Construction was also almost certainly seasonal and done in the winter months. And, given that people back then were lucky to live beyond forty years, it is unlikely that anyone who participated in the start of the construction on any one of the bigger enclosures would have still been alive to witness its completion.

To produce food requires that you live at once in the past, present, and future. Almost every task on a farm is focused on achieving a future goal or managing a future risk based on past experience. A cultivator will clear land, prepare soils, plow, dig irrigation ditches, sow seeds, weed, prune, and nurture their crop so that, all being well, when the seasons change they will at the very least bring in a harvest adequate to support them through the next seasonal cycle, and provide sufficient seed stock for them to plant the following year.

The early Buddhists, evidently, were not meant to retire from the world - as suggested also by the Zen Buddhist aphorism, “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” Despite the ingrained class oppressions of the Hindu varna system, the Buddha was not dissuaded from ordering his monks to strive for the benefit of all people. Great compassion was impossible without its realisation through concrete practice: his teachings were as much about kind thoughts as they were about loving actions. As noted by religious historian Karen Armstrong, “Instead of simply eschewing violence, Buddhism demanded a positive campaign to assuage the suffering and increase the happiness of the whole world.

They thought that, if you made a lifelong commitment to self-improvement, you could transform spiritually into a sage. They likened cultivating your character to craftsmanship: cutting bone, carving a piece of horn, or polishing a piece of jade.

Interdependence and Decentralization: who we are and how we share

““When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, almost everything lost its footing. Houses were detached from their foundations, trees and shrubbery were uprooted, sign posts and vehicles floated down the rivers that became of the streets. But amidst the whipping winds and surging water, the oak tree held its ground. How? Instead of digging its roots deep and solitary into the earth, the oak tree grows its roots wide and interlocks with other oak trees in the surrounding area. And you can’t bring down a hundred oak trees bound beneath the soil! How do we survive the unnatural disasters of climate change, environmental injustice, over-policing, mass-imprisonment, militarization, economic inequality, corporate globalization, and displacement? We must connect in the underground, my people! In this way, we shall survive.”—Naima Penniman