{"id":915,"date":"2025-06-01T06:15:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T13:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/?p=915"},"modified":"2026-06-13T08:24:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:24:54","slug":"one-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/one-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Service of The Lord of Lords"},"content":{"rendered":"

Navya, Bala, Divya<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s life before coming to the US and life after; life before our daughter was born and after; and life before joining the Chinmaya Haridwar community \u2014 and after. In our life before Chinmaya, we had volunteered steadily as students and working professionals. But during Navya\u2019s elementary school, particularly around the Covid years, every trace of volunteering faded from our lives. So, when we found this community, seeing seva as central to Gurudev’s teachings resonated deeply with our family values. We are offered many avenues to practice it together \u2014 both within and beyond our community. Volunteering, like so much in life, works best when it aligns with one’s true nature. This year, as a family, we took up service activities that amplified what we were already doing \u2014 helping others in the Chinmaya community while also stretching ourselves with new intentions.<\/p>\n

Journey to a Zero-Waste Household:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks to the PrthviSeva group’s effort in bringing Ridwell to our center, our family has been actively participating \u2014 and helping engage other families and young children to join in. Through this service, our household is now almost entirely zero-waste.<\/p>\n

The most effective way to reduce waste is to sort it at the source. For years, we had composted kitchen and garden waste and recycled paper, metals, and cardboard. But plastics \u2014 present in every corner of daily life \u2014 remained a stubborn gap, leaving our household with a small but non-trivial landfill footprint. This is where Ridwell comes in. It collects hard-to-recycle household items to keep them out of landfills. Our Sunday mornings to Haridwar now begin with unloading weekly bags of plastic waste, which we sort into categories: multi-layer plastic, plastic film, clamshells, lids, and more. Ridwell then partners with domestic companies to process these into new products \u2014 reducing the demand for virgin plastic and shrinking the environmental cost of production.<\/p>\n

Our pre-teen Navya and her father Bala have been helping lead younger Balavihar children through the sorting process. Even so, Navya is the first to admit that changing long-held habits is hard. When “throw it in the trash” is so deeply ingrained, sorting can feel like a chore. But Ridwell is a wonderful reminder that Prthvi Seva can be as simple as child’s play, and that small actions, done with care and done together, truly add up. We hope more families will join us in this endeavor.<\/p>\n

75th Anniversary: Rooting the Mission in the Earth with PrthviSeva<\/strong><\/p>\n

This year I had the privilege of working with the PrthviSeva group on a planting project for Chinmaya Mission’s 75th anniversary. With Bharadwaj(Ravi) Ananthan\u2019s able leadership, the board approved our plan and a small budget. The vision: add one plant for each year of the Mission’s work growing spiritual communities around the world. We developed a thoughtful plant list and planting plan to supplement the existing landscaping at Haridwar, drawing on the plant, tools, and gardening knowledge of Meghana Mude, Aparna Easwar, Divya Appanna, and Meera Krishnan to meet our goals within budget. But it was the turnout of grandparents, adults, and children \u2014 wrapping up the work in one weekend instead of two \u2014 that made this project truly special.<\/p>\n

In all, we planted across five areas:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pollinator patch<\/strong>: Native flowering shrubs Oregon grape, rhododendron, echinacea, salvia.
\nFruit patch<\/strong>: Apple trees on two sides of the building and a blueberry patch.
\nFlower patch<\/strong>: Marigolds, salvias, sedums, dahlias, kniphofia\u2019s, and echinacea\u2019s at the entrance.
\nPrivacy scree<\/strong>n: Laurel trees along the highway edge of the property.
\nHerb & berry patch<\/strong>: Planted by the kitchen back door \u2014 coriander, basil, parsley, oregano, walking onions, raspberries, and strawberries.<\/p>\n

Planting is only the first step of gardening. The hard work of taking care of young plants, weed removal, watering, making sure plants are growing, and surviving the summer heat is ahead of us. Thanks to the many families that have helped hand water the plants and create signs, a month since we planted, majority of the plants have survived.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Swami Ishwaranandji blessed our plants during his recent trip to Haridwar. With Gurudev’s blessings, we look forward to watching these plants grow in the years ahead. We look forward to engaging more families with young children in future planting, cleaning-up, and overall having fun with the process while enjoying the harvest!<\/p>\n

Balavihar: Planting Seeds in Young Minds<\/strong><\/p>\n

This year, Bala \u2014 an academic by profession \u2014 joined Balavihar as a backup teacher. Alongside lead teacher Ravi, he worked with curious and creative 7th graders on P.O. Box: Mr. God and Keys to Success, both drawn from Valmiki’s Ram Charit Manas. Beyond exploring the gems of the Ramayana and learning bhajans, Bala made sure each class began with movement. And what better choice than yoga, specifically Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar). A sequence of 12 asanas engaging multiple muscle groups brought both energy and intention to the start of every session with these highly active kids.<\/p>\n

What a Year of Family Seva Teaches<\/strong><\/p>\n

After years of struggling to volunteer meaningfully as a family, we are grateful for a community that offers so many opportunities for service \u2014 especially those that align naturally with who we are, while helping amplify the broader work of PrthviSeva.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Navya, Bala, Divya There’s life before coming to the US and life after; life before our daughter was born and after; and life before joining the Chinmaya Haridwar community \u2014 and after. In our life before Chinmaya, we had volunteered steadily as students and working professionals. But during Navya\u2019s elementary school, particularly around the Covid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1520,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/1520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmportland.org\/HariPatrika2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}