Elizabeth Oldfield speaks with peace activist and former Jain Monk Satish Kumar at The Realisation Festival. 12/07/2023
Introduction
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a podcast about our deep values – what I call ‘sacred values’ – and the people behind the positions and the professions that so shape our common life. I’m really interested in the values that drive us, whether the same, whether different, and how we can develop more curiosity and empathy for the people we might find on the other side of our very many divides. In this episode, I spoke to Satish Kumar. Satish is a really legendary Indian British activist. He spent his more than 80 years campaigning for nuclear disarmament, for global peace, for ecological and environmental issues. He founded the Resurgence Trust, he was the editor of Resurgence Magazine for many decades, and he also co–founded Schumacher College, which is in Dorset, and is seen as the kind of spiritual home of the British environmental movement. He’s written seven books, and the most recent one is called “Radical Love”. We spoke live at the Realisation Festival in front of an audience about his childhood, growing up in the 1930s in India, about the influence of Mahatma Gandi and his ideas on Satish’s outlook and his perspective on life. We spoke about his childhood from age nine as a kind of itinerant monk, a Jain monk, and how he deals with people, maybe like me, who might respond to what he says with some degree of cynicism. There’s some reflections from me at the end, and I really hope you enjoy listening.
What is sacred to you? Satish Kumar’s answer
Elizabeth
I’m going to kick off with the question I asked everyone, which might be easier for you, Satish, than it is for many people, which is about what is sacred to you. And this is really getting at deep principles, deep values, things that you have tried to let orientate your life.
Satish Kumar
Thank you for having me on your podcast. A sense of the sacred for me, is to see life more than what we think it is. Life for me is divine. And we have a body of course – we are made of earth, air, fire, water – but we are also made up consciousness, and a spirit, and our hearts which are filled with love. And those are kind of Divine presence in each and every one of us. And not only humans, but in each and every living being. So for me, a tree is sacred. Animals are sacred. Water is sacred. Birds are sacred. And I come from an Indian tradition where we worship trees. We worship the river Ganges, we worship Mount Kailash. So nature is a Divine gift to us, and so they are imbibed by the Divine Spirit. And there’s a sense of a sacred: sacred is in life, and life is sacred. That’s a my sense of the sacred.
Elizabeth
So, I think we sometimes… It’s not always easy for people know what is to know what is sacred to them. And sometimes, the sacred is kind of forced to the surface when we get in a situation where we are tended to compromise on it, or we’re asked to compromise it. And we feel that deep kind of ‘ick’ reaction, that like “No, something is deeply wrong here.” Can you think of a time in your life where you might have compromised on what is sacred to you? And maybe you did, but maybe you didn’t, but you can think about those turning points where you are forced to choose if you will live your values or not.
Satish Kumar
I had been very lucky, very fortunate to have a mother who was a very spiritual being. And so from very beginning, I heard from her stories, songs, and the way she lived, or with vegetation, or with going to see the monks and listening to spiritual teachings. And so, from childhood, I grew up with that atmosphere. And then at age of nine, I left my mother, I left home, and I became a Jain monk: without shoes, without any money, just walking, begging with food, and seeing the sacred in every moment of life. So I’ve never felt ever, in my life, as far as my memory goes, anytime when I did no see everything sacred. And I have a sense of the reverence for the sacred life. So everything is sacred, and I’m vegetarian. But even if I eat vegetables, I eat vegetables with a sense of gratitude. And you say “thank you”: “Thank you, water. Thank you fire. Thank you food for nourishing me. What can I do in return for you?” So it’s a kind of inter–relationship, interconnection, between all living beings around me and myself. I see myself in all living beings, and I see all living beings in myself. That sense of unity, which comes from a Divine source, is for me a sense of the sacred.
Elizabeth
So I want to really try and understand where this is coming from in you, and the things that are formed you. So can we just stay on that: before you were nine, if you became a Jain monk. What were the big ideas in your childhood? You’ve said a little bit about your mom, but what was your dad like? What was your kind of day–to–day world that was forming the man who would become?
Satish Kumar
Unfortunately, I did not know my dad much, because when I was four years old, he died. And I remember him vaguely even now, his body lying in state, and my mother crying, my sisters crying, my family crying. And so I was wondering, “What is happening? What happened to my father?” So I asked my mother, “Why are you crying? Why father is not moving and talking to me, and going for a walk with me?” And my mother says, “Your father is dead. He will never speak to you again. He will never walk with you again. He will never be with us again.” And that, in a way, kind of challenged me, even at age four. I didn’t understand what being dead means. And so I asked my mother, “Is everybody dying? Will you die? Will I die?” And mother said, “Yes, we all die.” And so that was a kind of trigger, which made me think about what is death, what is life, at age five. And then I grew up with that thought in my mind. Age 6, age 7, age 8… And then by time I reached nine, I met my Guru, Jain guru, and I said to him, “Is there any way to stop people dying? Is there any way to stop Death coming to us?” And he said, “The only way to stop that is to renounce the world.”
