Source: ritkanlathatotortenelem.blog.hu

I’ve always wondered how many people notice the even greater paradox lurking behind the whole thing. How come Labor Day’s a day off work? Why isn’t it an occasion for some fantastic common creation?

In the seventies we never ever had even a whiff of hope that we could be freed from this system that was like a yoke on our necks. It seemed rock-solid, eternal, unshakable. And we were just specks of dust in the face of the monster. Then the whole thing melted away, just like the March snow of my childhood.

I found this graffiti in Australia:

We can imagine the end of the world but not capitalism?

Or can we?

Have a great May Day!

Source: Julia Kicova, Unsplash

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King Nar could no longer remember how long he had been trying to find his way out of the forest; it felt as though he had been wandering for ages through an endless labyrinth. Gnarled branches of giant trees twisted in every direction as far as the eye could see. Thick groves of young saplings clung toward the sky in dense, impenetrable walls. Thousands of tangled vines hung from centuries-old branches. Fallen trunks crisscrossed the ground hindering his progress; in places, waterlogged sections stood in his way. He had long lost his servants; when occasionally stumbling upon something resembling a path, the apparent trail would sooner or later narrow, then vanish, together with hope. When he set out in the opposite direction, the same thing happened. He tried shouting, but his voice soon grew weary, muffled in the twilight. Now and then he climbed a tree that seemed suitable, hoping to catch a glimpse of where he was, but it was impossible to rise above the high canopy. His provisions and water were gone, and hiqs strength began to wane. All he could do was setting a course in a direction where he suspected a way out, and pressing on undeterred, he tried to keep the same direction among the twists and turns. His robe had been torn to shreds by branches, treacherous vines kept catching his neck, and his boots sank into the mud up to the shins time and again. His hope to ever arrive to his palace garden of pomegranate trees dwindled more and more, yet he pushed on.

After a long time, he noticed slightly more light filtering in from the right; it was as if the forest was thinner there. He set off in that direction, and, crawling under thorn bushes, he fought his way to a small clearing. There was nothing in the clearing, yet he felt grateful just to be able to once mote see the blue sky. As he was wiping his beaded brow, taking a deep breath, he became aware of a barely audible whisper.
“King Nar… Oh, King Nar!”
“Who could possibly know me in this tiny clearing hidden deep within the vast forest?”, the king wondered. It was as if the whisper had come from every direction at once. He looked around, but only a few rosebushes stood in the eternal moment of stillness of that misty morning. “Could this barely audible sound be coming from the forest?”, he speculated. But there was no one in sight who could have whispered such words. He looked up at the sky—only mist and fog swirled above him in silence, like unruly, giant sheepdogs. Finally, he looked down at the ground and spotted the source of the sounds.
“Who are you?”, he marveled at the sight of the strange creatures.
For all over the meadow, short, translucent flowers grew between the grasses; at first glance, they were barely discernible. They consisted only of outlines, as if drawn with a pencil by an artist who had not had time to finish his work. King Nar, though he had reached the prime of his life, had never seen anything like this before.
“We are the colorless daffodils with transparent petals,” replied a chorus of feeble voices. Although it seemed to take great effort for the flowers to produce any audible sound, their soft words captivated the listener’s attention.
“What do you wish of me, oh, colorless daffodils with transparent petals?” the astonished ruler asked.
“We wish to be painted…” whispered the quiet chorus in unison. “Paint our petals! Paint us, and in return we will lead you out of these woods.”

The king paused to think for a moment. He didn’t really believe that these faint-voiced, frail creatures could lead him out of the vast expanse of mighty trees. But he didn’t tell them that, because even as a king he was polite, and besides, his heart went out to these harmless, ghost-like creatures who were, in their own way, beautiful and longed so much to be colored. He might as well grant their wish before dying here in the depths of the forest. He nodded.
“And what color would you like to be, oh, daffodils?”
A soft murmur arose, as if the flowers were buzzing in consultation for a moment, then the chorus spoke again.
“Paint us… paint us with the gold of the Sun and the red of poppies!”

King Nar looked around. In the middle of the meadow grew a gnarled hawthorn bush; caught on one of its branches, he found a small feather. He cleaned it, tied it to a twig, then dipped his makeshift brush into the gold of sunrays and set out to paint the daffodils. Some he painted in an even, deep sun-yellow. Others, he colored lemon yellow with just a touch of sun-yellow paint. The lower, round petals of the latter he painted poppy-red. The flowers giggled softly, as if the feather was tickling them.

King Nar got so absorbed in his work that he could not have determined whether the painting had taken a quarter of an hour or half a day. Suddenly, it was done. He straightened, looked around and surveyed his work with satisfaction.

At this moment the forest trembled. It was as if the world had shuddered, and within it, almost imperceptibly, every creature had shaken. It lasted only a moment, but when he looked at the world again, it was as if the light was falling from a slightly different angle, and everything was different from before.

Source: Annie Spratt, Unsplash

He furrowed his brow, but the daffodils were stretching in a contented way, and their voices, though still soft, flowed toward him with resonance:
“Thank you for giving us color! Thank you, oh, King Nar!”
Looking up, he noticed that in the forest, which until now had closed in evenly on all sides, a narrow gap had appeared.
“Go now, King Nar!” the daffodils murmured. “May the heavens protect you on your journey, for keeping your word and bringing us to life!”

The king bid farewell to the daffodils, setting off along the path that wound through the trees, making his way out of the slowly opening forest to freedom.

Source: Subhasish Dutta, Unsplash

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One of the metaphors for healing is gardening. In our gardens, we strive to create ideal conditions for living things—just like in therapy. In this analogy, unwanted behaviors and emotions would correspond to weeds and pests. What should one do about weeds? According to the generally held belief, weeds are bad; they steal nutrients from cultivated plants. Let’s kill them! My grandmother taught me that you have to grasp weeds smartly below the stem so you can pull them out by the roots, otherwise they’ll grow back.

Western medicine pays surprisingly little attention to the roots of problems. It offers a few sophisticated pieces of advice to our conscious minds: “High blood pressure? Quit smoking, reduce stress, eat more healthily.” How to actually achieve these noble goals is not mentioned, as all energy of the institution is taken up by fighting symptoms. Here, take this chemical, it will lower your blood pressure. Consume it daily for the rest of your life. Problem solved.

Most schools of Western psychology, on the contrary, devote an extraordinary amount of attention to the roots of problems. They have, ever since Freud, been diagnosing and classifying problems, learning all their characteristics: shapes, colors, and smells. According to their ideology, the understanding of roots is enough to make the weeds jump out of the ground. If you shine a light deep into the soil, uncover from where the problem originates, and talk at length about your feelings related to it, then the weed somehow ceases to be a weed.

I’m not entirely certain that conscious understanding will cause a change in behavior. Just because you know that a spider was thrown at you when you were five years old, will your arachnophobia go away? Everyone knows that smoking is a major cause of countless diseases, yet a billion people still suck on the little poison rods.

Source: Sammy-Sander, Pixabay

Interestingly, the focus of these healing professions is not on the garden, but on weeds. Weeding constitutes the major part of both doctors’ and psychologists’ activities. What’s the problem, and how can we make it disappear? Medicine resembles industrial agriculture: you spray the fields with herbicides, and to hell with the consequences. Psychology, on the other hand, can be likened to a hobby gardener struggling with a sea of weeds, constantly battling the wild vegetation that keeps sprouting anew.

Fortunately, there are also gardening methods that take a longer-term view. One of their distinguishing features is, instead of weeding, focusing on strengthening cultivated plants. If you develop a very healthy soil ecosystem and provide your crops with appropriate nutrients, they will thrive so well that the weeds won’t be able to outcompete them. Beetles get to munch on them a bit, but if there’s a sufficiently large variety of organisms, pests won’t be able to proliferate. Gardens having a diverse array of living organisms will be more resilient. The equivalent of a rich and balanced garden ecosystem in people would be behavioral flexibility.

Source: K F, Unsplash

If, instead of putting out fires, you have the opportunity to prepare the ground, you can save a lot of work. ‘Deep mulch’ beds need very little watering and are full of nutrients. Almost as a side feature, they have hardly any weeds, and the few that do can be pulled out easily. But in order to achieve this you have to prepare the bed the previous fall in quite a specific manner. The more varied your garden’s living community, the harder for pests to get out of control. If a person has plenty of satisfiying, worthwhile activities in their lives they won’t spend the whole day watching TV series or kitty videos.

If you view therapy as weed control, your work will be a struggle. You’ll sweat profusely and so will your patients. Weeds are strong, tenacious, and grow quickly. What if you harnessed nature’s vitality and worked with it instead? When, instead of weeding out unwanted behaviors, you set out to create a fantastic garden your work transforms into an exciting creative endeavor. How can we make a person’s life wonderful? How does it feel to view healing as an art rather than a task of eradication?

Source: Ralph, Pixabay

As for the weeds, we are beginning to rediscover the fact that a significant portion of them are actually wildflowers, medicinal plants, and edible greens that, with a little control, can become useful additions to gardens. Even weeds that are of no direct use to us protect the soil from erosion and help retain moisture. Many behaviors deemed harmful can actually be quite useful in the proper context.

Nettles. Source: Helga, Pixabay

All right, but what about poisonous plants? Or their equvalent, such as a deadly habit, like smoking?

