Backwards, Forwards and the Middle Way

Over the past months we've spent much time moving slowly through and experiencing the ways of living and the changes in ways of living in the high desert regions of rural Spiti, Zanskar, and Ladakh. Our experience here has us feeling very passionate about sharing perspectives that challenge one size fits all global development as we see how it can lead to the deterioration of culture, environment, and a people's happiness, health, and sense of place.

In this post I try to paint a picture of the traditional past, the transitioning present, and a future continuing in the direction of western development using a the typical situation in a rural village here as an example.... The direction we are heading feels like a dramatic loss but we are inspired to find much hope that the people here and people around the world are gaining the awareness to find a middle way...

A village in the high desert Himalaya...

There are just 7 homes, each large and spacious, with grass, sticks and cow dung stacked high on the roof. Prayer flags flap in the wind above the grass, sending prayers of love and compassion throughout the lonely mountain valley... Each house was built with local materials and with the communal effort of the local people. The large size is not for show but for functionality, with space for storing grain and other human foods, large amounts of fodder, and keeping animals and humans warm and comfortable over the long winters. Yaks of different breeds spend their winters inside after a summer of grazing in the mountains, alongside them are many sheep, goats, and a couple of donkeys.
In one room one finds many buckets fill with each days milk as it ferments and turns into curd, much of which will later be turned into butter. The leftover liquid is then boiled and made into the local dried cheese and used in soups throughout the year. Nothing is wasted, all resources valuable.

Alongside the fermenting dairy is fermenting grains of barley, producing the local beer, 'chang' that is drunk by all either watered down as a refreshing drink during heavy work or stronger as a relaxing top off to a long day or an enhancement for enjoyment at local celebrations.
Stocks of dried vegetables, root vegetables, and grains fill the rest of the space.

In this house an entire extended family has lived for generations. Grandmother and grandfather now have a more relaxing indoor role as the spend more time near and in the home, praying, making tea, and doing small chores, feeling secure and well taken care of in their old age. Mother and father are out working in the fields, with the animals, and cutting grass with the help of their children and young grandchildren that follow around and play among the flowers and grains.

Everyone in the village is up just before dawn and asleep much after dusk, working in the fields or surrounding mountains, cooking, taking care of animals, spinning wool, building and repairing homes... the work often involves much physical effort but no one appears stressed, no one is over worked. Much time is spent throughout the day drinking butter tea or chang with tsumpa, along with breaks for meals, all cooked over a cow dung fire with simple local wholesome ingredients.
Families and friends are often found sitting together laughing and relaxing under the shade of a rock wall or a tree.... leisure is built into the day. Everyone feels that they belong, that they have a meaningful role in this world, that they have a community they can count on.

Everyone in the village knows how to grow the food the need to sustain themselves, they know how to take care of, raise, and obtain needed products from animals, they know how to build a house, how to make clothes, ropes, and shoes. They have an understanding and connection with the mountains around them, they have a religious philosophy that keeps them grounded peaceful and compassionate.
They are completley at home in these mountains and within themselves.....

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Walking through this same village today the surface appears to be mostly the same, but a deeper look shows a creeping shift...
There are less children and young adults around as they are now sent away for school, off in search of jobs in the cities, or away leading foreign tourists on treks and transporting their luggage on donkeys.
A look out in the fields and around and in homes find mostly elder couples, some alone, some with just one son or daughter around to help with the farm work. The only children are those  under the age of 5, still running around with each other among the paths and fields.

Durong the summer months foreign trekkers on holiday come through in big groups. They use their large cameras to take photos of local people in their daily work and they surround the remaining young children, snapping photos and handing out chocolates...
In homestays and camps they eat rice, dal, white bread, eggs, powdered milk tea and other non local foods. Locals expect that foreigners won't like their traditional meals and the trekkers have learned these foods to be the trekking staples, hardly knowing that there are much more nutritious options available grown right in front of them... options that they could choose that would give local people a greater sense of pride in their culture in place rather than seeing these market goods as the more advanced sophisticated options...

