Anand Krishna established schools and communities where people connect a healthy lifestyle to a healthy Earth.
Anand Krishna. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
On 1 September ashrams throughout Indonesia will celebrate “Hari Bhakti Bagimu Ibu Pertiwi” or “Service to Mother Earth Day.”
It is emblematic of the mission of Anand Krishna, an Indonesian spiritual humanist and founder of Anand Ashrams, a network of communities throughout the nation founded on the idea of healthy lifestyles and protecting the Earth.
In 1991, Krishna founded the Anand Ashram Foundation (affiliated with the United Nations since 2006), an organization that built centres of well-being and self-empowerment in Indonesian cities such as Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Bogor and Denpasar. These centres are called “Anand Ashram,” meaning “Communities of Bliss” which are open to everyone regardless of nationality, ethnicity, age, gender or religion and beliefs.
Ni Made Utami Dwipayanti is a lecturer on environmental health at the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Udayana University in Bali, Indonesia.
“Climate change is actually the results of human activities and how humans treat the earth,” Utami Dwipayanti said. “And what Mr. Krishna actually does is try to encourage more people to see how we treat our Mother Earth.”
Krishna was invited as a speaker in the international conference Earth Dialogues on Water Planet which took place from 26–28 November 2008 in Brazil. He presented his study titled “Water of Life, Wisdom of the Ancients — In Pursuit of the Indigenous Wisdom of Sundaland and South America to Save Our Planet,” a spiritual study of the importance of water for human life on planet Earth based on local cultural wisdom.
Krishna promotes a plant-based diet to his following of thousands in numerous communities all over Indonesia.
One of these communities is One Earth Yoga & Meditation Retreat Centre in Ciawi, Bogor, West Java, a housing complex where hundreds of people live sustainably with foods produced from hydroponics systems, gardens, plants and trees.
Respecting the Earth: An interview with Anand Krishna
How we can save Mother Earth
The connection between climate change and what we eat
Three questions to consider:
- How can living a healthy lifestyle help the Earth?
- What arguments do the authors make for identifying Anand Krishna as a climate champion?
- What changes to your current lifestyle might help prevent climate change?
Abhisheka Chandraka Tantra was born and raised in Bali, Indonesia. He has been a student at One Earth School since playgroup and now at 16, he is in his first year of high school. He is looking forward to pursuing higher education in architecture. Abhi, as he is called dearly by those around him, has been interested in video editing since he was in junior high school. Since then, he started to spend his free time learning video editing from YouTube tutorials. In the future, Abhi aspires to become an impactful person in society, by bringing change and offering solutions to people around him, and the world.
Awang Winnetou was born in Samarinda, located in the province of East Kalimantan, and grew up on three different islands throughout Indonesia. He is currently a 12th-grade student at One Earth School in Bali, and loves learning social science. Awang has a keen interest in literature and spends much of his free time reading the works of forgotten Indonesian authors. He also enjoys cinema and is curious about the field of philosophy. In the future, Awang hopes to contribute good things to the world by being a humane human and serving fellow living beings.
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