Elizabeth
I want to hear more about that, because to make that decision age nine seems extraordinary. And there are ways that that could have been a harmful thing. What was it like for your mother losing her husband with a young child? Did that create instability? What was going on in the household as you were processing what death is?
Satish Kumar
I mean, my mother was more wise. She was crying and missing her husband, but she accepted that the cycle of life and death is part of our existence. And therefore, we are sad and we feel sorrow, and we mourn, and we grieve, and all that is a part of human life, and human heart and human psyche. But we have to also embrace the living and live in the present moment, and not feel anything what has gone in the past and death is now gone. So, although she was in mourning and in grief for a long period of time, but at the same time, she was a very wise woman, and she understood. She was a very spiritual person. This is why I said, I got my spirituality and my sense of the sacred from my mother.
Jain childhood and monkhood: simplicity, radical non–violence and compassion
Elizabeth
Was she was a Jain also?
Satish Kumar
Yes, she was.
Elizabeth
So, there may well be listeners who are not really familiar what that spiritual tradition entails. Could you say a little bit about it?
Satish Kumar
Jain tradition and Buddhist tradition, are contemporaries. They started at the same time. And the founder of Jain religion was Mahavira, contemporary to the Buddha. And he started teaching compassion and love for all living beings. And so, he was the founder of vegetarian food, for example, in India. And he asked people to write about ego and see yourself as part of the universe, rather than separate from the universe. So, you and trees are not separate, you and other human beings are not separate, you and gods are not separate. You embody a kind of Divine Spirit within you. So that kind of teaching he started 2600 years ago. And so, that lineage had continued, and my mother was part of that lineage. And so, compassion, kindness, generosity, love without any discrimination. You love not only those who love you, but you love those who don’t love you, without any expectation of being loved back. These are the kind of teachings of Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion in our time.
Elizabeth
And what in the life of an ordinary Jain – not necessarily one who becomes a wandering monk – what might be the practices? Or how would their life look different as someone who was a Jain, aside from the amazing ideals?
Satish Kumar
So, the first and foremost quality of a Jain is to live a simple life. Not too many possessions, not too many accumulation, not too many gadgets, not too many things, but lives simply so that we don’t consume and we don’t take too much time in building big houses or having big possession, having big business, having more money… All that kind of thing takes you away, all your time is spent on your business activities, and your money–only activities and so on. So, reduce your external activities, live a simple life so that you have more time for meditation, more time for singing, for mantras, for chanting, for being in nature, walking. A simple life is called ‘aparigraha’, which means “without being bounded” or “without being gripped by your possessions”. So you are not possessed by your possessions – that will be one great teaching. And secondly, non–violence. That was the most important principle, that you do no harm to anyone, even the smallest of the small creature you do no harm. See, I walked bare feet for nine years as a monk so that even if I tread on the earth, I tread very gently. And even, I had a brush in my hand, so if I walk at night when I don’t see if I can tread on something, I brushed before putting my foot down. And in the daytime, whenever I’m walking, my eyes are on the ground, so that I don’t tread on any ant or any insect or anything like that. So, non–violence goes much further than any in other religion, I would say, in Jain tradition.
Elizabeth
Wow. It’s a strict religion.
Satish Kumar
The greatest religion for Jain is non–violence. Those two principles Jains have. It is a very small religion – not many, maybe a few million, maybe 10 or 15 million people all together in India – but it’s very kind of profound teachings.
Elizabeth
So at age nine, you decided to leave your mom with… did you have siblings? Who were you leaving? That’s a double question – but tell me more about being nine and deciding to become a monk and leave everything behind you. Was it lonely? Hard? Wonderful? What was the emotional experience like?
Satish Kumar
Oh, no! I went into Jain monastic order with enthusiasm, and with great anticipation. And so, it was not loneliness. And I left home, I left family, and I was a wandering monk with a begging bowl. So you go from door to door, and back once a day. So even from age nine, I was eating for nine years as a monk only one once a day: midday, no breakfast, and no dinner, just midday meal. And I don’t take food from one house. I’ll go for five, or six, or ten houses and take a little here, a little there, a little there. So a Jain monk’s practice is to be like a honey bee. A honey bee goes from flower to flower, a little nectar here, a little nectar there. Never ever a flower has complained that the honey bee took too much nectar away.
Elizabeth
Because people have that people might not have enough to give a whole meal. Is that the idea? Or is it about relationships?
Satish Kumar
Exactly. And also, as a monk, I do not want people to give me food than they have to cook again. So, share a little bit of their meal so they can do without further cooking.
Elizabeth
And what was hard about that life?
