electronic media use before bedtime. Those reporting longer electronic media use were also more likely to report insufficient sleep.

Overall, 29 per cent of light users (less than 1.5 hours) listed electronic media use as a possible cause of their insufficient sleep. By comparison, 40 per cent of medium users (1.5 to three hours) and 54 per cent of heavy users (more than three hours) said the same.

However, longer Internet and television use before bedtime did not correlate with less actual sleep.

While heavy users averaged about three more hours in front of computer or television screens than light users, the heavy users averaged only about 12 minutes less pre-workday sleep time than light users.

Notably, Suganuma said, “Internet use affected self-perceived insufficient sleep more than TV watching… not only in younger Internet users but also in middle-aged or aged Internet users.”

Up to 38 per cent of the respondents listed accessing the Internet far into the night as a possible cause for their sleep disturbance, while about 25 per cent said watching television far into the night caused their sleep problems.

The findings suggest that while heavy computer and television use before bedtime has a small effect on sleep duration, it may have a more significant effect on “sleep demand and sleep quality,” Suganuma notes.

(SOURCE: Sleep and Biological Rhythms, July 2007)

Reuters

Advertising is Brain Damage

From Adbusters #73, Aug-Sep 2007
http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/73/Advertising_is_Brain_Damage.html


Nathan AdlerAs global warming deepens, and a somber, new reality sinks in, people are starting to ask some uncomfortable questions: Why am I being told to buy a new car a dozen times every day? Why am I constantly being urged to splurge on myself ‘because I’m worth it’? Why, in this ecological age of ours, do we need a $500-billion industry telling us thousands of times each day to consume more? In the affluent West (where 80 percent of the global ad dollars are spent), don’t we already consume enough?

The industry is trying very hard to ward off this kind of thinking. Al Gore was given the rock star treatment at its annual bash in Cannes this year. Young & Rubicam ceo Hamish McLennan, recently told the New York Times: “The consumer sentiment out there is just palpable . . . we have to change the way people consume.” MTV’s slick new campaign, created by six of America’s top agencies and slated to be shown in 162 countries, is all about “environmentally friendly lifestyle choices among youth.” The copy on their web site, MTVswitch.com, reads: “OK, so we like to consume �” that’s fine �” Switch isn’t here to tell you to start hugging trees and become an eco-warrior �” although it’s fine, if that’s what you’re into. Nah, all we’re here to do is ask you to make little changes to the way you consume. So small are these changes that you won’t even notice them.”

Andrew PeatMeanwhile, an even more ominous threat to the industry is looming: People are starting to blame invasive advertising for the stress in their lives. A few of generations ago, people encountered only a few dozen ads in a typical day. Today, 3,000 marketing messages a day flow into the average North American brain. That’s more hype, clutter, sex and violence than many of us can handle on top of all the other pressures of modern life. So, to avoid the stress, the invasion of privacy, the information overload, the erosion of empathy, people are switching off on ad-infested TV, magazines and web sites. There are also fledgling movements now to tax ads, to ban them from schools and even cities (see “São Paolo: A City Without Ads,” later in this issue).

The fun image that advertising has traditionally enjoyed is now giving way to a much darker picture of advertising as mental pollution. As more and more people make the connection between advertising and their own mental health, the ad game will be changed forever.

street yoga

Gross National Happiness

 http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bhutan/gnh.html

A year after the legalization of television in Bhutan, Orville Schell, longtime observer of Asian affairs, returned to this sequestered kingdom to assess how it was faring with its new digital influences. He also examined the new challenges facing the nation in meeting a growing demand for information technology.

Schell, the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, most recently is the author of Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La From the Himalayas to Hollywood (Henry Holt & Company, 2001).



Looking down from Kungachoeling Monastery through fluttering prayer flags to the blindingly green rice paddies of the Paro River Valley below, one feels utterly escaped from the surly bonds of Earth. Not far from me, a solemn monk lights incense before the Buddha. In the silence of this remote and lovely refuge–one of the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan’s hundreds of functioning Tibetan Buddhist shrines–computer chips, frequent flyer miles, the World Trade Organization, and IPOs seem part of another world.

Especially here on the Indian subcontinent, awash in corruption, ethnic struggle, illiteracy, pollution, poverty, and the clash of civilizations, Bhutan’s pacifism, paternalism, and egalitarianism stand apart. It is hardly surprising that people here often speak of “the outside world” as if it were another celestial body. Under the spell of this tranquil monastery, the unexpected hum of distant engines is like an unwelcome tocsin awaking one from reverie. I spot a minuscule white dot against a peak as one of Druk Air’s two small planes drifts down out of the cumulus clouds toward the country’s only airfield.

The yearning of postmodern Westerners to escape the velvet shackles of our hard-won progress to places like Bhutan is hardly new. In 1921, when the British governor of Bengal, Lord Ronaldshay, visited Bhutan, he too felt intoxicated at the idea of leaving the aggressive, modern world behind. “Just as Alice, when she walked through the looking glass, found herself in a new and whimsical world,” he effused, “so we, when we crossed the Pa Chu [and entered Bhutan], found ourselves as though caught up on some magic time machine fitted fantastically with a reverse.”

From such accounts, a Western fabric of mythology was woven, one that allows the tourism industry even today to proclaim Bhutan as “the last Shangri-La.” No larger than Switzerland but with a population of less than 700,000, Bhutan is, in fact, a place of peace and natural beauty. Indeed, His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck refers to his country as “a paradise on earth.” It boasts awesome snow-capped mountains, including Gangkhar Puensum, which, at 22,623 feet, is the highest unclimbed peak in the world. Climbers are not permitted to scale these peaks lest they “disturb the spirits.” It has abundant wildlife, including 165 species of mammal, like the endangered snow leopard, golden langur, and takin. Because a 1995 law mandates that 60 percent of Bhutan’s land must remain forested (while another 26 percent is already protected as parkland), it has extensive virgin forestlands. And its pastoral villages are filled with friendly people who show few signs of modern dispossession or malaise, perhaps because their government spends almost 18 percent of its national budget on education and health care (compared with only 2 to 3 percent for a country like China).

