Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Editor of Resurgence magazine, peace activist and pioneer of ecological humanism who walked to nuclear capitals for peace.
On the island
Eight records
I met Joan Byers and what impressed me most was her love of life. And in our industrial structures and speed life, we have lost that gratitude to life. So I would like to start my music, first piece of music will be John Byers, which appreciates and thanks to life.
Bob Dylan was a kind of symbol of that inner voice of peace, and so I have chosen Bob Dylan to be my second record.
M. Shubha Lakshmi sings this song, which was favourite of my mother. So as we are talking about my mother, I would like this to be played.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
Now, because of my deep spiritual longing. I find John Tavenagh resonating to me. And he is one of the very few musicians who write his music with a deep spiritual longing.
Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin
I would like to choose a piece in which Yehudi Menoun and Ravishankar played together at the UN on Human Rights Day, which is very inspiring.
And we are so filled with the poverty of imagination that we think we cannot have the world which is peaceful and ecologically sustainable and a business which is ecologically sustainable. So we have to first step is we have to imagine. And that's where John Lennon comes in.
Ma SolitudeFavourite
Sometimes being in solitude and in silence gives you a kind of nourishment to the soul. So I have chosen this Ma Solitude.
Leonard Cohen of Canada. He was one of my great inspiration and he combines poetry and singing with spirituality. So when we are talking about life and death and the vision of evolution and cosmic existence, I cannot imagine anybody better than Leonard Cohen singing that spirit to me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:32Where did the idea come from in the first place [to walk for peace to the nuclear capitals]?
One morning I was in a cafe drinking coffee and reading a newspaper, and I read… that a ninety-year-old great philosopher of England, Bertrand Russell… was protesting against the bomb… was arrested and put in jail. When I read that news… I was absolutely stunned. So Bertrand Russell was our inspiration.
Presenter asks
5:18But it was a mad plan. You set out without any money, without any food, just two young men walking.
That's right… Cause we thought that if you have money… You don't have trust. And trust is the root for peace. And fear is the root for war. So if we want to really try peace, we have to trust ourselves, we have to trust people, and we have to trust in God.
Presenter asks
8:46Where did you walk with [your mother]? How did you walk with her?
My mother was a wonderful and wise woman, and she always walked… when I was four year, five year, six years old, I remember walking with her, and she would always show me the natural world, the bees and the and the trees, and the butterflies. So walking, my mother said, is a noble way… of living.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
because he has been one of the most uh fundamental inspiration in most of my life. So if I can have Gandhi with me, he will always keep me company.
The luxury
Now on Desert Island Disc I would like to start a little garden. Even it's a desert, I would like to start a little garden. So if you could allow me to have a spade, it may be a necessity as well as a luxury. I'll be very happy.
Presenter asks
10:04But your father, when you were four years old, died very suddenly… You couldn't really cope with his death, could you?
That's right, because uh he had a heart attack. And when I saw him lying on the floor, dead, I could not understand why he is not moving, why he is not talking, and why everybody is so sad and crying… the fear of death and seeing father dead was so profound and deep in my heart that I decided to become a monk. And I was determined, it was my own decision… at age nine, I renounced the world.
Presenter asks
14:15But in the end you wanted to escape. It was supposed to be a life sentence, being a Jain monk, but you wanted to get out. Why?
Yes, this is true, that once you are a monk, you are a monk for life… But I was again very inspired at this point in my life… at age eighteen, by Mahatma Gandhi. He said that… We have to bring spirituality, practice of non violence, and truth in every day life… I decided to escape from the monastic order rather than escape from the world.
Presenter asks
21:11How does it differ, tell me, the small school from an ordinary school?
It differs in the sense, first of all, in every human life we need food, we need clothes, we need houses. But no school teaches you how to cook, how to mend clothes, how to build a house, how to repair a house. So 50% of our time we spend where children are learning gardening, cooking, building, these practical things. And then other 50% they learn about philosophy or science or mathematics or French languages, etc. And you teach silence. We teach silence. That's right.
“Time makes perfect. When you give something a bit of your time, then whatever you are doing, whatever you are making, will be better. You can't write a beautiful poem in a hurry. You can't make a nice loaf of bread in a hurry. You can't do anything well in a hurry. So if you want to do something well, we have to slow down.”
“And trust is the root for peace. And fear is the root for war. So if we want to really try peace, we have to trust ourselves, we have to trust people, and we have to trust in God.”
“The freedom of fear can only come when you have experienced the difficulties and the pain and the suffering.”
“No, the the the problem is that we have thought of wealth… as money. And money is not wealth. Wealth is nature. The forests, the rivers, the land, the animals, the human capital. If we destroy all that and we have billions and billions in the bank, then where are we?”