Satish Kumar
It was quite hard, in the sense that for nine years, I was walking bare feet, and eating once a day, and mainly meditation in the morning for two hours, meditation in the evening for two hours. And the fasting once a month at least. And so, that was a kind of practice. But at the same time, it was a community, and I had a wonderful time. I learned Sanskrit, I learned philosophy, I learned lots of good things. I was a student, and my teacher was a great philosopher and a great teacher of Sanskrit language. And so, I learned lots of things. So for me, although it was hard physically, but psychologically, I was happy. And I was very committed to that life until I was 18 years old.
Embracing Gandhi: accessible spirituality, and the everyday struggle to learn to love
Elizabeth
So what made you leave?
Satish Kumar
That was the influence of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi came to me in my dream, and he said in my dream, “How many people can become monks? Only a few. That means spirituality becomes only for the monks, and it becomes very exclusive. But spirituality should be available to everybody, inclusive, not just the domain of few monks who become Jain monastics.” And so that dream shook me. And I said, “He’s right.” We are just thinking at the world as if it’s a kind of trap, a kind of sinful place, and we have to liberate ourselves from the world and find some sort of liberation, or some kind of “moksha”. And so that changed my mind. And by that time, my idea of death was also changed, and I understood that life is made of birth and death, so, it’s no big deal. And therefore, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, I decided to leave the monastic order. But once you become a monk, you are monk forever. You are not allowed to leave. So how do I leave? So one night after midnight, I had to run away, escape. And then I joined the Gandhian Ashram, and there I tried to practice spirituality, love, non–violence, as Mahatma Gandhi was practising, in everyday life. And seeing that spirituality is not separate from everyday living. It’s your motivation, your intention behind. If you do something for money, for power, prestige, for name for fame, for some kind of recognition, that is not spiritual. But if you are doing as a service, for love, with compassion, with kindness, as a mark of relationship, then then it’s spiritual. Spirituality id in your intention and motivation. So a business person can be a spiritual business man, or woman, or a politician can be a spiritual political person, like Mahatma Gandhi was a politician, but he was very spiritual politician. So whatever you do, everything has a place. And a normal life is a good life as long as your motivation is not selfish, not ego, and not “my success”, “my money”, “my house”, “me, me, me”. If you move from ‘me’ to ‘we’, and you move from ego to eco, then everything is spiritual. So that was the kernel of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, and that appealed to me very much. And so I lived in this Gandhian community, ashram, and that’s where I continued my spiritual practice.
Elizabeth
I’m going to ask you something that sounds extremely noisy. So, apologies, but I can’t help but think it probably took more than nine years for your ego to die entirely. Can you think back to times where that was challenging, where you were either in the ashram, where the parts of yourself which weren’t motivated by love, which weren’t motivated by the sacred or the unity… Please tell me you have them or had them at some point. Help us understand those struggles and what was overcome.
Satish Kumar
I’m not superhuman. I’m a human. And therefore, a little bit of fear, a little bit of anger, of anxiety, I have ego. They’re all part of me. And I have suffered from that. And I have gone through that kind of crisis in my own heart and my own life, that when I see that I want to do something which people will recognise, and so on. So that has been part of my life. I’m not trying to be superhuman, I am human, and those are a part of ourselves, but I recognise them because of my training, education, from my mother, from my Jain teachers and so on. I recognise it, then I say, “But yes, you have this anger, you have this fear, you have this anxiety, you have this ego, you want to be famous, you want to be recognised, etc. But it’s all passing, it’s all passes away. It’s not going to last forever. So, move on!” So I have a kind of struggle in my own heart all the time. And even now, I have this inner dialogue, where I always try to find a balance between the two: between ego and eco, between desires and letting go. So that struggle is continuous. Life is a the pilgrimage, life is a journey, it’s not a destination that I have reached now, and I’m enlightened, and I’m happy. No, that’s not the case. The case is that all the time, I fail, I fall down, and I go back into kind of crisis. And then I come out of it. So my training, and my childhood, and the Gandhian teachings, and so on, always helped me. And I’ve learned, you can learn to love. You can learn to be compassionate. Like you can learn to play piano, you can learn to play violin, you can learn to play cricket, in the same way, you can learn to be compassionate, learn to be kind. So I’m all the time learning and teaching myself, and learning from other teachers how to cultivate my compassion, and kindness and love, and how not to be too angry or egotistical and so on. Life’s struggle is not a kind of state of enlightenment.
Elizabeth
Few, thank you. That helps me a lot! I think it’s very easy when we read or hear spiritual teachers, people inviting us into what often sound sort of startlingly simple principles of love and justice – it’s easy to reject them because they sound impossible. And just lifting the lid a little bit, lifting the bonnet on the fact that there is a real human with an ego that you have to fight sometimes, and fears that you deal with, it really helps me connect. So, thank you.
The compassionate revolution: Vinoba Bhave and the Land Reform Movement in India
Elizabeth
I wanted to ask a little bit about the land reform that you were involved in before you went on your peace pilgrimage. It sounds extraordinary to me. Tell me what your teacher was doing? Essentially asking people to just give away land?
