Showing 75 articles

The Wisdom of Trees

Author: Manjula Nanavati

March 28, 2022

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” – Herman Hesse (1) There is a relative uncertainty as to when our earliest human ancestors evolved [...]

Winter- Inspiration for the Inner Journey of the Philosopher

Author: Anand Baskaran

June 19, 2021

Winter is here! Across the northern hemisphere, winter has taken hold. Bangaloreans have brought out their warm clothes, there is a definite nip in the air. In many other parts of the country and the world, winters are harsher, and far more measures are required to counter the chill. To a greater or a lesser [...]

Sport Hunting – a Consensual Crime

Author: Jorge Angel Livraga

April 3, 2021

Since the earliest times our current level of research can reach, man has made hunting one of his primary activities. Human groups, today considered primitive (although there is a reasonable possibility that they are actually the worn-down remains of other civilizations, which having completed their biological cycle have been buried in an oblivion that is [...]

Unity in Diversity – Lessons from the Animal Kingdom

Author: Dilip Jain

March 31, 2021

Om Purnamadaha Purnamidam Purnat Purnamudachyate Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamewa Vashishyate This creation is whole and complete. From the whole emerge creations, each whole and complete. Take the whole from the whole. The whole yet remains, undiminished, complete. -Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I come from the limited world of business governed by ever-changing rules of finance and management. Hence, [...]

Watch Your Energy

Author: Florimond Krins

January 3, 2021

Energy is something we don’t really think about until we have to pay our electricity or gas bill, or when we go to the pump and fill up the tank. However, we don’t realise – and I was guilty of it myself until recently – that a 40-litre tank of petrol (E95) contains as much [...]

The Rise and Fall of Mayan Civilization

Author: NA El Salvador

December 9, 2020

The people of Mayan society built large cities, sumptuous temples, and towering pyramids. At its peak, around 900 AD, the population was estimated at about 200 people per Sq km in rural areas, and more than 800 people per sq km in cities (comparable to the modern Los Angeles County). This vibrant “Classic Period” of [...]

Plant Lore – A Brief Insight Into the Mythology and Symbology of Plants

Author: Gareth Kinsella

November 19, 2020

“And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.” – Humphrey Carpenter You may not know it, but as a child, plant allegories may have left a bigger impact on you than first imagined. Vivid and captivating fables, like conceptual seeds that were sown in your mind through [...]

A Diary of a Struggling Ecologist

Author: Ubai Husein

October 14, 2020

This journey started with my love for food, which prompted me to pursue a degree in Culinary Arts. There, in addition to simply cooking, I was introduced to the various aspects about growing and producing food before it enters the kitchen, including the entire mechanism of factory farming and the resulting destruction caused to the [...]

The Philosophy of Climbing

Author: Eddie Selby

October 1, 2020

“I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience  a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche (1844–1900) [...]

Myths of Africa: Deepening our Understanding of Life and Death

Author: Siobhan Farrar

October 1, 2020

Africa is a vast continent with many different peoples and a diverse diaspora whose cultural and spiritual heritage has often been misunderstood and misrepresented through colonial and Western perspectives. The ability to move past assumptions and conditioning always presents a challenge, which requires that we aim to see the essence of human life and experience. [...]

John Keats: Immortal Beauty

Author: Maria Virginia Reina

October 1, 2020

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness” So begins the epic poem Endymion by John Keats. And in these opening lines, as through his exquisite body of work, he presents to us one of the core themes of his poetry, if not all art: that [...]

Terra Preta, the Black Earth upon which Civilisations were Built

Author: Gareth Kinsella

July 30, 2020

“Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns the earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health.” – Hebrew proverb In 1542, a Spanish conquistador named Francisco de Orellana set sail along the Amazon river with a group of his fellow countrymen, looking high and low [...]