Shilpa Garg 2/13/22 Shilpa Garg 2/13/22

Ubuntu in the New South Africa

Ubuntu Retreat 2022 at the Buddhist Retreat Centre, Ixopo

Ubuntu is an old South African word meaning ‘humanity’. I just completed my 7th year of Ubuntu retreats at the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo. The numbers of retreatants have steadily grown over the years. I felt priveliged to teach the old teachings of Ubuntu that was taught to me through my Xhosa sangoma apprenticeship. My Xhosa elders speak about ‘Ubuntu Ubunzulu’, the depth of humanity teachings. It starts with the individual person. We are all born human, however the elders say that we have to make a decision to become a human being. In the isiXhosa & isiZulu languages they speak about ‘umntu, ngumntu, ngabantu’. A person becomes a person through other people. As we listen to one another and engage with acts of kindness, consideration and empathy we feed our human family and ourselves.

Ubuntu is a circle of interconnectivity beginning with the human world and stretching into nature. The more harmonious and balanced the human world the more opportunity we have to help our non human families, animals and plants. The Ubuntu circle stretches upwards into the future with our current actions affecting the next generations, and it also stretches backwards in time to our ancestors. In South Africa we have many words for our ancestors, abazali bam (our parents), abantu badala (the old people) and one of my favourites, amathambo (bones, representing our bone people). There is an implicity responsibility to remember and honour our ancestors. As we do this we strengthen ‘isidima’ or dignity, facilitating a deeper sense of ‘Ubuntu’ and the interconnectivity of the human and non human lives on our planet.

I recorded a few of these teachings whilst leading the 3 day retreat in Ixopo at the Buddhist Retreat Centre. Please click the links below to access the youtube videos.

This a comparison between the 3 jewels of Buddhism and Ubuntu practice in South Africa.

A brief discussion on Ubuntu practice as it pertains to Ancestors, Dreams & personal responsibility.

Shilpa Garg 4/8/20 Shilpa Garg 4/8/20

Dreams and Tracking Retreat in the Kalahari Desert 2020

I have just returned from my first Dreams & Tracking retreats in the Kalahari Desert. The experience was incredible. I worked alongside Alwyn Myburgh and his safari company ‘Matsebe Safaris’. We lead 3 retreats over a 6-week period.

Sunset Meditation gazing over the Kalahari Desert

The focus of our work was to teach ‘African indigenous technology’. I focused on the ‘Dreaming’ component which entailed teaching people how to connect to their Ancestors, Dreams and working with African medicinal plants. Alwyn taught the ‘tracking’ aspect of the retreat. This involved intuitive tracking, interspecies communication and learning bird language. We split our teachings into 2 or 3 hourly segments depending on the weather and animal sightings. Each morning we would wake at 6am and start following the animal tracks at 6:30am.

Dancing with the local Villagers

We tracked lion for 6 weeks and on the final week we managed to see them, all seven of them, which I felt was very auspicious. Our Bushmen trackers reckoned that they had never seen human beings before. The Kalahari Desert is renowned for large open spaces, hundreds of kilometers of unspoiled wilderness and one of the wildest most desolate places left on earth. We chose the Kalahari Desert to do our retreat because we wanted people to experience the ‘Garden of Eden’, nature untouched by man! A hard task to accomplish, but we did it.

We hosted about 22 people with diverse backgrounds from medicine, dentistry, IT, teaching and the healing arts. It was a life changing experience for all of us. Here are what some of the people said.

I have never felt the tranquility nor peace I experienced with our team of trackers in the Kalahari. Thank you, John and Alwyn. Nelson De La Cruz (Dentist from the US).

The most transformative retreat I’ve ever been on. Krista Nielsen (Teacher from Hawaii).

We will continue our Kalahari retreats next year 2021 in Feb & March. For bookings/ Enquiries please email Beverley reservations.origins@gmail.com.

Please see my interview (below via you tube link) with Mitchel Clute from Sounds True on their FB community ‘Shamanic Path’ page.

Tags alwynmyburghsafaris, dreamsandtracking, johnlockley, kalahari, kalahariretreats, leopardwarrior, sangoma, shamanism, soundstrue, wilderness