Satish Kumar
Yes! He was the kind of, you could say, heir to Mahatma Gandhi. His name was Vinoba Bhave, and he came across a time and a place where there was a lot of tension between landlords and the landless people. And they were fighting, and the landless people were killing the landlords. Because they were hungry, they were homeless, they were poor, they had no jobs. And so, in that violent situation, my teacher, Vinoba – Gandhian – went and said that we need to solve this problem non–violently. How can we do it? So he asked all the landless people in the village, “How much land do you want? And there were 14 families. And they said, “Each one of us can get two acres, which is a minimal, very small amount, but two acres of land. At least we have some source of food and some source of livelihood.” And so Vinoba Bhave invited landlords in a meeting together with the landless, and said, “These people want 80 acres. A very kind of reasonable demand. And you have so much land here. Is there anybody who can donate 80 acres to stop this violence, and the struggle, and this crisis?” And so, there was a stunned silence for a long time. But after about five minutes, one landlord stood up. His name was called Ramachandra Reddy, and he said, “I understand what you are saying. Without my compassion of heart, and my generosity: I want to practice that, and I will donate 100 acres of land as my gift to solve this problem of violence and killing. I understand the people are very poor, and they need livelihood.” And that was quite a miracle. Giving land – never heard of that. And so that was the beginning. And then Vinoba said, “This is not a problem of one place. This is a problem for the whole country. There are millions of landless people, very poor, Untouchables, low cost labourers… They have no income, they’ve got no livelihood. So I need to go around the country.” So he walked 100,000 miles for 12 years, asking in every village of India, North, South, East, West, and said, “If you have land, give one sixth of your land to the poor, and I’ll represent the poor.” And he was very successful. He collected 4 million acres of land and distributed it to the landless. So that was a kind of, you can say, a non–violent revolution, a compassionate revolution. Because getting land, 4 million acres of land, from landlord to give to the poor! People can give you money, people can give you something else, but giving land is not easy, especially in India. And so, there was a big movement. There was a kind of spiritual movement, I would say, a movement of compassion. I joined that movement. I walked with Vinoba and I went to the landlords myself, and asked the landlord to give land. And I also had difficulty in getting landlords to give land. I had to persuade them, and even sometimes develop non–violent resistance, and so on. But it was a very successful movement.
Elizabeth
What do you think were the ingredients that made it successful? I’m sort of wondering, if I was a landlord, you know, 200 years ago, and someone shows up and says, “Well, you donate some land.” What has to go on in that conversation? What does the asker have to bring, and what does the landlord have to have going on in them to make that something that turns from conflict to something that actually is a kind of force for renewal?
Satish Kumar
Yes. First of all, remember, Vinoba Bhave had the great example of Mahatma Gandhi. If Mahatma Gandhi could achieve independence for India from the British, from colonialism and imperialism, through non–violent means, and persuade the British colonialists to leave India without fighting, without war, without struggle – there was a non–violent struggle, but without violent struggle. So if Gandhi could achieve political independence from the British, and independence from colonial and imperial powers, why can’t we achieve the same from our own people who are like colonialists, owning the land and exploit the poor?
Elizabeth
So that’s a kind of imaginative space that has opened up. Something seems like it’s possible.
Satish Kumar
Yeah. So Vinoba said to landlords, “Look, if you don’t solve this problem, eventually, people are going to rise. And eventually, government will bring law. Eventually, an armed revolution, some negative thing will happen. Do it voluntarily, do it with compassion: that’s a much better way.” And he was not asking land for himself. He was in a loincloth, he was very poor himself, he used very little money, and he was a saintly man. So he was not asking anything for himself, he was asking for the poorest of the poor, the Untouchable, the lower caste of the low. And so, there was a very big movement, and then many people join him. And he organised this land gift movement in such a way that you are given the land, but you don’t own it. You keep it as long as you cultivate it, and your children can cultivate it. But anytime you don’t want to cultivate, you cannot sell it, you cannot buy it, it has to go back to village community, and village community will decide who can have that land. So that kind of ‘no ownership’, but kind of relationship with the land.
The peace walk: the pilgrim mindset, encountering violence, embracing hardship and rewards
Elizabeth
So like ‘community land trusts’? That sounds amazing. There’s so much in that. And after that, you did the thing that you’re most famous for, I think, which is this very long, many–year walk during the Cold War, to try and raise awareness of the threats to the world and call on world leaders not to destroy us all with their nuclear weapons. And you did that really as a pilgrim. barefoot, asking for shelter, asking for food. Again, I’m just really interested in the internal journey of that. You’ve said elsewhere when you when you weren’t given food, it was an opportunity to fast and to sleep outside under the stars. Going back to this sense of inner struggle, and ego, and fear, and anxiety: when you did have times where people maybe responded with violence, or maybe I’m projecting… Did people respond with violence, or with distrust, or with prejudice towards you? Did you encounter that kind of resistance?
Satish Kumar
Yes, I encountered twice.
