Walk about Water in Ulster County Health Department

Walk about Water meets the Health Department to discuss shale mining. Possibilities emerge within the non-adversarial approach.
Approach your local health department for information and leadership and explain your fears and concerns about shale gas mining. They need our persistent ask at every level to be able to shift the official realm of possibility

The Shambhala Warrior

From the Tibetan Buddhist tradition:
a metaphor for a being known as a Bodhisattva.

There comes a time when all life on earth is in great danger. Great barbarian powers have arisen, unrestrained and blind with lust for power, loving not the earth, not her beauty, but only power. Although they amass untold stores of wealth and resources, they squander their holdings in massive preparations to annihilate each other. Sworn mortal enemies, they are intimately connected, like images in a mirror, and have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and technologies that lay waste the world.

So, it is now, in this time of danger, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the Kingdom of Shambhala emerges.

You cannot go to Shambhala for it is not a place. The Kingdom of Shambhala exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize Shambhala warriors by sight, for they wear no uniform or insignia, there are no banners, crests or shields. And they have no barricades from which to threaten the enemy, for the Shambhala warriors have no land of their own. Always they move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.

Now comes the time when great courage is required of these warriors, moral and physical courage. For they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power and dismantle the monstrous weapons. To remove these weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where the decisions are made and the weapons are devised and guarded.

The Shambhala warriors know they can do this because they understand that the weapons, however horrible their carnage and vast their reach, are "manomaya"—all these weapons and all their devastation are created by the human mind. So they can be unmade by the human mind.

The dangers that threaten life on Earth do not come from evil deities or malevolent extraterrestrial powers. They arise directly from our own choices and relationships. So the Shambhala warriors must go forward to defeat them with only two weapons of their own.

The weapons of the Shambhala warriors are compassion and insight. Compassion moves us to act on behalf of other beings, from the fire of our hearts, yet by itself its heat can burn us out. So the second weapon is needed as well: insight into the interdependent, co-arising nature of all things. This lets us see that the battle to be waged is not between good people and bad people, but rather, that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. With insight we realize that we are interconnected, and that each act undertaken with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see. Yet insight alone can be too cool, so to proceed with strength and clarity, we need the fuel and fire of compassion, of our openness to the world's pain.

Used skillfully and courageously, these together are the only tools available to the Shambhala warrior to disarm the weapons of the barbarians and bring into being the kingdom of Shambhala. Armed with these weapons and single-minded intention, these warriors will bring their kingdom into being.

This legend of the Shambhala warrior, of the bodhisattva path to disarming evil and creating the reality of peace, is available to us, and valuable to us, as we face the unprecedented challenges of these times.

The Weaving by Chrys Countryman

 

 

The weaving

"In times gone by we only knew our little patch of place
far away and other people, never really face to face

But now our view has widened and we perceive the loom
our collective choices, adding up to likely doom

our fathers made the fiber and our mothers spun us well and true
but each thread is easily broken, alone there is little we can do

so now is the time for weaving life together strong and fine
what is the story of this tapestry to be told for the rest of time?

let our fabric clothe our mother earth in dignity and grace
and include well being and freedom into every human face

let us honor the fact that nature is our only healthy home
and  future generations be given cause to admire what we have done

oh let me be a thread in the fabric of our time
weave me into everything that is both coarse and fine

let my color brighten the cloth along with those of many others
may my presence help it to be good and strong
may it be useful forever"
chrys countryman 2003

THE KOGI MAMA'S SPEAK

The Kogi Mama's Speak

We work to take care of the world.

We respect the Mother Earth... [W}e know that the land is our Mother Earth.

If we plant an orange tree or any type of tree and then dig it up by the roots it will die. Digging out the earth’s gold is the same thing. It could die. We’ve all heard many stories that the world is dying. Why is it dying? It is because they have robbed so many tombs. The world is like a person. Robbing tombs, stealing its gold, it will die. We don’t take out the earth’s gold. We know that it is there but we do not take it. We know from our divinations that the advice of the Mother is not to take the gold. We know where it is but we decide only to make offerings to it.

