There's a new world coming!!

Dear friends old and new!

Ideas that have been developing over years have recently started to blossom and suddenly there's a full-time project to design and develop. Very inspiring and very exciting.

Some friends and I are currently researching the possibility of setting up a housing cooperative and sustainable community somewhere in South America and WE NEED PEOPLE who would be interested in joining us for a short or a long time!

This is not a money-making project or an idea to develop a for-profit company. It is also not a charity or a way for us to impose ourselves and our ideas on others. This is our idea for a solution to some of the difficulties we think we, as a human race, are going to face over the next few years. We want to make a place where a group of people can:
live together cooperatively, sharing land and housing
grow food and other plant materials for their own needs and for exchange with the local community,
develop the necessary skills to live in harmony with our environment,
produce as much as possible our own power from solar and wind energy,
contribute and become integrated with the local community,
work on individual ideas and creations, supported in a peaceful place

Ways in which you can participate. By
joining me on a research tour of S America. I plan to visit Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Uruguay from about November this year and I welcome travelling companions.
sharing information and skills during the planning and development phases in areas such as
perma-culture and other organic farming methods
methods for sourcing renewable energy
alternative ways of dealing with waste e.g. composting toilets
building, DIY skills
Spanish language skills
knowledge about legal procedures in South American countries
and anything else you may think of.

This project is a new-born baby who can't grow without input from adults cooperating together for its development. We welcome anyone who comes to the project from a place of love.

You can find us here and at changjiclare@yahoo.com and later at www.notanecovillage.com

The picture is on my desk-top to inspire me all the way. It is somewhere in Ecuador's Cotopaxi National Park.

With loving-kindness to you all,
Clare

Peace in the face of chaos

Have returned to England 10 days early.
2 days ago, when leaving Nepal, my attempt to go to Malaysia, via India, to serve in the vipassana centre, failed spectacularly. After a very long day, I decided I'd had enough of fighting the systems and came back to the company of friends.
A list of things that have gone wrong in the last 2 days for your amusement:
1. Air India refuse to let me onboard because no transit visa.
2. Visa office refuse me visa because dates on ticket not changed.
3. Try to change dates on ticket- all internet connections are down.
4. Get connected but Air Asia have never heard of me.
5. Time running out quickly go to Air India to change other tickets- will cost me an arm and a leg.
6. No longer having time to get Indian visa and with Nepali visa due to run out the next day, am forced to buy a new ticket to UK. This costs A LOT...
7. Three ATMS in a row stop working on me.
8. Get out half the cash then daily limit kicks in.
9. Try to call bank- takes 20 minutes to connect on a pre-historic contraption balanced precariously on a sloping shelf half the size of said phone. This causes the phone to nearly fall onto the floor every time you try to punch numbers into it.
10. Bank assure me all will be well...Takes another 3 hours to manage payment which was mainly made possible by the kindness of the travel agent.
Get ticket. Definitely don't allow self to relax.
Next day- get on both planes- no delays, no screaming children. Arrive in London half an hour early, speed through passport control. Wait an hour at luggage carousel...
11. No bag. No clothes. No toothbrush even. Nada.
But all this has failed to stir even a tiny amount of anger in me. Very little worry or anxiety. Almost no stress. And have managed on several occasions to laugh about it.
Meditation- it really really rocks!