Elizabeth
Just twice?
Satish Kumar
Just twice. I could have been killed twice during that journey. Once in Paris, and once in Southern Georgia in the United States.
Elizabeth
Can you tell me about those now?
Satish Kumar
In Paris, I was mistaken to be Algerian, and at that time, there was a struggle between Algeria and France. And therefore, someone thinking that I was Algerian had a gun, and wanted to kill me. And in Georgia, in part of the United States, I was thrown out of a restaurant at a gunpoint because I was not White. And that was just after I had met Martin Luther King. And so, in those days, the segregation and discrimination was so strong that everything – schools, restaurants – everything was segregated. Blacks and Whites could not go together, so that restaurant was Whites only, and I entered in it, and I was throw out. But in the whole two–and–a–half years of journey, there was only two occasions when I had a violent encounter. Of course, during other days, there were days where I don’t get food. And people would suspect, “Who am I? Am I spy? Why am I walking like this? Why am I in that country?” So they would suspect. There was times of “No, no, we don’t want you to in this village. Go away, go away, go away!” And so I will go to another village. So there were occasions like that. In addition to that, there were lots of physical hardship, because of blisters, and knee pain, and all that kind of climbing 10,000 or 12,000 feet high mountains, and walk in the desert, no village. Sometimes, no village for two days, three days of walking, and so I had to sleep under the stars. And this is why I called my “million–star hotel”, because I was very happy to sleep. And hungry, because I was not getting any food, just the water. And so I managed to go. But you know, when I was walking around the world, I knew there’s not going to be a feast. That it’s not going to be easy. That it’s going to be hard, and I will go hungry. I will be without that shelter, but I will be prepared to do this journey and accept difficulties, accept problems, accept negative experiences. Because I did not want an easy life. If I want an easy journey, I could have flown. If I wanted an easy journey, I could have taken a car or taken a train, or anything. But I did not want that easy journey: I wanted to work for peace as a pilgrim, and go through Muslim countries, Christian countries, communist countries, capitalist countries, poor countries, rich countries, or whatever you are. Mountains, desert snow, whatever it is, I face it. I wanted to go through it. And that’s the kind of pilgrim’s mindset. Pilgrims are accepting life as it comes, wars and all. Just because there are difficulties, problems, everything are part of life. And so that was my pilgrimage. And for two and a half years, I walked to 15 different countries. And I delivered a packet of ‘peace tea’ in the Kremlin, a packet of ‘peace tea’ in the White House. I was received in those two biggest centres of power. And I met Bertrand Russell, I met Matsuki, I met many, many wonderful people. And so, there were lots of hardships, difficulties, problems, but also lots of rewards. So together, I feel that I learned a lot, and it was a great experience of my life.
Turning the other cheek: the power of trust, nurturing courage and cultivating resilience
Elizabeth
I want to talk to you a little bit about what it takes to grow the kind of character to respond non–violently to violence, to respond to hatred with love. And I’m very formed by the Christian non–violent tradition and by this phrase that I always come back to when Jesus says “Turn the other cheek.” He’s not saying, “Passively lie down and get yourself beaten up.” It’s a very strong response. The fight–or–flight response in us is inviting us to resist it, because it’s neither hitting back nor running away. It’s standing your ground and keeping eye contact, and staying in that moment, staying in that relationship, really. But fight–or–flight is an automatic response. Our threat response is not something we have much control over. Our fear of the other, our fear of conflict, our fear of the enemy, our fear of violence. If we’re functioning on automatic, we will either fight or flight. We will either attack or run away, or sometimes freeze, or occasionally fawn – is the kind of new research coming out. And so, there is something that is needed to interrupt the automatic processes. And I’m beginning to think for me, it’s my spiritual practices, it’s the podcast, it’s spending time with people not like me, it’s becoming more aware, it’s time in prayer. What have you done? And what are you still doing that meant it was possible? I mean, when you have a gun pointed at you, there’s not much you can do, unless you have one and pull it, which you were not going to do because you’re a Jain. But what has got you to the non–automatic response of non–violence?
Satish Kumar
First of all, my response is that I have to trust. All conflicts and wars begin in fear. And we, as a society, suffer from a ‘trust deficit disorder’. And so I need to cultivate trust in my heart.
Elizabeth
Trust of what, or trust of who?
Satish Kumar
Trusting myself, first of all: that I have courage, I have imagination, I have creativity, I have a spirit. And I’m a Divine being, and I can serve the world. I can take care of others. I can offer myself for the world’s goodness. So that’s trusting yourself, that I am capable of doing good things. And then, trusting others: they’re all Divine beings. You are a Divine being, everyone is a Divine being. If you trust them, they will respond. Trust begets trust, love begets love. If you trust them, they will trust you. If you fear them, they will fear you. So that’s my sort of conviction. And with that position, I moved. And of course, as I said before, there is always struggle. And the part of compassion, and love, and trust, is not for the faint of heart. You need courage, you need conviction, you need resilience in your heart and your body. And you have to cultivate it. You can learn to cultivate courage. Like I said, you can learn to play piano, you can learn to play cricket, you can learn anything: you can learn. I’ve learned all my life, and I’m still learning. Learning does not end, I’m still learning. As I said, I’m not perfect, I am still struggling, and still learning. But that is my aim. That is my conviction. That is where I want to move. I want to move more and more love. Even if I am hurt, cheated, I’m prepared to accept that. But I am not prepared to accept to live in fear.
