Greetings one and all who will take the time to read this
passage!
My name is Abhaya Mudra!
I am an extremely well travelled Asian elephant, however I was born in
Bhutan and lived there until I was teenager.
I am probably at the larger end of my lineage weighing in
at six tonnes and standing ten feet to the shoulder.
I find myself at this time charged with maintaining a
blog that is usually written by a bull I met for a short time last week.
Unfortunately, he has gone missing which has prompted a
large search by the local community.
I was employed by a charmingly eccentric gentleman called
Lord Augustus to use my expertise in teaching the bull to become more at one
with the world.
I was to be in charge of guiding him away form his
judgemental outlook and to ground him in the ways of accepting people’s
strengths and weakness.
In his absence I have been allowed to stay here on the
farm and I hope I can help out to the best of my abilities during these
delicate times in agriculture.
It is unfortunate that a fresh case of bovine TB has
surfaced in Dorset this week.
It seems that there are strong opinions and claims of
truthful evidence to both sides of the argument, which features badgers as the vessels
of contamination.
It is with much sadness that I have learnt that farmers
in this county are having to destroy their animals to halt the spread of this
tragic disease.
As his holiness the Dalai Lama is famed for saying "When we meet real
tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling
into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner
strength."
I am a Buddhist and in my tradition we are quite Iconic!
Let all of us that our on
the peripheries of this great industry have hope in the notion that government,
trade unions and farmers can work together to fight the issue and look for some
positive break through’s as well as some common ground .
However I personally do not
have hope in this farm’s trade union representative, Handsome James. He wears
too much light yellow, which in my culture, means he needs to take better care
of his kidneys.
I have learnt that the
farming community finds its strength in times of crisis. And believe me as a relative
new comer to this industry I feel as though it is in a truly global crisis. Not
just on a micro level in rural England, with the prevalent spread of disease
amongst the nations livestock, but on a global level too.
Our world has a growing
population and a rapid spread in desertification. Mouths need to be fed a
healthy mix of food types from an ever diminishing source of fertile land.
Some argue that a vegetarian
way of life is better off for the planet and that intensive meet production
methods cause more damage than good.
I am open-minded as people I
meet always talk best with full stomachs. Some of which would not have talked
at all had they not had the opportunity to chose their fuel.
Crisis brings creativity and
desperation can bring dedication.
We need to take stock of
what we are going to have in the future and work as a motivated team in order
to utilise it more effectively.
Easier said than done, but
the most basic advice is always the best advice.
For example, if you want to
loose weight, eat less and exercise more.
It is not complicated to
move forward in a manner that will give you good results. It’s just a state of
mind that holds us back.
I am relishing the prospect
of being a farm worker and helping in the global effort to feed people.
There is much learning to be
done but already I have volunteered my services to make plough after harvest.
Some local horses said that
they will teach me how. They believe that after a few days in the field I
should be at competition level. They seemed really motivated by the prospect
and talked at length about it.
I can’t help but think they
were somewhat tongue in cheek when discussing the logistics of this however and that they may be setting me
up to fail. A lesser elephant wouldn’t trust them but I will certainly give
them the benefit of the doubt, until I actually have a go! It’s a team event so
I will be using a human to guide me throughout the discipline.
I like humans, my old art
teacher was a human. He taught me to challenge my own conventions and paint in
styles that I felt unconfident in.
This taught me to follow new
lines of enquiry and I almost ended up becoming an architect. However three
months working on a building site soon put a dampener on those dreams.
Also – you have to use a
pencil quite a lot and I have an issue sharpening pencils.
I can use those sharpeners
with a handle as that’s sort of a one handed affair, but they are becoming
quite rare now and were getting all old school when I was dabbling with the
trade.
In conclusion I am looking
forward to my time on the farm. Agriculture is a hard industry to master but I
am relishing this challenge!
I’m creative, reflective,
contemplative, massive and above all positive!
I like the idea of working
for a human too! And I know what you are thinking – all those years of working
in the creative industries for gallery’s and in circuses must have involved
humans at the helm at some point?
Well no! Believe it or not
its actually the hippos that ruled the roost in the circus company I worked
for, with the clowns a close second in command. This is usually true of the
industry, as hippos some how manage to embrace all the facets of management in
the most balanced way.
See – you think it would be
the tigers, but they were always hungry.
The art gallery I worked for
India was curated by a cobra called Hindu Pete. Cobra’s are very lateral
thinkers. I think all snakes possess that quality.
In the bulls absence I am
going to try and keep the blog updated in his honour.
I am confident in his swift
return and have much respect for the work he has done.
I am looking forward to
getting my trunk dirty and getting well and truly stuck in on the farm both practically
and journalistically!
In the meantime, just like I’m
doing with this new venture, follow in the words of the Buddha:
“Do not dwell in the past,
do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment”.
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