Kassi is a vibrant and enthusiastic young woman in her twenties whom I first met when I co-taught a free course offered by the Marion Polk Food Share called "From Seed to Supper." (At the time, I was a trainee in the Master Gardeners program, and knew very little about gardening, so my co-teacher, Victoria--another bright and talented young Twenty-something--did most of the teaching.) The following year, Kassi enrolled in the Master Gardener program herself (where she excelled) and then--following my advice--she enrolled in Andrew Millison's Permaculture Design Certificate course at Oregon State (which I had taken the previous fall), and again she excelled. More recently, during the pandemic, she has married her long-time boyfriend, and together they have assembled a thriving Permaculture garden.
The following letter is an attempt to leave behind a legacy that could inspire Kassi and other like-minded young people.
Dear Kassi,
How are you and your husband doing these days? When you get the chance, I would love to hear more about your Permaculture garden, and what you are learning from it.
But the deeper reason I am reaching out is this. As you well know, I am 70 now, and though I'm currently in excellent health, I am at a stage in life where I have one of two things to look forward to: either death, or slow decrepitude and death. You, by contrast, are just beginning your adult life, and while I harbor great hopes for you, I also have great fears for the world that my generation is leaving behind for you. So I wish to channel these hopes and fears alike into some thoughts to share with you, such that, if I die tomorrow (or 20 years from now), these thoughts might help guide you through the encroaching chaos to find your path as a healing agent for our planet. For from the day I met you, I saw this great potential in you.
I will not waste your time recounting all the threats you and your generation are facing now, and will face in the future--they are obvious to any careful observer. Instead, I would like to share an aspiration I will never live to fulfill, but which might inspire you as well, as you pursue your own path through the darkening times to come.
Imagine, then, a Dharma Gaia Practice Center, here in Salem. This would be on a piece of land, in reasonable proximity to the city, with, say, 1-3 acres on it. (It could, of course, be more or less).
The goal of such a center (which may or may not have a residential core of people for whom it is home) would be to cultivate a synthesis of vertical and horizontal healing modalities, for ourselves, our community, and our planet. It would be, ideally, replicable, based on a core design that could be transplanted anywhere else, with local variations. Here are some possible components of such a center:
I. HORIZONTAL HEALING (Garden, Community, and Planet)
1. A Permaculture Demonstration Garden, or living laboratory, for creating, testing, and refining Permaculture design techniques, in accordance with the pre-existent climate, topography, and soil types and conditions of the chosen site. For this reason, a residential core group of one or more couples (like yourselves) would be ideal.
2. Periodic Courses and Workshops in any and all aspects of Permaculture Design, bringing in guest instructors when and where possible, to provide ongoing education to the community.
VERTICAL HEALING of body, mind, and spirit:
1. Periodic workshops in holistic healing modalities, such as yoga, massage, and acupuncture.
2. Regular meditation and study sessions, open to anyone interested, to cultivate mindfulness, as rooted in my tenfold Dharma Gaia mantra:
a. Breathe, Observe, Let Go; [Reclaiming the moment from distraction]
b. Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch; [A generic daily agenda]
c. Learn, Teach, Heal, Create. [Revisiting our life agenda]
INTEGRATING VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL HEALING:
3. Satyagraha. In the event of encroaching tyranny and repression from corporate fascists and continued depredations of our living planet, training workshops in the three branches of Satyagraha, or nonviolent nocooperation with evil):
a. Satya: Speaking truth to power, mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly. Finding skillful means to expose tyranny, lies, and repression wherever they arise, and to nurture communities of nonviolent resistance.
b. Ahimsa: Training workshops, as necessary, on self-purification and nonviolent civil disobedience to prevent tyranny and protect its victims--mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly.
c. Swaraj: Cultivating local self-reliance at the personal, community, and regional level by propagating Permaculture theory and practice as effectively as possible, in order to plant the seeds of a new, symbiotic Gaian culture to displace the dying, parasitic Glomart culture.
This, then, is my dream in a nutshell. As I mentioned, I am probably too old, and certainly lack both the skills and the resources, to implement it myself. But I am passing it on to you to inspire you, in your own life path, to pursue any or all aspects of such a goal for your own generation, as you inherit this distressed planet from my generation.
Much love,
Tom
