Tues 31st
This week has been quite interesting; going on many long bike tours of Auroville sites and surrounding villages. I am slowly getting aquainted with all the unmarked dirt roads that make up Auroville's infrastructure.
Today we are at the Live Education Center [LEC], a gathering place and program for young women [15-22] much like a Tamil YMCA or Boys and Girls Club. These women are so disenfranchized, so slighted by their situations of birth. Abuse runs rampant in these empoverished communities, along with alcoholism.
As a male in a male-dominated culture, this is very hard for me to experience. Personally, I do not support this unbalanced structure, yet my subscription to this system through my complacency does, in fact, condone it. It is something I have to sit with, something that deserves my time. Male and female energies are both beautiful in their unique way, yet when one becomes dominant both suffer. This is due to their interconnected nature.
A Tamil girl just said I look Tamil to her. And they just gave me the Tamil name of Dhanush. Sweet...
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
...Awakening to wholeness through the practice of Self-Inquiry/Self-Remembering/Self-Abidance; this site sets down journeys in India, South America, and the States, through academia, shamanic healings, eco-villages, meditation intensives, and the like.
~May I Be the Being I Know I Am~
Author
DharmaFarming~
The conscious cultivation of connection with the Real in all one's daily activities, with a focus on 'awakened earth stewardship'.
The conscious cultivation of connection with the Real in all one's daily activities, with a focus on 'awakened earth stewardship'.
~The DharmaFarmer in One Stanza~
Born of Spirit and Soil
Tempered in the furnace of Planetary Transformation
DharmaFarming is a child of our needs.
Finding support in the goodness of Earth
Seeking fulfillment in the goodness of Heaven
May we remember our Connection
Our Common Bond and Birthright.
Manifesting this Vision
May we heal our Selves and our Planet.
I ask for your truth, and give you mine.
Good luck friend.
Born of Spirit and Soil
Tempered in the furnace of Planetary Transformation
DharmaFarming is a child of our needs.
Finding support in the goodness of Earth
Seeking fulfillment in the goodness of Heaven
May we remember our Connection
Our Common Bond and Birthright.
Manifesting this Vision
May we heal our Selves and our Planet.
I ask for your truth, and give you mine.
Good luck friend.
The Journey
- .Flowetry. (12)
- .Posts to Awaken. (44)
- 2006 Auroville and India Pilgrimage (45)
- 2006 Sirius Community Apprenticeship (29)
- 2006-07 Hampshire College DharmaFarmer Semester (12)
- 2007 Argentina and Peru (7)
- 2007-08 Sirius Community Spirit Semester (5)
- 2008 Peru Healing Journeys (6)
- 2008-09 Insight Meditation Society (11)
- 2009 Hawthorne Valley and the Playful Heart (40)
- 2009 Playful Ramblings Across the Country (28)
- 2010 San Fran Adventures in Mentoring (6)
4 comments:
Jus,
Your observation of a double standard is accurate I'm sure. I give you credit for recognizing it and trying to comprehend what this means to you in your own life. Though we often see inequities in our own country, the contrast your see there in India must be stark in comparison.
For your own part, you can give of yourself the care and compassion that is full and completely expressed in your character. That is the best gift you can give at this time...the future may hold other opportunities. As one who spends most of my professional life caring for women, I believe we make a difference whenever we make the attempt with even one individual.
Love,
Dad
Well said, Dad. I can see where Justin gets it. ;)
Justin, also, I saw both Emily and Dan today at Hampshire (Emily's in my yoga class along with Kieran), and I gave them both this site URL. So they might be posting soon. :) They all miss you terribly.
Dear, dear Justin/Dhanush (sweet name!), it is so wonderful to read about your experience...thank you Nikki for giving me the URL again so that I could finally get on here! It's true, I miss you terribly. Kieran and I are pining for you. We're going to go to the loose goose this weekend for lunch and eat some herbed mayo in your honor. And I'm looking forward to reading more and writing you little comments...this blog thing is a good idea.
I cannot express to you how joyful an experience it is for me to read about your adventures and relive my own through them. I'm taken right back through your words--not just to the place, but to my emotional responses and thoughts of that place as they happened within me over the course of the semester. Thinking of you doing yoga in that beautiful little oasis of college guest house makes me go into full-body smile mode. Which turns into a tingly excited dance as I think of the adventures that await you as the semester continues.
I agree with your dad's comments on this one...isn't it interesting to dwell in a place of recognizing the strangeness and often unbalanced inequality of another culture, but not necessarily acting on it? Being in that caring, compassionate watcher type of place. I know that you will hold that space well.
You are the most honorable man I know. For serious.
With all my love,
Em
Post a Comment