“The real appeal of Bhutan is that we feel human,” says Tshewang Dendup, a graduate of the documentary film program at the University of California, Berkeley, who now works at the Bhutan Broadcasting Service. “Maybe we are somewhat isolated from the world, but we feel part of a living community that is not just connected by wires. That’s why 95 percent of us exchange students return home. By and large, you would have to say people are happy here.”

But “one way or another, change is coming,” King Wangchuck told the former New York Times South Asia correspondent Barbara Crossette a few years ago. “Being a small country, we do not have economic power. We do not have military muscle. We cannot play a dominant international role, because of our small size and population and because we are a landlocked country. The only factor we can fall back on . . . which can strengthen Bhutan’s sovereignty and our different identity is the unique culture we have.” And so the government has kept a tight grip on matters of culture, which have grown out of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage of Tantric Mahayana Buddhism. In 1999, only 7,000 foreign visitors were granted visas, and for 2000 the figure rose only to 7,559. Police are empowered to detain any Bhutanese not wearing official national dress, the robelike gho for men and the jacket and apronlike kira for women. It was perfectly in keeping with this strict but benign paternalism that the King should proclaim that “gross national happiness is more important than gross national product” because “happiness takes precedence over economic prosperity in our national development process.”

“Happiness has usually been considered a utopian issue,” acknowledged Bhutan’s foreign minister, Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, at a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) meeting in Seoul, Korea, in 1998. But he emphasized that because an “individual’s quest for happiness and inner and outer freedom is the most precious endeavor, society’s ideal of governance and polity should promote this endeavor.” What is needed, he continued, is “to ask how the dramatic changes propelling us into the 21st century will affect prospects for happiness [and] how information technology will affect people’s happiness.”

These were good questions, because only half a year later the Internet and television, both locally broadcast programs and imported cable channels, were due to arrive, and it was tempting to view Bhutan as a kind of a nouvelle canary in the cyber mine shaft. So, just a year after the advent of these two tectonic technologies, I traveled to this Buddhist kingdom, which had been so determined to maintain its own identity, to see how it was weathering the penetration of the information and entertainment highways.

One thing was immediately obvious: whereas the old controls on trade, tourism, and foreign investment had depended on limiting physical access, Bhutan was now confronting new and more elusive kinds of globalizing influences that would not be impeded by mountains, rivers, and jungles. TV and the Internet had radically recast the terms of intrusion, and many Bhutanese were worried about what Dasho Meghraj Gurung, the managing director of the country’s postal service, Bhutan Post, characterizes as “the negative aspects of modernization” and “the mad race for the acquisition of material things in life . . . which lead to a lack of public accountability.”

Walking past the main intersection in Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital city, only the most attentive person would notice the small blue and white sign that hangs unobtrusively beneath a second-floor window announcing a cybercafé. Upstairs, there is only a small room decorated with a single Buddha image dangling from a wall switch and three homemade booths equipped with ancient computers. Pema Wangchuck, a shy 20-something who had been trained in India, tells me that he opened the cybercafé in this rented room a month ago, making it one of the first two Internet beachheads in Thimphu. He charges 3 ngultrum ($0.07) per minute to go online.

“Until recently, all I knew of the Internet was what I read in books and magazines, but I believed the Internet was something extraordinary,” Mr. Wangchuck says. “Now, as I understand it better, I see that it really is a boon. If people learn how to use IT, the benefit could be infinite, because it will help break our isolation and give us easy access to the world!”

When I ask him if his customers come in just to surf the Net, he somewhat despondently replies, “It’s so expensive that they get nervous about the cost. So it’s mostly just girls who come in to answer a little email. It’s not yet for everybody’s pocket. Most will have to just remain excited.” Mr. Wangchuck says that the main challenge confronting his incipient business is simply connecting to the Internet–all 32 dial-up lines to DrukNet, Bhutan’s only ISP, were busy so often.

DrukNet was inaugurated on June 2, 1999, as part of the silver jubilee of King Wangchuck’s coronation (druk means “dragon” in Bhutan’s official language, Dzongkha). It was initially conceived as providing only intracountry email service, a hermetically sealed communications system that would keep the rest of the world at bay. But the king finally concluded that Bhutanese should be able to navigate the entire World Wide Web like most other people. The DrukNet inauguration ceremony, which was attended by chanting monks and Queen Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, the eldest of a quartet of sister-queens, heralded the king as the “Light of the Cyber Age.”

Despite the royal fanfare, DrukNet functions much like any small ISP. “I don’t think we’ll make any profit for several years, but we must factor in the social service aspect of our business,” says Ganga Sharma, a young engineer of Nepali extraction who was trained in the United States as a Fulbright Fellow at the Florida Institute of Technology and oversees DrukNet’s hardware. As we talked, he stood admiring his Dell PowerEdge Server at the telecommunications division of the Ministry of Communications. Its blinking lights indicated that all available lines to the outside world through British Telecommunications’ Concert UK hookup were being used by Bhutan’s 600 Internet subscribers.

Part of DrukNet’s mandate is to provide, at the same cost, service from any point in Bhutan. This means that someone going online in a provincial town over a local phone line connected by microwave links to the capital pays the same phone and user charges as someone next door to the server. The hope was, and still is, that more schools, tour companies, businesses, and government offices around the country will thus be encouraged to go online. If successful, DrukNet will help Bhutan leap-frog the landline phase of the telecommunications revolution and go right to microwave links.

