The Heart-Centered Way of Symbiotic Culture, Chapter 12, Part 4
From Siloed Systems to Sacred Networks
Welcome to the Birthing the Symbiotic Age Book!
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You are in Chapter 12, Part 4, The Heart-Centered Path to Symbiotic Culture: from siloed systems to sacred networks — How a Parallel Society Strategy Addresses Crisis
Chapter 12 posts:
Living in Truth: Building a Parallel Polis Within a Spiritually Hostile Regime
The Ancient Blueprint – A Missing Piece Hiding in Plain Sight
I Write the Book, the Book Writes Me
Are you trying to figure out where this is All Going? Read Building Bridges to a New World — embodying the Transcendent through the nodes of intersection within local, grassroots-empowered community networks.
Voice-overs are now at the top of my posts for anyone who doesn’t have time to sit and read! You can also find this chapter post and all previous posts as podcast episodes on Spotify and Apple!
Previously from Chapter 12, Part 3
You will recall the anecdote from Chapter 11 when 14-year-old Ari created a coconut husk co-op to streamline the supply chain, eliminate extractive middlemen, and flatten the economic hierarchy. Instinctively, he saw a perennial problem in any financial system that became top-heavy and corrupt. Some seventy-five years later, talking with Vinya about the same middleman problem — heavy supply chains that create huge price asymmetry between the bottom and the top—was exciting.
At a time when so much high-tech data tracking is top-down and secret, this business network would be an open-source, transparent database that would enable grassroots connectivity and greater business-to-business business. It would also allow “pricing visibility,” which means recognizing which costs are necessary and which aren’t—particularly identifying unnecessary middlemen.
This bottom-up symbiotic network would accelerate fruitful connections inside all these communities, disintermediate middlemen, and grow genuine prosperity. It would put Sarvodaya—and its virtues—at the forefront of Sri Lanka’s economic development.
Through this network, Sarvodaya would continue to grow as a unique, spiritually based, regenerative economy network.
We planned to begin with a model Symbiotic Network of independently owned businesses in one region and then scale to other regions. We were gaining momentum when the food crisis hit, and we shifted our priorities to helping Sarvodaya develop a national food banking system, part of a larger food security initiative.
How a Parallel Society Strategy Addresses Crisis
As you may remember, Sri Lanka made headlines in 2022. You have likely read accounts or seen videos of a civil society revolution sparked by government corruption and food and fuel shortages. This uprising—involving all religions, ethnicities, and classes of the population and calling for whole-system change—involved thousands of protestors who stormed and occupied the presidential palace, forcing the president to flee in July 2022.
In a world beset by supply chain issues exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, the world’s food supply was already compromised. I experienced Sri Lanka as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” — the first domino to fall, as a worldwide globalized economy based on large-scale, corporate monoculture and shipping food halfway across the planet wobbles toward collapse.
Suddenly, the issue of re-localization and food self-sufficiency became all too real. Fortunately, Sarvodaya had already built a nationwide, grassroots infrastructure, their parallel society movement, which was prepared when the other institutions in Sri Lankan society were not. They immediately launched a food access initiative called the We Are One campaign.
One inspiration for the effort was “the matchbox” campaign Dr. Ari had initiated many decades earlier. Each family, even the poorest, would fill a little matchbox with whatever rice and dal they had and bring it to a preschool where food would be prepared and shared with all. With such radical collaboration, even the poorest were able to contribute and have agency and saw for themselves how sharing food could provide enough for everyone. The We Are One campaign also increased motivation to attend school, where the children would ultimately have a more consistent food supply.
The campaign involved three “pillars of food security.” The first pillar was increasing the number of people growing food, like the backyard victory gardens in America during World War II. This included community gardens, where groups of families grow food and harvest together.
The second pillar was the “community kitchen” in thousands of villages' preschools. Just as America’s school lunch program is designed to feed children who may not get proper nourishment at home, this Sri Lankan program ensures no child under five goes hungry or misses a meal. The idea was to recreate the “matchbox campaign,” again with the townspeople bringing whatever food they could afford to contribute — homegrown or store-bought — to the local preschool, where the food was then prepared and served. I couldn’t imagine a more grassroots approach to feeding the population, especially the most vulnerable.
The third pillar is the food banking system mentioned earlier. As you may remember from section I, I have experience in that area, having worked as the executive director of the San Diego Food Bank in the late 1990s. Because of this, Vinya asked me to help train Sarvodaya’s management staff. I could share the food banking model we used in San Diego and the United States, in a country that had no food banking system at the time.
