A spark ignited
Purpose of the camp is to promote right practices to make every family as Healthy, Happy and Harmonious family! to understand and unison with mother nature with eco-friendly life style
Learning: Healthy cooking, ideal daily schedule, Yoga, eco-friendly life style, greatness of mother Nature and our responsibility towards environment.
Many volunteers and like minded families have joined together with great enthusiasm. Actively working for all the arrangements to help each other with sharing smiling faces in this 3 days camp!
Date: 23rd May 2015, Satish Kumar with Manavata UK family at evening campfire talk.
The Manavata Family walked more than 6 miles on their quest to reach the impeccably scenic Devil’s Dyke. It was a long walk and there were groans, pains and tiredness but this was soon completely wiped away. How? One answer: Satish Kumar. A man who walked 8000 miles from Mahatma Gandhi’s grave, Raj Ghat, to John F. Kennedy’s grave in Arlington with his friend E.P. Menon. They were inspired by Bertrand Russell, a world-renowned philosopher who, in 1961, was sent to prison due to his clarion call for total disarmament as nuclear clouds of the cold war loomed over the Earth. Satish and Menon, heard Bertrand’s call, all the way in Bangalore, and this inspired them to begin, what they termed, a ‘Peace Pilgrimage.’ They visited the nuclear capitals of the world- Moscow, London, Paris and Washington as they began their outcry for disarmament, in the most pious way-walking.
Satish said: ‘Trust is the root of peace. Fear is the root of war.’ He inspired and enlightened as he told us the importance of trust, just as he did, by embarking on the ‘Peace Pilgrimage’ without a penny in his pocket. They trusted the hospitality of human beings and this suggestion was given by Vinaba Bhave, their guru. He planted this simple thought in our head: trust in the goodness of people and when we thought about it a harmonious society is all that came to mind echoing the Manavata principle of a ‘healthy, happy and harmonious, A 3H world.’
Satish introduced us to the concept of Holism as he said ‘things are connected, nothing stands in isolation. We must see everything in their whole perspective as opposed to being isolated fragments.’ If we view Nature with its entire context, we would all realise that ‘nature isn’t out there, it’s within us. When you touch the earth, you are touching a divine spirit’ and to harm this, is a gross destruction of natural order. Satish is now the editor of Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine where he combines perspectives on ecology, social justice, philosophy, spirituality, sustainable development and the arts.
Satish Kumar’s talk created a virtuous stimulation inside every single one of our Manavata family and as the glowing embers of the campfire crackled between us, we felt so lucky to be in the presence of two modern apostles of peace: Satish Kumar and Srinivas Alluri. Between them, they have walked and cycled the breadth of the world twice to reignite Humanity. Satish Kumar urged us to destroy the divisions in our mind by the realisation that: ‘If I come to Pakistan as an Indian, I meet a Pakistani. If I come here as a Hindu, I meet a Muslim. But if I come here as a human being, I meet a human being. That’s the primary identity.’ That attitude that relates to what Manavata stands for perfectly, ‘Humanity is our Identity,’ as together they remind us the importance of compassion, trust and simplicity.
23rd of May 2015 will remain a special day for all of us. We take away the two great men’s ideals of peace, nature-loving, and kindness, in short, Humanity and embark upon bettering ourselves, our families and society. They open our eyes, our mind, our hearts and soul and kindle a spark which is left to the individual to keep alight in order to recover, preserve the beauty of this world.
Author: Snigda Tiruvuru