When I raise the question of access to undesirable sites–no small concern in a traditionalist country that has been so dedicated to filtering out objectionable influences–Mr. Sharma acknowledges that DrukNet did censor certain sights with some X-Stop gateway hardware from a company in California. No one I talked to, however, including the vice minister of communications, seemed deeply concerned about the kinds of First Amendment issues that such censorship would raise in the United States.

At the end of 2001, DrukNet had almost 1,000 dial-up customers. Bhutanese tour and trekking companies, the mainstay of the country’s fragile economy, have become some of the Internet’s biggest enthusiasts. Where previously they had to fax brochures to hundreds of overseas travel agents and call clients, now, the manager of one trekking company told me, the use of Web sites and email has reduced their international phone bills by 90 percent. By the end of its first year, DrukNet hosted 15 new Web sites.

One of the leaders of Bhutan’s cyberrevolution is 38-year-old Umesh Pradhan, a bright Nepali with a master’s degree from George Washington University. After working with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Mr. Pradhan set up a software consulting and training firm. But with the arrival of DrukNet, he rented a two-room suite at Jojo’s, Thimphu’s first shopping arcade, moved in eight computers, and opened an Internet café. When I visited Jojo’s, it was under construction, but it would soon have a laundromat, a nightclub, a restaurant, and a food court, as well as Mr. Pradhan’s InfoTech Solutions Café.

In the spring of 2000, something quite unexpected occurred. Kuensel, Bhutan’s only newspaper, happened to mention Mr. Pradesh’s café. The BBC picked up the story from Kuensel’s Web site, and then Time magazine ran an item. Suddenly quaint little Bhutan, hitherto known to the outside world as the last holdout against the wages of technolust, became something of a cybercelebrity. Alas, the publicity may have been global, but it hardly brought a stampede of customers to Mr. Pradhan’s café.

“The problem is that there are only three or four people in Thimphu who are real IT pros, and there is not yet any real entrepreneurial spirit,” Mr. Pradhan complains. “The government has spent all these years putting its heads in the sand, and now the gap is growing. The question is: could they really catch up and take advantage of this revolution?”

But there is another question: did they want to catch up? Or did Bhutan want to continue marching to a somewhat different drummer? After all, gross national happiness may not be advanced by jumping too recklessly into the gale-force winds of the global marketplace and technological change.

Mr. Pradhan is clear about what Bhutan should do, and he sees people’s interest in email as having already “broken” initial resistance to the Internet. He stands in the hallway outside his “café” with his American friend Bob Morgenthaler, a sometimes consultant and something of a Bhutan groupie, and unrolls a set of floor plans for the future. Gesticulating grandly, he and Mr. Morgenthaler describe which walls they are going to knock down to expand the café, where the food court is going in, and how other shops will turn Jojo’s into “one-stop shopping.”

“I don’t buy this pure Shangri-La thing,” interjects Mr. Morgenthaler. “To publicize Bhutanese culture and give it a stake in the cyberworld is to save it. I mean, there are already over 20 video rental stores in Thimphu. Some people here have seen more video movies than anyone on the planet! And don’t forget, lots of people have long had satellite dishes. A small place like this needs the Internet even more than a large place. Bhutan’s one college will never have the library resources of a big university abroad, so the Internet is the perfect answer.”

The presence of DrukNet has started to have a catalytic effect on sleepy Thimphu. For example, Bede Key, an English expatriate who worked with the British Voluntary Service Overseas and then married a Bhutanese woman, set up the Visual Institute of Technology with a Bhutanese partner, Singye Dorji. Their goal was not only to train Bhutanese to use computers, but to develop an indigenous software industry.

“It’s an ambitious goal,” admits Mr. Key, whose drip-dry white shirt, black trousers, tufty hair, and manner of speaking in acronyms would enable him to share in the community of international geekdom anywhere. “Eighty percent of Bhutanese language software is developed outside the country,” he says, with outrage tingeing his voice. “The challenge is to redress the balance and to build self-reliance here by developing the export of IT.”

As Mr. Key sees it, the foundations for this seemingly improbable dream are actually pretty solid. “Bhutan has a very young population [45 percent of its citizens are under 15 years of age] and growing unemployment among its rapidly increasing class of educated young people,” he says. “And there are probably a good number of ex-pats who wouldn’t mind doing a little time here in ‘Shangri-La.’”

As reluctant as some in the government might have been to open Bhutan to the outside world, the minister of communications formed a division of information technology to help plan Bhutan’s technological future.

“I admit I’m a computer buff,” says Kinley Dorji (Dorji is a common Bhutanese surname), the head of the division, as we meet in his small office, where he sits in his gho in front of a new computer monitor. “But we’re just beginning. How are we going to do it all? Right now I have no idea.” The bright, energetic Cornell University MBA gives a self-deprecating laugh. “We also have to develop a private sector, because sufficient motivation will not come out of the bureaucracy. But our market is small, so it’s hard to find people to fund projects. We need to prove that we are entrepreneurs before we’ll ever get capital. So possibilities of success are not immediately great.”

I ask Kinley Dorji about resistance to getting Bhutan online.

“Things are moving too fast even for America, so imagine how people feel here!” he exclaims. “Sure, our government is a little reluctant. What they say is: Do we know enough about IT to avoid harm? Everyone worries about pornography. TV and the Internet will, of course, infringe on the time people spend at monastery festivals.

