Garden of Peace: Wisdom Tree of Traditional Indian Knowledge

Every week at the Garden of Peace in Kanyambadi, Tamil Nadu, south India, we had different local wise people visit to give talks. This was called the "Wisdom Tree" series of speakers. The first speaker was a retired navy sailor who spoke about the spirit of the sea. The second week, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Madras who spoke mainly about Indian indigenous knowledge, skills, wisdom and how these things were insufficiently compatible with the conventional education system. Next we had a woman working with young women in regards to sex education, puberty, pregnancy, STDs, health & hygene, etc. On the same day, we were given a talk by a group of local indigenous herbal healers, who showed us some uses of local plants and gave us each an ayurvedic pulse diagnosis. On the final night, we had two young people from Japan who were touring the world's peace museums and are hoping to create one that doesn't have weapons and terrible war images, as all of them currently have. The last speaker was a leader of an organization converting Indian farmers in Tamil Nadu back to organic agriculture. He and his organization have effectively helped transition around 5000 farmers in the state of Tamil Nadu back to organic. I had a tear in my eye when I shook his hand out of appreciation for what he has done for this planet.