Готовый перевод Мы строим деревню / we are building ecovillage: убеждения

Beliefs, or what is my faith?

I believe in neither the cuckoo calls nor daisy divination

and I don’t go to the Gypsies…

B. Okudzhava

Important point on which adoption of any decision is based, a certain set of belief and values is. In other words, it is necessary to answer a question, in what such it is necessary to trust the person to decide to move from the city to mountains?

I thought of it much and today I understand that process of preparation myself, the mind rather difficult, after all as a result it is necessary to select only that is related to a studied subject. As Robert Dilts, the belief specialist spoke: "To work with belief of the person is how to fry roast from a tiger. The most difficult is to catch! " It is valid, moving to mountains is that rather strongly changes a way of life of the city dweller and belief which force to go to it have to be very powerful, such that lie in the core of the personality, in depth "I" where happens not so simply to make the way "to a tiger hunter".

I decided to go on a cunning way, to begin not with myself, and with those people who strongly affected in due time my outlook, became a source of belief for me therefore as it seems to me, we live as we live. I at first wrote names of people, and then understood to that they taught me.

In this list there are with whom I didn't happen to get acquainted and about whom I know according to their books. And there are also those whom I know personally.

The first important belief sounds approximately so: any person, it isn't dependent on experience and a financial position, can build the own beautiful and comfortable house. It will be possible to live in this house, being in harmony with the surrounding nature.

About it I read at them:

Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher known for that in due time two years lived in loneliness in the hut constructed by him, on the bank of the Uoldensky pond. Its book "Walden, or Life in the Wood" became result of that. Thoreau was the minimalist and the opponent, as though now told, "consumer societies". It in detail describes the life and thoughts which visited it during this biennial experiment.

It is interesting that a lot of things from this that he wrote in the 19th century quite actually and now, in the 21st. Henry classic. Lines from its book used and many people who are interested in "what subject" use still. Even Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy quoted Thoreau.

Bill Mollison. Australian father of "permaculture". Applied science any mention about which causes nervous excitement in "eco" - parties. Mollison is good that united many traditional and modern knowledge of agriculture in one harmonous beautiful system by means of which it is possible to create very harmonious managing, such which would be ecologically competent. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a system of design, applied science about communications of different elements, for example, houses, greenhouses, a kitchen garden, a garden and any hen house for creation of the closed, autonomous cycle with the most effective use of energy. Bill's book "Introduction in permaculture", though abounds with information about various tropics and bananas, has to be read as it seems to me, any villager. I read this book several times, and then someone dragged off it, such it interesting.

Yanto Evans, Michael Smith and Linda Smiley with the book "The house from the saman: philosophy and practice". The unique book which can quite become desktop for all who wants to build the house. In due time, after I read this book, I believed that itself I will be able to build the own house for the family. It very inspiring and practical even if you don't want to build the house of saman, and of any other material. Many times read, it again and again is remembered to me.

Simon Dail known on Internet for the "house of the hobbit". Now he lives with a family in an ekoposeleniye Lammas, in Great Britain. Many his interesting thoughts relatively "Low impact" (low influence) - lifestyle which has the minimum impact on environment, can be read on its site. About Simon there was article in the first issue of the magazine "Ecohouse".

One more character is Tony Wrench, too the Englishman. With him we even sometimes correspond. He is known for the "The round house", too in "low impact" style. He has the book, not translated into Russian, but very interesting: "Building a low impact roundhouse".

All these characters and their experience is successful stories how it is possible to live closer to the nature, rendering on it an influence minimum. To build own houses, inexpensive and thus beautiful and cozy. These are stories how it is possible to organize so the economy that it brought pleasure.

There are stories about ordinary city dwellers who changed the way of life, having successfully moved on the nature. If one person made something, it can be repeated by another. I'm inspired by this stories.

These people, first of all, I consider as the "eco" - teachers.

Second belief: It is possible to grow up independently the majority of necessary products for the family. It is normal for the person and isn't something supernatural. It is possible to do it by a natural way, without equipment and chemistry use.

There are "preachers" of thoughtful and careful lifestyle naturally, already it is more than their work about directly garden and farmer affairs. I too love them and I consider as the inspirers. Here it is possible to remember again Bill Mollison about whom I already wrote, there are also others.