“We should give credit to our government’s policy and the way the idea of Bhutan as something unique has helped protect us. The answer isn’t to say that we don’t want the Internet and all that it brings. At some point, more involvement with the world is inevitable. Instead of looking at it with fear, let’s look at it as an opportunity and trust in our record of balancing things. Remember, most remote islands connected to the Internet long ago. It kills distance. Think of it! It’s a bit utopian but a powerful image of the Internet’s promise.”

If Druk Air–with only several flights a week, the smallest national carrier in the world–can be described as “small pipes,” the Internet offers Bhutan large pipes. But perhaps the largest pipes now linking Bhutan to the outside belong to another arriviste medium. Until spring of 1999, Bhutan was one of the last countries in the world without television. At the same time that the Internet was inaugurated, the Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS) started a nightly one-hour TV news and variety show. But the effect of this event paled in comparison with the jolt caused by the arrival of cable television from beyond Bhutan’s protective mountain ranges. While some had already bought illegal satellite dishes, it was not until several local cable companies set up shop that ordinary people truly entered mondo cable.

Dago Beda, the cheerful and energetic managing director of Etho Metho Treks and Tours, is an astute business person who basically fell into the cable business. In 1999, she and her partner, Rinzy Dorji, began hooking up local subscribers to a satellite dish.

“We weren’t sure what would happen,” she coyly tells me in her office overlooking Thimphu’s only movie theater. “But then all the government said to us was, ‘No overhead lines, please.’ So we took the lines down. We’ve done a lot of digging for underground cables since!”

Everyone, it seemed, was a bit surprised when the government did nothing. “We just started to do what we wanted, but we ourselves thought that BBS should have done cable,” Ms. Beda continues, shrugging diffidently. “Finally, they made some rules. So we applied and then got a license.”

Thus was born Sigma Cable Service, offering 26 channels, including Home Box Office, Star Plus, BBC, Turner Network Television, Cartoon Network, MTV, and ten pay-for-view channels. Sigma charges 1,500 nu ($52) for a hook-up and a 200 nu ($7) monthly subscription fee. By the beginning of 2002, Sigma had signed up about 3,000 subscribers.

“But you know, when TV finally did come on in June 1999, I really felt a little sorry,” she says, suddenly turning somewhat triste. “Gone are the days when we were so naive, when people just talked together, read, and gardened rather than let the TV tell us how it should be. Now we’ve entered a new world.”

If she feels so ambivalent about this “new world,” why did she become part of the cable-ization of Bhutan?

“Well, I thought better us than someone else,” she explains. “We, at least, can control things. Once we attain our target, I want to review all our channels. We want the BBC, Hallmark Channel, and Nature, but I want to get rid of the action and professional wrestling channel.” She grows increasingly indignant. “I want to say to our viewers that they should not watch this trash! I mean, we still have a moral duty to our kids, and we do care for our country! We can always go to the government and ask them to control it.”

It was confusing to hear Ms. Beda criticize something being shown on her own cable system as if she were somehow not involved with it being there. When I point out the obvious contradiction, she just sighs. “The problem comes from too much freedom. TV has happened outside, and it’s going to happen here,” she says. “But how do we go about keeping TV or the Internet in balance? Maybe it can happen differently in Bhutan. So far, we have managed, because if there is one thing we Bhutanese have, it’s our culture to anchor us against the world.”

But this cultural safeguard is precisely what the advent of the Internet and cable threaten. In fact, since the advent, nothing has agitated the Bhutanese quite so much as the sudden appearance on their screens of beefy World Wrestling Federation ogres body-slamming each other in a way that is hardly calculated to earn much good karma.

The Sigma office is on Thimphu’s main street in a dusty shop where a pack of young children are often playing on the stoop, sometimes dressing up like American professional wrestlers and imitating their theatrical style of fighting. When I visit one evening, I find a bored young woman, Deychan Dema, inside behind a rickety table with a phone and an order pad with carbon paper. (Bhutan is the only place where I have seen carbon paper in the last decade.) The office is decorated with a few tattered posters and the de rigueur portrait of the king above gritty shelves of soft drinks and beer. A glassy-eyed boy sits before a new color TV, surfing desultorily, with a remote, between TNT, the Cartoon Network, MTV, and an action film.

Rinzy Dorji, Ms. Beda’s partner was out of the office. In fact, he had been out ever since a saboteur mysteriously started cutting Sigma cables several days earlier. Like a county lineman, Rinzy Dorji was trying to restore service to those customers deprived of their nightly 26-channel fix.

“When football is on, people now stay up very late,” says Ms. Dema, a neighborhood girl hired to answer Sigma’s phone, sheepishly. “And kids know exactly when the World Wrestling Federation is on. I like wrestling and Popeye.”

“In terms of actually putting controls in effect, I think the government sort of gave up on TV,” complains Kinlay Dorjee, who works for the World Wildlife Fund. “We have strict controls on foreign investment, although I hear this may change. But we have no such controls on television. And now we are also getting hooked on the Internet. Suddenly we find ourselves stuck in front of so many screens! It has become a kind of compulsion, so that we feel it was almost like ignoring God, or Buddha, to not answer our screens!”

Actually, it may not be long before Bhutanese have only one screen to answer. While cable service presently has no connection to the Internet, part of the reason that Ms. Beda and Rinzy Dorji were interested in cable was because they understood that ultimately it could provide pipes for the Internet as well.

Kinley Dorji, the Columbia University-educated editor of Kuensel, has equipped his office with new computers, many of which are linked to the Internet over modem. He is an articulate man of about 40 whose wire-rimmed glasses and tousled hair provide an interesting counterpoint to his pert, gray gho with white cuffs.