Plastic wrappers and bottles are found scattered around the water channels and fields. In the homes chemical soaps, packaged biscuits and butter,  and other market products replace the local, free, and more environmentally friendly traditional cleaning products and foods.
Rice and dal become a common meal for locals as well, transported thousands of kilometers to reach them and providing far less nourishment than that which they grow right outside their door.

The younger generation now live outside the village, all off in schools in cities, staying in hostels and being exposed to a drastically different way of living and thinking. Consumer culture media, and their own teachers in school teach them that the way forward is to live in the cities, make more money, and buy more consumer goods. They learn that the ways of life in the village of their parents and grandparents is backward and only for the uneducated.
They spend nearly their whole upbringing away from their roots, not knowing how to grow food, build a home, cook traditional foods, or make clothes. Their bodies become more weak than those of their ancestors as they eat chemical foods and are un accustomed to physical labor.

This generation is more educated than their ancestors but lesser in wisdom, they lack a sense of community, contentment and belonging. They are taught to strive for more bigger and better and distract themselves from the confusion felt on the inside. They are trained to fit into city jobs, and into the global economic system and become less and less fit for self sufficient survival....

---- (A look to where things are heading and where some places have already gone)----

Back in the village things become quieter and survival more difficult. Leisure time becomes less as there are less hands around to help with the work.
Elders become more and more alone and less secure in their old age as their children and grandchildren are now off in the cities.
Villages are now mostly a relic of the past, used for tourism as trekkers explore these world of the past.
Roads begin to replace these trekking routes and motorbikes and taxis rip through the valleys, throwing plastic wrappers on the side of the roads, polluting the rivers, hardly feeling the reality of the place they are coming through. Taking selfies and snaps, gaining photos of memories they never had..

Most of the food eaten now is trucked in from the plains after its grown in vast chemical monocultures. The rice and dal don't fit with the cold climate, they don't make the body as strong as the traditional barley and peas but they are seen as the way forward. Sickly sweet milk tea replace the local salt butter tea... Chang is replaced by packaged soft drinks. Few people have tasted real thukpa made without refined flour or the other strong nourishing foods of their ancestors.

While it used to be common for people to live into their 90s people are now amazes at those who make to 80, while middle aged adults are facing a variety of new diseases..

The farms that are left are now kept going through the paid labor of Nepali and economically disadvantaged Indian workers. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are subsidized and encouraged by the Indian government and applied in abundance. Much of the food grown here is shipped to markets in the cities of the plains, much of the food eaten here is shipped up from the plains... following the logic of 'free' global markets thanks to subsidies that discourage local markets.

Back in the cities some people begin to become aware of feelings of discontentment, and a lack of belonging. They hear stories of the lives of their ancestors, a life that existed without the need of the outside world. A life where the air was clean, the water fresh, the food nourishing, bodies strong, minds clear and needs few. A life where everyone had a role, everyone was needed and belonged, where everyone could count on one another.
A life where there was no notion of needing something more, where each person lived simply in the sickness of each moment.

People begin to want to come back to this simpler life but now feel stuck, stuck in the comforts they've become accustomed to, stuck in the need for money and things, stuck in a body that doesn't know how to carry loads of grass and cow dung and how to spend days harvesting grain and and cutting grass...
Within a generation traditional seeds, knowledge, and strength that had thrived for centuries are lost.. and people don't know how to find their way back...

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This is the direction that globalization and a craving for the modern can easily head if people don't remain awake, if they don't question, and listen to their hearts and the truth.

But here we find much hope in a middle way... in the cities and the villages people are becoming aware of the danger of where they can easily head if they follow blindly.
Some few young people who have experienced city life become tired of the chase after desire and look toward the farming life of their parents..
Many are still racing blindly 'forward' with the encouragement of government subsidies, media, and uniform education.