Well, if you plant hardy enough plants in the garden, the weeds will naturally be pushed back. If you create other ways for the person to achieve the original purpose of smoking just as effectively, the harmful behavior will no longer be necessary and will cease. You can, of course, facilitate this transformation through hypnosis or other methods, but the focus will be on finding new behaviors rather than on the problem itself.

The desired state of conventional agriculture is a field of wheat instead of a field of thistles. A monoculture that lives for a single summer.

Source: Jonny Caspari, Unsplash

What if we envisioned a kind of inner forest garden instead? A forest garden is a community of plants where perennials—trees, shrubs, and herbs—dominate. Where people work hand in hand with nature to create a diverse ecosystem that’s resilient in the long term. Where less external intervention is needed because the balance of the system is stable with its regenerative capacity being strong. It produces healthier food and is more pleasant to spend time in.

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Source: Jonas Koel, Unsplash

You can hardly get a more intime connection than physical contact. People instinctively feel that touch doesn’t only have supporting and comforting properties, but can also be healing. It’s soothing and stimulating at the same time. The effect can even be observed across species. Kids love petting zoos, and even a rabbit used to being caressed will nudge your hand, as if to say, “What’s taking so long? Pet me now.”

Why does touching friendly creatures’ fur feel so good for most of us? Although not everyone likes the wording, it’s sometimes helpful to remind ourselves that we’re monkeys.1 98.7% of our genetic makeup is identical to that of bonobos. And monkeys spend a fair amount of time grooming each other, cleaning each other’s fur. While this serves a hygienic purpose, the social bonding aspect is probably even more significant. According to Desmond Morris, grooming was replaced by conversation when we lost our hair. Yet our million-year-old need for physical contact with specie-mates remained—in a transformed way.

Source: Helena Lopes, Unsplash

How did we get to the point where, in some countries, if a teacher pats a child on the head, they’re reported for sexual abuse? Obviously, there is such a thing as inappropriate touching, but just because there are poisonous mushrooms in the world you don’t have to give up eating.

I think physical separation is most characteristic of Northern cultures that come from a warrior background. English-speaking films have taken over the world in many part of which their human remoteness seems quite weird. In the midst of great human dramas everyone’s standing alone like an obelisk. No one touches the others; it’s as if you were observing a bunch of emotional autists. I remember an international course where it took me a month to realize that the corpulent Dutch woman was the wife of the skinny Dutch guy. They never even sat next to each other.

Japanese movies are also not about people cuddling up to each other. Even your grandma is a samurai. Whether it comes from the new international trend or just general paranoia, I don’t know, but for some time now, a cold wind has been blowing in mainstream Hungarian culture. People nod to each other from a distance. Covid hasn’t helped the situation.

Source: Alexandra_Koch, Pixabay

As a remedy, contact dancing and ‘angel corridors’ were invented, where dozens of strangers rub up against your body. I’m sure it’s possible to learn to cope with this sensory cacophony. Have you tried it?

When two dogs meet, they sniff each other in a ritual way. This behavior can be observed in other species as well. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of formal greeting procedures. You walk into a party where you have to go around to all thirty-two people, mumbling your name incomprehensibly while they mumble theirs, rigidly cheek-kiss the women, while to men you extend your stiff paw like some kind of sword. (To praise Americans for a change, they actually pay attention to each other’s names.)

Source: Ralph, Pixabay

When we started going to hippie camps abroad, we learned to hug each other—and even strangers. Back home in the fall, it lasted for a little while, but then the alienation of Budapest set in; physical closeness became uncomfortable, and we slipped back into just shaking hands. It took a few camps for the new habit to take root in our nervous systems. Over the years, we managed to sneak this into Gyüttment gatherings as well; I think rainbow hippies played a pretty significant role in normalizing hugs there. Throwing your arms around the other person is becoming quite accepted in some subcultures; it’s part of a social trend in alternative circles.

Like a handshake, a hug can be shy and hesitant or formal and stiff—especially the kind when you bang the other person on the back, trying to make light of the fact that you’re touching their body. It’s a typical postmodern gesture: I’m doing something, while at the same time pointing at myself sarcastically: hehe, look at what this guy’s doing. Even so, this is a step forward; if it happens often enough, at some point you can begin to actually sense the other person.

Information about the other person’s state also comes through the smaller surface of the hand, especially in the slow, prolonged handshakes of Southern peoples. It seems infinitely strange to us when an Arab takes our hand and, while looking deeply into our eyes, won’t let go. Hey, give me back my hand! But he still knows the original function of handshakes and doesn’t understand why you’re pulling your paw back before he could sense your emotional state.

Source: mostafa meraji, Unsplash

Changes in cultural norms always cause uncertainity. Should I kiss her on the cheek, give her a hug, or just wave? Is this person dying for a human touch, or are they afraid of germs? The most awkward part in Hungary is when you shake hands with the men but just nod at the women, because they are still too much of a stranger to cheek-kiss, while a handshake—well, that’s too masculine. Going through this with thirty people? I’ll just quietly slip away; no one will notice.

How does this topic rub you? I admit, I like African wild dogs, where you can’t tell which leg belongs to which spotted head in the pile. I don’t know how we’ll find our way back to the horde from the mad individualists that we’ve become. Yet, just like that of the lycaon, this is our true nature.

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The sailor was frantically running around, dividing his attention between a sick person and a wounded one. Pharmacy. Emergency ward. Ambulance. Herbs. Hospital. Healthcare institutions. Medicine. And blood. Lots of blood.

Wait a minute, he said to himself. Stop for a moment. The book says a term more useful than sick or wounded is healing. What happens if we look at the situation that way?

Source: Okan Caliskan, Pixabay

He began to breathe a bit more calmly.

Well, he thought, the first part of the ‘healing’ experience is usually not very pleasant. Chaos, despair, pain. Why did this happen to me? Where did it come from? What should I do? When will it finally pass?

This phase lasts for varying lengths of time, but while the mind runs around in circles, the regenerative capacity of the body kicks in. Ancient processes churn deep within. And at some point, the magical moment arrives. Things start to fall into place. The bubble of primal energy that we are fizzles, shifts, breathes, and bustles until it finally regains its fundamental vibration. One could say the individual bubble reconnects with its place in the Universe. With strength, peace, and harmony.

Source: Dan DeAlmeida, Unsplash

And that place will be a little different than before, he pointed out. We will be more; more mature, more united, more experienced. The energy awakening gives us a momentum that we can use to go a bit higher than our previous state.

He recalled that phase of healing from his childhood when he would lie in bed with his eyes closed, beginning to feel relief. Pages upon pages of printed text would float before his eyes, filled with colorful stories and wonderful wisdom—which, of course, vanished upon waking, but still had their effect.

Source: Julian Hochgesang, Unsplash

And personal healing is only the beginning, he mused. One could even say that society as a whole has embarked on the path to healing.

Source: Zac Durant, Unsplash

I haven’t gone mad, he said, looking at the reader. I mean, not now—that happened a long time ago. But just think about it: war is like a fever. The (soon-to-be-felt) scarcity of raw materials is like a diet. We can think of the internet as a kind of nervous system connecting the cells of the body. And people staring at their phones are in a suitably altered state of consciousness in which change can occur.

I don’t think we’ve reached the recovery phase in society yet, he admitted. We’re still in the fever phase. And, whether we like it or not, we must gradually come to realize that the time of this mechanical civilization is over. What’s happening at the moment isn’t always pleasant. But it’s good to keep the big picture in mind—that the elevated state of healing has already begun.

And if we look at it this way, he added, it might be worth pondering what will help our patient—in this case, human society—in healing. What will be the hot soup, the gentle touch, the herbal tea, the sea of positive suggestions that supports renewal?

Source: ha11ok, Pixabay

I’m going back to my healing ones now, he said to the reader. And you can feel free to let your creativity wander whenever appropriate, because this is one of the most important questions of our planet in this era. How can we help civilization heal with our thoughts, our actions, our way of life?

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Source: Enrique, Pixabay

Most people don’t follow world political events in depth. Partly because they have better things to do. Or because the news aren’t very positive, and since they feel they can’t influence events anyway, they rather put out a bird feeder and watch cheerful chickadees. Or because they haven’t yet faced the fact that what comes through mainstream media is not news, but propaganda. (Not just in our stuffy East European corner, but in the West as well.) And also because there’s so much noise. Who am I supposed to believe?

As for me, I spend a lot of time sifting through the alternative media, looking for level-headed voices, unbiased reporting, honest perspectives, people with insider knowledge or a deeper understanding. By comparing different points of view, you can learn quite a lot about what’s really going on.

Recently something interesting happened: more than a month before the event took place, 100% of the otherwise quite diverse group of talking heads said that war with Iran was going to break out. That this was no longer a show of force, but genuine preparation. The U.S. government and military were doing everything they usually do before a war, and Trump would be unable to back out of the dead end he had maneuvered himself into.

Every night in India, I contemplated the filling moon. The initial strike usually happens on a moonless, dark night. Might I still fly home to Europe with my ticket via Jordan? Time passed, there was just one weekend left. On Friday, the Muslim holiday, the most critical moment, nothing happened. I was almost beginning to get my hopes up.

On Saturday, on our way back from the beach to the ashram, we flagged down a car. The driver spoke very little English. On the radio, the announcer’s voice carried suspicious excitement. Something in Malayalam. Something about Iran. Iran. Iran.