As we sit chatting in his office, I ask him how he views all the changes rocking Bhutan. “TV and the Internet are very new to us, and their impact on family and society has not been fully understood,” he says without hesitation. “After all, we are talking about a traditional society that only recently came out of isolation. We feel vulnerable. In the past, we always saw these threats in the form of physical occupation. But with TV and the Internet, we must now fear a new threat–a kind of aerial threat.”

A wistful look began to furrow Kinley Dorji’s brow. “It’s not that TV and the Internet are bad, but that we’re so small, unprepared, and vulnerable. To use things like TV and the Internet intelligently and not lose our uniqueness, our people need to be better educated. If you let a subsistence Himalayan farmer watch sexy girls in five-star hotel pools, . . . ” his sentence trails off. “Well, you have to ask: do human beings ever learn without going through these mistakes themselves?”

This issue is being pondered by Karma Ura, an Oxford-educated author and the director of the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a government organization that is very much involved in questions of cultural preservation and national identity in Bhutan. “I thought, well, since the king is controlling things at the helm, he should control TV, too,” says Mr. Ura. “But then, he let go. If all barriers are broken down, then all decisions will become economic.” It is rare, indeed, in Bhutan to hear anyone criticize the king so directly.

When I ask Yeshey Jimba, Bhutan’s minister of finance about cable and pro wrestling, he pauses. “There is no doubt that TV is now uncontrolled,” he finally replies. “But to do anything about it leads to criticism of being authoritarian, and we Bhutanese are freedom-loving people.” He smiles wanly. “Anyway, in certain ways I think the days of such control are over.”

Indeed, when I ask him about the prospect of allowing foreign investment in Bhutan, he hints that it would not be long before changes would be made here as well. Until 2001, Bhutan had a uniquely strict policy against foreign investment; the only outside development monies permitted were aid projects funded by the United Nations and such benign countries as Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland. This policy changed when two Bhutanese companies engaged in the development of the country’s tourism infrastructure were permitted to form joint ventures with several Singaporean and Indian investment groups to build first-class resorts and hotels.

When I ask Mr. Jimba about the Internet, he flips his bright orange minister’s sash, or kabne, over the shoulder of his checkered gho and points proudly to a new computer on his desk. “I’ve only had it two days,” he crows with pride. “We have to embrace the Internet, learn from it as much as possible, and use it to good effect. But we must also inculcate respect for our culture and values in our people, thereby building up our own strength and resistance.”

As we talk, I hear the chanting of monks begin from across the courtyard of the Taschichoedzong, the fort-cum-monastery that was the ancient summer residence of the government and clergy and that presently houses the offices of the king and Je Khenpo, Bhutan’s spiritual patriarch. Mr. Jimba is himself a practicing Buddhist, as are most officials in Bhutan’s government. As soon as he notices me listening to the chanting, he triumphantly proclaims, “You see? Right over there, we have monks! Buddhism here won’t weaken!”

In the contest of cable TV and the World Wide Web vs. Buddhism, it’s hard to say which will prevail. The fates of other traditional societies, from Alaska to Bali, Mongolia, and Tahiti, that are struggling to keep their cultural balance through “selective modernization” do not inspire great optimism. But Bhutan is a curious holdout where the kind of go-go entrepreneurial energy that has besieged so much of the hyperkinetic global marketplace has been kept in abeyance. Bhutan, a small, reluctant Buddhist refuge, seeks to measure its progress in long-term kalpas (a measure of millions of years in the Buddhist faith) of good karma and gross national happiness rather than in quarterly corporate bottom lines. But now, as the siren song of the outside world’s infatuation with IT (never mind global terror) begins to reverberate throughout Bhutan, even in this once quintessentially isolated Himalayan land, a debate about globalization is gathering intensity.

Unlike countries where the only concern is how to get a bigger piece of the global market, Bhutan, at least, is debating the wager. In fact, the deputy minister of communications, Leki Dorji, tells me that he has undertaken a survey on the effects of the Internet and TV and is hoping to organize a media-advisory committee to “do some soul-searching” about formulating a coherent media policy. In almost every conversation, two starkly contradictory imperatives are implicit: control heterodox influences from outside lest they corrupt Bhutanese culture, or open up to gain the obvious benefits of the larger world’s hybrid vigor.

But one would have to conclude that Bhutan has passed an important milestone in convergence with the outside world. Even one of the architects of gross national happiness, current chairman of the Council of Ministers and foreign minister Jigmi Thinley, agrees. “We can continue to be cautious, but being cautious does not mean shutting our eyes,” he tells me in his office upstairs from the National Assembly.

“Shutting our eyes and cloistering ourselves as we did at one time during the policy of isolation served us once. But then we took the conscious decision to strengthen our sovereignty through involvement in the world. That means some intrusion, and we are prepared for that.”

What about maintaining the integrity of Bhutan’s vaunted traditional culture?

“Some people tend to look at culture as static, but actually culture is always evolving,” he replies emphatically. “It is a tool, and when a tool becomes obsolete, you have to change it.”

Perhaps, then, for this hesitant land to be electronically linked to the outside is not so bad. After all, such interaction does not involve invading armies, legions of businessmen, or phalanxes of ganja-fueled backpackers. On both the Internet and TV, unwelcome intrusions by real people can still be kept at bay.

“Yes, we need money, but we should never forget that money is not the end,” emphasizes the division of information technology’s Kinley Dorji. “Whenever indigenous people meet with outsiders, the indigenous people seem to lose. The difference between a physical occupation and a virtual one could be huge. So, while it still may be hard to get to Bhutan physically as a place, we may nonetheless connect it more closely to the outside world.” He pauses a moment and then adds somewhat tentatively, “Maybe I just see the bright side.”

