The Swetky Agency - Harmony--The Ecstatic Mysteries of the Bhagavad-gita

Book Opening

Harmony--
The Ecstatic Mystery of the Bhagavad-gita

by Visakha Dasi

Book Opening:
In June of 1999, my family and I moved from our Los Angeles apartment to Saranagati, a remote 1600-acre valley in British Columbia where a small band of semi-rugged, spiritually minded individualists had settled. My mother-in-law said, “I’d say they’ll last two years there—three at the most—before they move again.” (In the 28 years since we’d been married we’d moved every two to five years, so my mother-in-law wasn’t being unduly pessimistic.)

The Saranagati community was isolated, off the grid, hours from a significant city, and functioned at its own sweet pace—a slow-motion crawl. Here we planned to start a new life, free of electric bills, fluoridated water, noise, traffic, bad air, billboards, crime and TV.

The home we rented—and then bought 10 months later—was a small wooden house on a knoll overlooking grassland. In the distance, a mile-long lake shimmered through trees, flanked by fir and pine-covered mountains. We were living inside a picture postcard. Our 5 year-old daughter was the twenty-second student in the valley’s one-room schoolhouse (grades K-12). We renovated our home, used a woodstove for heat and an outhouse for nature’s call. Our tap water was gravity-fed from a small aquifer on the mountain slope a quarter-mile away, our electricity was from a solar panel. We grew vegetables and planted fruit trees. Except for our old Toyota Camri sedan and our 3000 ie Honda generator (back-up power for overcast days), self-sufficiency was nearly tangible.

In Saranagati, among the rhythms of nature, near other sincere seekers and confronting the wildness of our own mind, perhaps we could purify our lives, perhaps those long winter nights and endless summer days would forge different people out of us, people closer to the earth, to simple faith, to content, noncommercial, commodity-free lives. Perhaps observing the habits of Canadian loons and black bears, taking long walks in dense forests, working the soil, feeling glad about the things we grew and the miracles around us, we would begin to distinguish reality from illusion. Perhaps our new life, nourished by good cheer and harmony, could be our tiny contribution to the well being of others. Surely, with less stress and more open sky, epiphanies would reveal our essential identity and the purpose of existence.

What actually happened was quite different. Black bears ate our carrot crop and broke our apple trees to get at our fruit. Aphids attacked our berry bushes and overpopulated our Russian kale. Mice used an almost mystic power to get into our sealed root cellar. A neighbor’s 19 year-old son broke into and robbed our house. In January it was –30 degrees F. In July it topped 100. The winters were dreary, the summers mosquito-filled, the autumns dry. In 2003, a forest fire burned 25,000-forested acres just north of us. At one point we saw flames shooting over the east ridge, less than a mile away.

Through all of this, except the forest fire, I continued to read the renowned scripture Bhagavad-Gita and to become more conscious of my incredible smallness and ignorance and uncertainties. I wondered about my purpose in living Saranagati and the purpose of living in the world generally; I wondered about country-style survival and about the urban cycle of continually making and spending money; I wondered about innocent and less than innocent diversions from the daily grind; I wondered about the relation between values and happiness.

Gradually my disparate experiences and reflections drew together under the canopy of harmony: the pleasing and diverse unity overarching all things and all beings. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, author of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, once said, “Material or spiritual, everything is in harmony. That is God's law. Everything is in harmony.” The simplicity and complexity of how this is so is for me the ecstatic mystery Bhagavad-Gita explores. This, the true harvest of daily life in Saranagati, is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.

The three of us have been living in Saranagati for many years now. Our daughter has grown up, but sadly my mother-in-law cannot be surprised with that news. She passed away three years after we moved here. I think she would have liked Saranagati too, at least in the spring, summer and fall.