When we returned home, it turned out that what we had been trying to push away had come to pass: the mentally deranged psychopaths had done what they had wanted to do for decades but hadn’t dared to: They believed their own lies about their own invincibility and actually went to war with Iran. Five days before my planned trip, all the countries in the region closed their airspace.

Rókaviti found one last reasonably priced route through Egypt. As for whether a visa was required for the layover, there were five different versions circulating online. There was some risk that they wouldn’t let me board the plane. I asked a few world travelers, but it still wasn’t entirely clear. I was still on the fence. At dawn I woke up with a start, sat up, and—come what may—booked the ticket. The next day, out of curiosity, I checked again: the price had gone up four and a half times.

There was a brief window of time when people were frozen in place. When there was still time to act. My flight home was smooth.

We’re in a similar window of time now. How long it will last—a few days or weeks—I don’t know. But it appears that when this is over, we’ll find ourselves in a quite different world. The U.S. government’s kindergarten-level victory bluster is not even close to reality. All signs point to the fact that—no matter how many schools and hospitals are bombed in Persia—Iran is putting up a fierce resistance. The attackers’ losses are far greater than they admit.

Now the talking heads I watch are once again unanimous—in predicting an unprecedented economic crisis. Iran will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed for as long as it wants, they point out. The U.S. president can rant and rave all he likes, but there is no realistic way for him—or anyone else—to force open that passageway. And even if the war was to end tomorrow—of which there’s no sign of happening—restarting the shut-down oil and gas wells would take longer than the energy reserves many countries have. The longer the strait remains closed, the stronger the secondary and tertiary economic effects will be; dominoes will start falling. This goes far beyond oil. In addition to countless chemicals, 30% of the world’s fertilizer used to pass through this route.

This post isn’t about the injustice of this latest senseless war. About that topic, volumes could be written. It’s simply about us. About what we can do in our own lives during this transitional period, while artificial measures keep oil prices low for a short while longer (if you thought they were high, look back in a month).

If I owned stocks, I’d think long and hard about which ones to hold onto. If I had spare money to invest, I’d bet on skyrocketing oil prices, especially refined petrol products. If I was a farmer with a tractor, I’d buy diesel to last the season. If you live in Hungary, you can get local organic rice here; it keeps for a long time. That’s the kind of action I mean—you know your own circumstances. As far as I can tell, even in the best-case scenario, everything is going to get much more expensive very soon. The entire patchwork global economic system is about to take a hit like never before.

If we’re lucky, this will eventually aid in developing a more ecologically sound economy and lifestyle. High time for that. And even in the short term, the turmoil opens up a whole range of possibilities. If you speculate wisely, you could double your money in the blink of an eye. We’re obviously won’t stoop so low as to buy shares in an arms manufacturer, but what will actually be useful?

No matter what happens, our inner well-being comes first. The world always poses challenges; they strengthen the heart and the body. Let us remain calm and courageous. At the same time it may also be helpful to be more aware of what’s happening. Although I’ve just done so, it’s not wise to engage in predictions. I may be wrong in everything. Don’t listen to me, but if you are interested in world affairs, it might be worth listening to those who have been right before.

The few links below are just a drop in the ocean, but they’re a good place to start. Taken individually, they may not always be accurate, but when you put several of them together, you’ll get a picture.

In English:
A pretty good daily summary about the Iran situation with several good links:
nakedcapitalism.com
a somewhat biased German with good technical knowledge:
moonofalabama.org
the most freely speaking Israeli paper:
haaretz.com

Deeper analyses:
a mysterious former British diplomat:
Aurelien
a former Scottish diplomat:
craigmurray.org.uk

Hilarious satire:
Normal Island News

On Youtube:
John Mearsheimer, USA political scientist
pensioned American colonels: Daniel Davis, Douglas MacGregor,
Jeffrey Sachs, American economist
Glenn Greenwald on Rumble
The new Atlas
Kalibrated with Scott
History Legends

Multilingual
Lebanese analist with insider information, paywalled, but his Twitter isn’t:
ejmagnier.com

In German:
News mal anders
Actuarium

In French:
voltairenet.org
Idriss Aberkane

See which of them you resonate with. And if you know other impartial or intelligent sources, drop me a comment. If you think others could find this post useful,

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Have a nice spring, be brave and optimistic. A new era is beginning.

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And this in India, continued Sindbad, where even people in uniform are generally friendly1. When Indians don’t want to talk to you, however, (mostly because they don’t speak English), they simply ignore you, acting as if you didn’t exist. Psychologists call this behavior ‘passive aggression.’ As Hungarians are avid advocates of active aggression, the disappearance of someone in plain sight strikes us as very strange. The antidote is to be pushy, to get in their face, to raise your voice. After a while they will be forced to look at you.

Well, he doesn’t know, he muttered sourly in response to the challenging question of “When does the bus leave for the next town?” Call this number. nderstand Indian English on the phone in the noise of an Indian bus station? The sailor shook his head. In a situation deprived of both visual and auditory metacommunication, there’s almost no chance of unraveling Indian logic. He looked around to see if there were any pant-wearing people2 in the area.

The situation was somewhat similar, the traveler explained, to looking for a Hungarian outside of the borders of the Hunky Reserve. In Rimaszombat (official Slovak name Rimavska Sobota), his mother’s town of birth, he wouldn’t want to address someone in English as they could be Hungarian. Even less to try the language of Slovak colonists with their marked dislike of vowels. So he would scan passers-by: facial features, hair color, and other genetic factors, although shared among populations to an extent, did count. Combining this with facial expression, movement style, clothing, age, together with some other, not so easy to define-factors, you can get an idea about the person’s ethnicity. It’s never 100% accurate, but much better than chance.

In India, there similarly are signs of a person able to meaningfully communicate with pale-faces. Some of the more obvious ones are being between the ages of 20 and 40, wearing better-style Western clothing. A backpack is a big plus, glasses are also good. The decisive factor is a trait that is more difficult to describe, yet very clear: the I.Q. reflected in the eyes.

A couple did make their appearence soon enough. Sindbad explained the task at hand. “Ah, we’re Tamils,” the man smiled. We don’t speak Malayalam. But give me that phone anyway. Whether this stemmed from simple Indian kindness or natural intelligence, I don’t know, the traveler said. But he obviously had a much better chance of understanding the Indian on the other end of the line. He knew the situation, the logic, not to mention that the sounds of the related language Tamil are at least formed in a similar location of the vocal apparatus.

At school, he continued, we are taught that it’s words and grammar that’ll make you understood in a “foreign” environment. That’s a bit like starting lunch with a cake—and having nothing else. You can get there, obviously, the sailor spread his arms, but first you’ve got to make contact. Which is not an intellectual, but an emotional and physical task.

The most tangible part of entering the world of another culture is through body language, he explained. In order to understand how they work and what they want, you have to become like them. Just as you modeled adults when you were a child, you must model native speakers. Most of which is not only entertaining, but also quite easy: you adopt their posture, their muscle tone, their movement patterns, how close they stand to each other, and so on.

And sometimes there are tougher nuts to crack, he scratched his head. Like Indian head rolling. No, not that kind. It’s just that the inhabitants of the subcontinent are closely related to wrynecks. Their heads are very loosely attached to the rest of their bodies and begin to sway at the slightest breeze. This has great communicative value, indicating yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, and about seventy other things. And they actually seem to know which is which. After two months I noticed my head beginning to sway slightly, Sindbad said. So I knew I was starting to show progress. Apart from things like that, if you’re willing to take on their physical patterns, you can quickly resonate with them.

Because that’s the other thing, he said. Sound. If you try pronouncing the name of a town guided by the Latin transcription, they won’t understand. Those wriggles may look familiar but they represent sounds that don’t exist in your language. “I’ve recorded the name of the village for you so you can pronounce it when asking for directions,” wrote my new friend. Specific sounds are quite an exciting zoo: ‘L’s with your tongue low or high, an ‘n’ where you touch your front teeth with your tongue, and so on. And the bottom line: the music, the intonation, the shape of your vocal apparatus. Once you get those right, you’re pretty much on their wavelength. It feels strange at first, but do you travel to the ends of the Earth to stuff yourself with chicken paprikash and noodles?

The advantage of smaller peoples, ethnic groups is quite striking in this field. As is the lack of cultural empathy among native English speakers (with all due respect to the exceptions). The vast majority of the latter are virtually incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes. It’s like trying to explain something to a Zimbabwean using the example of Köbüki, a Hungarian cartoon character from the seventies. I constantly ran into this when I was working as an interpreter, the traveler sighed. People of other nationalities knew that their partner wouldn’t understand the internal references of their culture. The majority of Anglo-Saxons, even those otherwise intelligent, didn’t. It’s perverse, yet somehow understandable, how their language has become Number One: the people least capable of empathy have made everyone else to adapt to them.

I don’t have insider knowledge of Russian or Chinese culture, but they do seem like bulls in a china shop, too, added the traveler, confessing that he was beginning to crave some good chicken paprikash with noodles. Only the sort that came from humanely treated animals, of course. As for entering the worlds of other cultures, he said, you can read about the details in that wonderful masterpiece of a book: Természetes Nyelvtanulás (How to Pick up Languages).