Practical steps for learning love and courage, embracing simplicity, and overcoming cynicism
Elizabeth
So if listeners are thinking, “Okay, I want to learn love. I want to learn courage.” We are we are increasingly bereft of morally formative communities. And for all the things they’ve done wrong over the centuries, religions have tended to be the places people learn this stuff, right? This is the stories and the practices that have helped form us, in theory, and sometimes in practice, into people who can show up in the world and do good. As you said, to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. What would you say to people who maybe don’t have any connection with the faith tradition, or wouldn’t know where to start? What would be a way to start learning to show up in the world with love, and courage, and non–violence that would be very actionable for them even today?
Satish Kumar
First of all, anyone who wants to do that, they have to be aware of themselves. And they have to want to learn to love. If I want to learn French, then I have to want to learn French. If I don’t want, if I’m not aware of the French language, I can’t learn. So I have to be aware that you can learn to love, you can learn to be courageous, you can learn to be resilient, you can learn to be compassionate, you can learn to be kind, and therefore I can learn. First, we have to be aware. And then you say “I want to learn. How do I do it?” Everyday practice. How do you learn to play piano? How do you learn to cook? How do you learn to garden? Do it every day. The first time when you start cooking, maybe you will burn some food. It doesn’t matter! Second, don’t give up. The second day, third day, second week, third week, second month, third month. You will become a chef. So in the same way, if there is learning to love, each part is a skill and you have to try every day to get it to speak to your mind. Am I learning enough? Am I giving enough time for it? There is an inner dialogue going on. “Am I living in love on fear? Am I living in trust or in fear? Am I living in resilience or weakness?” So, this courage is in our heart. We all have been given by Divine power courage in our heart, imagination in our heart. We have everything. We don’t need to buy courage and resilience from Marks and Spencer. It’s in you, but you don’t cultivate it. I don’t cultivate it, I leave it dormant. It’s just sitting there without being cultivated. Like a soil, if you don’t put in any seed, then nothing will grow. In the same way, the soil is there in my heart, but I don’t put the seed of love. So, I put that with meditation. Every day, I meditate. Every day I speak to myself: “How can I be a bit more kind tomorrow? How can I be a bit more loving today? How can I be a little bit more generous tomorrow?” So this is a kind of a continuous process is not something that you arrive at, and now you are enlightened and finished. It’s a continuous journey, continuous pilgrimage of life.
Elizabeth
Thank you. Gosh, it’s important and challenging. I wanted to confess something to you, which is: I surprised myself by reading your work and preparing for today feeling quite cynical. And that’s surprising to me because we have so much… I mean, we have nothing in common in terms of our life story – mine is much more dull – but in terms of our commitment to non–violence, our sense of wanting to grow in love and courage in the world. My background is in media and a sort of journalistic thing, and I don’t know whether it was just a heritage of that – but I was listening to your Desert Island Discs from quite a long time ago, when I heard the same thing in Sue Lawley. She’s talking to you going, “Yes, it all sounds very nice, Satish, but what about power? What about money?” And I felt that it myself, and I was curious at what’s going on. The fact that what your saying – and I spend a lot of time talking about why the things that seem too simple, and too earnest, and too nice, and not sexy, or new, or complex… Like, almost all the good ‘soul food’ has terrible branding, and we need to retrain ourselves to see goodness for what it is, which is fascinating. So, this must happen to a lot: why do you think that we react against things that sound too simple by getting cynical? And what would you say to someone – I’m feeling less cynical now, to be clear – but what would you say to someone who’s having that reaction, like, “Come on, Satish. This is ‘motherhood and apple pie’, it’s all very nice, but it can’t actually do anything good in the world. It’s not got enough edge.”
