Forests to Grow People - Living in an eco-community

Introduction

Two years ago I quit my job. I used to be a high school teacher. I always wanted to be a teacher, because I really loved kids. But soon enough I realised, that loving can be quite hard if you constanly have to judge and evaluate and tell children what to do. Even though I really did my best to teach interesting classes, and much as my students and the school staff told me I was doing a great job, I was left deeply unsatisfied of the job. I realised I just wanted to give unconditional love and acceptance, and did not want to be caught up in the constraints of the system.

And so I started longing to live in a community life again. I had lived in community before – I used to be an intern in Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in the south of France – and I realised that was the only time in my life where I felt real unconditional love and acceptance. In community, we can just be ourselves, and just love each other for who we are, without having to worry about complying with the rules of the system. However, I did not want to go back to Plum Village. I felt like living in a lay community and finding more profound ways of connecting to the opposite sex. And I wanted to live a more active life, with more focus on service than on contemplation.

Bird's eye view of our community

Environmentalism as Sadhana

Through a friend I heard of Sadhana Forest, an ecological community in the South of India, trying to replenish depleted local aquifers and replant the indigenous rainforest, which had been cut down by the colonizing forces, causing the entire area to start desertifying. What really attracted me there though, was that it was much more than a reforestation project. Sadhana Forest has deep roots – pun intended – in the spirituality of the Indian subcontinent. Sadhana means ‘spiritual path’ in Sanskrit, and it is part of the larger community of Auroville, an experimental township dedicated to human unity, founded by the followers of Indian spiritual teacher Sri Aurobindo.

And so Sadhana is not just about planting as many trees as we can. As we say here, our people do not just grow a forest, our forest also grows people. In Sadhana Forest we realise that being an environmentalist, is more than just planting a few trees or shouting some slogans. If we try and do some good for the environment, only to go home to buy a lot of stuff we do not need and fight with our partner, then what good does it do?

Here we understand that an environmentalist life is a Sadhana, a spiritual path. It requires constant awareness and growth. Saving the environment cannot be part time commitment. It is not just trying to consume less plastic or even use less water. Rather on the contrary, it is about continuously being mindful of the impact of our actions, constanly deepening our understanding of how nature functions, and how we can live in harmony with it. It is a lifelong practice, where perfection can never be achieved – it is impossible to become completely impactless – but nonetheless we can try to keep minimizing the impact we have.

In this, for me, it very much resembles the Buddhist path and the Mindfulness Trainings we practice in Plum Village. In Plum Village we also constantly try to be mindful of our actions and to deepen our understanding, knowing that our understanding does not make much sense if we do not strive to apply it in all aspects of our life. And we also know that our trainings are like the Northern star, there to guide us, but sheerly impossible to completely achieve.

Planting a tree

More specifically, I think this environment-conscious lifestyle has been a great teaching on Interbeing for me. In the past Interbeing was more of a philosophical concept for me. Rationally it made sense to me that everything was connected, but I never really felt it. Here I feel it every day. When I wash my hands, I am very conscious of how much water I use, where the water comes from and where it will go after I use it. Life in the forest is for me, for that matter, the best example of the teaching of Interbeing I have ever encountered.

Life in  the forest

So what does life here look like? It is very simple. So simple that it makes Plum Village look like a five star hotel. I live in a small hut in a forest, which is not much more than a floor and a thatched roof. I have no electricity or running water in my hut. Our community is completely off the grid both for water and power, so we are solely reliable on the energy our solar panels produce and on the water we pump up ourselves (which again comes from our own water conservation efforts). Running water is only for community purposes, electricity is limited to community buildings. Water for personal use has to be pumped up by hand, electricity for personal use is only available during certain hours. (So playing with your smartphone all day is virtually impossible!)

A simple life is also a slow and mindful life. There is no rushing things when you have to cook on a wood stove – got to watch out for those burning embers though! - go somewhere by bicycle or wait for several hours in the morning for the power to come on. Everything goes at a natural pace, from growing the trees to washing your clothes by hand. In fact, sometimes life goes so slow that you have to practice a lot with impatience, especially when you wake up in the middle of the night, having to go to the toilet urgently. First you have to climb out of your hut and find your way in the dark through the forest!

The community is fully vegan. We also do not allow processed food and try to eat as much local and organic as we can. We use sustainable rocket stoves, dry composting toilets and live with a zero waste philosophy. This means we try to produces as little waste as we can and try to reuse as much as we can. Our buildings are made entirely of natural materials and we clean only with biodegradable soaps and detergents. Because of that, all the waste water can flow back to the forest.

Washing your hands at our efficient,  zero waste
hand washing stations

So whenever I use our sustainable water taps or our compost toilets, naturally Thay’s gathascome to me and make much more sense to me than they ever did before. Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life. Quite obvious when you are working in a project that is turning a desert into a lush forest, and where all water flows back to nature. Defiled or immaculate – these concepts exist only in our mind. When you are squatting over a dry composting toilet and than later turning that very compost to use it to grow our forest, you have no choice but to get over these concepts.

In order to happily do indigenous reforestation, you have to let go of a great deal of ego. Reforestation is a very selfless act. We get no direct return on investmentof our planting efforts. (In fact, this is the very reason why the founders decided to create a forest!) It takes a long time for trees to grow. And there is nothing we can harvest or sell. The only way we can continue our work is throughrealizing that everything in the global ecosystem is deeply connected – interbeing, there it is again! Forests attract water and rain, soak up CO2, cool down the environment and increase the biodiversity. They make a livelihood possible for all living beings. In fact, becaouse of our water conservation work, the aquifer has been restored and local farmers can farm again. So when I eat my (vegan, logal, organic non-processed) food, I truely realise that this food is the gift of the entire universe, the sky, the earth, numerous living beings and much hard loving work.

Conclusion

I have lived here for a year now, and what do I take home from this experience most? Where before, I knew intellectually that we had to do something to save the environment, now for the first time, I really feel a profound connection to Mother Earth, mind, body and soul. You should really try waking up every morning by the sound of birds and bees and wind rustling to the trees. There is no better teaching than this. I have really seen and realized here how everything in Nature is connected and how everything we do has an impact – or to put it in a positive way – how everything we do can become a celebration of life on earth! In fact, saying we feel connected to Mother Earh, is not enough, we have to realise we are Mother Earth, we are part of nature, just as much as the birds and trees. Growing a forest has really taught me that, growing a forest that grows people.