Busy busy

This is the view of my village from bus ride to Mussourrie

This is a time of great motivation. So much is taking place on the farm! I am really pleased with all the progress. This week I made two floor plan designs for the main building of our project, one where the food processing plant and cow shed will be and another where our organic restaurant, reception courtyard and store will be. There has been a back hoe working here for five days making water storage tanks, flattening the areas under construction and also building a road! Now there is vehicle access all the way down the 14 acre terraced property and even to the little cottage where I am living.

Me looking like a freak trying to protect my skin from the very hot sun with Ravi (one of the young guys also working here) 

I have also started seriously working on the three large murals I am painting for the restaurant. They are original designs done in the style of local Garhwali painting. This project is a dream come true for me, I am working with people, with the earth and with art. I thank God every day for being given this wonderful experience.

Anyone interested in learning to farm organically in the lap of the Himalaya?

Professional agriculture professionals will offer theoretical and practical instruction on how to farm organically. These two week courses are designed for students of all levels. Excursions and cultural events will also be included. The full program, including lessons, all activities, lodging and three freshly cooked Indian meals a day cost under $10 dollars a day!

Come to Darbar Farm and take one of our Organic Agriculture Courses! Spread the word. Do something good for yourself. Do something good for the planet!Darbar Farm Organic Agriculture Courses

Holi

Today in India is the celebration of Holi, a day when people honor the victory of good over evil. Families throw color and water on each other, and in the streets people also throw colors everywhere.
It is also a festival to honor the God Krishna, because Krishna used to play holi with his beloved Radha.

Layers of Reality

It's an interesting juxtaposition to be taking an intensive yoga course from two excellent teachers and helping form a new initiative devoted to organic farming, preservation of local Gharwhali culture and education. On the one hand I am learning about the ancient Vedic philosophies and techniques of how to get to master the self, and on the other hand I am still deeply intrenched with the distractions and stimulation of the outer world and it's pleasures and illusions. I guess I am a chronic example of a western spiritual butterfly, addicted to the myth of personality and the dance appearances in the transient world of the senses. Still I am grateful to be involved with the Darbar Linving Museum. Doing what we believe in our outer lives is also helpful "on the mat". I accept that the mystical path and precise discipline of yoga entails lifetimes of serious training. Also I feel blessed to be human with all the bliss, the hell, the choices and the responsibility that entails. I guess that is the balance so many of us are trying to strike-how to kindle an inner practice that aligns the layers of the self  in harmony with the layers of reality all around us.

My yoga teacher gave a beautiful metafor today for meditation: He said it is dissolving layers illusion that obscure the bright effulgent light of life that lives within us, shining like a flame that burns constantly and undying. The fuel and the wick are always new, but the flame is eternal. When we invest out attention in the outer world that limits our identity to our physical personal circumstances, the winds disturbing the flame are great. When we turn the lamp of awareness upon ourselves, we see that there is a witness silently there, always watching, never leaving us alone. The more we identify with this indweller, the more evenly we can face the ups and downs of life.

I have great respect for the teachings of the Vedas, for yogic philosophies and the many masters who have left records explaining how to activate the inner potentials of being human.

Darbar Living Museum

The entrance of the Darbar Living Museum is based on th Sakundevi Temple, a temple  for  the Nature Goddess Durga

Ok I'm over my honey-moon period in India. I still love it here, and am sure that I will come here many times in my life. I now get annoyed when people cut me in line, instead of think to myself how perfectly amazing it is just to be here. I feel relaxed and at home instead of surprised that I feel at home.
I'm also through the cautionary stage of wondering if and how much I should get involved with the farm project I was helping with. I am now fully involved and will probably devote most of my energy over the next five months and beyond to making this place as good as I possibly can. Right now my goal is to try to find funding, consulting and design work to get the building off the grid as much as possible. If anyone can help with grant writing, let me know.
The name of the project is the Darbar Living Museum. There will be a large lecture hall upstairs in the museum. If the building in an eco-friendly construction, we could be an example of sustainability in a developing country where these things are very new and rare. It would nice to have conferences, lectures and information sessions on solar and other renewable energies to help promote these technologies in India. WWOOFers are welcome at the farm, and anyone knowledgeable about solar energy is especially welcome.

