The following is a transcript of a converation with Satish Kumar on the PRI program, To the Best of Our Knowledge (Listen to the interview yourself here):How about going on a pilgrimage, and walking 8,000 miles barefoot across India. When he was only nine years old, Satish Kumar joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks in his native India. At 18, he became a campaigner for land reform and one of Gandhi's followers. To protest the nuclear arms race, he made an 8,000 mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America, without any money. Years later, he did it again, celebrating his 50th birthday by walking 2,000 miles with no money around Great Britain. Now in his 70s, Satish Kumar is one of the leading voices bringing together spirituality and ecology. He's the editor of Resurgence magazine and the founder of Schumacher College in England. Steve Paulson sat down with Mr. Kumar recently and asked how his spiritual values have informed his life.
Steve Paulson: When you were nine years old, you joined the wandering brotherhood of Jain monks, and you stayed a monk until you were 18. What did those years living as a monk teach you about nature?
When I was a monk, I meditated upon nature. I would go out in nature, and stand under a tree because I would remember that even the Buddha learned from the tree. He was enlightened while sitting under a tree, because when you are standing or sitting under a tree, you can see how all life is connected. The rain is falling and nourishing the tree roots. The birds are coming and sitting on the tree. The seeds are falling and giving fruit and food and nourishment to the worms. Worms are making the land fertile and nourishing the tree. So how, the cycle of life and the connectivity of life, how it is all together, how the interrelationship of all living beings act, I learn by standing and meditating under a tree.
SP: I wonder if there is something about Jainism, about this religious order that you joined that let you into some of these insights.
The specific quality of Jain religion is adherence and its belief in nonviolence. There is no other religion greater than nonviolence. So as a Jain, I will not even wear shoes, because if you are wearing shoes you might tread on some creatures on the earth, and they might get hurt. Whereas the feet are soft, and even if I am walking bare feet, I will look down watching the earth, so I don't tread on any creatures. And, if at night I'm walking, I'll have a little brush in my hand, and I'll sweep the floor before I put my foot down. So this way, Jains practice nonviolence to its extreme level, and that's what I love. And so nonviolence to nature, my nonviolent ecology, came from Jain ecology.
SP: Let me ask you more about walking, because you've spent years walking. I mean, I know you went on pilgrimages in various points in your life. You would walk across an entire continent. It sounds like you're saying that walking can have real spiritual significance.
Absolutely. For when you are walking, you are touching the earth. When you are touching the earth, you feel a sense of belonging to the earth. And earth is holding you, earth is sustaining you, and walking becomes a spiritual practice. This is why all great religious teachers have gone on pilgrimages because walking is the best form of meditation and best form of relationship with the natural world, the earth, the trees, the air, the sunshine, with the whole, whole existence. And so walking is a beautiful and a very high form of spiritual practice.
SP: I'm surprised that you didn't also say that it forces you to slow down, that you can't go too fast.
Spirituality and speed don't go together. The very fact that you are walking, you have to go slowly and you have to believe that when God made time, he made plenty of it. There is no shortage of time. You don't have to get somewhere quickly. Getting somewhere is not as important as how you get there. So the process of living, the process of walking, is more important. This is why I call my autobiography, No Destination, because when you are obsessed with reaching somewhere, you take any means of travel. But when journey itself becomes important, then you realize that not only this walking, where you are going somewhere, the life itself is the journey.
SP: Well, I have to ask you about this because you are not a monk anymore, living in England you edit a magazine, you teach at a college, you give talks around the world, it sounds like it can be very demanding. I'm wondering how much you can incorporate these principles of slowness and walking and not venturing too far off, how much that you can incorporate all that into your own life.
All those things I do slowly. I get up in the morning and I spend an hour reading spiritual scripts, I spend at least half an hour doing yoga and meditation every day. And then I have a siesta after lunch at least half an hour, so whatever work I'm doing, editing a magazine, or lecturing, or whatever work I'm doing, I'm never hurried. The quality of your work is more important then the speed and quantity of your work. So I always shift my consciousness from quantity to quality.
