Embodying Freedom & Peace
Dear friends & family, children & respected elders, teachers & mentors, our collaborators, supporters & well-wishers,
I write literally on the heels of Assam bidding farewell to its beloved Zubeen Garg that brought a people together in an extraordinary heartfelt mourning & memorializing — a people are experiencing a perfect void caused by the loss of an irreplaceable being who filled it so perfectly; whose incalculably rich music flowing like the life of Assam from the life of Assam, spanning its ancient rivers & mountains to an old culture & consciousness of a people interacting with modernity, manifested from, arguably, the highest unity at the collective realms of hearts of people embodying the timeless existential condition in the need to find relief from mundane to extraordinary burdens of life to open spaces for dreams & hopes, love & kindness, courage & truth, and such aesthetics & logic of freedom & peace.
As such, Zubeen transcended even himself, and where his shortcomings were as clear to see.
Now, as we are approaching, what appears to be a difficult to even complicated trial to uncover the truth behind his death, I pray, even as we are tested, we manifest from such togetherness as that is what Zubeen ultimately wanted and as which his wife, Garima, in no uncertain terms, spoke so directly & clearly to such an extraordinary gathering of people even as she was in acute grief.
May we so honour Zubeen and bring enduring peace to Garima, his family, and to the people & life of Assam.
As such, I offer our annual report & journal for 2024-25 with deep mindfulness & sadness for such an irreplaceable loss & void in the life of Assam, which the people were anything but ready for as Zubeen was just 52 years old and so deeply present in life here.
Reading this Report & Journal
From my perspective, this report & journal is but a reflection of our continual cultivation of our path & vision of freedom & peace, respectively, and its principles~insights that I have noted in my Foreword:
- Highlights (pages 1-12) is literally a consolidation of all our work this year as already deeply documented in our quarterly newsletters
- Spotlight on Sakuntala & Sunita’s Journey with Mushroom Farming (pages 23-24) is a heartfelt account of a journey of resilience of 2 women in the face of challenges from naive assistants to emerging as confident leaders of our model mushroom cultivation unit
- Spotlight on Deepening Compassion’s Role in Allowing the Freedom Flow of Education (pages 25) directly reveals such explorations & their emergent maturity as flowing from our mixed-bag of insights~principles on the path~pathlessness of freedom
- In-Depth essay Curiosity, Freedom, Love, and Education (pages 26-35) spans the poles of an effortless meditation to effortful psychoanalysis that I followed~used to recover from my subconsciousness such principles~insights as I have been referring to, along with practical examples
- Financial Summary & Audited Accounts (pages 36-44) are self-explanatory titles, but presented with mindfulness of a great doing~allowing of the emergence of modern-compliant systems of truth & accountability in the balance of us being a traditional~agrarian community
Last, but not in the least, in Grateful Acknowledgement (pages 45-46) we note with heartfelt gratitude every drop & stream of humanity spanning leaders, staff, partners and donors past & present, to advisory committee members that empower & allow such explorations of freedom & peace.
With my heartfelt gratitude,
Arjun
