| The Philosophy of Ankida: By Dr.Geoffrey Miller |
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To me, health education regarding healthy lifestyle and preservation of a healthy natural environment are what I would wish Ankida to encourage and support.
By healthy lifestyle I mean one that leads to the health of the total environment. Health is wholeness, i.e. it is concerned with air, water, the soil the trees, plants and vegetation, animals and people, in fact the whole mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and possibly higher degrees of life in the total environment. So care of the planet's resources is of paramount importance. Everything is connected (or inter-related) and is therefore affected by everything else. Therefore everything is dependent on the whole being in harmony.
Hence vegetation and its preservation is necessary for the health of all, animals must be protected and nurtured, as must also air, water, the soil and human beings. Although most of us humans don't recognise it human health is also dependent on the health of the whole. We are related and connected to the whole environment, so humans need to study the environment in its total sense and the factors that lead to his own health. Only when humanity is healthy and with a healthy attitude to the whole can the whole be preserved and nurtured. Hence the need for wholistic education. Humans, being at the forefront of the pyramid of evolution, unfortunately have the ability to be the destroyers as well as the protectors/nurturers of the whole.
Therefore I would like to see Ankida concerned with the preservation of the total health of the environment, which includes this beautiful property of Ankida. Education about the health of the whole is a necessity for the welfare of this planet as a whole.
The Philosophy of Ankida:
By Shirley Miller
The Ankida property is an environment of natural beauty, peace and harmony, where people may come to experience the joy and refreshment of these qualities and to learn more about the forest and it's inhabitants. The place where everything in the environment is reverenced for itself -- where there is care and respect and a deep understanding of the need of all forms of life, human, animal, vegetable and mineral, to be nurtured and reverenced for the life within.
There needs to be a total involvement in everything we see -- communion, belonging -- not just verbally caught in a description of it but part of it, aware of the interrelatedness of all life -- the world of nature, the world of humanity. We are all inter-related, reliant on every other life form. Humanity needs to realize that if we destroy nature we destroy ourselves. To live in harmony with nature, with the world, naturally brings about a different world.
The need for more nature refuges, land protected forever, must be realized NOW and acted upon by all who care for the remaining remnants of this fragile, threatened heritage.