Read Satish Kumar and Bertrand Russell

May Peace Be With You...

I read Radio 4's report which I printed below with profound trepidation...

Memories of my younger years deluged my consciousness and I for the entire day lived and relived my memories and thereby made new memories...I had never though about those years after I retired from teaching...

I was an activist then, and I am an activist now...

Satish Kumar was one of the people that I admired...and I wanted to devote a blog post for him...But while reading Radio 4's passage...I stumbled upon Bertrand Russell...

Bertrand Russell was one of my heroes...He was not a rock start...He did not sing...He did not rap...He did not wear patchy cloths...His pants were not drooping down to expose his ...

I admired him...He was ALL that I wanted to be...

Bertrand Russell was a mathematician...a logician...a philosopher...a pacifist...

I read his books one after the other...At times I did not comprehend all what he said...I reread him...I did not understand still...and I read him again...I still read him...

I was lucky to have access to his books...They were expensive and I could not afford them...But as a group of younger idealists we purchased collectively and shared together...That's when I learned that books should not be private property and they MUST BE SHARED...

Also I developed my sense of sharing what I wrote and thought without asking any "copy rights" to them...My writing and ideas were out there to be shared...

The more they were shared...The more they are shared...The more I am honoured...and that's enough for me...

I did not write to make money...I did not paddle ideas for greed...

That was a way of life...

We came together and discussed and debated...We dreamed of the freedom of the cafe trottoirs in Paris...where young people exchanged ideas without fear of Big Brother...

Cafe trottoir where youth have freedom of speech and thought....But for us it was a luxury... a forbidden fruit of sorts...

We were young and full of energy and we thought we could do everything and change the world...for the better...

We just asked for PEACE...We just wanted PEACE...

and with your help...

I am sure WE WILL HAVE PEACE...May be not in my lifetime...May be not even in yours...

But it is a BEAUTIFUL DREAM...to chase the rainbow of PEACE...

*** 

Read the Radio 4's passage and be inspired by Satish Kumar....

Imagine walking ALL over the world...WITHOUT MONEY...for nuclear dismantlement...

There is a big fuss that Iran should not have nuclear weapons...

I agree...

All the world should be a nuclear free zone and all nuclear weapons MUST be destroyed...

There is a big fuss about chemical weapons in Syria...

Let the world be a chemical weapons free zone...Let us destroy ALL chemical weapons...Starting from Russia to Europe and to the US.

Imaging the wonderful challenge that Satish Kumar is posing to us....

ACT...not for greed...but rather to promote PEACE...

Radio 4's No Destination: Peace campaigner Satish Kumar takes a trip back in time

Kumar recounted his epic walk to the four nuclear capitals of the world during the height of the Cold War

FIONA STUGES                                                           

Wednesday 16 July 2014

"Come with me and we can relive this journey together," said a voice on the World Service on Saturday morning. Why the hell not, I decided, in a rare burst of spontaneity.

I had been all set to spend the morning with Rev Richard Coles on Radio 4's Saturday Live. But the peace campaigner Satish Kumar's voice on No Destination was so full of mischief and joie de vivre, like that of an excitable wizard, that it seemed wrong to let him relive it alone.

During the height of the Cold War in 1962, Kumar had been sitting in a cafe in Bangalore reading a newspaper when he came across an article about Bertrand Russell. (See below...) The celebrated philosopher, who was 90 at the time, had been jailed for a week for protesting against nuclear weapons.

At once, Kumar, a man with a political conscience and a clear thirst for adventure, turned to his companion, E P Menon, and said: "What are we doing here, young man, sitting here drinking coffee?"

After a night of intense conversation they decided that they would embark on an epic walk to the four nuclear capitals of the world: Moscow, Paris, London and Washington DC. They would take no money and no food, and instead put their faith in the kindness of others. During their journey they would spread the word about nuclear disarmament and entreat warring nations to put aside their differences.

And so I accompanied Kumar, bleary-eyed and still in my pyjamas, in a journey through his memories, moving from mountain villages in Afghanistan to the palace of the Shah of Iran, a tea factory in Armenia, the Kremlin in Moscow, the Elysée Palace (and a spell in jail) in Paris, the living room of Clement Atlee in London and – 8,000 miles, 30 months and countless pairs of shoes later – Washington.

Now in his Seventies, Kumar was a delightful guide ...