When Queen Wangchuck, who like her three sisters now has an email address, attended the opening of DrukNet in 1999, she optimistically described “Bhutan’s dream for the Internet” as being a window through which her people “will gain access to the whole world without ever having to leave the tranquility of their tiny remote villages.”

The thought of cable television and the Internet tamed and harnessed to minuscule Bhutan’s humanism is an enchanting dream. But the real question is not simply how well the government succeeds in controlling traditional physical invaders, but whether the Bhutanese and their culture will be strong enough to resist virtual influences.

“The challenge is this: can a nice tshechu dance at a monastery compete with the World Wrestling Federation?” asks Kay Kirby, a former Los Angeles Times editor who married a Bhutanese and moved to Thimphu more than six years ago. “Since people are very aware here, if any place can survive the onslaught, Bhutan can. Until now, Bhutanese culture has held its own. This may be wishful thinking, but I have hope.” Everyone, it seems, is a little suspicious of optimism.

By the end of 2001, the BBS had expanded its nightly television programming. But the most seductive entrant in the television wars was still cable. Around Thimpu, it was all too familiar a sight to see young Bhutanese boys dressed up like Andre the Giant, the Undertaker, or Dude mock body-slamming each other as they played, as if the Lord Buddha was the patron saint of the World Wrestling Federation.

Internet use in Bhutan, too, is growing rapidly. In September 2001, DrukNet added another upstream provider–KDTI in Japan–and had almost 1,000 dial-up customers and about 40 Web sites. A survey by the Bhutan division of information technology found an acute shortage of people trained in IT skills. This, despite the fact that, in addition to the pioneering Visual Institute of Technology, Bhutan now boasts six private IT training institutes. Also, the first two cybercafés in Thimphu now find themselves in competition with four other upstarts, including one run by Bhutan’s postal service and another called Digital Shangri-La. Mr. Pradhan’s Internet café at Jojo’s is going strong, with several new rooms of computers; he is even providing computer-literacy training to a complement of Bhutanese policemen.

Perhaps for this small landlocked kingdom, the arrival of the Internet and cable TV will be providence. Indeed, even as virtual video images from outside the country were cascading into Bhutan at the end of last year, the country’s tourist industry was contracting, hammered by the global economic downturn, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and technical problems with tiny Druk Air. As of the beginning of October, only 4,460 tourists had managed to arrive physically in 2001, just more than half the number of the previous year.

“Yes, we are vulnerable,” admits Mr. Dendup at the BBS. But he insists that with one cross-country road that is blocked by snow in winter and landslides in summer, and with one airline composed of only two planes that often cannot fly because of bad weather, technology is just what Bhutan needs. “For example, take my father who is a priest at a temple,” he playfully told me several months ago. “When I recently bought him a CD player, he didn’t even know what it was. Now he brings it out every time monks come for a puja ceremony. And what does he play? Religious music! He has taken this new high-tech thing and put it to his own uses! We have a saying in Bhutan: ‘If it is medicine, you should take it from an enemy. But if it is poison, you should refuse it from a friend.’”



“Gross National Happiness,” by Orville Schell. Originally published in Red Herring, January 15, 2002.

Guidelines for July Low Impact Month

http://theidproject.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=415&sid=47415a3668b1de0a9445bbed5519c1c5 http://theidproject.com/ 

I pledge to lower my impact on the environment for one month.

Below I have listed the general guidelines that I came up with and also the Compacter rules. Any portion and combination of the “rules” can be followed. This can be as hardcore or low core as you want it to be. We also suggest that daily meditation practice, journaling the experience and frequent posts on the discussion board be a part of the month. Please start posting suggestions and resources so we can all help each other. There is a lot of information out there.

I pledge to lower my impact on the environment for one month.

This can be as hardcore or low core as you want it to be. We also suggest that daily meditation practice, journaling the experience and frequent posts on the discussion board be a part of the month.

Suggested Guidelines for July Month of Low Impact

1. Limiting Waste

-plastic bags

-coffee cups

-napkins

-energy, lights, air conditioning, cell phone charging, computers

2. Travel

-public transportation, ride share

-walking, biking

-planning ahead to make less trips in the car (if you have one)

3. Food

-buy local

-no bottles water

-try to eat less meat

4. Other

-limiting general purchasing and consumption of new products

-trying to use second hand stores, library, Craig’s list, freecycle.com, downloading music and movies…

5. Personal

-find something personal that you would like to add to your month.

Compacter Guidelines

The aim of the Compacters is:

1. To go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the U.S. consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc. – a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact

2. To reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er)

3. To simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact)

*First principle- don’t buy new products of any kind (from stores, web sites, etc.)

*Second principle- borrow or buy used

*a few exceptions- using the “fair and reasonable person” standard –i.e., you’ll know in your heart when you’re rationalizing a violation:

-food, drink, and necessary medicine (no elective treatments like Viagra or Botox)

-necessary cleaning products, but not equipment (don’t go out and buy the Dyson Animal, for example)

-socks and underwear (utilitarian- non-couture or ornamental)

-pajamas for the children

*Utilitarian services allowed (plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, veterinarians, dog/house-sitters, fire/paramedics, dry cleaners, house cleaners, etc.) Support local and encourage used parts (rebuilt transmission, salvaged headlight unit, etc.)

*Recreational services (massage, etc.) and local artisanal items – Good sources for gifts, but should not be over-indulged in for personal gratification

*Charitable contributions (Seva, Heifer, and the like) – an even better source for gifts

*Plants and cut flowers- whenever possible cultivate from free cuttings or seeds. Ok in extreme moderation (yo, incoming oxy) when purchased from local businesses (i.e. not the Target Garden Shop)- and again, within reason

*Art supplies – First line of attack: SCRAP. When absolutely necessary (for the professionals and talented amateurs in the group), from local businesses

*Magazines, newspapers, Netflix- renewals only, no new subscriptions. Even better to consume online

*Video rentals and downloadable music files (non-material) – freely shared and legal, please

“Instead of watching TV, watch your mind.”

