Learning from Nature

"Nature is the greatest teacher," said my mother while we were walking from home to our farm.

"Greater than the Buddha," she continued, "for even he learned from nature. He became enlightened while sitting under a tree, contemplating on the compassionate, generous, ever-giving tree. While observing the banyan tree under which he was sitting, the Buddha realised that the fulfilment and self-realisation of the tree was in its being that which it is, never trying to be anything other than a tree. As tree it was always available to those who came to it: the birds could nest in it, the animals could rest under its cool shade, and everyone could benefit from its fruit."

I was only eight years old, listening to my mother, and yet this was something I could understand. She would talk to me in more or less the same way that she would talk to my older sisters and brothers. For her, I was not 'a child — an underdeveloped adult'. She always talked to me about matters of great substance.

Yet Mother was an illiterate woman: she could not read, nor write. She could not even sign her name, and on a document she would put her thumbprint. But she was both deeply religious and an intuitive philosopher.

My mother, whose name was Anchi Devi, was born in 1900, in the small town of Momasar in Rajasthan. Her parents were farmers, so she grew up on the land. Therefore, her religion, her spirituality, her philosophy and her way of life were part of her experiences, rather than a result of any formal education.

Mother was short and slim with bright eyes. The wrinkles on her kind and thoughtful face were clear evidence of an active and eventful life. She wore traditional clothes: an earth-coloured skirt with tie-dyed red circles on it, full and long, a black blouse and a dark brown cotton wrap which went over her shoulders and head, and veiled her forehead. All her clothes were woven, dyed and stitched locally in our town. She adhered to the Jain religion. Everything she did was underpinned by a religious view of life.

My father, Hiralal Sethia, was also Jain. His family lived fifteen miles away in another small town, Sri Dungargarh. His parents were mer