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This is another of the difficult-to-understand contradictions of Indian culture. How can spirituality coexist with such carelessness? People are constantly sweeping, tidying around their homes, while elsewhere they throw things away as if there was no tomorrow. The following two photos were taken on either side of a narrow street. You can’t see the tidy house from all those carefully tended potted plants:

While a few yards away, on the other side there’s this:

How can high aesthetic standards be combined with such indifference? In Western Europe, the authorities would be called upon to take action. In Hungary, a middle-class citizen would curse people’s negligence and the authorities’ impotence, picking up the trash himself, not bearing to look at the pile of filth so close to his home. He’d consider at least the immediate vicinity of his house to be his own.

In India, sacrificial flowers are sold everywhere.

These are taken to temples, home altars, or other sacred places, to be offered, for example, to river gods. We saw with our own eyes how a woman threw flowers into the water from the bridge—together with their plastic bag.

Yes, in the tropics, organic waste decomposes in a few months. However, due to the considerable efforts of the chemical industry, banana leaves and disposable clay cups have been replaced by plastic. It appears that this people with a basically accepting attitude and a like of gaudy colors simply hasn’t noticed that this material is fundamentally different.

By the way, it’s not impossible that the sequence was intentional. Phase 1: Get everyone hooked on “free” plastic bags and bottles. Phase 2: When the mess becomes unbearable, introduce recycling. More work for the industry!

India does have some recycling, by the way. Let’s hope this bottle collector wasn’t meant to be a work of art.

Selective garbage collection normally looks more like that:

A fairly recent article in Telex complains that higher bottle deposits recently introduced in Europe aren’t effective, there’s even less recycling than before. I don’t know where the author lives—in Budapest even Santa Claus is walking around with a bottle collector bag, and new plastic bottles are conspicuously absent from the forest. Not to mention that the poorest segment of society has gained a means of livelihood, while the rest can satisfy their hunting instincts. The fifty-forint / fifty-ban bottles provide food for the destitute, while you can buy lottery tickets with the profits. If you win, remember me.

Incidentally, we differ from India in only one important way: we have created a system that hides the piles of trash from view. We collect our garbage with fume-emitting trucks, building mountains of trash, which are then covered with soil by another army of roaring machines. This is called sweeping under the rug modern waste management. The futuristic miracle is recycling, which means that a (smaller) portion of the zillions of tons of plastic produced every day is turned into a kind of rough plastic, while the chemical industry continues to churn. It’s not entirely clear to me how this process is supposed to solve the problem.

You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to realize that there’s but one effective way to eliminate plastic waste. Stop producing it. Give up your daily microplastic gut shower; don’t buy things wrapped in plastic. “What about Coke?” Are you crazy? “How about mineral water?” According to surveys by Tudatos Vásárlók Egyesülete (Association of Conscious Consumers) bottled water is in no way superior to tap water. “But what if I’m thirsty?” Well, you can take a water bottle with you. You’re a grown-up.

There are a number of advantages to thinking of your planet as your own. First: all you need is confidence. You decide how to live, and just do it, without checking what others do. By doing something useful for our common future, your horizons will expand and you will feel good. At the same time, you are beginning to become independent from the faceless systems that consume our lives. This will come in handy very soon. By the way, you are also setting an example. I’ll stop preaching at this point. Sleep on it.

Incidentally, the destruction of our planet is by no means a by-product of ‘progress,’ but rather the result of deliberate effort by a few mafias. One is the chemical industry, which includes the oil industry with its ‘refineries.’ Also more and more the food industry, alongside the pharmaceutical companies. We can simply call the whole conglomerate the poison lobby. Another one’s the defense mass murder industry. Do you own shares in it? If you keep your money in investment funds, you might very well do! That’s why the returns are so high.

I got some feedback that I should write about more positive things. All right. Visible trash is supposedly on the decline in India. There’s an effort to get the population to tidy up a bit. Some messages have a higher degree of professionalism than others.

There are also people making earrings from the opener bits of soda cans or devil sticks from tent poles left behind after festivals. The possibilities are almost endless. So is our potential for a reconnection with a natural way of life.

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Some kind of ceremony was just about to begin, and people were streaming in. Rókaviti gave me her large scarf to wrap around my shorts, and then we each went to the appropriate side. The priests burned incense and lit fires, while the faithful piled flowers in front of statues. The assistants brought forehead paint, holy water, blessed food, and head blessings. I refused everything. Nothing touched me. It all seemed like hocus-pocus, a ceremony, a worldly ploy. If these rituals are performed, Saint Anthony, I mean Ganesha will be gracious and fulfill my wishes. I’ll get the new laundry machine, and Stevie, sorry, Krishna will pass his university entrance exams. Of course, who knows how the crowd experiences it, maybe it’s real for them, Sindbad shrugged. I was completely indifferent, looking at the paintings of astrological signs on the ceiling, the row of carved stone dragons, wondering what other animals were hidden there with them. Fortunately, Hindu ceremonies are much more relaxed, there is no coercion. If you don’t do exactly what you’re supposed to do, you’re not immediately looked upon as a heretic. It was over pretty quickly, and people dispersed. We walked around in the large complex. There was a kind of a tower on the church grounds. “Let’s go up there,” I said. After climbing several levels, we finally reached the top roof, where steep stairs led up to the tower.

In the small topmost chamber, which had a connection to the main hall of the temple, a man was sitting. There was something about that place, which immediately made me sit down behind him, and Rókaviti sat down on the other side. A tampura was playing, and someone was singing. It sounded as if it was amplified; it was impossible to tell where the sound was coming from. It seemed to emanate from everywhere. It took me a while to realize that it was the man sitting in front of me who was singing and that only the acoustics of the space amplified and shaped the sound.

We had no idea who he was. Could he be someone who belonged here, a cantor or something like that? Or just an ordinary person who gave voice to his feelings? He was neither old nor young, neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor—all right, he was actually fairly short. He had a small bag, just as gray and insignificant as he was.

Rókaviti saw the man from the side and later said that tears were streaming down his face. Who knows what was going on inside him—grief, pain, joy, elation—but tears came to my eyes too. Because that singing contained everything. What everything? Well, it’s the everything that cannot be described. The universe. What you find in One Hundred Years of Solitude or in certain Van Gogh paintings. There it hangs in an insignificant place in the museum, you stop to look at it, and an hour just flew by.

We sat there listening to the music, and—well, I can’t really say much more than that. For a moment, it crossed my mind to record it, just as I had recorded the loud chittering of the starlings, the bayjans, the rustling of the palm trees in the wind, but I knew immediately that this magic could not be recorded, could not be taken away, could not be pasted into an album, could only be experienced there and then. I hoped you wouldn’t start recording, Rókaviti said later. The song resounded in an unfamiliar language, winding, rising high, falling back down and rising again.

We listened until the music stopped. It was impossible to tell whether it was the singer or the invisible accompanist who had decided to stop, but they ended it together. The little man grabbed his bag, hurriedly backed out of the small chamber, and went down the stairs.

We looked at each other with Rókaviti, wondering what that was all about. Finally, she said, finally. This is the India we came for, not the seeing, the experiences, the going from place to place.

As we climbed down to the lower level, we found him crouching by the exit. I went to him and took his hand. Not in a businessman-like handshake, but with both hands, and through his tears he could see that my eyes were also filled with tears, and I just nodded, mumbling something incomprehensible, but it didn’t matter, because what happened there in the tower was beyond words. It was also beyond personality, and yet we were all very much present in the experience, and it felt so good that I was able to thank him and show my elation. And it may even be that the energy of another human being who had drifted there from a distant land was able to support him to some extent in whatever he was doing there.

Well, that’s all for today, said Sindbad. I couldn’t record it, but at least brought you some news about it, and perhaps this way you can experience something of that music yourself.

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Most of the elements were already familiar: the garbage heaps of the global South, the motorbike-infested megacities of the Third World, the noise, the heaviness of tropical air, the unpredictable weather caused by climate change. But never before had such an intense barrage of stimuli hit his senses all at once. The word ‘loud’ took on a new meaning. Why do villagers blast local popular music at a thousand decibels at dawn with speakers pointing outwards? Why are there no foods without sugar or hot peppers? Why is the fan droning away even in the cool of dawn? The density of people, the chaos, the masses of festive lights—it was as if there was too much of everything.

True: in the tropics, culture seems to mirror nature, birds, flowers: everything is bigger, louder, and more colorful. But why does it have to be so chaotic? Was the South always this jumbled, wondered the sailor, or is it due to the still ongoing exploitation and the population explosion? In any case, the extreme case of India highlights processes that are present everywhere. And culture shock is a phenomenon that can manifest itself not only in space but also in time.

A friend of mine, said the traveler, complained a few years ago that he no longer felt at home in Budapest, because the city had changed so much. The political regime had erected new buildings everywhere, with dubious aesthetics. Simple shops had closed, old community spaces had disappeared, and in their place, international stores and junk food places had opened up, the likes of which could be found all over the world. The old, familiar feeling, the atmosphere of ‘our city’, had disappeared.

Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock was published way back in 1970. He coined this expression mirroring ‘culture shock’, and he meant constant, rapid change that people are unable to adapt to. In 1970! In those times of blessed tranquility and peace, when the internet, cell phones, social media weren’t even on the horizon! When there was no unceasing flow of information requiring your instant response. When communities still existed, neighbors got together, and people looked each other in the eye on the street. When social institutions still functioned. When no one talked about moats between generations.