My prayer is that the forces of peace, beauty and higher knowledge will guide this project, and the Darbar Living Museum will be a beacon of sustainability, tradition and diversity in the world.

Beginning of construction of Darbar Living Museum  with restored windows from the royal palace in old Tehri

Chamba, District Tehri, Uttarakhand, India

Darbar Farm is a 14 acre terraced property in the heart of the Himalaya, 18km from Tehri, 56km from Rishikesh and 62 km from Mussourie. Our project is a new initiative, and much of our infrastructure is still under construction. It is a good place to learn how to build up an organic farm. Our professors will offer theoretical advice as well as practical instruction to agriculture students of all levels of experience. These two week courses are designed for beginning and professional farmers alike. Our staff includes professional agriculture professors of horticulture, sustainable agro business and animal sciences.

Yoga

I am still helping with the project involving organic/biodynamic farming, conserving Himalayan heritage and  reviving traditional local styles of art.  I am taking a little time out from the reality of the material world and the personality to practice yoga. I am studying with two amazing teachers. The physical body is merely as a means to align the more subtle bodies with the universal spirit which enlivens us through the breath. To do this the mind must be reverent and aware of the grace that blesses us with each and every inhale and exhale. Every transient system of the body relies on the breath to survive. This universal force sustains us without asking anything in return. With proper alignment of our mini microcosms (the body) with the macrocosm, the human being can transcend and evolve tremendously, or so I have been told. I am only a beginner! Life is truly a gift.
I practice for four hours a day, and in between I help my friends, who live a 30 minute bus ride away, with the nuts and bolts of starting this living museum. It is a big project, and one day hopefully it will take on a life of its own, combining the best of the old with the best of the new. Now it is a lot of work and a wonderful inspiring opportunity!

Garhwali Painting

This beautiful style of art once flourished in the area where I am staying. Now, like so many things, it is a tradition slipping into the forgotten past. These paintings were mostly miniature paintings and murals done for the majaraja dynasties of India, who were great patrons and appreciators of art. I am researching how this kind of painting was done and trying to help my friend make a museum of Garhwali Art and Culture. Children and scholars will be able to come here and learn about this sublimely beautiful style of art.

Getting involved in farming in India




Navdanya Organic Seed-Saving Farm

 

Seeds that can save the world from GMO monopolies

A cow at Navdany Farm, used for plowing fields, and worshipped by Hindus for its life-giving milk and manure

The above pictures were taken at Navdanya, an organic seed-saving farm and international education center for organic farming, founded by Dr. Vandana Shiva, located in Ramghar, northern India. The top picture is of the rice-seed field, where there are over 500 varieties of local rice seed cultivated. Navdany also has over 200 kinds of local potato seed and much much more. Seeds are given for free to local farmers, so that they don't have to purchase GMO seeds from multinational companies like Monsanto, whose plants are engeneered to not produce seeds. All the local farmer must give in return is 1.25% of the amount of seed they recieved from Navdanya from their next harvest.
Navdany is one of the places I will go go seek instruction and materials in the project I have been recently blessed to become involved with; I am helping a friend and his family develop their farm in the Garhwal province, over 7000 ft. high in the mountains, in a village called Chamba. My friend is interested adopting biodynamic farming methods to grow vegetables, cow fodder and continue cultivating the hundreds of apple and almond trees which already grow on the beautiful terraced property overlooking the Himalayas. The project, which includes the farm, is going to be a "living museum" of traditional Garhwali culture. In the face of globalization, local culture is under threat, and rapidly traditions are dying away. This project I have been fortunate enough to become involved in will be a place for students and scholars to observe how traditional life used to be and how it can be of benefit to people in today's world. There will be an organic restaurant, a museum of ancient manuscripts belonging to my friend, who is a member of the royal family of Garhwal, and an exhibit of traditional Garhwali painting prints. I have had the honor of desiging the exterior architecture of the building! I will help in any other ways I can to support this project dedicated to preserving the earth, traditional wisdom and culture and being a beacon of sustainability and adaptability in contemporary society.

