Mitr:
Hearty Greet­ings from LILA! It is sum­mer again–the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary and pas­sion­ate among the sea­sons. Since its in­cep­tion, on every May Day, in the true spirit of the times of ripeness and fruition, LILA has taken a sem­i­nal step ahead — whether it is mov­ing to a new space, or start­ing a pub­li­ca­tion, or launch­ing a pro­gramme. The bright­ness of the sea­son, and its rad­i­cal his­to­ries merge with LILA’s un­der­stand­ing of lu­mi­nos­ity as the ground and con­di­tion for liv­ing our own free and light spirit within our com­mu­nity.

Down Mem­ory Lane: An image from 2013

Our world-wide thought and trans­for­ma­c­tion con­nec­tive, LILA Terra-Su­tra in­vests it­self in dis­cov­er­ing, nur­tur­ing, cel­e­brat­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing, re­new­ing and con­serv­ing re­sources in var­i­ous fields of knowl­edge and cre­ativ­ity, so that the pos­si­bil­ity of eq­ui­table and eco­log­i­cal liv­ing be­comes ap­par­ent and in­te­gral to every human being. Under the ban­ner LILA Terra-Su­tra, we or­gan­ise reg­u­lar courses, work­shops and other pro­jects with em­i­nent ex­perts in var­i­ous fields rang­ing from urban gar­den­ing to tra­di­tional mar­tial arts, green ar­chi­tec­ture to po­etry.

This year Lila began its Terra-Su­tra ac­tiv­i­ties with an in­ten­sive course in the phi­los­o­phy and prac­tice of Holis­tic Liv­ing THE TAO WAY OF LIFE AP­PRE­CI­A­TION held from 27-28 Feb until 5-6 Mar 2016 at the Lotus Farm, Kadarpur, a re­treat space of­fered by our friends Priya and Rav­ish Mehra. The course guide, Mas­ter Nicholas Packard is a renowned healer and Qigong (pro­nounced Chee Kung) ex­pert. We will have more of these work­shops and courses com­ing up through the year. LILA wel­comes you to this won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence wherein you will dis­cover a set of prac­tices that helps to keep the mind, body, and soul en­gaged & strong. You can read the re­view and find the pho­tos of the work­shop here!

Nicholas Packard was born in Amer­ica, and has lived in many parts of the world, in­clud­ing India, Italy, China and Thai­land. He has lived in the Hi­malayas of India and the moun­tains of China for more than twenty years. He has trained with Mas­ters in China in the phi­los­o­phy and prac­tice of Tai Chi Qigong for over ten years, dur­ing which he stud­ied Tai Chi with the Grand Mas­ter Gaoyang Meng, a Taoist priest at Qingyang tem­ple in Chengdu, Sichuan China. Now a mae­stro in Tai Chi Qigong, he trav­els all over the world help­ing the sick to build the inner con­fi­dence to sus­tain their life ahead. Nicholas has also es­tab­lished a non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion in the United States, called The Tao of Holis­tic Liv­ing.

Green Fin­gers Work­shop

LILA Terra-Su­tra pro­grammes in Life Ap­pre­ci­a­tion are a man­i­fes­ta­tion of LILA’s mis­sion to help in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties find their most or­ganic means to hap­pi­ness. LILA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with  or­gan­ises Green Fin­gers Work­shop which shall take you closer to na­ture whereby you ex­pe­ri­ence the in­nate plea­sure of being with mother  na­ture. At this work­shop par­tic­i­pants learn to plant, de­sign and ef­fi­ciently run a kitchen gar­den even in a space-choked city. If the idea of a small veg­etable gar­den is hang­ing some­where in your mind, then join us now! Here are some ideas for grow­ing veg­eta­bles on a small and man­age­able scale. Click to join us on­line!

The Terra-Su­tra work­shops and courses use the prin­ci­ples of ‘Or­ganic De­sign’, uniquely de­vel­oped by LILA. They are cus­tomised and open for all age groups. You can read the re­ports on some of the in­no­v­a­tive ex­per­i­men­tal work­shops or­gan­ised by LILA in the past three years, which may en­hance your way of life ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

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LILA has been or­gan­is­ing the in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary se­ries of lec­tures, LILA PRISM, dur­ing Aug-Dec every year. PRISM, for us, holds to­gether five con­stituent el­e­ments of trans­for­ma­tion: Per­for­ma­tiv­ity, In­no­va­tion, Sus­tain­abil­ity and Mul­ti­plic­ity. PRISM is con­cep­tu­al­ized to be worked out through three major phases – The An­nual Lec­ture Se­ries (Au­gust-De­cem­ber every year), Na­tion wide Pub­lic in­ter­face pro­grammes, and de­vel­op­ment of in­ter-linked open-source archives. Over the past three years, this an­nual se­ries of pub­lic lec­tures has ex­plored the ques­tions of de­vel­op­ment, cul­ture and gov­er­nance in the par­tic­u­lar con­text of India, through the prisms of var­i­ous dis­ci­plines. Under the ban­ner, so far LILA has hosted 45 lec­tures fea­tur­ing em­i­nent minds from var­i­ous fields of knowl­edge and cre­ative prac­tices. Each year the se­ries takes off from some of the sem­i­nal ques­tions raised by the pre­vi­ous speak­ers, and ex­tends the dis­course  on liv­ing and know­ing.