How is it that we are able to live? Without blood we cannot live and without bones we cannot walk. Here all the Mamas [teachers, custodians of Kogi cosmological thought] are in agreement about what it is we are going to say and how to speak. If i cut off my foot I cannot walk. When they [the Younger Brothers, us] dig into the earth and take it’s gold it is the same thing....Gold has it’s own thought and it can speak. It is a living being. They must stop stealing it.

If they take all the gold the world will end. The Mothers of banana trees, of all the trees and of all the birds, they have all been stolen. They are cutting off the flesh of the Mother’s body. They have taken everything. They have stolen the spirits of all things from the Mother. They are stealing the very spirit and thought of the Mother...

It is the mountains which make the waters, the rivers and the clouds. If the trees are felled they will not produce any more water. We do not cut down the trees that grow by rivers, we know that they protect the water. We do not cut down huge areas of forest like the Younger Brother does, we cut small clearings for our fields. The Mother told us not to cut down many trees, so we cut very few, tiny patches.

If the Younger Brother keeps cutting down all the trees, there will be fires because the sun will heat the earth.... We are the Elder Brothers so we have to think clearly....

Younger Brother, stop doing it. You have already taken so much. We need water to live. The Mother told us how to live properly and how to think well. We’re still here and we haven’t forgotten anything.

The earth is decaying, it is losing its strength because they have taken away much petrol, coal, many minerals. Younger Brother thinks, Yes! Here I am! I know much about the universe! But this knowing is learning to destroy the world, to destroy everything, all humanity.... The Mother is suffering. They have broken her teeth and taken out her eyes and ears. She vomits, she has diarrhoea, she is ill.

If we cut off our arms, we can’t work, if we cut off our legs, we can’t walk. That is how it is with the Mother. The Mother is suffering. She has nothing.

Does the Younger Brother understand what he has done? Does he?

Chrys Countryman

Chrys Countryman is a grandmother from Shokan NY, a small hamlet in the Ashokan watershed of the NYC reservoir system. There she has lived simply and maintained an organic garden since 1981. She is a free-lance draftsperson and energy auditor-in-training. www.sustainable-1.net

Chrys is a dancer and one of the Million Women Drummers.

She walks because she is unwilling to to sit by while unacceptable volumes of water are contaminated by shale gas mining. "Water is eternal and a gift of nature to all life. Gas is so temporary it is gone the second it's useful. My generation has a responsibility to leave a livable planet to the ones that follow. I walk because I feel I must respond personally to this serious threat to our waters and the public health".

today's thought..

Gas is so temporary it is gone the second it's useful.
And leaves a stain that lasts for generations.

Walk about Water Video with Chrys Countryman and Deb Weir

the begining

ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, WATER IS BEING CONTAMINATED, COMPROMISED, RUINED.


ON APRIL 17TH THROUGH 23 OF 2011, WATER WILL BE CARRIED FROM THE CLEAN NEVERSINK RESERVOIR BY FIVE WOMEN,  TO A PLACE WHERE WATER IS ENDANGERED, SALT SPRINGS STATE PARK IN SUSQUEHANNA COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

THE CARRYING – THIS “WALK ABOUT WATER” - WILL BE ON FOOT AND WILL INCLUDE STOP-OVERS IN MANY TOWNS ALONG THE WAY.

JOIN US IN SUPPORT. WE ARE SEEKING DONATION OF USE OF A RECREATIONAL VEHICLE FOR THE WEEK (TO PROVIDE LIFE SUPPORT AND SLEEPING QUARTERS WHEN NOT WALKING), WE WILL ALSO NEED FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR OUR BASIC NEEDS WHILE WALKING.

JOIN US IN CONTINUING THE CHAIN OF CLEAN WATER. ARRANGE TO MEET US AT SALT SPRINGS TO RECEIVE A VESSEL OF CLEAN WATER TO CARRY BACK TO AN AREA THAT YOU KNOW IS CONTAMINATED OR NEEDS TO RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE.

JOIN US IN SPIRIT AND STATEMENT. TELL YOUR FRIENDS. CHEER US ON AS WE COME THROUGH YOUR TOWN. SPREAD THE WORD. WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT CLEAN WATER.

Walkaboutwater@aol.com
Chrys Countryman

Woodstock Hidden Kitchen Chef/Activist Deanna D'Angelo-Karpe deannascatering@aol.com