Satish Kumar
There’s nothing wrong in being simple. Nothing wrong in being a mother. Nothing wrong in having apple pie. Nothing wrong in saying “I want to be simple.” Any fool can make things complicated. It requires a genius to make things simple. So, simplicity is good. Motherhood is good. Apple pie is good. I want to have a good mother. I had a good mother. Why should I deny? And those who say cynically “That’s not possible. We can’t have mother, we can’t have apple pie. We can’t have simple live. We have to make complicated. We have to make everything confused, everything greedy.” The power you talked about – do you want to have a love of power, of power of love? I’m seeking the power of love, not love of power. I don’t want power. Power over what? If I want power, I want power over myself. How can I control my anger, my fear, my anxiety. I’m in charge of my life – I’m the CEO of my life – and I want to decide what I want to do. Do I want to be angry? Do you want to fight with people? You have to be greedy? Do I want to do this? Or do I want to be kind, and compassionate, and generous, and loving? And I decided that I want to be kind, and compassionate, and generous. And I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to have this complicated power, and go and become Prime Minister or become MP, have become a kind of millionaire. I’m not interested. I’m interested in relationship. I’m interested in friendship. I’m interested in community. I’m interested in land. I’m interested in nature. I’m interested in birds. I’m interested and I enjoy them. What is wrong? Those cynical who say, “Oh, you are ‘motherhood and apple pie’?” Yes, yes. I’m ‘motherhood and apple pie.’ I love my mother. I loved my mother. I love apple pie. I have 15 apple trees in my garden, I have an orchard of apple trees. And I make 200 bottles of apple juice, I make a lot of apple pie, and apple crumble. So what’s wrong with apple pie?! Let’s all have apple pie, all have good mother. Let’s have all good compassion. Nothing wrong with being simple.
Elizabeth
Amen.
Reflection and Outro
Elizabeth
So, Satish Kumar. I had heard Satish’s name, but it wasn’t until I started speaking to a few other people at some of the events I’ve been recently, that I realised what a big deal Satish is in certain tribes. And in fact, at the Realisation Festival, the first sight I have had of Satish was of someone coming into the room and bowing down to touch his feet, which was a surprise and quite foreign to me as a practice – although it’s very much not foreign, and a gesture of respect, in lots of different parts of the world and communities. But as I confessed to Satish – and I can say it because I said it to him – I was surprised to find myself feeling quite cynical as I was prepping for this episode. I read quite a lot of Satish’s writing, and I was surprised to find myself feeling cynical, because I’m not that cynical. Maybe I am naturally cynical, but I’m trying to be less cynical. And it was not anything in particular that he was saying that I disagreed with. That in lots of ways, the Jain non–violent tradition that he’s drawing so heavily on, and my kind of interest in and love of the Christian non–violent tradition have loads of overlap. I would have expected to feel more drawn. And so it wasn’t the content of the ideas that I was reacting against, but it was more that I really struggled to get a sense of him as a person. Because what he says sounds so utopian, so idealist, that if we just loved each other with radical love, if we just kind of lived these very simple, non–acquisitive lives, everything would be okay. And he’s very hopeful and optimistic about the possibility of that. And I just didn’t know what to make of it. I couldn’t get a hold of who was talking. I didn’t know how to trust what he was saying because I couldn’t hear who he was as a person. And so it was a real joy to get to have a longer conversation with him at the festival, to bring some of that into the room.
And he said his sacred value was basically everything, is how I would interpret what he says. That all of life is sacred. All human beings are Divine beings: animals, plants, insects. That what is sacred to him is everything. And I am both kind of moved by how beautiful that is, and don’t know quite what to do with it. Honestly, what’s coming to mind is the Incredibles, when Dash’s mum says “Everyone is special, Dash”, and he says “Which is another way of saying no one is.” Is it possible for everything to be sacred – question mark? I’m sitting with that. But it was really helpful to understand a bit more about the Jain faith. And I did a bit of reading around it, and sort of deepened, really, what was quite basic knowledge of Jains. And it really helped me understand Satish, understanding just how central non–violence is to this tradition. Just how much it’s the sort of core tenant, the core belief. There are others: simplicity, non–attachment to possessions and emotional states. If you’re a Jain monk, you’re also called to celibacy. It is different from Buddhism, but in ways that as an outsider, it’s hard to see the very clear distinctions. I think they’re cousins. But that, yes, non–violence, if that’s the key thing you’re formed in from age nine, of course that is the way that you show up in the world. And it reminded me of what I think is actually quite a deep difference between different religions. And I’m not gonna use the phrase ‘Eastern religions’, because it feels a bit like a blunt instrument. (And faintly colonial; is it colonial? I don’t know) But Abrahamic traditions, and then Buddhism and Jainism in particular, is what I’m thinking of. I’m not sure how this plays out, in other faiths. But this sense within the Jain faith, and very especially in the Buddhist faith, that that the ego needs to die, and that certainly within Buddhism, the sense that there isn’t really a self: it’s not about self–actualisation; it’s about realising the oneness underneath us all. That we are all connected. And that, when we surrender the desire to stabilise ourselves and realise… One person, a Buddhist, that we were speaking to at the festival said, “It’s really the more you meditate, the more you realise, when you try and find yourself, there’s nothing there. It’s just an illusion that we have a self.” And that’s very different, I think, certainly from my tradition and my understanding of Abrahamic traditions. This at very basic level, the conception of the self and what we’re aiming towards might end in similar places, actually, but that’s a pretty different orientation. And then, as you could hear, the idea of a nine year old wandering around, asking for his one meal a day, really brought out this maternal instinct me, that I was like, “That doesn’t sound good!” And that’s just projection, I’m sure, and a misunderstanding, because he speaks of it so beautifully. Psychologically, it was really healthy. He was part of a community. He was doing all this meditation. And it clearly has been such a formative thing for him for the rest of his life. Which he then ran away from, which I just can’t help but find funny, because I have this picture of, you know, nuns escaping from windows.
