permaculture

["D.A. Riley" <permascape@yahoo.com>]

My two senses worth. Not an attempt to define, but contribute, to the 
discussion of spirituality and permies....

It is inspiring when seeing students of permaculture connect the web of life 
to ourselves, observing nature's ways, the function of designing a system to 
support an ecology; giving back to others and the Earth in an ethical 
manner...

The thoughts and behaviour that come from understanding this, ever-growing, 
concept of Permaculture can, for many, cast an image of spiritual connection 
to the greater world. 

"Spiritual" is another ever-growing concept. It's very definition is ripe 
with a loving and dominating history. Very personal in it's make-up, spirit 
takes the form of our individual/collective beliefs, according to the 
particular social reality in which we are exposed during development.

I believe Bill's own spirit is in his writings, teachings and life work. The 
man has done much to better the world, from his heart. He took a lifetime to 
develop his views and his belief, as we each do.  

My understanding of what he is saying about permaculture and spirituality 
mixing together, reflects this: spiritual belief takes a lifetime to create, 
and is individual in nature. To incorporate a specific belief into a design 
system would isolate many who will benefit from Permaculture. Such as; those 
who've experienced a history of oppressive "spiritual" movements dominating 
their villages, towns, country. Or, the devout monotheist...

I like what Rain says about creating diversity in Permaculture teaching to 
include everyone: New Age, Taoist, Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Shinto, Christian, 
Zoroastrian, Sikh, Jewish, Confucian, Buddhist, Tribal, Interfaith, Utopian, 
Subgenious, meditation-based, Yogic, Santeria, Evangelical and a great deal 
more.

Cheers to diversity,

DA 

 

3. permaculture and spirituality (Rain Tenaqiya)
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 15:43:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rain Tenaqiya 
Subject: [permaculture] permaculture and spirituality

Despite Bill Mollison's railing against Californian New Age influences on the 
permaculture movement (which is a movement and not a text-based dogma), Bill 
himself openly admits that his permaculture ideas are based partly on Taoism 
and other spiritual traditions. On page 99 of the Designer's Manual (4.23 The 
Mnemonics of Meaning), he even devotes some time to a Tantric Buddhist chant 
(and even connects it to his own name, which will no doubt result in some 
personality cult someday, probably in California). While I loathe New Age 
spirituality (mainly for its continuation of the patriarchal/otherwordly 
paradigm), each community needs to adapt permaculture to its own situation to 
make it take root. If a permaculture teacher is afraid that a specific 
manifestation of permaculture is excluding people, than that person should 
come up with a different version. We should not pretend that a permanent 
culture will not include spirituality, as history shows that we are spiritual 
bei
ngs. We
just need to create diverse permacultures so that everyone can be included.

Rain




                
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