If you’d prefer to watch the episode, it is available here on Youtube.
While waiting for their coffee in a Bangalore café in 1962, Satish Kumar and his friend Prabhakar read a newspaper article about the great philosopher Bertrand Russell being arrested at a protest against the atom bomb. Russell was ninety at the time. If this old man is going to jail for his engagement for peace, the two young men thought, what are we doing sitting here, drinking our coffee?
They decided on the spot that they would walk to each of the nuclear powers of that time, Russia, France, UK and USA, in a worldwide pilgrimage for peace. A few months later, they left New Dehli and began the long journey that would take them over two years, through more than fifty countries. As one might expect, the journey was very hard; they endured excruciating blisters (and blizzards) crossing the mountains of Afghanistan, were threatened at gunpoint in Paris, and were often tired and hungry. But like pilgrims everywhere, they received generous help and hospitality from the people they met, including from their heroes Bertrand Russell and Martin Luther King (and a brilliant woman at a Georgian tea factory).
As we learn in the episode, Satish has always been a walker. Before his peace pilgrimage, he had already walked great distances with his mentor Vinoba Bhave and thousands of others, as part of the great land reform movement that was sweeping India at the time. As an adolescent, he spent years walking barefoot from village to village as a begging Jain munk. And as a young boy, he walked miles with his mother, who never wanted to take a horse, saying “How would you feel if the horse tried riding you?”
In our conversation, we talk about the power of walking, and of pilgrimage. What is it about moving through (or perhaps with) the landscape on your own two feet that carries such profoundly transformative power?
In the 1990s Satish helped found Schumacher College, a small institute for transformative learning, where I did my masters over a decade ago. Looking back, I can see how formative my time at Schumacher was for me. I went there because it was one of the few places that offered a degree that integrated economics and sustainability (which I still find staggering – should linking economics with how we relate to nature be considered so niche??). So I went there for the economics, but what I got was much more – deepened perspectives on life and learning, a growing community and a life-long friendship with the Dart, the river that wound its way around the college grounds.
As Satish mentions in our conversation, today’s universities like to focus exclusively on educating the brain (and even just the left half of it, as per Iain McGilchrist’s insights). The college’s philosophy was that we must learn not only with the head, but also with the heart and the hands. Their practice of allowing for artistic or creative assignment submissions spurred me into taking up filmmaking, which became my creative mode of exploration for years. It was also where I first heard about Gregory Bateson and his “ecology of ideas”, which has been one of my guiding images in sketching out the Forest of Thought.
So I have many reasons to be very grateful that Satish decided to take up the very difficult task of starting a college. Like so many radical learning institutions, Schumacher has had many struggles, not least financial ones, and has finally had to shut its doors and move from its beautiful location at the Dartington Estate. In our talk, Satish reveals that they have found a place that may become the college’s new home. If you’d like to give them some much-needed support, you can do so here.
I’ve heard Satish talk about his peace pilgrim journey several of times before, but I am always touched and amazed at what a spark of inspiration while waiting for coffee can unfold into. I hope you enjoy the conversation too.
Best,
Ingrid
LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:
Satish Kumar’s autobiography No Destination – autobiography of a pilgrim.
Satish’s mentor Vinoba Bhave
Satish’s peace pilgrimage – if you’d like to hear more details about his trip, I can recommend this episode of Follow your Blissters.
Schumacher College – support the college here.