For many years my three-fold priority in life has been combining art, education and agriculture in a way that nourishes the soul, empowers free thining and cares for the environment. That is why I have chosen to become part of this wonderful initiative, which braids together all three strands of my life path. Truly I have been blessed to make the aquaintance of the wonderful family that is starting this project, and that they are open to my ideas about biodynamics and artistic creativity. If anyone would like more information about this project, has any ideas or suggestions or wishes to make a donation to the farm/living museum at Chamba, please let me know via my email address: asrachael@yahoo.com

Globalization

Every fifty miles you go here, there is a different culture, different language, different dress, different food, customs etc. All over the world, people have found such diverse ways of celebrating life and living in harmony with their environment. But all this is changing rapidly. There are tvs in every home. In my humble opinion, tv is the devil. It uses the power of images, and art to temp people into pursuing useless cheap thrills instead of seeking happiness through creative and constructive means. But I'll get off my soap box now.
What I am meaning to say is that indigenous cultures are dying out as people buy into consumer culture.
Some may claim that this is people's free choice. But it is not so simple. There are big businesses behind the scenes orchestrating alliances between nations and monopolies of large corporations. I am seeing the effects of globalization in the streets. Here is an article talking about the politics underlying it.
This is a photo from the train leaving Delhi at sunrise.

WAR WITHOUT BORDERS, WASHINGTON INTENSIFIES PUSH INTO CENTRAL ASIA
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23012

Support Fair Trade

If anyone is interested in buying some beautiful hand-dyed scarves made with natural dyes in the area where I am staying, let me know and I will mail you one. The shawls are $35 and the slightly larger stoles cost $40 dollars. I will charge $10 to mail it. There are also cheaper scarves which are not large enough to wrap around the shoulders like the other scarves, but they only cost $20 plus $10 shipping. Sorry I'm charging so much for shipping. Mailing things is expensive here and the post office always takes a lot of time. Send me your address and email address, and I will give you my mom's address where you can mail a check which she will deposit for me.

Here are a list of colors and dyes used of the scarves.

Brazilwood-pink

Harada-light gray

Henna-red/orange

indigo-blue

lac-purple

madder-bright red

pomegranite-red

tea-light green

tesu-orange

Combinations include: 

orange and pink

red and purple

green and orange

yellow and orange

light and dark blue

There are beautiful pure white soft wool shawls also.

There is also some kind of bright marigold yellow color. I'm not sure which dye it is, but that color is also available.

These scarves are truly exquisite. They are made of the softest wool imaginable mixed with silk. It is a special kind of pashmina made with eri silk that does not require killing the cacoons to extract the silk. This is a traditional art form that would be great to keep alive here in the Himalaya. http://www.himalayanweavers.org/

Studying Hindi

Learning Hindi is coming along slowly. There are many sounds that sound almost identical, and ofcourse I must learn the script. I am hiring a tutor in Landour, a couple of kilometers above Mussourrie. Here is a photo of the sunset from Landour. There is a panoramic view from the school, with the Himalayas to the north and the Ganges plains to the south. I am still constantly amazed by people's kindness.

