Blueprint for a good life
India today seems to be in a fevered rush to embrace uninhibited consumerism and mindless materialism.
I wouldn’t say spiritual values have been lost entirely. But there are signs of erosion, most evident in the loss of balance between the four aspects of life — dharma (ethical living), artha (wealth creation), kama (pursuit of pleasure), and moksha (liberation and spirituality). Each had its place in the matrix of life, which is no longer the case, with artha assuming precedence over everything else.
A spiritual-cultural blueprint for the “good life” exists in India, one that is in accordance with nature’s values of cooperation rather than competition, nurture rather than consumption, of taking only that which is needed and nothing more. We need to remember it today because the earth cannot continue to sustain lifestyles that burden its resources.
“Eco-literacy” has a deeper meaning. Scientist and philosopher Fritjof Capra defines it as “forming of networks, sharing resources, cycling matter continuously, using solar energy to drive the ecological cycles, developing diversity to assure resilience, forming networks nesting within networks, and so on”. In this complex, nonlinear web of life, in which everything is interdependent and matter moves in cycles, no single variable can be maximised. In fact, maximising a single variable is defined by scientists as the ecological understanding of stress.
Our pre-globalisation way of life, still alive in parts of the country, had much of this holistic wisdom woven into it. Informed by the principles of integration, frugality and balanced living, it was an eco literate lifestyle where all constituent variables were optimised, not maximised. According to it, the “good life” was a balanced, mindful, meaningful and healthy life.
Individual well-being was assured through an ayurvedic cuisine that linked properties of food, seasonal variations and methods of cooking with individual constitutions, and yogic disciplines regulated physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Principles of frugality required not wasting and reusing rather than throwing away. The emphasis was on balancing, not maximising, the variables of one’s life. Santosh dhan (wealth of contentment) was cherished over material wealth.
We may not be able to replicate this lifestyle exactly as it once was, in a pre-industrial, agrarian society. What we can do is not forget this ancient wisdom, and rethink and re-imagine it in our contexts. A new blueprint is needed to meet the needs of our times.
Swati Chopra writes on spirituality and mindful living. Her most recent book is Women Awakened:
Stories of Contemporary Spirituality in India.
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