The human nervous system is extremely flexible—otherwise so many different cultures couldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be able to adapt to so many different environments. But I think many people agree that what’s happening now exceeds our biological capacity, thought Sindbad. It’s worth reading Aurelien’s latest brilliant article on the many layers of social disintegration and how they are interconnected.

The ever-present propaganda, of course, suggests that all this is normal. That dreaming of a time when you could simply ring your friends’ doorbells means you’re a fossil. Or longing for the times when you didn’t have to download eight faulty apps to board a plane. Actually, you didn’t even have to fly to another continent; taking the train to Austria was enough to make you happy. Most of us blame ourselves for not feeling comfortable in the chaos of modern times. After all, everyone else is coping so well, right? We don’t know that they think the same about us.

When you experience culture shock in a distant land, one remedy is to return to familiar, usual things. Reading a book, finding some real bread, speaking your mother tongue. Using a fork to scoop rice into your mouth, instead of three fingers of your right hand. And so on. Another option is to slow down the flood of stimuli: spend more time in one place, ground yourself with garden work and the like.

Would these methods work in case of future shock as well?

As individuals, we have plenty of opportunities to get into a different flow with peaceful, relaxing, slow activities. That’s already something. At the same time, the essence of the current chaos is that the fabric of society is falling apart, and in order to restore our inner balance we need to somehow harmonize our affairs with others.

This doesn’t seem like an easy task, but we can start by coordinating with our loved ones and those around us on a small scale. We can start building normal social structures again. This is what the community space at Gyüttment Festival is all about. Together with grassroot local communities and similar initiatives. As for me, when I get home, I’m going to organize hikes with no screens, said Sindbad. You’ll have to leave your cell phone at home. We’ll see if anyone will show up.

In any case, posing the question is more important than some specific answers. How can we maintain, restore, or create a normal, human-scale shared reality?— asked the sailor of the long-tailed mongoose that had sneaked in the door of the hut. All this happened in Auroville, South India, in one of the somewhat dilapidated organic farms of this futuristic urban experiment where our travelers healed themselves with work therapy.

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A different attitude towards people is already evident in Turkey, the sailor recounted. Once, in the dark, we camped on a nice flat spot, which the next morning turned out to be someone’s back garden. The owner was already approaching with —no, not a pitchfork— tea and cookies. In America, he might have shot us. When I worked for Greenpeace in Colorado, canvassing door to door, I had to flee twice like the roadrunner in the cartoon. Once, a furious dude was chasing me down with a car. Luckily two kind youths let me into their garden, so I was able to slip out to the back lane.

Another good thing in India, at least in the southern part we visited, is that people, although sociable, aren’t aggressive. If you don’t make eye contact, strangers won’t initiate conversation. Even rickshaw drivers and other ambush predators can easily be fended off with a “no, thank you”. Indians tend to be shy around foreigners, whom, for some inexplicable reason, they hold in high regard. On our first night, our host took us to a crazy rural fair where, in addition to the usual industrial junk, original handmade items were still available. Of course, there was also a Hindu temple on site. When we entered, it was announced over the festival’s loudspeaker that, after last year’s Australians, foreigners were once again honoring our celebration.

In India, similar to most places, phones have completely suffocated society. Most people on suburban squeeze-on trains fall into their screens just like they do in Europe. Playing games while standing in a crazy crowd or watching noise-pollution Bollywood films without headphones. Yet they can still, at any point talk to the person next to them with complete casualness.

Having eye contact is nice, and so is being able to talk to anyone, continued Sindbad. Of course, you soon get saturated with repeating the same things a hundred times. When we were in Iran, a friend of mine said he will have a T-shirt made with answers to the five most common questions in Farsi. My name is Miki, I’m from Hungary, I like Iran, et cetera, I don’t remember the rest.

In India, the five questions are only partially the same: 1. Where are you from? 2. What’s your name? 3. How long have you been in India? 4. How long will you stay in India? 5. Where did you arrive and where have you been so far in India? For some reason, it’s important for them to locate the extraterrestrial in time and space. Of course, it’s not entirely clear why you have to introduce yourself during a five-minute hitchhiking ride, or why it’s vital for someone to know that someone is from Hungary when they don’t know where it is.

One of the contradictions that’s difficult for an outside observer to understand is how these soft-hearted people turn into psychopaths in traffic. They crowd onto the train, pushing and shoving each other, elbowing you, cutting in. True, personal space is much smaller, and people are not as afraid of physical contact as they recently have become in our parts.

In traffic, the law of the jungle reigns supreme. Bus drivers are obviously recruited from people disqualified from Formula 1 races for agressivity and a condition for passing their driving test is shoving a minimum of four rickshaws off the road. Rickshaws similarly mow down motorcyclists, who in turn mow down pedestrians. Sometimes you literally have to jump out of the way if you don’t want to get run over. Incidentally, despite the disorder, Indians drive much more skillfully, maneuvering easily through the chaos and never getting angry. The constant honking is just a warning not to crash into each other. It’s impossible to know what human relations might have been like a hundred years ago, before the population multiplied sixfold. One and a half billion naked apes hardly fit into an area one-third of the size of Europe. Here, we would eat each other, thought Sindbad.

A more aggressive attitude is probably why politeness developed here in the first place. The name comes from the behavior prevalent in the royal court. In India, it’s not so common; people don’t thank each other so much. There’s no “excuse me, is this seat free?” They push your bag aside and plop down. Verbal greetings are also less compulsory; instead, they wave or place their hands on their hearts in a graceful gesture.

All the more reassuring in India, the seafarer went on, is the general safety paired with the honesty of the people. You can leave your backpack at the front of the bus with complete peace of mind and sit at the back, knowing that the space between will soon be filled with a throng. No one will touch it. You can safely hand over a large bill, they will break it, and bring back your change. You can take out your phone or camera anywhere, no one will snatch it and run away. The only people who tried to cheat us were part of the tourist industry. Of course, if you only visit places like the Taj Mahal, you might have a very different experience.

We didn’t really encounter the terrible poverty that is often talked about, the seafarer continued. In Mumbai, we saw a family living on the sidewalk, but where we went, this wasn’t the norm. In fact, we didn’t see many more beggars than at home. One type is genuinely physically disabled, and then there are the gypsies. The latter travel in groups, with naughty children, and are pushy by local standards. They behave just like the classic gipsy beggars we used to have at home. Even their gestures are the same. They haven’t changed in a thousand years. Otherwise, they are mostly good-looking in picturesque clothes. I guess you could call it an occupation. I give birth to children and beg with the youngest in my arms, sending the others away to “work” alone.

This is not a particularly profound view of society, the traveler apologized, just my impression after the first month. Every moment spent here reveals deeper and deeper layers. One thing’s certain: this is one of the oldest continuously existing high culture, extremely complex and diverse. Its contradictions probably stem largely from modernity and, let’s call its by its name, the rape committed by Britain. I don’t recall anyone ever apologizing for that. Fortunately, Indian culture is very flexible, said Sindbad. Sooner or later, it always assimilates its conquerors.

I left my handwowen blanket in Mumbai, he ruminated. Chances are I won’t be able to pick it up on the way home. I think I’ll stuff my bag full of tolerance and kind-heartedness instead. There’s gonna be plenty left here.

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The tour next day did not improve the picture. Their enthusiastic guide painted a rosy image of the advantages of the institution, specially emphasizing the dozen shops within the complex. Among countless other goods, one could buy dolls made in the image of the Master, as well as the day’s bracelet having been personally worn by the Master. The guide carefully explained every questionable feature including the presence of soldiers and the necessity of chaining the elephant.

The climax was a half-hour documentary depicting the Great Deeds of the Master, combining the styles of former Eastern Block youth magazines, Turkish romantic soap operas and the Bureau of Statistics. Achievements of the school, university, hospital founded by the Master. Number of millions hugged or saved from starvation by the Master. The Master helping victims of tsunamies, earthquakes and fires. A series of dramatic violin solos with close-ups: people of different ages, sexes and skin colors shedding tears on the shoulders of the Master. The Master with the Pope. The Master in video call with the Prime Minister. The Master signing the declaration against slavery in Abu Dhabi (!)

Sindbad had some personal experience with the workings of cults. His self-adopted brother had disappeared in the already mentioned Hit Gyülekezete without a trace2. What if, at least, this Master didn’t buy a TV channel from the money extorted from his disciples?”, he asked Rókaviti in an unsure voice. What if this particular Master is well-intentioned and all we see serves the attainment of noble goals? What if it’s only our East European gut reaction? The picture of the Master was hanging on every wall.

“Ah, power over people / A strange hobby of mine / Seeing my photo posted / on the walls is so fine.”

The role of the spiritual leader is wrought with contradiction, the seafarer went on. The essence of spirituality is surpassing your ego. Yet leadership, no matter how gentle, requires a strong personality and strong determination. How can one be a modest ship captain?

Even in the more mundane field of psychology, there’s a paradox. The goal here isn’t a connection with the Whole, just being well in our measly little selves. But how can you guide others to harmony when you yourself are not a paragon of well-being? Even disregarding the fact that most psychologists choose their career out of a desire to be OK, who is really well-adjusted these days?

