Mindful Living article / Mindful Living-artikel

English: The journalist Alma Trischler has written an article about us for the webpage www.mindfulliving.se, if you want to take a look at it, click here. It's also translated to english in this very post.

Svenska: Jounalisten Alma Trischler har skrivit en artikel om oss för websidan www.mindfulliving.se, kolla in artikeln här: http://mindfulliving.se/2008/09/17/art-minfulspaning-4-2-nimai-skedens-tradgard-sep-08

English translation of the article:

Journey to the garden of the spoon

To spread vegetarianism with love, humor and the spoon as a symbol and tool as the goal of the spoonrevolution. Around the world people are working actively to spread "the message of the spoon". Four of them are doing most of their work in the organic farm - Imlitala.

Far out in the countryside in a place lined with red ripe apple trees and earthy roads. A place where the mild late summer breeze is filld with the sweet aromas of the fruits and flowers, there is Imlitala. It's the name of both an organic farm and a yoga monastery where four persons spend every sunday. This sunday I have gone there together with Shyamananda, also called Shyama, to take part in the work on the farm. Shyama and the three others who runs the farm are vaishnavas which means that they are followers of vaishnavism, the most common faith within hinduism. Through the organic farm they produce a lot of vegetables which later serves many of the activities they have in the name of the spoonrevolution in central Gothenburgm where they also run a shop and social meeting place, the Nimai house.

This Nimai house literally located next to the highways roaring traffic, and the life inside the high walls is a sharp contrast to the outside. Out at the farm though, the pressing reality of society is not present. The main road is so far away that the traffic does not reach our ears through the whispering winds in the trees and the humming insects. The place which is located in Fjärås, a hundred metres from the extensive ocean and a 15-minute-walk from a lake, gives an idyllic picture which moves the mind to Astrid Lindgren's stories. Maybe Bullerby, or the brother lionhearts' - Nangijala.

But to run an organic farm is not only peace and delight, it takes a whole lot of work. Today it's time to dig up the potatoes and get hay that will protect the plants during winter. Together with Garuda, I undertake the task to pick potatoes. Garuda is also a vaishnava, but on a temporary visit from Bulgaria to learn how to take care of an eco-farm, with the hope of being able to start one in his home country.

The time floats slowly as we dig and pick the potatoes, in two long rows they grow both yellow and read, many enormous, but here and there we find many which are not bigger than a cherry. Garuda digs the deep earth with his bare hands, unlike myself and the others who use sturdy garden gloves.

-The soil you have here in Sweden is the most beautiful I have seen, so nutritious. To feel it with my bare hands is an honor, he says and make the gloves seem bulky and unnecessary.

When the potatoes are picked and washed we offered our help in the kitchen where Shyama has started cooking. Today we make patties from fresh vegetables from the garden. such as potatoes and beans and for that, tomato salad and soup. The only thing not grown by themselves is the rice.

I sit down at the table och help peeling potaotes and soon we are sliding in on discussions on environmental issues and consciousness of life.

-For my part I think it started already as a seven-year-old. Already then I started seeking answers for questions about my own existence, says Shyama, as he is stirring a pot. He continues to tell that when he found a book of Dalai Lama in his mother's bookshelf that lead to buddhism for a couple of years.

-But there was something I always missed in Buddhism, that God is not mentioned, that's something you just hush down. That's what is so lovely about vaishnavism, where you can find texts telling about what God and his associates are doing on their spare time. That makes it so easy going in a way.

But in spite of that he thinks it's diffcult to express his faith in the Sweden of today.

-People don't understand when you speak about your faith with them, so instead we concentrate on vegetarianism and ecology, that's something which we can reach out with.

To be vegetarian is a matter of course for Shyama as well as the others, but aggressive persuasion is not a desirable method.

-We want to spread vegetarianism with humor. Fun, but not ajoke, he says and laughs.

Nowadays there are active spoonrevolutionaries in about 20 countries. Shyama tells that the initiators most often share the same religious views, but that anyone is welcome to help or to do their own thing in the name of the spoonrevolution.


After a delicious dinner and a full day out in the nature I seem to have forgotten what time it is. In some strange way the time has not existed, but when the sun slowly starts to set, I know it's time again. Time to go back to the huge, noisy, rushing life a few miles away.

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