This year’s LILA PRISM se­ries of lec­tures ti­tled ‘IN­STI­TU­TION AS AB­HYAS’ con­tin­ues the con­cerns  raised by the speak­ers and au­di­ences of PRISM 2015 on ‘Trans­for­ma­tive Gov­er­nance’. The se­ries asks ques­tions like: What trans­forms an in­di­vid­ual or col­lec­tive into an in­sti­tu­tion? Is there a way of com­pil­ing the best prac­tices in In­sti­tu­tion build­ing? What is the ab­hyas that one has to fol­low in this re­gard? Why do many of our in­sti­tu­tions, es­pe­cially State-run es­tab­lish­ments, tend to fail or be­come re­dun­dant after the exit of their first gen­er­a­tion lead­ers? How can we evolve a re­new­able method­ol­ogy to build in­sti­tu­tions and to en­sure their good gov­er­nance through time? We are bring­ing to­gether a set of em­i­nent minds to re­flect on the above, and wel­come the in­tel­lec­tual and cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties of the coun­try to par­tic­i­pate and en­gage in these de­lib­er­a­tions. Read the con­cepts and other de­tails of the up­com­ing lec­ture se­ries here!

As part of the first phase of the PRISM pro­gramme, fif­teen sem­i­nal thinkers who have made re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tions to their fields – rang­ing from Pol­i­tics to Arts, New Media to Tribal Re­search, Media to Grass­roots In­no­va­tion – agreed to col­lab­o­rate with us and de­liver pub­lic lec­tures from Au­gust to De­cem­ber 2013. This made the LILA PRISM LEC­TURE SE­RIES 2013!

In 2014, the LILA PRISM Lec­ture Se­ries fea­tured thirty other major stake­hold­ers, agents and thinkers from a va­ri­ety of fields, all join­ing our move­ment to re­flect on the theme of this sea­son: Cul­tures as Con­tin­uum. Click on the fol­low­ing image to find all the re­lated in­for­ma­tion. Get more de­tails of our Lec­ture Se­ries here!

LILA PRISM 2015 on Trans­for­ma­tive Gov­er­nance was de­signed as a de­fin­i­tive step to­wards cre­at­ing a con­nec­tive for ‘Or­ganic Gov­er­nance’ fa­cil­i­tat­ing eq­ui­table growth in the In­dian Democ­racy. Read more about our thirty ex­perts as speak­ers and dis­cus­sants and lis­ten to their re­mark­able con­ver­sa­tion here!

Kaapi LILA is a monthly gath­er­ing of like-minded friends, over cof­fee. At each Kaapi LILA, we dis­cuss a work in progress pre­sented by its vi­su­alis­ers. It is a plat­form for dis­cov­er­ies, ex­plo­rations and re­flec­tions among cul­ture-mak­ers from across bor­ders. Through these in­tense con­ver­sa­tions, we hope to en­er­gise the cli­mate of cre­ation in the city and be­yond. Here are some clicks from our Kaapi LILA gath­er­ings. Enjoy! LILA promises to bring more col­or­ful, more vi­brant par­tic­i­pants this year. Wait and watch!

LILA Newslet­ter in­tro­duces a new col­umn Out of the Box whereby you are con­nected to the im­me­di­ate world around! You can find here the lat­est news, up­dates, in­ter­views, videos, blogs, paint­ings etc that ad­dress cur­rent af­fairs. Af­ter-all we need to think Out of the Box some­times! This month have a look at an in­for­ma­tive in­ter­view ti­tled Med­i­cine Man where  our super ac­tress Man­isha Koirala is in con­ver­sa­tion  with the Tai Chi Qigong ex­pert Mas­ter Nicholas Packard. They dis­cuss in de­tail about  the im­pact of Hip­pocrates and the hun­dreds of gen­er­a­tions of heal­ers who fol­lowed…Read the in­ter­view here!

Send us your opin­ions, sug­ges­tions, blogs, in­ter­views and other in­no­v­a­tive ex­per­i­ments that force peo­ple to think out of the box. The best will be pub­lished here! Hurry up. Some­times one chance is all you need! Write to our ed­i­tors for fur­ther queries:
Ayshath Shamah Rah­math – shamah@​lil​afou​ndat​ion.​in
Latha Narayanaswamy – lath­adac@​gmail.​com