Sepp Holzer is an Austrian farmer who lives in his farm Krameterhof in the Alps and amazes everyone around him with his wondrous agricultural successes. It's interesting and useful to read about it. But first of all, Sepp is a successful and rich farmer, who is very good at large-scale agriculture which includes improving the surrounding nature at the same time. This is a rare experience that Sepp shares actively in his seminars and books. Personally I take interest in Sepp, but he's a farmer. And we are not. The main thing that I find worth learning from him is global and systemic thinking. Sepp creates monumental projects. They're worth reading about.

There is Nikolay Kurdyumov, who actively writes about "smart" gardening. He's good, but more oriented to hobbyist gardeners. And is valuable as an inspirator and a distributor of ideas. And the ideas are good. Most of all I appreciate his "trilogy": "An art of fertility", "Defence instead of a fight", and "Peace instead of defence". These books describe, how you can reorient from conquering to collaboration and thoughtful observation of the nature in the small eco-system of your garden. The book "An art of fertility" is the collection of the classical works about different approaches to soils in easy readable narration by Nikolay. Thanks to him I learned about Ovsinsky, Faulkner, Fukuoka - the classics of natural restorative agriculture. I'm very grateful to him for that. Although, after Kurdyumov I've read separately with a pleasure "A revolution of one straw", the book by japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka - full with no narrations, very absorbing reading. Masanobu is very wise, and is worth to be learned from. In his book he's not only telling about agriculture, but also about the man, his way of thinking, happiness, natural food, the ecology.

Boris Bublik have done well too. He's the ukrainian preacher of the "nature-wise" agriculture. His "Melange garden" and the other books are interesting enough.

That's regarding gardening.

But living in Nature is not only living in Nature. Not only the garden and the house. If it was so, we wouldn't look for a community, but just moved to a village. And in this sphere there are mentors I can name. The people who had influenced me.

The third belief sounds like that:

People can live in a healthy community, having lots of common businness, not based on a financial relationships, have shared posessions and live a common rich creative life.

"On the other side of lonesome", the book by Nilse Kristie, is very useful here. It describes the life of communities in interesting settlements, so called "Camp Hill" communities. It's an alternative form of supporting mentally unhealthy people, existing in some places in Europe. These are the villages, living as true communes, and their example is an interesting way of researching the essense of communal co-existing of people. Very interesting, if you want to learn something about real communism in a separate village.

I know life in communes not only out of the books, I had my own more or less successful experiments. For example, we lived together for several years as a commune in Tjumen, I lived in communes in St. Petersburg and Moscow (although not for long). Before that, for about two years, I've been living in student's campus. The experience was very diverse, but mainly pleasing enough. Probably I'm a communist at heart.

There is another belief, the fourth: the Universe is kind and plentiful. It has all resources that are needed for life.

The source of this belief is for sure Anton Krotov, it's a very important person for me, who at some time influenced a lot my outlook. He pushed me into hitch-hiking. Amongst his numerous books I'd recommend "A practice of free travelling". There, like in other Anton's books, is a lot about people relationship, freedom, love and confidence to the world, not only about how to hitch a lift or find yourself food and shelter in different places of the earth. He also was one of the people who had shown me with his own example that you can live "out of the system", working for yourself, doing what you like, instead of what you have to. He, too, helped me to publish my first book about travels - "Drom-o-mania". Thanks to which, I started to write more and am writing now.

By the way, another very important belief just arose, the fifth one, that you can live "working for yourself".

Besides aforementioned Anton Krotov, I met a lot more people, those who work for themselves, do creative work, handcrafting. Here I can remember all my teachers on psychotherapy, which had personal practices, held trainings and educational seminars.

And the sixth belief, practically following from the fifth one: the money is not a goal, but just a tool. You can have everything you need without having money.

Here I want to mention Heidemarie Schwermer. The german, well known for about 15 years she lives without money. At some time successful woman, she decided to hold an experiment: is it possible to live without money in the modern society? In a result, Heidemaried became the biggest specialist in this area in the world. She preaches, that the money is not a goal but just a tool. If you need something you can get it easily, for example, by changing. You can work in a cafe and get food. Work in a clothes store and get dressed. Change work to work, replacing impersonal money relationships with more priced - human relationships. Heidemarie wrote several books about her way of life, she conducts seminars all over Europe. And though some time ago she was considered a weirdo, now she has disciples and followers.

I will add another statement, the seventh one, a lot of aforementioned people are preaching the following: if we will live in thoughtless extra consumption - we will destroy ourselves. The main condition for saving our planet is rational, deliberate simplicity. Simple life in nature. Simple food. Simple human relationships. Simplicity in consumption. In all spheres.