But a more awake few are beginning to question.  They are looking for a way back home, are looking to find a middle way....

------------ a plea for a greater awakening------------

May this new generation have the strength and wisdom to see with clarity through the chaos. May they remain rooted in  the wisdom of the Buddhas. May they see value in preserving traditional knowledge, saving seeds, conserving scarce resources, eating tradition foods, and maintaing physical strength.
May they maintain the knowledge and ability of how to survive and continue to know the freedom of self sufficiency and a clear balanced mind. 
May they find the middle way.

May we all have the courage to question with honesty what 'progress' , moving 'forward' , and 'development' should really mean.
Not by definitions given to us in schools and in the media but by what we expereince to give us the most fulfillment and inner peace.

May we each have the strength to look at the direction we are headed in our own lives and question if it is where we truly want to go. If we are truly moving towards inner peace for ourselves and others or if we are blindly following this endless cycle of desire and attachment to the impermanent.
May we have the strength to change.

May we all begin to see with clarity, wisdom and an unwavering mind.

May we find the middle way and live in the simple suchness of this moment.

May all beings be free of suffering.

OM MANI PADME HUN

Cutting grass and a gassy ass, some perspectives on land use and conservation

While walking across the high desert Himalaya from Himachal Pradesh into Ladakh we strive to learn from and take part in the ways of living here as much as possible.
The traditional lifestyle here has much to teach, from practical knowledge to a deeper wisdom in how to live in peace and harmony with the land, with one another and with one's self...

The end of our trek brought is into the harvest season with everyone working from tje crack of dawn to well past dusk to get everything ready for the quickly approaching winter. Many families where much appreciative of extra hands in helping with the work and we were much appreciative of the chance to stay with and learn from them and to give back some of the time and energy that so many have given to us...

Shortly after spending 5 days harvesting barley with a family in Hanumal, the last village of Zanskar. We stayed 5 more days in Lingshed village in Ladakh helping with a variety of farm work from cutting grass, carrying loads of peas on our backs, and harvesting the local cumin seeds and fields of barley. Of course with many tea, snack, and hardy meal breaks in between.  :)

Ama lai (mama) has the main role of cutting the grass, harvesting the grains. Aba lai (papa) is in charge of the animals. Colleen and I traded off helping the two of them in their tasks the first day, helping aba lai bring the two donkeys across the village to the field below the monestary and loading them up to bring the already cut fodder back to stack on the roof of their home.

We learned some new lessons on the digestive tendencies of donkeys As they farted their way across the village. As we led the second donkey behind Aba Lai we would have to keep our scarves over our mouth and nose as the first donkey continually farted noisily in front of us.
Yippee!
Their bodies were hard at work digesting that days grass as they carried their food for the winter months up and down across the village. 

Here every bit of vegetation is a precious resource. First all the vegetation around the house and fields are cut with a scythe, stacked in piles and then carried up to the rooftop. Then after the grain harvest is finished the grains are separated from the stalks and the stalks are added to the roof stock pile. Once this is all done the women of the village spend several days heading out further into the mountains, cutting all vegetation they can find and carrying it all in a giant bundle on their backs back home, each looking a bit like walking trees...

Even plants only a few inches high are cut. The winters are long and each family has many yaks, goats, sheep, and donkeys to sustain all throughout.

The areas not cut by humans are used as summer grazing grounds for the animals. Each village shares the responsibility of being the Shepard as they rotate turns between families that have a person take out the hundred or more sheep and goats of the whole village for the day. In the morning and evening there is a meeting spot at the edge of town where everyone bring and collects their animals, in a chaos of 'bahhing' animals and shouting and running villagers throwing stones, somehow all the animals end up back to their correct place each day.

Each night in Lingshrd we help Ama Lai to round up the sheep and goats and get them into their small night time stone structure. Once their all packed tightly inside ama lai squeezes into a crazy on the corner with her bucket and several minutes later re emerges with a bucket of goats milk! Somehow casually finding the correct animals to milk in the chaos.