And then there’s our modern god, Substance. We imagine the Universe to be built out of matter. Well, the slang of peoples often hides profound meanings so let’s compare terms. In German, it’s Kohle, coals. In Rumanian: mălai, corn gruel. In a bit old-fashioned Hungarian: guba, a kind of coat. And in English dough or bread. We’re, of course, talking about money, the means of attaining these goods placed at the very base of the Maslow-pyramid. What relation do high human ideals have with earthly needs and desires?

A begging monk is in harmony with himself. If he gets a bowl of rice, he’ll eat. If not, there’s still tomorrow. But if you have designs to improve society, your vision might need some material support. Yet if the means supersede the goals, as usual in capitalism, it’s game over.

And then there’s the ever present tempation of megalomania.

And all that is just the beginning, the seafarer said with a grimace. As long as your visionary prophet / guru / master / healer is alive, even if there’s some personality cult around them, the light is on. But them being enlightened won’t make their disciplines enlightened. Whatever they do, after centuries of time what remains will be formalities, institutions and rituals. And fallible humans. As soon as the Great Person leaves this world nothing guarantees that others will not use their name to commit exactly the opposite of what they had intended. Words can be distorted indefinitely. Minister originally meant a servant.

Having said all that, a deeper connection seems to be very much alive in India, Sindbad admitted. Especially compared to the West that has lost its soul. And the smell of spirituality does attract flocks of wasps, I mean tourists. Whether they are enthusiastic fans of esoteria or sour-faced skeptics like us, the tourist industry is welcoming them with open arms. Reserve quickly, only two places left for instant nirvana.

At the same time the everyday life of ordinary Indians is still embued with spirituality, the seafarer changed tone. Every house has an altar or a sacred room. Pop songs are about gods. Your bus might at any time run into a religious festival. With the whole population of the area frolicking, completely immersing themselves in the event. The bus just will have to wait for the drummers to finish, the dancers to come out of their extasy, the elephants to pass. The bus is not important. And all the passengers are happy anyway.

Every village has a holy mountain, a holy forest or at least a holy tree. People go on pilgrimages and when they come back they hold a puja (flower offering) in the village which ends up in frantic religious singing. Children wearing T-shirts with English slogans are participating with the same zeal as the adults. Here’s a culture that possesses a living connection with the metaphysical.

Could there still be real enlightened people in the throng of fake gurus? Who knows, Sindbad shrugged. We might even stumble into one some day. But the very fact of having been able to experience this everyday spirituality, the knowing that something like this still exists on our planet, made it worth being born.

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At the same time we are also chin-wagging mammals, the people of Bandar-Log, and the monkey horde of every place babbles in a different way. To chatter with faraway monkey hordes as easily as with your own — this had seemed an unattainable wonder to Sindbad, especially after his corresponding experiences at school.

Later, when the seafarer figured out how to enter the reality of other cultures, whereever he went, he made sure to learn a few phrases of the local language. Out of curiosity and respect; also, if the tongue had many speakers, it could prove to be useful later. An early base, no matter how minor, made later progress easier. If the language was small, looked down upon, oppressed, there was another motivation. “Your world is valid”, was the message of a sentence in a minority language. “I’m on your side.” “Not that of foreign companies or the guys in uniform.”

Official languages of India (out of hundreds spoken). Source: Shyam Tirhut, Wikipedia

This noble intention encountered serious difficulties in India. Not only when traveling through a geographical area where tongues continually melted into each other through a series of dialects, but even in one place. Beside a number of more minor languages, Mumbai was characterized by a Marathi-Hindi-English trio. Upon hearing this the businessmen from Karnataka who picked up our hitchhikers just shrugged. “In our area seven languages are spoken”, they said. The travelers’ first host1 spoke four languages very fluently and naturally. A later, South Indian host also spoke four, and could understand two more. Neither one of them perfected any of these at school. This state of affairs used to be more common in our parts, Sindbad mused. The mixed population of Austria-Hungary or Imperial Turkey could usually speak the languages of their neighbors, thereby gaining a more wide world view.

One of the most amazing thing of knowing other languages, the seafarer thought, is the immediate usability of the most minimal knowledge. Numbers in North Indian tongues are very similar to those in Persian. Knowing Persian numbers, together with the two words announced in English is enough to understand which platform your train will arrive.

You’re probably thinking that knowing Persian numbers is an exotic skill, Sindbad said. Actually, some Hungarian words for numbers come from Iranian and are easily recognizable. (Iranian roots of European culture we discussed here) Some numbers are also quite similar to English because of common Indo-European ancestry. And there’s geography: Punjab, India’s bread basket province is punj-ab, ‘five-waters’. Or you might have come across the name of the Panj river forming the border between Afganistan and Tajikistan, also meaning five.

It is said, Sindbad ruminated, that in the river big fish eat the small fish. In biology this is part of a constant balance; big fish just control the population of the small fish. Were the big ones exterminating the small ones, they themselves would die out soon after. In business the metaphor is used falsely, as big companies swallow up small ones for good.

A similar thing is happening with languages. A never-before-seen linguistic concentration is happening right before our eyes, or rather, ears, the traveler said with a sigh. This is quite observable in the Babylon of India. Smaller languages are gobbled up by larger ones. Konkani, with its six million speakers, in spite of being the official language of Goa state, is being eaten by Matathi. Marathi, with nearly a hundred million speakers is being preyed upon by Hindi. Most high schools in Mumbay nowadays teach in Hindi, or even English. Because even Hindi, this gigantic language is being chewed up by English. And Hindi is the third most spoken tongue on the planet, surpassing Spanish.

On another plane the same thing is happening with writing, Sindbad continued. Dozens of kinds of writing are used on the subcontinent — at least now. Marathi switched from traditional alphabets to devanagari, the writing used for Sanskrit and Hindi, among others. And youmg Indians tend to simply punch Latin letters in their phones, in spite of it being thoroughly inadequate for the sounds of their languages.

But this is normal, people shrug. Small peoples have always been assimilated into more populous ones, just look at the Roman Empire. At least less language classes will be needed. Pueyo2, the Catalan with a computer brain even advocates everyone speaking English as this would reduce translation costs.

Sindbad, who disliked the soulless monocultures of oil palms, prefering the wild growth of the jungle, disagreed. He remembered well the kindergarten plasticine in which all colors merged into a disgusting uniform brown. True, mixing languages gave an opportunity for jokes and mental leaps. To be able to do that, you need to preserve the original colors, he thought.

Every tongue is so interesting, he went on. Every one has amazing associations. They all approach phenomena from a unique angle. And through these thought forms you can enter an even more exciting realm, the lush jungle of emotions.

Thanks to bus conductors in Kerala state one language did finally get into focus. The burlesque rolling of Malayalam, this member of the south Indian Dravida language family absolutely fascinated the traveler. Curving your tongue to your palate, letting words form in the back part of your mouth opened new dimensions of fast speech. I must try this, the traveler said to himself with satisfaction. All you need to get close to their heart is a few phrases, he winked at the Reader.

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The Emirates occupies a special place among the fiefdoms of our human cultivation planet. Its population, less than a hundred thousand in 1963, is over eleven million today. An increase of 1100% in a good half a century. The traveler scratched his head. An influx of people into a desert where temperatures reach 50 C and there’s nothing except sand and oil. Oh, and the sand is too coarse, what you find on the beach is imported from Australia. What will happen when the food shipments stop, the desalination plants and air conditioning cease working? And the question is certainly not if but when.

The other Gulf states, although each has unique features, will soon be in a similar position. Their ruling families, masters of life and death, consider their countries, mineral wealth and accumulated funds to be their personal property. Actually, something like that also happens to much poorer countries closer to home, Sindbad remembered.

As for Gulf states, the part of the original population that’s willing to bend a knee is basically kept in a golden cage. And riches open up possibilities.

Huts of the local poor. Wealthier citizens lead their miserable lives in desert haciendas.

Their passports surpass European ones, Sindbad continued. And it’s well known that oligarchs of certain countries sell citizenship.

Why am I always talking about home? — he wondered. Well, here’s a home example of the fleeting value of money. There was a time between the two world wars when my grandfather’s family was fairly well off. They succeeded in saving up for a car. Those puffing beasts at that time were rare. In a village children ran to the streets whenever one appeared. The family fled from the approaching Soviet army during the war. When returning to Hungary in 1945, the price of the car bought exactly one bunch of grapes. My aunt, a small girl at the time, had a real craving for it. So they bought it, as by the evening that money might not have been worth anything.

Coming back to the country of virtual skyscrapers, one has to admit that they provide shelter to inhabitants of many places devastated by colonialism. As far as I understand, emigrants come in three main categories, Sindbad said. Slaves, Professionals and Soldiers of Fortune.

The hub of the last group is mostly Dubai. We haven’t encountered them in the smaller, calmer capital, said the traveler with a sigh. (He liked adventure stories.) The slaves, on the other hand, are everywhere. They are the food delivery people, the janitors, the gardeners who water the plants trimmed to rectangular shapes. They are the ones without whose work luxury life would grind to a halt in five minutes. The ones who fall from great heights because they faint from the heat when constructing air-conditioned skyscrapers.