I tell you when the interview shifted for me: it’s when I was worrying away of this thing of “Who are you underneath these beautiful ideas?” And he said, “Of course, I have ego. Of course, I have anxiety. Of course, I feel angry. Of course, sometimes you want to be famous.” And I was like “Yes! Okay! Now we’re in the room. Hello, real three–dimensional person.” It really it really shifted for me and I was able to go, “Right. Brilliant. Satish, the human being. Not some kind of untouchable guru.” And at that point, I felt much that I could take him seriously, and to trust him, and to be invited into the things that he was speaking of. Because he’d admitted something that lots of people struggle with.
The thing about the land was so powerful – asking landlords to donate their land. And this sense in which, actually, class divisions are so key and we don’t talk about them. Those with land and those without. With money, and without. How hard it is to seek each other’s good, and to not feel threatened and resentful of each other. And the sort of powerful, moral move of saying, “Well, we could descend into civil war, or you could donate some land to the people who can’t feed themselves and who have no land.” And landlord saying, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” I was sort of imagining… I used the name “Nick” in the question, and that’s Nick, as in the current Earl of Shaftesbury, in whose house the Realisation Festival was meeting. One of these great ancestral landed families. But on a simpler level, where I live in London, for every person who has a property portfolio: if they’ve got 10 properties, could they just give one away? Could there be some sort of community land trust, community home trust, that could manage those as a way of kind of releasing some of the pressure on the boiling pot of resentment from those that don’t have access to the housing market? What would be the narrative of compassion? What would be the moral call that could bring that kind of moral transformation that Satish was not leading, but was involved in?
And then this pilgrimage. I was really interested in where it was hard. Because it was a while ago, he has told the story of the peace pilgrimage again, and again, and again, and again. It is a beautiful and inspiring story. But he always makes it sound as if everywhere he went, people gave him food and shelter. And he always says, “And when they didn’t, I just took this opportunity to fast and I laid outside of my million star hotel.” And this posture that he has, that if you trust people, they will respond with goodness is so beautiful, but it really does make me feel cynical. And so, just hearing him say, “Yeah, they mistook me for an Algerian and I got attacked at gunpoint. And I got thrown out of a restaurant in Georgia because I have got Brown skin.” The fact that there’s a realness about those situations that he’s encountered; the conversation moved on, but what I wish I’d said was, “Okay, what did you do? Obviously, you didn’t have a gun you could pull back. And you were trained not to respond with violence. But what did you feel? How did you overcome that moment? How do you respond to violence with non–violence, other than just shutting up and shutting down, and going into flight?” You know, self–protection, which is the classic instinctive response. Peace tea. Again, brings out the cynic in me. Deliver tea to the world’s nuclear capitals, and ask them before they press a nuclear button to have a cup of tea: is that gonna work?! And sometimes, just changing the imaginative possibilities a little bit, some kind of symbol, a different story… It’s not impossible that someone could be all riled up, and just remember the slightly strange smiley man who bought you tea?
I think the thing that really did challenge me was this trust. Trust yourself to be able to do good in the world – complex idea. But trust other people: if you treat them with compassion, they will respond with compassion. If you expect them to be generous, they will be generous. And actually, I think I’ve experienced the reality of that, even sitting with my kids. That the story we tell about what we expect other people to be like, really, really matters because it changes how we show up. And how we show up changes how they respond. And we can create these little virtuous cycles by choosing to go into situations that might be difficult, or with people who are different from us and expect to see the best of people – much more likely to respond. It’s still not concrete enough for me. When I’m “Tell me, how do you become more courageous? How do you become more loving? You make it sound easy, it’s not easy. It can’t just be me who doesn’t find this easy.” And I think, keep practising, do it every day. But it’s also probably because I think it’s such an individual path that we have to find our own structures, and rituals, and communities to be part of. All the great wisdom traditions have ways and practices that we can involve ourselves in, in order to be growing in this, and he didn’t want to dictate them. And I sort of know what mine are. So maybe I’m wrong to be grumpy with him. But I want him to tell me how to make it easier, is the fundamental thing.
And finally, he did respond really graciously, and I think well, to my exposed cynicism at the end, of just “Isn’t it all just motherhood and apple pie?” And to have someone say, “I like motherhood, and I like apple pie. And I think sometimes simple is good.” Just reminding myself that we all have different roles to play, and that Satish’s is maybe reminding us of the simple, basic truths of seeking to love one another, and to resist violence and to protect the Earth. I sort of want that voice in the mix, even if I don’t always know how to apply it.