Back to the grass...

It's interesting to look at the land use here from an ecological or permaculture perspective. While normally I would be inclined and have learned that it's best to keep the vegetation on the land, and that vegetation on farm field should be returned to the soil as much as possible, I find myself lacking certainty on ways to make the farming here more ecologically sound without large disruption in the culture and way of life. There is just no mulch to spare for mulching...

All vegetation is needed for animal feed. And these animals are an essential part to their survival in this harsh climate.

There are few crops that can grow in the short growing season here, making the extra nutrition from the animals products essential. Dairy is a precious source of fat, protein, and other vitamins and minerals, keeping the local people strong and healthy in this harsh environment.
The sheep provide wool that people turn into clothes over the winter time and the meat from the animals provide sustainance once all other foods become scarce over the winter months.

Large stock piles of grass gathered by the villagers to last throughout the winter fill the rooftops. This grass then cycles into manure that help to fertilize the fields and fuel the fires for cooking and warmth.

The land is in a state of permanent heavy disturbance with little chance of ever reaching past primary successional species yet I would argue that these people are living much more sustainably than those back home that are encouraging land to be set aside for wilderness and forest. The land appears heavily used yet remains in balance with no resources going to waste as everything cycles back into the system.

The people are fully a part of the environment and the local cycle. With even the human manure going back to fertilize the fields. All resources are precious and put to use in their full potential. Population is at a small enough scale for the land to continue to sustain for centuries....

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At home there are many prisitne wilderness areas but most people are living as though they are separate from these natural systems.  This land can only be set aside for wilderness because the American economy is dependent on exploiting resources from other, more politically weak countries. Americans can buy their food and an an excess of other consumer goods from supermarkets and shopping malls and then burn large amounts of fossil fuels to drive to national parks to spend their holidays. Americans have their cake and eat it too...

But these visits to the parks and day to day life don't often feel connected to one another. One goes to the wilderness for the weekend and enters nature, then leave nature and goes back to the 'real world' and back to work...
Nature and day to day life don't seem connected.

But what if we were to live a bit more deeply on the land and find a middle way?
Where we lived within our natural surroundings, using the resources around us for sustainance in a capacity that could be continually sustained? Where we lived in a way that we felt ourselves to be apart of this cycle. Where economics meant making the best use of thelimited local resources and enhancing their capacity, rather than creating an illusion of endless growth..
Where human population was subject to the same restraints of the population of all species, kept in check by the carrying capacity of the local environment...

I'm not suggestion that we get rid of the wilderness areas and cut all vegetation. Each situation has to be adapted to the local culture, and ecology. Wilderness is essential, these places are extremely healing and valuable and other species need a place where they can thrive without the threat of human exploitation of their homes.
But it's important to take a look at the true cost of setting aside this land for protection. Is it truly conservation if we set aside this land yet replace it with stealing resources from others elsewhere?
If we are to set aside land for wilderness we should also put limits on ourselves in how much we can consume so there is space for all beings to survive and thrive...

We need to look at our local living spaces and find ways to turn these resources into sustainance. Seeing waste as part of the cycle of precious resources. Turning green and unused spaces into places that provide food... sustaining ourselves locally and then also leaving some untouched space for other beings to thrive without our intervention.

We need to mature and develop in a more responsible way, learning a bit more from those who are living more simply and in harmony with the land. We need to use our minds as tools for enhancing and supporting life rather than for destruction..

We need to re connect to what it means to survive and feel at home in our local environment, to find balance and our place in the ecological system, to understand that conserving one place doesn't mean we have a right to destroy another...

Maybe we would begin to find the right path if we all spent a little time  cultivating grains, and vegetables, and getting to know what it takes to become connected to the life emerging from the land around us.

Maybe we should all spend a little time cutting grass and carrying it back home with a gassy ass...