The travelers’ most remarkable encounter with slaves took place in the money change office. There was a long line in front of the entrance on the street, made up of simple Indians and Bangladeshians. Are you here to change? — the travelers inquired. Salary, salary, they replied in lead-accented English, gesturing with a smile: go ahead.

The change procedure took long, giving ample time for our heroes to observe events at the other till. The first worker received 800 dirhams, about 200 dollars. A simple mid-month weekend, they must be getting paid weekly, our heroes concluded with satisfaction. The next worker pocketed 1100 dirhams, about 300 dollars. At least they get a relatively reasonable sum, the travelers thought. Who knows how many people depend on that monthly amount wired home.

Upon hearing this story, the travelers local friend (a Professional) shook his head. That was a whole month’s salary! And the Emirates in this sense is at least fair: they can quit and go home any time. In some other Gulf states, once you sign a contract, your passport is taken away and you’re at the whim of your patron.

Once your state of horror wears off, Sindbad thought, it might be worth considering if all of us could be in a similar situation. At least those who became soldiers of some multinational enterprise or the throng of companies serving them. The specific amount received doesn’t actually matter that much. For the few thousand zillionaires who control the world it makes no difference whether they pay a pawn two hundred bucks a month or six thousand. In exchange for their youth, intellect, muscle power — for the most part of their lives.

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When you’re in the unwanted state—the traveler continued—you’re generally in a fierce fight to cross over into the opposing circle: health, happiness and so on. You will either succeed or not, but it takes a lot of effort in any case.

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Another possibility is to relax, allow yourself to go inside and sink back into the vertical part of the Y. One of the ways it could happen is in meditation. Or while traveling. When you pull up your anchor and are floating between sky and water, getting back to your center, your roots becomes easier. At these timesyou’re more fluid to feel the Being that is not good or bad, not nice or ugly, not lucky or unlucky but simply IS.

That state of being without qualities is a bit like arriving home, he tried to describe the situation. Relaxed, pleasant without desires. In a way similar to a stem cell that can evolve in any type of cell. Able to turn into any kind of specific life form. You can become a ball of anger or full of mirth and satisfaction, ill or naturally healthy. All you need is to very softly follow a kind of proto-feeling and you will find yourself in its manifested form.

In order to become a deva or a flying human, you’d need to withdraw very deep into the root of the Y, he phantasized. Deeper than a human stem cell. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians or Indians were capable of such a deed. In any case, happiness, wholeness is available to all of us and it takes no more energy than any other state you might be in right now.

Our task today, he mused, might be bringing the common consciousness, or at least the attention of humanity to that depth. Obviously, while also working on redirecting specific manifestations to normalcy. How could we remind people to reach back to their god-selves? To again experience the simple joy of being?

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As individuals, fortunately we can all experiece this quiet exhileration, he noted. Maybe even in small groups that can then connect in different ways, he gestured with wide open arms in the mangrove where he just came out of a short meditation.

In the case of bacteria, we have already realized how wrong we were when declaring them evil. After Semmelweis discovered that certain diseases were caused by tiny creatures invisible to the naked eye, all their kin was placed in the box of harmful spirits. Unfortunately, this idea still persists in public consciousness. Even today, broad-spectrum antibiotics are prescribed like there’s no tomorrow. In America surfaces are disinfected with religious fervor, and they even sell socks pre-impregnated with antibiotics.

Source: Natalie Kinnear, Unsplash

Meanwhile, we have been learning that we couldn’t live without these tiny creatures. There are more beneficial microorganisms in our bodies than cells of our own; despite their small size, they weigh about two kilograms in every person. They do us small favors, such as digesting our food. Soil microorganisms live in a similar symbiosis with plants, while within plant cells, chloroplasts derived from blue-green algae produce sugar and oxygen. Free-living blue-green algae do the same in plankton. The world of bacteria can be thought of as the basis of all life on Earth; without them, nothing would exist. We ourselves are just strange skyscrapers of protoplasm that evolved from bacteria, and looking from a distance it wasn’t even that long ago: in the first two or three billion years of life, only tiny creatures existed.

So even if we don’t fully appreciate the significance of bacteria in our everyday lives, in a sense they’ve been rehabilitated. On another level, the same thing has been happening with animals. A hundred years ago, animals were regarded as mechanical automatons, with cats and other mammals being dissected alive in university anatomy classes. This was probably not science’s last horrifying mistake.

Source: Sarah Kilian, Unsplash

The next conceptual breakthrough will probably come in the recognition of the plant kingdom. That is, in modern society, as many cultures have always known that plants are not just objects in the landscape. Plants are feeling creatures. (Vegetarians must be scratching their heads.) For many people, this is already a big pill to swallow, let alone the idea that tiny bubbles only visible under a microscope can feel. Yet if one observes the behavior of single-celled organisms it seems quite obvious that they possess the foundations of our emotions: fear, curiosity, attraction. This can, of course, be called anthropomorphism, but that’s just that: name-calling. The currently prevalent view could just as well be called ‘materialization’, the objectification of living beings.

Living beings function very differently from objects, as anyone who has ever stepped on a large dog’s tail has experienced. But can viruses be considered living beings? Viewing paramecia as feeling creatures may pass but viruses really do seem like mechanical little rockets, cold as outer space. They are incapable of anything except blindly copying themselves over and over again, regardless of the destruction they cause. By human values, they are textbook examples of evil selfishness, and since they have no characteristics of living beings, we don’t really understand what they’re doing on the stage of life.

Source: Wikipedia

At the same time, one cannot say that nature is parsimonious in creating them. According to estimates, there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses in the sea, fifteen times more than all other living creatures combined, and their weight is equivalent to seventy-five million blue whales. (That is, if there were that many blue whales.) I wonder who counted them, but in any case, you can safely go swimming, as the vast majority of them feed on bacteria. Anyway, it’s too late now: there are plenty of viruses embedded in the human genome. This doesn’t sound very encouraging, but don’t worry: they don’t cause any trouble. But still, how did these little psychopaths get in and what are they doing there?

Source: Dr. Victor Padilla-Sanchez, Wikipedia

If we consider that most viruses are nothing more than pieces of DNA or RNA traveling in a protein shell, we may have already solved the mystery. Viruses are the messengers of nature. They carry genes, sometimes even between plants and animals, and it’s thanks to this phenomenon that we have eyes, among other things. It’s as if they were the threads that hold nature together.

Source: Petra, Pixabay

As puny little blobs as they may seem, viruses contain orders of magnitude more genes than all other living organisms combined. When new types of viruses are discovered, it usually turns out that their genetic material consists of genes completely different from those known to date. It seems that they are not only mailmen, but also storehouse keepers: they carry nature’s treasure trove of genetic material. In fact, they are even DIY-wizards: their enormous numbers, rapid reproduction, and ability to mutate result in ever new gene combinations. What’s more, not all of them are completely passive automatons. There exist colossal, bacteria-sized viruses. Some have such complex internal structures that other viruses can infect them. Yes, even viruses can get a taste of their own medicine.

Meanwhile, viruses also maintain the balance of nature. Bacteriophages, or bacteria-killing species, ensure that bacteria don’t gobble up the whole world. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how obvious it would be to use them against pathogens. It’s a bit like biological plant care, where ladybugs are used to destroy aphids instead of chemicals. And well, after we’ve pumped ourselves full of antibiotics, making them resistant, we may not have much choice. Before World War II, a French scientist named d’Hérelle was already treating patients with bacteriophages, but the antibiotic lobby swept him off the stage.

Source: ochimax studio, Unsplash

Could the time have come to sweep away our ideas about good and evil? Together with our mechanical understanding of the universe. Meanwhile we can strenghten our immune systems with the right mental gymnastics. But that’s a topic for another day.

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Source: Maria Hossmar, Unsplash

Sindbad watched the woman, whose nose was beginning to point to the sky, with some concern. He, in order to protect the stomachs of sea turtles, always carried his own reusable bags. It was also obviously unnecessary to wrap two pieces of hard Alexander pears in plastic, and anyway, it would have taken two seconds to tie a knot. However, he decided that any attempt of help could be dangerous and would only delay the solution. The woman’s convulsive movements and facial expression announced clearly that she had already decided she would feel bad about a torn bag and nothing could change her mind. She deserved a quality bag, and any other outcome was unacceptable.

Fortunately, the matter was resolved as the cashier nodded understandingly and quickly ran off to get another bag, into which the fruits (more precisely, the rock-hard pear-shaped objects) were successfully transferred. The customer thus may have escaped the incident without lasting trauma, although it was clear that the terrible injustice she had suffered had taken a heavy toll on her. Unfortunately, it was likely that she suffered such insults several times a day. The life of consumers is difficult.

Source: Henrikke Due, Unsplash

Why do we make such an effort to be discontented? — the traveler wondered. When, with the same amount of energy, we could be happy. It’s not that darn bag that makes the difference. He remembered what Bandler said in Using your Brain for a Change: disappointment requires detailed planning. You can only be disappointed if you have first determined what would make you satisfied and then something else happens.

Sindbad had realized long ago that happiness—except perhaps in the most extreme circumstances—is basically a matter of choice. The cases of suicidal superstars and radiant paupers illustrate this quite well: it’s not external events that determine how we feel in the world. Unfortunately, this realization didn’t mean that our hero constantly experienced that desired state in his life.

