Tuesday 2 April 2013

Friday, March 29th, 2013

Progressive Thinking

Durban, South Africa

It’s no fun being in bed, but it’s doctors’ orders. A syrup for the cough, some pills for the pain was his prescription. Of course the Naturopath and Ayur-Veda pundits came out of the woodwork- all to offer their sincere advice. Teas kept coming to me – home brews, ginger and honey packed. Love is beautiful here. That was my cold / flue condition and how to treat it. I confess to not being present at the procession. My meagre strength did eventually allow me to roll out of bed in order to make it for the evening flare at North Beach.

At questions- and- answers booth various cultural leaders sat there taking in queries. It’s a first for this. Jayadvaita Swami shared the time-spot with a Muslim leader and Christian leader to address the questions people had.

Overall I see that this first of a four-day festival has really shaped up to take on the flavour of multi-social collaboration. Would it be fair to view this event as something we call varna-ashram, a one target mix of people. In a Vedic context (from India) four social and four spiritual orders have been identified as material divisions based on people’s psycho-physical qualities. The thread that keeps such civilisation intact is the spiritual theme. Once one loses sight of such a spiritual arrow-head, then you have disaster, a defraying of the fabric of a society based on self-centredness.

So what I see manifest before is a stroke of genius (the genius being God) where all the elements of a community sit under one umbrella. The festival of chariots worldwide doesn’t work like that in most of the venues I’d been to. Most of the festivals have turned to a very closed event or become too exclusive.
 
Here in Durban some progressive processing has taken place. I’m so happy to be part of it. Our drama “Dhruva: Prince of anger and peace” was so well received by the crowd of 3000 at the marquee.
 
4 KM
 

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