Higher consumption and irrational usage of resources is the thing various ecologists always proclaim about. And that is what we can see around us. We live in the world where a lot of factories work. We live in the society which consumes an incredible amount of energy. We destroy a lot of resources. And as a result of that 99% of produced in a half of year going to a landfill. Landfills are growing, resources are destroyed, the nature dies, natural products become a rarity, and in this very moment we buy 3 cars for our family because we can't walk 500 metres to our work. Each couple of months we buy a new cellphone because the old one gets out of date...

Allright. We can talk about that for long. Watch the very interesting short movie "Story of Stuff". It is easily found on the Internet (www.storyofstuff.com).

What about ecology, here is the eighth belief: you should start from yourself. Lower your consumption, realize your wishes. Produce yourself natural food and support those who already does that. And overall, consider that each of us affects the planet.

Honestly, it's difficult for me to emphasize any particular beliefs then and I can't but notice following people. I consider them to be my teachers too:

Steve Paxton - the person who was one of the fathers of the contact improvisation, which is the corporal practice I used and taught about 5 years already. The corporal practice is a kind of art which combines organically the beauty of the contemporary dance with plasticity and physical power of aikido. For me Steve is a symbol of the life experimental approach, of the courage and the ability of asking oneself: ‘’what if?’’

Because of this question about 40 years ago was appeared this interesting style of practice, which nowadays has its followers almost all around the world. By the way, as far as I know, Steve also lives in one ecovillage today.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is a person, who is famous for his massive and boring enough novels, for example for ‘’War and Peace’’. But few people know that there are many works by this author, which are not included to the school curricula. These are his essays about vegetarianism, morality, religion, labour, pedagogics. It will just suffice to mention his “The Gospel in Brief”. But the special attention I’d like to draw to his fairy tales, for example ‘’The Story of Ivan the Fool (a character from Russian folk fairy tales) and his two brothers: Simeon a soldier
and Tarras-Briukhan ("Tarras the fat belly", a merchant)’’, “What People Live By” , “Three old men” and the book which was written before the death -“Way of life”. I highly recommend them to you. Tolstoy was the man of great strength, he was an innovator and a rioter (by the way the title for this chapter “what is my faith?” I took from his work). He was a man, who rejected his rich count life and became s simple farmer.

One more person is Richard Bandler. He is the founder of the NLP which is one of the systems of the modern psychology. I took a great interest in it and even taught it several years. For me this very person is first of all the symbol of an irrepressible energy and of the question ‘’HOW?’’. HOW can I accomplish one or anther task? HOW can I learn to do something new? If somebody can do something, HOW can I repeat it?

I frist wrote these three names and then I realized what unites them all.

FREEDOM. Bandler even said: "Freedom is everything and love is all the rest."

Another thing they all have is PASSION. Passion for life. Interest, energy, enthusiasm, ardour... I could make up more synonyms. And now if we join them all and take away the unnecessary, there will be only these two words left: FREEDOM and PASSION.

FREEDOM from housing utilities, from mortgage, from a job you don't love, from money, from fear to be fired, from fear of a crisis, from fear to have the electricity cut for nonpayment, from fear not to have enough food... Freedom to be who you are.

And PASSION for life. A life that you like, a life that you choose. Passion to do what you want to do. Passion to be who you are.

There are two main convictions which constitute the base of my life. They are the main reasons why we live as we live. Now here, in the ecovillage.

Finally I will enumerate some more writers which we fond of and which were not mentioned above. They are not directly connected with the ecovillage life, but nevertheless during long winter evenings they are our company and undoubtedly our important teachers.

Yury Koval

Stepan Pisakhov

Boris Shergin

Tove Jansson

Sergei Dovlatov

Vladimir Mayakovsky

And the series of Tachibana Akemi`s poetry called “Reciting Poetry for My Own Pleasure”, I share with you some here:

* * *

It is so nice,

when you came across the customer,

who without stinginess

for the trifling letter

would give you a decent price.

* * *

It is so nice,

when after long-term labour

you shut down the book

and sit admiring of the bulk

of rewritten treatise.

* * *

It is so nice,

when noisy guests

leave you early

and nobody disturbs you

to dive into the book.

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/45942/183467

Переводчики: Yanne, vladvic, natte, pakuleva

ivanovishe, filatova_m