“Instead of watching TV, watch your mind.”
Are you up to the 30-Day Practice Challenge?

http://theworsthorse.net/thirtyday.html 

PEOPLE SURE HAVE IDEAS ABOUT MEDITATION. Lots of people think it’s easy, it’s blissful, it’s an essential part of every Buddhist’s every day. Well, it can be all of those things. It also can not. It can be difficult, and aggravating. And when they feel like being straight-up, a whole lot of Buddhists cop to the fact that they often spend more time thinking that they should be meditating than actually doing it.

Andrea McQuillin, assistant editor of Shambhala Sun magazine, copped to it and did something about it. A couple months back, she gently threw down the gauntlet to friends and colleagues in an email announcing a new experiment. Were people willing to put their butts on the line? Andrea sat down herself to answer The Worst Horse’s questions about “The 30-day Practice Challenge.”

TWH: So, tell us about the “30-day Practice Challenge.”

AM: The 30-day practice challenge is a group of self-selected practitioners from disparate places who like the idea of practicing regularly and have committed to sitting every day for 30-days.

What do you mean by “practice” here?

I think that I would say any kind of contemplative physical discipline, but especially sitting meditation, such as mindfulness of breathing. We have formed, I think, a loose de facto virtual sangha.

For those who don’t know, what’s a sangha?

A sangha is made up of individual practitioners who each acknowledge that they are, as individuals, committed to waking up. What makes them a group is that in making the commitment to themselves, they acknowledge the presence of others who have made the same commitment. Their mere existence encourages one another, and they can actively encourage one another in a sane and ultimately kind way, if they really dig it.

The group is connected by 1, a commitment to practice daily, and 2, some kind of electronic communication, either email or an electronic message board.

How did the idea come to you?     

The 30-day practice challenge was an idea that my friend Jessica, a fellow-practitioner, and I thought of. We were lamenting that our regular practice was waning. When we were in the same city, Jessica and I used to arrange to practice together quite a lot. But when she and her partner Aaron moved to Montreal a year and a half ago–though we kept in touch by email and phone–we lost the ability to practice “together.” So we decided that we would make regular “dates” to practice together, across the miles. And then that turned into a challenge to each other to sit every day for 30 days. Just as a lark, really. We thought that some of our friends and coworkers might enjoy the same thing. So just for my own amusement, I made a “contract” that people could read and sign. [An excerpt follows:]

“Join millions (well, now I think we’re about people from coast to coast as we attempt to practice every day for thirty days!

“You don’t have to be an expert meditator in a cave to accept this challenge. All you need is a quiet place to sit and 10 to 60 minutes a day. Who can’t spare that? Instead of watching TV for 30 minutes, watch your mind.

“What You’ll Get:
* Email support from your cross-country pals, who will also be meditating daily
* Daily dharma quotes by e-mail that will inspire you
* The ineffable benefits of meditation”

…I figured it would make the commitment more palpable, at least initially. The daily inspirational dharma quote [served] to remind people about their pledge, and to not get discouraged.

We often hear of meditation teachers imploring students to find others to practice with. Does it make a difference if they’re not actually there, sitting in a room with me?

Personally, I think there is still merit in having other physical bodies there in the room with you occasionally — it sharpens your practice. But I also think it’s important just to practice, and to not just think about doing it, or to talk about doing it.

Why is it important?

I think it’s important for me to practice, but I try not to judge others on whether they practice or not.

There are just so many ways that we can trick ourselves out of practicing. This is a way to trick us into practicing.

I’ve found that once you’ve been sitting for awhile, you can become a bit complacent. It’s easier to rest on past insights, and let the discipline slide. So then it’s more important than ever to do the daily practice, day-in, day-out. Just like you’re diligent about brushing your teeth. It’s a chance to state your intention and follow through, developing some sort of discipline in your everyday life. You just do it. But really, the only person you have to be honest with is yourself. No one knows if you’re doing the practice anyhow.

But there’s a way to “confess” if you’ve missed a day, right?

We created an opportunity for “confession,” which most people haven’t availed themselves of. Once a week, people could report in on how well they managed to practice every day. Clearly some people liked to do that, and others didn’t (because they never did).

I’m not really sure what function the “confession” serves, except to provide some sort of reset mechanism for people. It might be some sort of lurking catholicism in our approach…I don’t think it’s harmed anything (except to make a few people irritated).

Maybe the fact that they have to report in motivates some people. It’s like being checked on your homework. If someone cares enough to inquire about whether you did your homework or not, maybe just that sense of someone being interested in your practice is enough to get you on the cushion.

It’s not like we know when anyone is really practicing anyhow, even when they are actually ON the cushion. They could be working on their grocery list, or planning their next vacation, or rehashing the last one. I think the invitation, the sense that it’s possible to practice, is the main thing.

So, what’s the value of sitting with a “virtual” sangha, as opposed to with a real one?    

The “virtual sangha” experience is a bonus. Some people feel very isolated in their practice — either they can’t find practice-minded people around, or they are physically separated from their group of practice-minded people. It’s possible that some sort of virtual sangha thing really fits some people’s lifestyles. But it’s also true that with this kind of set up, you can still hide out if you want: you just put on your electronic game face and fake your way through. But hopefully the basic commitment and regular reminders create some sort of unbearable friction in that case.

From what you could knew of the first crop of “challengees,” did they have much in common? What kinds of things?