    

When he was only nine years old, Satish Kumar renounced the world and joined the wandering bortherhood of Jain monks. Dissuaded from this path by an inner voice at the age of eighteen, he became a compaigner for land reform, working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a renewed India into reality. Fired by the example of Bertrand Russell, he undertook an 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage, walking from India to America without any money, through mountains, deserts, storms and snow. It was an adventure during which he was thrown into jail in France, faced a loaded gun in America - and delivered packets of 'peace tea' to the leaders of the four nuclear powers. In 1973 he settled in England, taking on the editorship of Resurgence magazine, and becoming the guiding light behind a number of ecological spiritual and educational ventures. Following Indian tradition, in his fiftieth year he undertook another pilgrimage: again without any money, he walked to the holy places of Britain - Glastonbury Lindisfarne and Iona. Written with a penetrating simplicity, No Destination is an exhilarating account of an extraordinary life.

This book traces the spiritual journey of Satish Kumar--child monk, peace pilgrim, ecological activist, and educator. In it he traces the sources of inspiration that formed his understanding of the world as a network of multiple and diverse relationships. You Are, Therefore, I Am is in four parts. The first describes the author's memories of conversations with his mother, his teacher, and his guru, all of whom were deeply religious. The second part recounts his discussions with the Indian sage Vinoba Bhave, J. Krishnamurti, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King, and E. F. Schumacher. These five great activists and thinkers inspired him to engage with social, ecological, and political issues. In the third part Satish narrates his travels in India, which have continued to nourish his mind and reconnect him with his roots. The fourth part brings together his worldview, which is based in relationships and the connections between all things, rather than the philosophy of dualism, division, and separation that are found in Rene Descartes' famous maxim "I think, therefore, I am." Satish Kumar holds an emergent worldview encapsulated in a fundamental Sanskrit dictum, So Hum, well known in India but not in the West, which can be translated as "You are, therefore, I am." This mantra underpins all the experiences brought together in this book.

Indeed there's an activist in all of us, and you don't have to shout about it to be heard. To prove it, Satish Kumar has invited 11 of those activists he most admires, in areas ranging from environmental change to human rights, to share their own inspiring stories, revealing who or what kind of world they want to help create.

Let us make the world a better place for us all...Ukrainians and Russians and Israelis and Palestinians...

Be HUMAN...and PROVE that we can live TOGETHER...

Do not only imagine, but MAKE all people live in harmony....

Love the earth...take care of the world...After all, it is the only one we have...

***

Bertrand Russell

1. Philosopher
2. Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic and political activist. Wikipedia
4. Born: May 18, 1872, Trellech, United Kingdom
5. Died: February 2, 1970, Penrhyndeudraeth, United Kingdom
6. Full name: Bertrand Arthur William Russell
7. Nickname: Lord Russell
8. Education: Trinity College, Cambridge (1890–1895)
9. Few of Russel's books...

              

He was my hero...
He has a unique way of employing logic...Only to arrive at paradoxes and contradictions...and admitting his limitations and not able to explain the paradoxes made him even bigger...

I admired him from afar...after all, you burn when you come too close to the sun... 

During WWI Russell was for a while a full-time political agitator, campaigning for peace and against conscription. His activities attracted the attention of the British authorities, who regarded him as subversive. He was twice taken to court, the second time to receive a sentence of six months in prison, which he served at the end of the war.

 In 1916, as a result of his antiwar campaigning, Russell was dismissed from his lectureship at Trinity College. Although Trinity offered to rehire him after the war, he ultimately turned down the offer, preferring instead to pursue a career as a journalist and freelance writer. 

The tragedy of Russell’s intellectual life is that the deeper he thought about logic, the more his exalted conception of its significance came under threat. He himself described his philosophical development after The Principles of Mathematics as a "retreat from Pythagoras." The first step in this retreat was his discovery of a contradiction which is now known as Russell's Paradox... at the very heart of the system of logic upon which he had hoped to build the whole of mathematics. The contradiction arises from the following considerations: Some classes are members of themselves (e.g., the class of all classes), and some are not (e.g., the class of all men), so we ought to be able to construct the class of all classes that are not members of themselves. But now, if we ask of this class “Is it a member of itself?” we become enmeshed in a contradiction. If it is, then it is not, and if it is not, then it is. This is rather like defining the village barber as “the man who shaves all those who do not shave themselves” and then asking whether the barber shaves himself or not.

Russell devoted his last years to campaigning against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War.

The sight of Russell in extreme old age taking his place in mass demonstrations and inciting young people to civil disobedience through his passionate rhetoric inspired a new generation of admirers. Their admiration only increased when in 1961 the British judiciary system took the extraordinary step of sentencing the 89-year-old Russell to a second period of imprisonment.

When he died in 1970 Russell was far better known as an antiwar campaigner than as a philosopher of mathematics. In retrospect, however, it is possible to see that it is for his great contributions to philosophy that he will be remembered and honoured by future generations.

I relived my youth today...and Russell ,as in my younger years, gave me new hope...
After all I am much younger the 89-year-old Russell...


P.S.
This post is dedicated to ALL my young friends, but specially to Visionary Determination...