Source: Jeremy Perkins, Unsplash

The strangest thing, mused the traveler, is that we often act as if whining was a sign of sophistication. We demand our right to be offended, instead of creating inner joy and balance. There have probably never been so many princesses on peas1 on Earth as there are now.

We, Hungarians are quite prominent in this regard, he continued to ponder. Looking at actual events, it’s understandable that the Indians of Europe are not swimming in joy after the traumas of the past (and partly the present), but are we sure we want to stand out from other nations in our depression?

Source: Igor Omilaev, Unsplash

What if, he thought, I focused a bit more on this realization in the new year? What if, instead of my expectations of what should happen, I paid more attention to inner balance, contentment, and feeling good about myself no matter what happens?

Source: Christel SAGNIEZ, Pixabay

A thought flashed through his mind. It would be so much fun if others joined me... He glanced at the Reader out of the corner of his eye.

I know, cheerfulness doesn’t come with a wave of a magic wand, he hurried to reassure himself. After all, we’re constantly exposed to appalling atrocities, torn bags, splattering cars, rude cashiers an so on. Still, if you consistently return to your original intent, reminding yourself again and again that you can channel that energy that you’d have spent on grumping into creating joy, where might you be by this time next year?

Source: Bhanuka Gamage, Unsplash

One could even turn it into a sport, he thought. What if I decided to surprise myself and those around me, prepared myself in advance and remained cheerful even in situations that would normally be challenging? When I get on the train, I can anticipate the train company’s inane blabbering, people’s beeping phones, and still feel good! I know The Bureau will demand impossible documents, so I’ll laugh it off and stay cheerful! How much better it is to live life on this side of the counter!

It promises to be quite a pleasant game, he leaned back contentedly. If you want, you can join in too, he winked at the Reader. We’ll meet here again next year to discuss experiences.

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Source: Howard Walsh, Pixabay

As no one knew the birthday of the most influential person for this culture – perhaps not even himself – and he was identified with light, his birthday was placed on the day light began to grow. Which had also been the greatest holiday in many ancient cultures. In some languages, Christmas is simply called ‘birth’: Noël, Navidad, and the like. The Hungarian word for Christmas, Karácsony, is of Slavic origin (for a change) and means solstice.

The beginning of the new year, which would be more logical on the spring equinox (where it still is in the Persian calendar), was moved to or near the winter solstice for various reasons. And, of course, the calculation of time was not perfect either. So both major holidays shifted from the cosmic moment; there are now ten days between the 21st of December and the end of the year as set in the Western calendar. We thus have a whole period, a week and a half of transition, when one can turn inward, reflect on the world, life, the twists and turns of fate, the accomplishments of the past, and the changes being sent into the future.

Source: Pascal Debrunner, Unsplash

The whiteness, softness, and sparkle of snow add a touch of magic to the long winter nights. Nowadays, in Central Europe you only find snow on higher mountains, but perhaps the memory of white Christmas holidays and crisp, cold New Year’s Eve nights of the past can tempt you to make a pilgrimage to the Tatra or the Hargita mountains.

Yes, we really did make a lot of snowballs when we were kids, but we also didn’t have pomegranate trees growing in the gardens. So much is changing these days...

Talking about celestial phenomena, the brightest star, Sirius, also known as Canus Major, the Great Dog Star, is calling with sparkling white rays. It’s in line with Orion’s belt, directly opposite Aldebaran.

Source: Holger Isenberg, Wikipedia.

Let us now borrow the slogan of its humble, two-tailed earthly companion1:

In the new year... in the new light... in your life... in our lives...

May everything be better!

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Source: Vidar Nordli-Mathisen, Unsplash

How is it possible, Sindbad wondered, that Radeg, whom I’ve met perhaps three times in my life, the last time being ten years ago, after popping up in a conversation yesterday, should appear in person today? He recalled a recurring experience from before the era of cell phones: After meeting someone at a house party or some other social event and talking at length, they would bump into each other on the street within a few days. In a city of 1.5 million people2. And then never again. He looked at the reader. Has anything like that ever happened to you? How do these energies work?

He had just settled in on the shoulder when a taxi stopped. Without even picking up his knapsack, he walked over. “Thank you,” he said to the Rumanian, “I don’t have any money, I’m hitchhiking.” “No problem, I’ll take you to Medgyes (Mediaş),” said the man. Sindbad shrugged, went to get his rucksack, and got in. “Do you ever travel by train?”, the driver asked reproachfully. “Don’t you pay there?” The traveler knew this logic and didn’t feel like arguing with one-dimensional people. “This is how I travel”, he said. “Very few places charge money for hitchhiking, and it’s even gone out of fashion in Rumania.” They soon parted by mutual agreement. The place was completely unsuitable for hitchhiking, with fast cars on a narrow road. “Maybe an hour to the next village”, he thought, setting off briskly into the pleasant, mild winter landscape. At the sound of the occasional car he turned and stuck out his hand. Less than three minutes passed when someone pulled over.

The new ride lived in Segesvár (Sighişoara), one of the many migrants from Wallachia, and was on his way home to visit relatives in Râmnicu Vâlcea. Sindbad always got on well with the loquacious, adaptive southern Rumanians, more so than with the rigid Transylvanians. He thought the latter had managed to combine the less favorable characteristics of the two cultures. He fit easily into the relaxed, familiar style of the southerners. The athletic pensioner, who didn’t look a day over fifty, was very talkative. He described the beauty of the road through the Fogaras Mountains, showed his wildlife camera footage of bears, and complained about loneliness. Why don’t you travel? Alone? Host couchsurfers. Go to meetups. I don’t speak English, the other admitted. People have got it backwards, Sindbad said. They think you first have to learn the language so that you can speak it later. All the polyglots I know use precisely these opportunities to hop over the language gap.

Source: madsmith33, Pixabay

The sparse traffic on the ramp of the Szeben (Sibiu) highway did not bode well. A few minutes later, however, the driver of a black Mercedes from Arad County called out. “Where are you going?” “Towards Arad”, Sindbad replied quickly. Again, there were already three people in the car. The young driver was snacking, talking with his friend, and typing away on his phone at 160 km/h The big machine was bouncing in the inside lane, sometimes just centimeters from the guardrail. The seat belt in the back seat didn’t work. “Why don’t you use a ride share app?” the driver asked. “Well, you can get to the top of the mountain by cable car, but it’s not the same as hiking up”, the traveler responded. The young man was getting more and more into the spirit, passing a police car at 180 km/h. In the end, he must have gotten bored of driving as he was cruising with 200. Lots of hard braking for slower cars suddenly pulling into the inside lane.

As the beautiful valley of the Maros river was covered by fog, the traveler had time to ponder. What could be the explanation? he wondered. You’re standing in the best place in the world, lots of traffic, cars coming slowly, room to pull over. Yet they look right through you. Three hours pass, you feel the energy getting stuck, you start walking into an impossible future, even onto the limited access highway, and five minutes later someone stops. This happened to me over and over. It’s a general experience of hitchikers. When the energy gets stuck, you have to move, we say, but what does it mean for the energy to get stuck, and what ‘energy’ is it anyways?

Source: Federico Beccari, Unsplash

He got out at the last gas station before Arad, visited the restroom. As he exited the large building, a small truck with an Asia Minor licence plate was just pulling away. He waved frantically, and it stopped. “Where are you going?”, the traveler asked. “Where are you going?” “To Budapest.” “There’s no room, said the guy, pointing to the luggage that completely filled the leg space of the front seat. “I’ll manage”, said Sindbad, placing his backpack on the seat, taking off his boots in polite Turkish fashion, somehow squeezing them in upside down, then curling up on the seat. “I was hoping there’d be a Turk here I could travel with”, he sighed with satisfaction. “I miss Turkey so much. The niceness of people reminds me of my country when I was a child.”

Rapport with the smiley young driver was immediate. “How did you learn Turkish?” “On the road. From people like you.” After a long while, the conversation turned to music. Put on something you like, said the traveler. Let me discover something new. He expected music in the style of Ibrahim Tatlıses or Ahmet Kaya, Kurdish musicians singing in Turkish. They were very popular among drivers. Instead, Merdo by Aşık Mahzunı Şerif came on. The eyes of the young man widened when Sindbad joined in. They sang together. The driver beamed with happiness.

How is it possible, wondered Sindbad, that I’ve just finished writing a post that mentioned singing in a Turkish truck, an event that happened years ago, and boom, here it is again? How is it possible that out of the millions of songs played by a thousand Turkish folk musicians, he puts on one of the extremely few I know by heart? Could it be that the world works differently than we think? We all feel that there’s something out there, we’re affected by it, yet we act as if the world would consist of ones and zeros.

It wasn’t even two o’clock when they arrived to the M zero highway around Budapest. Nearly seven hundred kilometers in just under seven hours, a new record from Székely Country, he muttered. And they say hitchhiking doesn’t work anymore. Sure, it’s a shame they’re building these desolate highways instead of high-speed rail. But one can at least make use of their excess capacity.

He remembered a previous trip where everything revolved around spirituality. Everyone, without exception, who picked him up, talked about a higher connection. A cool cult member, a spiritually minded truck driver, normal citizens intent on improving the world, a mix of Hungarians and Rumanians. Today’s trip centered on languages and energy. I don’t know how to grasp the latter, the traveler pondered. However, it really is time to model this Radeg guy. Learning new things always gives you a bit of energy.

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