Pilgrimage Sites

These photos were all taken on my pilgrimage to the main sites of Gotama the Buddha's life:
Mahabodhi Temple- Bodh Gaya where the descendant of the Bodhi tree where Buddha achieved enlightenment stands outside the temple door. In the mornings at about 5, you can hear chanting of the sutras from all around the town. Monks from many different traditions meditate in the grounds, some of them in little mesh tents to keep from being annihilated by mosquitoes.
Dungeshwari Caves- Gotama spent 6 years meditating here before descending to Bodh Gaya. I went early in the morning, at the beginning of my 2-day road trip, and was able to climb the hill to the rough, rock stupa at the top before it got too hot. Outside the cave, up the stairs from the 'Keep Noble Silence' sign, was a group of about 20 Indian tourists, listening intently to their guide as he bellowed out facts. As usual in wonderful India (I mean that sincerely) all my plans were brought into question: I had planned to show my respect and gratitude to this incredible human being (he sat down under that tree announcing that he wouldn't move, even if his flesh dissolved and his bones broke, until he understood the truth of existence. Sitting for a couple of hours I've found to be agony enough!)by practicing what he taught i.e. meditation. I had expected (dangerous!) these places to be serene and conducive to meditation. I even thought I might find others doing the same. In every single place I visited these 2 days, I was the only person I saw crazy enough to want to sit in silence. I was quite torn between what I've been taught of Buddha's wishes for his followers (he told people not to worship him or even to believe what he said and to seek the truth within themselves by observing reality within the framework of their own body-mind. Sadly most Buddhists simply do what's known as impure puja- offering incense and flowers and hoping that Buddha will solve their problems for them rather than doing the work of meditation) and seeing all the groups of Indian tourists enjoying themselves on their day trips, proud to be from a country that contains so much important history and really living but making a LOT of noise in the process. This juxtaposition has followed me ever since and I'll explain more in later posts. I was wise enough to realise how ironic it would be to get angry at the lack of silence and seeming disrespect that it could suggest!
Rajgir where Gotama lived and taught. It's now home to a big Japanese Peace Pagoda which I took a rickety chair lift to see. The meditation practice has removed my fear of heights to such an extent that I positively enjoyed this trip my main worry being adding one of my flipflops to the growing number on the rocks below.
Nalanda- ancient university, where many important sages taught and where monks meditation cells sit side by side with university buildings we are more familiar with today (e.g. library).
Vaishali- where Buddha gave his last sermon before donating his alms bowl at Kesaria and dying at Kushinagar, finally moving out of the cycle of life and death. My equanimity was spectacularly tested in Vaishali at the only 'hotel' in town by the manager with paan- stained teeth who tried to charge me a fortune for a bed covered in other peoples' body fluids and then, after promising to feed my hungry driver and I at 7, didn't give us a meal until 9.30. In the morning he charged me another fortune for the meal and demanded I gave his lacky a tip. Hard cheese for the poor lackey, it was my only means of protest to bellow 'No thank you' and make a hasty retreat. God only knows when the last saintly person visited Vaishali but it hasn't rubbed off on the staff at the inn there!
Northern Bihar, around Vaishali, is a bit of a god forsaken place of horrendously pot-holed roads and dusty intersections where lorry after lorry announces itself with ear-drum splitting horns. How the people there survive these constant onslaughts to the senses is beyond me. I stopped for breakfast at one of these junctions, where children stopped in front of my table and watched me without blinking for all the time it took me, praying for escape from amoebic dysentery, to consume a plate of fly-infested puri. I felt like a princess or a courtesan from 2500 years ago, passing through a land of small farms and settlements that probably haven't changed much in all that time, save for the introduction of mobile phones. It was a little disconcerting too to realise at one point that my driver was probably the person within a 200 km radius (at least) who understood and was understood by me the most (his English a few phrases better than my hindi). It was with relief that I arrived at the border town of Raxual and my next adventure into Nepal. That's until I'd been in Raxual for more than 5 minutes. I will dedicate an entire post to the hell that is and will probably always be Raxual. It deserves it.
Until then, May all beings (especially those in Bihar and particularly Raxual) be happy and liberated.

On the bend, go slow friend

I met a Kashmiri guy who'd traveled with some tourists who actually wrote down some of the brilliant road signs on the Srinigar- Leh road. My Canadian friends, Nat and Ari and I discussed how cool it would be to be the person who invented this stuff.
Don't be rash or you will crash.
Life is short, why make it shorter?
Best of luck!
Driving faster can cause disaster
Happy minds make happy roads (very philosophical)
Your behaviour on road is identity of your character (oh dear!)
If the road is hilly, don't act silly.
Speed thrills but kills
Will-Skill-Drill= Kill (you what love?)
Keep your nerves on sharp corners (or curves?)
If you sleep, family will weep
Drive on horse power not rum power
If married, divorce speed
Expect the unexpected
You're driving on a highway, not a runway
And the excellent- After whiskey, driving is risky
I love them. If you'd like a bumper sticker of any of these, let me know. I have a business idea...

Two more poems

I’m a wild seed again. Let the wind carry me.

I’m a wild seed again .
Let the wind carry me.

Watching life passing, changing:
There are no constants.

Waves, wavelets
Vibrations

Meeting, making, being
Watching my being

Waves, wavelets
Vibrations.



Queen of the cynics

It’s alright.

There’s a wall being built around my heart.

You’re just another brick in the wall.

Auroville

Got a new camera, got a place, got a beach. Here they are.
Be happy!

1000 Lions

Take me!
Like a thousand lions.
Eternal lifetimes of our passion
Combined in this moment.

Again! Again! Again!
ALWAYS.

But baby, raise it up.
Raise it up, up, up
Infused with the warmth of love.
And fly.

Diary of a healing

I’ve been spending the past 5 weeks in Tamil Nadu. In M’puram again, staying at the Bob Marley, waking to the sea and Tamil wedding songs. The sea has been having an amazing healing effect on me. I was swimming or body boarding at least once a day but showing some signs of the stress and trauma of the past three months: loss of appetite, sleeping less and less and digestive problems that I’ve never had before. Emotionally feeling very shaky. During the 8 day Satipatthana meditation course, the sensations I was experiencing on my body were very air-based. All this seems very natural for one who has been moving home at least every three months for the past 2 and a half years! That's not to mention my dad dying and with him, my main connection to a country I might have called home. So few roots.
On the first day of the course I was given the gift of being able to cry all day. Such a release. I think I lost a kilo in tears. All this is very good.
I returned to Auroville two days ago and found myself a flat. Just unpacking, cleaning and cooking food for myself immediately filled part of the hole I have felt in my solar plexis since dad died. Amazing.
To balance my energetic and digestive systems I decided to get some massage and energy work done. With so few roots, I have to find them inside myself. This afternoon I had shiatsu, focused on my sensations for an hour while the guy worked and I felt better, more centred immediately. When I got home I went to the loo almost normally and this evening I had the appetite to eat the most delicious homemade dinner. Incredible.
After the treatment, my therapist, Sami, explained that he felt my system was assimilating recent events. That my small intestine had been on overdrive so nothing was reaching lower down the tract. He advised I’d feel better in a couple of days. It took a couple of minutes!
Tomorrow I’ll take myself to the Aryurvedic doctor, get some nice herbal oils to put on the body, face and hair and continue to observe events...
May all beings be happy.