SP: Do you end up saying no a lot, when people ask you to do things?
Um, yes, to some extent I have to say no because if somebody's asking me to go to a conference, and I'm already doing something else in my diary, then I will have to say no. But I try to say yes as much as I can because I like to honor people's requests and people's invitation. So, I do it with a very light, light sort of foot. I don't feel any kind of stress or strain when I do something. I do slowly, and I do with love and with care, and that way I can live simple and slow life.
SP: I'm trying to figure out how you manage to do this when I can't, and so many other people can't. I mean, for me it seems to be this, this test to see if I can fit everything that I seem to need to do into a day.
I do only one thing at a time. When I'm doing that thing, I'm doing only that thing at that time. I'm not doing anything, I'm not thinking about anything else that I have to do too much other things. I will do what I am doing fully, totally present in that moment, and when I finish doing that, then whatever next comes, I will do that fully and totally at that moment. So I live in the moment, in the here and now, every moment is a very beautiful moment and my full concentration, full attention, full mindfulness is there. And that way, I don't feel any stress. I don't think that I have to do too much. I have a day, a whole day, time is always coming, I have plenty of time to come, and plenty of time to do things and if I don't accomplish everything in this life, there's a next life. So I...
SP: [Laughing] So are you saying you don't have any stress in your life?
No stress.
SP: No stress at all?
No stress at all. Because if you are living in the moment, in the here and now, and everything you do is a work of spiritual practice, and a work of art, then there is no stress. When you are painting a picture, you can't feel stress because this is what you want to do. If you are writing a poem, you can't feel stress because this is what you want to do. So I do only what I want to do, and when I do it, I do it with imagination, with mindfulness, with slowness and with creativity, with imagination and with full presence and mindfulness. And there's no stress. Stress is because we are worried, "Am I going to achieve?" I'm not trying to achieve anything. There's nothing to achieve. Action in itself is its own reward.
SP: Doesn't success also come from trying to do certain things, to take responsiblity. I mean maybe you have a job most of the day, you have children and you have all kinds of responsiblities there. I'm just trying to think of how some of what you're talking about applies to the typical American lifestyle.
I do things without doing them. I'm not the doer. Things are happening through me, but I am not the doer. I don't take any burden of the action. Action is naturally flowing through me so, like children come through you not from you, Khalil Gibran said. In the same way, actions and words come through you. I'm speaking to you now. These words are coming through me, I'm not taking any kind of ownership, or worry, or I'm not in any stress, I'm not in any hurry. I'm just speaking in a nice, relaxed way. So this way, I do every action, and there is no need to have any stress. I'm not interested in any outcome, I'm not interested in any achievement, I'm not trying to get somewhere. I'm not trying to succeed in my life. My life is not about success, my life is about self-realization and fulfillment. And if we seek fulfillment, we'll have no stress. If we seek success, we will have stress.
SP: As you look around the world right now, you are an activist, and you campaign for the principles of simplicity. You're shaking your head. You don't do that?
I am, but not in a kind of visionary way. I'm not trying to preach anything. And I'm not saying that people must listen to me, and follow me, and they must change as I want them to change. Like you plant a seed, and the planting the seed is your action. After that, the seed will grow by itself. And your work is to water the seed maybe. So what I am doing in my mission, and it's not really a mission, in my work when I'm trying to promote simplicity, sustainabilty, nonviolence, peace, all these things are like watering the seed. The tree will grow by itself. The seed knows how to become a tree. I don't have to tell people to be peaceful. People know how to be peaceful. I am only there to encourage them, to remind them to water the seeds of peace in their heart. That's all I'm doing and if the peace does not grow, then too bad. I'm not taking any responsiblity. So you can say I'm very irresponsible in that way. But I don't want to take the burden of the world on my shoulders. I'm not God, I'm not shaping the whole world. It's not my responsiblity to change the whole world. I'm here not to change the world, but to serve the world. When you want to change the world, you take a burden of changing and responsiblity of changing. And that can be stressful. When you are serving the world, you do your best and that's it.
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