Blessed

I have been very blessed to meet good people and see very beautiful places so far in India. After leaving Delhi, I went to Dehradun, a six hour train ride to the north. I had the good fortune of becoming friends of the owner's of the hotel where I stayed. They are a very dignified family, the ruling family of the Garwal province. This liniage of the Majarajah does not govern anymore, since India is a domocratic country, but in the years before the Brittish colonalization, this family's responsibility was to govern and take care of the people of this mountainous region as the kings.
I will be helping the youngest son of this family start an organic farm in the mountains three hours north of Dehradun beginning in March. I have visited the farm, surrounded by terraced mountain landscape all around with views of the snowcapped Himalaya in the distance. I will rent a small cottage there, after the weather warms up a bit, and help design a plan of how to implement local organic farming techniques that I learned about at the Navdany organic seed saving farm, started by Dr. Vandana Shiva. There is also a small school in the nearest village to the farm where I can teach.
For now I am in Mussourie, also in the mountains but a little closer to Dehradun. I am renting a beautiful room with an amazing view from a very kind family with two beautiful daughters who are lawyers. I will study Hindi here and read Hindu mythology for three weeks until the 14th of February when my yoga course begins in Dehradun.

That's the update on me. But far more interesting than me is Indian culture. I am so impressed with the kindness, intelligence and morality of everyone I have met. In India, women, children and elders are all very respected. It is considered impossible here for a man to accomplish anything without his wife by his side. If a child has no parents, the extended family takes them in. Old people always live with their relatives. If a family tries to send their parents away, the neighbors loose respect for them. Marriages are arranges here and matches are based on astrology. When a baby is born, they have their birth chart done. The family guards this chart until the child is of age to be married. Then the chart is sent to many astrologers, and they compare the charts with others until they find some compatible charts. The divorce rate here is less than 5%. This does not mean that all marriages are happy, necessarily, but families stay together. Divorce is not favored, but if a woman does not want to live with her husband any longer, she can live separately and the husband is obliged by law to support her.
These are some of the interesting things I have learned so far. I like it here more  than I could have ever dreamed. Thank you for reading.
Peace

Rachael

India

I spent two days in Delhi and am now in the town of  Dehradun, the capital of Uttarachand province, a six hour train ride north of  Delhi. Today I am on my way to Navdanya organic farm where I will visit with my cousin Michelle.
I feel so safe here. People are so kind, and respectful. I have not had one single bad encounter with anyone. It is all in the eyes. As long as I do not look at things I do not want to invite into my sphere, the I am just another small and equal part moving peacefully and insignificantly through a vibrant world of forces much greater than me. I have been taking the cheap public transportation, and everyone is calm, welcoming and unobtrusive. I feel so alive to be here, where people live with no safety net of money and comfort, as we have in more "developed" places. Reality is raw and direct, flowing naturally like the traffic here, cars, bikes and motorcycles all moving in all directions, not staying between the lines.
After seeing Michelle I think I will go to a warmer place for a few weeks and begin to learn Hindi. Then on Feb 14th I will return to Dehradun for a three week yoga course.

Caught a feather falling

You know you're on the right track when you catch a feather falling in the air. I was walking along the streets of Delhi, which I love surprisingly, and I just reached out my hand and caught it, without even breaking my stride. It wasn't a hawk or a peacock feather, or anything exotic, just a pretty simple white feather. Anyway, just being here is exotic enough for me!
Today I went in to a Hindu temple for the god Hunuman. From the street the temple looks like a six or seven story bright orange statue of an almost naked man with a monkey face wearing lots of jewelery and a fancy loin cloth. After taking of my shoes I entered through the open crocodile-like mouth. Inside there were many marble passage ways, walls covered with mirror mosaic and colorful shrines. Here are the living gods! In each shrine stands a god or goddess and their eyes are bulging out, staring, not at you, not within, but at something awesome, invisible and very real. Little pathways let from one chamber with a god in it to another staircase, until I finally came up almost on the top of Hunuman, looking out over the city. I didn't go all the way to the top. There was no one up there, and it seemed like someone's house. What a cool house, and porch, hidden in the heights of Hunuman's brightly painted head and shoulders! Up there in an arched nook hear Hunuman's head were two bright gold figures, one male one female. Each had their hand raised relaxed, as if they were pouring blessings down on the city below, their eyes too fixed onmisciently on something I cannot see.