Having had my own “open heart” experience and not fully realizing what it meant to “open your heart to the world,” little did I know at the time that I would be helping Sri Lanka establish a national food banking network and reinvigorate a new economy initiative with the 5,000 village economies.
During a crisis in which the official institutions did little, the We Are One campaign responded by creating nearly 150 community kitchens and 600 home gardens. It also launched a national food banking system and established some 25 food banks in just five months.
This initiative reached 300,000 families (1.5 million people), with a plan to almost double their impact by the end of the year. There’s no telling how much more privation and suffering there would have been, had Dr. Ari and Sarvodaya, not launched and sustained their “parallel society.”
Although I never considered Dr. Ari my “guru,” he was a spiritual friend, mentor, and colleague. His unique spiritual qualities allowed Sarvodaya to thrive and grow over sixty years. When Dr. Ari visited those poor villages, he inspired and activated these “throw-away” people by treating everyone as equals, as human beings. Dr. Ari exemplifies what I’ve called “spaciousness” — a pure heart, an empty vessel for Divine Love that has allowed him to be of service, holding a sacred space within the community without any agenda other than his and the community’s mutual awakening.
People could sense that he desired no fame, fortune, power over them, or even recognition— his only desire was to help and serve. Unlike many other pioneers and spiritual leaders, he never stepped into the limelight to become a visible thought leader or luminary.
Journalists have characterized him as Sri Lanka’s “Little Gandhi. " A recipient of many honors, peace prizes, and international awards, he has shunned glory and celebrity to rally ordinary citizens to look beyond their short-term agendas and focus on serving the larger community.
Instead of allowing himself to be put on a pedestal, he has kept his eye on the prize—the development of the community from the bottom up. As one of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated citizens, he was once asked by the country’s President to become Prime Minister.
He declined, characteristically. The President mistakenly concluded that Dr. Ari declined because the offer wasn’t big enough and that Ari wanted to be president himself! That kind of misunderstanding only accentuates how unique Dr. Ari is in the world.
So, why is this important?
His success in launching and sustaining Sarvodaya is indicative of the spiritual maturity required to hold the space for others to look past their egoic impulses so that Symbiotic Culture can take hold and thrive. As someone seeking to reconcile and weave personal awareness and global transformation, I have found Sarvodaya to be the perfect living laboratory. And instead of holding Dr. Ari up as a larger-than-life icon, I see him as a role model any of us can learn to emulate.
My six-month visit reinforced my perception since I first read the article on Sarvodaya in the 1990s. Sarvodaya’s “secret sauce” is twofold: 1) Forming networks of local organizations that are based on the spiritual awakening of participants, and 2) using that as the foundation for building bioregional ecosystems.
It’s not just about teaching people to fish; it’s about training teachers to teach fishing, which creates agency, nexus agency, and self-sufficiency.
Sarvodaya remains unique worldwide. First and foremost, its community and economic efforts are based on universal principles and Virtues, not as a side note but as a foundation. Second, it is the world’s only example of a Commonwealth of Bioregional Ecosystems. It truly is a network from which anyone can launch an initiative nationally and eventually globally.
What I dreamed of scaling beyond Reno could now become a reality—provided it emulates Sarvodaya, works with people where they are, and expands through Symbiotic Kinship.
While reaching out to potential allies worldwide, I came across some brilliant theoretical and exciting practical work related to bioregionalism, regenerative agriculture, and community. These ideas were hugely inspiring, yet they involved only a narrow, predefined group of regenerative organizations.
Conversely, Sarvodaya is a working example of thriving, self-reliant bioregional ecosystems and a parallel society and economy --- by mobilizing all the people, organizations, and businesses from conventional to “regenerative.”
This expansive approach to bringing together all conventional organizations and businesses was the basis of my work building Symbiotic Networks.
It is clear that Sarvodaya, a Buddhist-based movement, is part of a lineage of the “Ancient Blueprint,” which I have followed from Jesus to Gandhi and Dr. Ari.
That lineage is “unbrandable” and universally available to all of us today!
Stay tuned for Chapter 12, Post 5 … Living the Truth: Building a Parallel Polis Within a Spiritually Hostile Regime
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" a little matchbox" - how big are we talking - as a little match box to me is about 2cm X 3cm X 1cm - it won't hold much food. It also sounds like the feeding of the 5 000!
Richard, you are an inspiration for a new world. Keep shining.