From what I know, they all have a sincere interest in practice, and a certain kind of loneliness due to the circumstances of their lives. Maybe they are so busy they don’t often have time to practice or study. Maybe they feel disconnected from their local community. Maybe they don’t care for face-to-face interaction. Maybe they just want to practice alone.

What if I sign up and I miss a day, or ten? What happens?

Nothing happens. And you work with that. It really doesn’t matter how much people practice, in the end, at least in my view. I think that if you are committed to practice then that doesn’t have any end-point particularly. So the 30-day thing is just an artificial incentive. It’s kind of nice to break it up, practically speaking, into some sort of periods, but the idea is for it to permeate your life.

Have you cheated?

No, I haven’t cheated. There are days when I haven’t practiced.

How do those days differ?

I actually miss practice. I don’t think that I ever thought that I would say that. But I definitely miss that opportunity to see what’s going on. If I don’t practice, I mainly feel like I spend the day running scared from my thoughts.

Did the others keep up with it? Would you do it again?

I do think that the thing had more energy at the beginning. I want to do it again and put more maintenance energy into it throughout. Need to think about it a bit, about how that would work. On the other hand, I don’t want to be a cruise director, particularly.

My feeling is that the 30-day Practice Challenge should just go on and on. I’m not really sure how to make that happen for the rest of this group. Myself, I’ve just been extending it over and over. I’ve found that in just orienting myself in this way toward practice, and knowing that there are other people who are trying to practice every day….that has changed the way I think of my day, and where practice fits in it.

Maybe we should make it a “Lifetime Practice Challenge.” I actually like that idea. Now that would be a GREAT challenge.

So: the first thirty days have gone by. What have you learned?

I’ve learned that I want to practice every day for the rest of my life. I’m not sure whether anyone is in this same boat, but that’s how I feel.

I’d like to know if the little experiment has worked for others. Maybe we should collect some data.

So… will the Challenge be renewed?

Oh, yes.

 

STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO JOIN THE NEXT ROUND OF THE CHALLENGE. (OR, START YOUR OWN!)
SEE ALSO:  The evolution of a great idea?: Tricycle’s “28-day Meditation Challenge.”

Nothing Wasted, Everything Gained

 http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/03/weisman.html

Nothing Wasted, Everything Gained

DAYCARE CENTER
Children playing on a seesaw lend a hand: The seesaw doubles as a pump, which operates the center’s swimming pool.

News: A Colombian scientific community’s radical experiment becomes a sustainable way of life

By Alan Weisman

March/April 1998 Issue

To get to Gaviotas from Bogotá, it takes 16 hours driving over the rutted, dust-choked roads of a dangerous no man’s land. If it’s raining, the trip will take several days navigating jeep-swallowing mud. Guerrillas and paramilitary roadblocks can further delay travel. Eventually, a green mass looms on the horizon, and aluminum sunflowers begin to dot the empty savanna. The latter turn out to be delicate windmills; the former is a 25,000-acre forest, rising improbably from an infertile tropical plain.

Amid the trees is a cluster of low white buildings and colorful houses with dramatic, swooping roofs, all bearing solar collectors. Begun in 1971 as a scientific experiment, Gaviotas is now a self-sufficient town of 200, supported by clean, renewable industries that have made the once improbable goal of zero emissions a reality.

The first Gaviotans were a handful of Bogotá engineers and soil chemists, persuaded by a Colombian visionary named Paolo Lugari to try to make an unlivable place livable. Lugari reasoned that someday expanding populations would have to inhabit hitherto inhospitable places. And because barren, sparsely settled savannas constitute much of the tropics, a research station in Colombia’s eastern plains could have global implications.

The scientists weren’t seeking an alternative lifestyle so much as applying common sense to use what little materials lay at hand. The first problem was finding pure water in this land of muddy, malarial streams. The hand pumps the Gaviotans invented to reach deep aquifers proved so easy to use they hooked them to children’s seesaws. Next they developed solar “kettles” to sterilize drinking water, windmills to convert mild tropical breezes into energy, solar water heaters that work in the rain, and soil-free hydroponic systems to raise edible and medicinal crops. These innovations have spread to other parts of Latin America; nearly 700 villages in Colombia alone now use the pumps developed in Gaviotas.

After years of experimentation, Gaviotas scientists discovered that Caribbean pines from Honduras could flourish in the area’s thin, highly acidic soil, and the bark resin could be harvested without cutting down the spreading forest. Tapped like maple syrup, the natural resin is used in paints, cosmetics, perfumes, and medicines in lieu of petroleum-based substances. When distilled in Gaviotas’ pollution-free factory, its byproduct is marketable turpentine.

Besides providing a sustainable living, the pines have also created what biologists call an unimaginable miracle: In their sheltered understory, a tropical forest not seen for millennia in these savannas has regenerated, restoring the habitat of already proliferating deer, hawks, and anteaters. The 250 native plant species thus far identified inspired Gaviotans to convert their pharmacy into an herbal apothecary and begin an ethnobotanical research lab with local Guahibo Indians. Many Guahibos and rural peasants now live in Gaviotas, riding to work on Gaviotas-designed savanna bicycles, the official mode of transportation. The newest projects include a purified water bottling plant and a musical instrument factory, using wood culled from the pine forest.

In the midst of Colombia’s ongoing civil upheaval, drug wars, and environmental stresses, Gaviotas has evolved into a community of peace and sanity. A place without police or politicians, it proves that even the leanest environments provide rich tools and resources if people choose to live sensibly. “If we can do it here,” says Paolo Lugari, “it can happen anywhere.”

Alan Weisman is the author of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, published by Chelsea Green Publishing this spring. Additional research by Jen Wieczorek.

 

Image: Antonin Kratochvil