Yesterday my experience of religion was different but even MORE powerful. I was so freaked out by the idea of being in Delhi, ignorant and vulnerable as I am, I was nervous to leave the hotel. But after being in planes for over 14 hours, I couldn't stay still another minute, so I went walking almost immediately after arriving. The streets are very wide with big trees growing on each side. Dirty air. After a day and a half exploring here, I have not had one single encounter with anyone who was aggressive or rude. So anyway, I was led to a beautiful Sikh temple by the sound of singing and tabla playing. The music turned out to be live and was being broadcasted on speakers all around. While the Hunuman temple was practically empty, there were many people, all very pious moving clockwise through the Sikh temple. The building is white with huge gold domes and couplets of thin arched windows evenly spaced along the walls. Absolutely everything is white marble-white marble steps, floors, walls inside and out. The walls are also carved with beautiful decorations of plants. Outside the temple is a large shallow pool, perhaps the size of two soccer fields. All around are arch ways and the ground is inlayed with geometrical patterns of stone. The sun setting behind the temple made the delicate

Inspirational Reading from "Ka, Stories of the Mind and Gods of India" by Roberto Calasso

The first equivalences were the stampads that flashed across Prajapati's mind as he was dueling with Death. A stampad is a 'falling together,' a chain of equivalences. How did they reveal themselves? Prajapati was staring straight ahead, at Death. All around him, the world. The two combatants gazed at each other, studied each other. But didn't move. Each was surrounded by a supportive army. Wooden spoons, a wooden sword, bowls: such was Prajapati's army. Frayed a frail. Around Death were a lute, an anklet, some powder puffs for making up.
How long would this tension last? As he waited Prajapati ran through everything that served as a frame to Death, a frame that amounts to everything that is. It was a long way to run. He penetrated the frame, in its scrolls and flourishes-and the density of decoration would sometimes hide Death from him. He thought: "This is like that, this corresponds to that, this is equivalent to that, this it that." A vibration, a tension, a euphoria flooded his mind. If this is that, then that corresponds to this other thing-he went on. Slender bonds wrapped themselves like ribbons around this and that. The bonds stretched, invisible to many, but not to the one who put them there. With a sentinel's eye, Prajapati went on watching Death. But with the eye that wanders, that evokes images, numbers, and words, he went on getting things to "fall together," sometimes things that were far apart, getting them to coincide. And the further apart they were, more exhilarated he felt. The existent world-prickly, numb, empty-let itself be covered, taken, gathered, enveloped, in the mesh of a fabric. Oh, still a loose mesh, for sure.....Yet this made it all the more exciting, that the mesh was at once so loose and so fine, as though to avoid upsetting the blind breathing of the whole. But Death? Still crouched there, waiting. Prajapati thought: "If he kills me, what will be left?" Until now, this thought had terrified him. Prajapati knew that everything proceeded from himself. Imagining himself as not existing meant imagining all existence nonexistent. But now he looked around. Then he saw himself from without: an exhausted, weary, wrinkled old being. All about him, everything was still new, so that looking around he could now see how every dapple of vegetation, every outline of a rock, concealed a number, a word, an equivalence: a mental state that clung and mingled with another state. As if every state were a number. As if every number were a state. This was the first equivalence, origin of all others. Then Prajapati thought: "If I were gone, perhaps these things would no longer fall together? Perhaps the sampads would dissolve? But how could Death hurt the equivalences? How could she strike them?" Where was their boy, for her to wound? They occupied no space, they couldn't be touched. They surfaced in the mind, but where from? As he thought all this, Prajapati felt a fever, release. He thought: "If the sampads elude me, who am myself thinking them, they will be all the more elusive to Death, who knows nothing of them. Death can kill me, but she cannot kill the equivalences." He wasn't aware that a clear, dry voice was issuing from his mouth. He was speaking to Death, after their long silence. Prajapati said: "I've beaten you. Go ahead and kill me. Whether I am alive or not, the equivalences shall be forever." -Roberto Calasso.

Hello Friends!

I am going to try to figure out how to work this blog business so I can post information about interesting organizations, places and bits of wisdom I discover while I am traveling. Enjoy!