Soulful Sadhak

 Op uitnodiging van de Vlaamse Plum Village Sangha gaf ik een voordracht over sociaal engagement: hoe kan je je engagement in leven houden in een dolgedraaide wereld waar alles mis lijkt te lopen? Waar begin je? En hoe houd je de moed vol zonder op te branden? Ik deel over de lessen die ik trok uit meer dan 20 jaar sociaal engagement, en over mijn vallen en opstaan met perfectionisme, sociale angst en overdreven dadendrang.  Je kan de voordracht hier beluisteren: https://soundcloud.com/soulfulsadhak/dharma-talk-duurzaam

A piece about my life in Sadhana Forest  and how living in a sustainable reforestation community contributes to my understand of Interbeing. Originally written for Wake Up . Adapted from an earlier post . Tree planting in Sadhana Forest The past four years, I have been living and volunteering in an eco-community in South India. We live very simply in thatched roof huts made from local, natural materials. Our community is off-grid and uses only electricity from our solar panels and the water we draw from our well. In our daily life, we practice reforestation, bringing back to life an almost extinct indigenous tropical forest on a 70-acre piece of land, returning water, trees, and life to a once-barren and deserted area. I have learned many practical things about community life and sustainable living practices, but the deepest teaching while living this life has been a very direct, lived experience of the reality of Interbeing. Living this close to nature and actively participat...

There was a man whose name was loneliness. He was kind of an ordinary man, the one you would not really notice when you were sitting opposite him on the metro, grey nondescript suit, glasses, nondescript haircut, nondescript leather suitcase. Everyday he got home from work, Mister Loneliness would sit at his window and look outside, contemplating the world, looking at cars driving by, people passing, falling rain lit up by on orange streetlight on a cold an dreary evening. Sometimes he would see people stopping and saying hello to each other, but never for long. Sometimes he would see couples passing by holding hands, but not often. He never really understood what that meant, in fact, that is still saying too much, his mind would not even register it as special. They were just like the cars passing by. He could feel quite comfortable at times, sitting there in his warm and cosy sofa. Sometimes you might even say he felt something like – really? – happiness. But still, there was somethi...