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Thank you to the many Ama and Aba Lai's we've had the chance to work alongside an learn from over the past couple of months. Thank you for your time energy and graceful way of doing it all while remaining fully rooted in each moment.
May this connected way of being and natural wisdom continue here into the future and continue to inspire visitors to become better beings in their own homes.

May all beings find the path to bring themselves and others out of suffering.
May we all live in peace inside and out

:)

Candle light and life

As dusk sets in between the wide Zanskar Valley mountains the streets are dark and calm, as though the daily life of cars and busy people has been hushed back to traditional ways.
Tonight there is no power in Padum and the soft glow of candles flicker from the windows of dhabas and shops. In a home one can see a monk sitting cross legged on the ground doing a late night task and enjoying conversation over the soft flicker.
The source of this simple glow and lack of electricity allows for the easement of truth and presence.
Erin and I enjoy a bowl of thukpa for dinner as the flickering light brightens the face of one another. This clarity and calmness flowed into deep conversation with Sonam (the principle of the school in Padum and refugee of Tibet). The soft flicker of candle light matched the tone of hardships faced and lessons learned by Sonam in his push out of Tibet when he was only 6 years old.
This simplicity in lighting seems to bring back this simplicity of being... allowing for such presence and clarity. This blessing is a reminder to stay connected, slow down and to use awareness in utilizing these innovations of the mind and technologies as a tool.....
To enhance the harmony and stability of all life. 

Barely blessed

Coming into the high mountain desert region of Spiti and Ladakh we feel blessed to have become so acquainted with the traditional staple grain of barley.

From getting into Kinnaur through to Ladakh all the villages are surrounded by green fields with these tall grains waving in the wind.
These fields are nearly always dotted with one or two women, moving water through the channels for irrigation and weeding out unwanted grasses.

There are several different types of barley grains in the valleys here, each with slight different charaterstics in growth and flavor and some suited better for certain foods than others.

For all barely through the main way of consumption is in the form of 'tsumpa' or 'satu'. To make tsumpa you take the grain and dry roast it, sometimes with a little salt. The grain is delicious just like this as a crunchy snack or topping but here is usually then ground into a flour.

Since the grain has already been roasted the flour doesn't need to be cooked again and can be readily added to a variety of things.....
Such as:
- sweet tea (mitti chai)
- salt butter tea (namkeen chai)
-curd (dahi)
-chang (local light beer made from fermented barley)
-thukpa (soup made with vegetables, yak cheese, and either tsumpa or wheat noodles)
-liquid dal
-breads
.... the possibilities are endless!

Alcohol is also commonly made with the barley grains:
Chang is a light beer made from the fermented barley that is often had in the villages as a refreshing drink and pick me up by both men and women. People here also talk of wedding parties and celebrations where families each bring barrels full of chang to share as they dance sing and enjoy.

It can be made more light or strong depending on the occasion as the desired level of intoxication. 'Sahi' is the chang that is fermented for the least time and is mostly a probiotic drink. This variety is what is most commonly had during work, mixed with some tsumpa for extra energy.

A stronger chang would be had after work or a distilled barley liquor called 'eirik'.
Home made liquor here is often called wine, often confusing many foreigners when they accept it for the first time, expecting a nice sippable drink but then getting a taste of this strong spirit.

We have been calling ourselves 'barley blessed' as we carry a bag of tsumpa with us along the road/trail. Always finding it easy to refill from the ample supply in everyone's homes.
We have tsumpa porridge or make sweet energy ball laddus with local ghee, honey, and dried fruits. Add it to dal or soups that we make and add it to curd when we can find some in the villages. 

Our enthusiasm for barley has us excited to share the many uses of this nutritious grain back home and grow it ourselves!

Harvest season is coming up in a couple of weeks. We are keen to learn the rest of the process bringing this grain from the field to our mouths and plan to stay with a family and help harvest, process, and store. Being one of the busiest times of the year it should be very easy to find a village where there is the need of extra hands.
Hands harvesting barley with energy powered by barley.
Simplicity at its finest.