Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection: Thoreau’s Influence on My Life

Kay Brown
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Palo Alto, CA

Long long ago, when I was in school, I actively avoided liberal arts classes, and took elective mathematics and science instead, because I liked them so much better. Then, in my young adulthood, I got way too busy with my technical career and raising children. But now, as a retiree, I do have the time and the interest in subjects like Transcendentalism. I am currently taking the video course offered by our adult RE on Emerson, Thoreau And The Transcendentalist Movement.

This means I know too little about Thoreau’s work to stand up here. Then why am I here? Because I thought it would be interesting to share with you how Thoreau’s ideas influenced my personal life as a young girl, growing up in Mumbai, India, so far away from where Thoreau was born and worked. Of course, you will hear from Amy all about Thoreau’s work with her usual insight and depth.

The essay titled ’Civil Disobedience’ is perhaps the most famous essay by Thoreau. He wrote it right after he was sent to jail because he did not pay the poll tax. In this essay, he advocates “actions through principles. If the demands of a government or a society are contrary to an individual’s conscience, it is his duty to reject them.” This was a radical idea at the time. Mahatma Gandhi studied Thoreau’s writings when he was at Oxford in 1900. He later is reported have said “Thoreau’s essay left a deep impression on me”. Confronted with the injustices of the British rule of India, Gandhi decided to adopt civil disobedience as his chief weapon in his fight for freedom. But he did not like Thoreau’s term ’civil disobedience’. It was not appealing enough to his audience. So, he coined his famous Sanskrit term ’Satyagraha’, which means the Power of Truth. Gandhi organized and lead massive, but peaceful resistance against the British occupation. The freedom fighters were thrown in jail. Sometimes they were beaten and even shot. But the fight for independence remained largely peaceful. In 1947, the Independence movement succeeded in freeing India from the British rule. I was brought up in Independent India. This is the first great influence of Thoreau on my life.

The second significant influence of Thoreau on my life was more personal, though somewhat vicarious, through my parents.

But before I tell you my story, let me start by telling you a little about Vinoba Bhave. He was a respected philosopher and a scholar of Hinduism from my home state of Maharashtra. He was called Acharya, which means ’teacher’ in Sanskrit. My father attended Vinoba’s lectures on Bhagwat Geeta and was impressed by his teachings.

Vinoba was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He was jailed several times by the British for his civil disobedience. And like Gandhi, he read Thoreau and was influenced by his writings, especially by the book Walden. As you know, Thoreau’s Walden is considered one of the all-time great books. The book is a record of Thoreau’s two year experiment of living at Walden Pond. It is a nature book and a guide to simple life. Thoreau said “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” and also, “Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” The book, in essence, is a do-it-yourself guide to live simply and spiritually, in communion with nature.

Vinoba took these writings seriously and developed them further and decided to live by them. He developed Thoreau’s simplicity ideas into two new principles, and like Gandhi, named them in Sanskrit. The first was called kanchan-mukti, which means freedom from dependence on money. He wanted to live without using any money. The second principle he called rishi-kheti, which means farming using practices of the sages of ancient times, without using beasts of burden or mechanized implements.

To build a life based on the ideas he started an Ashram in Pavnar, Maharashtra. According to Google, the ashram is still functioning today, and houses 30 older women on permanent basis.

When Vinoba started the ashram, I was in my early teens. My father was a civil engineer and the director of a successful construction company. His company in collaboration with Kunz and Company of Germany built a tunnel along the road that connects India to Pakistan and on to Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. I mention this because the road has been in the news lately. We lived rather well, in a large house, with five full-time, live-in servants. My parents were totally unaccustomed to doing every day chores with their own hands. But as a part of their spiritual journey, they were attracted to Vinoba’s ideas and decided to go and spend FOUR WEEKS in his ashram. My aunt stayed with us to take care of us.

I remember the day my parents returned. It was a bit shocking to look at them, just shadows of their former selves. I think they each may have lost as much as fifty pounds.

Then we heard the stories of how they lived for those four weeks. They lived in a small building which had no furniture, except a few, thin, bamboo mats. The land surrounding the building was the farm, where the grains and vegetables were grown.

Each morning, everyone got up at 5 am. After a 30 minute morning prayer and meditation, they had flour mill duties. They milled wheat and other grains for the daily bread using a manual stone mill. The primitive mill consisted of two flat, circular stones, each about 5 inches thick. The touching surfaces were chiseled in a pattern to propel the grain from inside out. The top stone had a hole in the center where you added grain by the fistful. Towards the edge of the top stone was a peg, which was used to hand power the mill. The simple peg was the crank, without gears or leverage. They sat on the floor and rotated the peg, pulling the heavy top stone, for about two hours each morning. Then they ate a small breakfast. After breakfast, the men went out and worked in the field and the women worked in the kitchen till lunch time. The afternoon duties were spinning the cotton, weaving cloth and sewing and mending clothes for daily wear. There was also light housekeeping, tending the cows and other chores. Though there were no bulls for the farm work, they kept cows for milk, yogurt, butter and ghee. The meals were strictly vegetarian. They ate what they grew on the farm. The excess grains, vegetables and milk was bartered for cotton, oil, salt and other essentials. After the evening meal, there was time for prayers and meditation and they slept in a bed roll on the floor.

All the kitchen scraps and plant stocks, husks and other materials as well as the cow dung were composted and used as fertilizers. No chemical fertilizer or chemical pest control was used. Water was hand drawn from a well. And the light at night was provided by oil lamps. So, the life in the Ashram required no money and the farming was done the same way as the sages a thousand years ago. Would you agree that this life style was as green as green can get?

But, curiously, Thoreau was not a strict vegetarian. He neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead he sought a middle ground, the pastoral realm that integrates both nature and culture. It seems, he inspired more extreme principles through his writings in my home state. Who would have thought!

Also, his ideas were translated into one of the most effective weight loss program known to mankind. Sorry, just kidding, and I don’t mean to belittle or disrespect Thoreau’s ideas.

Thank you for listening.