Re: ecovillage and sustainability

In a message dated 5/3/2004 6:17:39 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
[email protected] writes:

> I just wanted to say that I think you are drawing too much of a conclusion 
> from your 
> experiences at these two communities. I know for a fact that it is very 
> wrong to say 
> that at all communities you cannot play the music you wish or say a witty or 
> sarcastic 
> comment, or in general be who you want to be. It seems clear that these two 
> communities you mention are not the places you want to be, and that is why 
> they 
> were uncomfortable. At the community which is for you, you would I'm sure 
> have felt 
> much more comfortable with how things were done.
> 

Right you are, Ken; in fact I am looking now for communities that have more 
built-in adaptive flexibility and personal autonomy than those I have visited. 
The irony, of course, is that another side of me, equally strong, thoroughly 
enjoyed both of the above-mentioned places and the people I met there. But I 
seem to have this inner schism--a yearning for eco-spiritual community, and a 
constitutional aversion to external authority over my personal life choices.

For example, at the end of the Buddhist retreat, I formally took the Five 
Precepts with Thich Nhat Hanh--a great teacher whom I revere--but only after I 
had inwardly struggled with his insistence, in his wording of the Fifth Precept 
(temperance) that we must completely cease drinking all alcohol. While I 
understood his logic (the harm that all intoxicants bring both to ourselves and the 
rest of humanity, and the virtue in cleansing our bodymind systems while 
simultaneously withholding our dollar from those who profit on others' addictions) 
I bristled at ceding that much authority to him over my life. After all, my 
wife and I routinely enjoy a glass of wine before dinner, yet neither of us 
have a "drinking problem" and we never have more than one glass a day.

So I took the Fifth Precept with the others, because I still honored the 
spirit of it, but retained my prerogative to choose whether or not to have an 
occasional beer or glass of wine with friends. Did I foreswear myself in so doing? 
Some would say yes, but, as Gandhi said, "I acknowledge only one tyrant, and 
that is the still, small voice within." Until my own conscience freely tells 
me to quit drinking wine, I will continue to enjoy it in moderation. On the 
other hand, if I joined an ecovillage that had agreed to an alcohol-free policy, 
I would easily and effortlessly adhere to that policy. (But wild horses could 
not drag my wife into such a community!)

Thank you for your comments.

Best wishes,

Tom