Beginning - brainstorming

[Guest guest]

Please accept my obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

-

"Syamasundara (das) (Bhaktivedanta Manor - UK)"

<Syamasundara (AT) pamho (DOT) net>

"Cow (Protection and related issues)" <Cow (AT) pamho (DOT) net>

Sunday, September 23, 2001 3:46 AM

Subject:

Beginning

 

Syamasundara

> What is Needed to Begin and Sustain a Rural Community"

>

> A major consideration I think we should establish is that the rural

community model is primarlily householder modelled. For it to go forward it

cannot be based on single person no children dynamics. If it works for

married persons it will also naturally work easier for the single persons.

 

Comment:

Agreed, but it must be remembered that there are other members in the

community that do not fit this dynamic. We are just concerned with the

Vaisya portion of the community in our discussions here - so as to not get

bogged down with other considerations. These other considerations are best

dealt with in the Varnasrama conference, we want to establish a workable

agricultural community within the Varnasrama society.

 

 

> Syamasundara:

>As a direction I would suggest we move towards establishing married

persons on the land in a sustainable way.

>

>Some considerations are:

>

>1. It should be livelihood based. The participants can obtain their life

needs and reasonable wants from the system.

 

Comment:

Agreed.

 

>Shyamasundara:

>2. The participants are protected from victimisation by dint of weakend

sadhana.

>

>3. Land holding is based on farming practices and not on Spiritual

prowess.

 

Comment:

It cannot be stressed enough that we follow the four regulative principles

and chant sixteen rounds. If we are having trouble with this we should not

be kicked out, but encourage reforming our habits so as to conform to the

basic tenets of Srila Prabhupada's teachings.

 

>Shyamasundara:

>4. Back off zones are established to cushion the participants from

intolerant management groups.

 

Comment:

What do you mean by 'back off zones' and 'intolerant management groups'?

 

>Syamasundara:

>5. To be sustainable and have relevance to the cow conference it must

be based on ox dependancy.

 

Comment:

By this you mean that it is based on muscle power as opposed to petroleum

power?

 

Following upon the principle that if you have to acquire it from the outside

(you are unable to generate from your own resources) then it is best not to

or how far do we want to take this line of thought?

 

>Syamasundara:

>6. It should be based on the need to bring in the major income for the

family.

>

>7. It should be repeatable.

 

Comment:

I think this needs to be expanded more for better understanding.

 

>Syamasundara:

>These are just a few thown in comments to help with the momentum.

>

>One major conflict area which we have to sort out is are we looking at a

single person and peasant model or are we looking at a 21st century we can

live that way model.

 

Comment:

I think we should try to avoid using terms like peasant as they have a

derogatory connotation, preferably we should use the term 'simple'.

Having stated that, just what is your description of a '21st century living

model', it does not match with point 5 above - ox dependency can in no way

be called 21 century or to a lesser degree 20th century.

So we need to expand this point more.

 

>Syamasundara:

>My personal warning is that if we go hard into the self sufficient keep

away from making money model we will go nowhere as we have gone nowhere over

the past many years.

 

Comment:

Caution must be exercised here so as to not throw out the baby (our

devotional creeper). This is closely tied to the preceding comment and

cannot be answered until we decide just what we want to accept in the way of

self-sufficiency and how 'modern' do we want to get. Remember we want setup

our environment to make it conducive to spiritual life yet live with an

acceptable degree of comfort.

 

One suggestion is we should begin with a two-tiered system; to those within

our village we should deal with exchange of service and commodities and to

those outside we should deal in hard currency.

 

>Shyamasundara:

>We should be thinking that this model must fulfill my financial needs I am

currently getting from other non cow related work.

 

 

Comment:

1. A few other questions:

 

So what is the minimum needs of an average family? Just to set a standard so

we are all starting on the same platform in the discussion.

Another question arises is this family on its own land or is it utilizing

temple land; also how should it relate to the temple in regard to land

usage?

 

2. A few statements:

We should also deal with the animals that this family is going to need,

ideally they should come from existing ISKCON farms before going outside to

acquire stock. This is a great burden for the existing farms and needs to be

minimized and safe guards put in place to keep this defect from perpetuating

itself.

 

When Srila Prabhupada established the first temples he built into their make

up a brahminical nature - a mode of goodness. Now our duty is to take this

mode of goodness out into the larger society and modify it with features of

the mode of passion so that productivity is manifested according to the

principles of a Vaisya society. To put it another way, we need to remove the

mode of ignorance from our present system. Not only our thoughts and words

must be in relation to Krishna but also this must become manifested in our

minute-to-minute actions.

ys, Rohita dasa

[Guest guest]

haribol prabhus

pamho agtsp

 

As an amount to start with one must consider if the land or house are

belonging to the families - outright ownership or lease/rent payments. Also

about the level of living standard. By necessity (and we were in a start up

phase) when I was between work contracts, I had approximately £140 Stg per

week. We survived on this and managed to still contribute to a very

financially stressed temple. This was only because we grew our vegetables

and kept everything to a minimum. This may be a lot to some, and little to

others, but we were a family of four (and my son when off his preaching),

but I think the amount is not as important given different local economic

factors, but the level starting place could be an adopted acceptable

standard or quality of life, and then cost is relevant to each area. Given

that quality of life is to some individuals subjective, this may not be as

easy as having some type of vision for vaisya development - as enevitabley

there will always be some more sucessful than others.

ys

AMD