Walking in Agaya and Ubuntu: a footpath into oak woodlands at the Costanoa resort on California's central coast. The Novsautras symbol is overlayed in one corner.
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‘Walking in Agaya and Ubuntu’ posted to Insight Timer

ByMichelle Y. Merrill, Ph.D.

Explore agaya and ubuntu through contemplation of a multitude of the everyday wonders and reciprocal blessings we share with the world around us.

The third Novasutras Insight Timer recording – Walking in Agaya and Ubuntu – was just published May 11th on Insight Timer at insig.ht/gm_52488 (if you don’t want to use the Insight Timer app, you can listen or download it on the Novasutras Patreon page). This is a guided visualization and loving-kindness meditation. In it, you are invited to envision greeting beings along a walk with wishes for agaya (joy, gratitude and reverence) and ubuntu (connection through loving-kindness). 

This can be practice for a Novasutras walking meditation in nature, or a substitute when you can’t go outdoors. Develop appreciation for sensory details, ecological roles and behaviors of organisms you encounter, and express gratitude through blessings of agaya and ubuntu.

The intention with this half-hour recording was to inspire practitioners to truly connect with the beings they can see on a walk near their own homes, developing ubuntu with neighbor species and an appreciation of agaya in the everyday. This sacred sense of us humans as just one species in a network of reciprocal loving-kindness on our beautiful homeworld is one of the keys to transforming the human presence on Earth, bringing forth a human civilization that fully integrates and celebrates agaya and ubuntu.

So far, my first recording – Beginning Novasutras Meditation Practice – has been up since July 28th 2018, with nearly 1300 listens.  The second recording, a talk on Calling the Corners: Opening Sacred Space for Novasutras posted on November 18th 2018, and has almost 1200 listens.

I am working on the next major recordings: A Journey within the Body and Honoring All Our Relations, plus a short meditation (less than 5 minutes) for centering and reconnecting with agaya and ubuntu. I will also try to post a video version of Walking in Agaya and Ubuntu to the Novasutras YouTube channel soon.

You can support this work through donations here, on Insight Timer or through Patreon membership.

Please let me know what you think, or if you have other suggestions or ideas for Novasutras meditation recordings, in the comments below.

Michelle Y. Merrill, Ph.D., is an expert in international sustainability, systems and complexity, teaching and learning, biologically-inspired design, anthropology and ecology. Over decades of research, she has worked in the US, Asia and Africa studying rainforest primates and Higher Education for Sustainability. She is a published author, a respected educator and international speaker, and the founder of Novasutras. She earned her doctorate from Duke University in 2004. 

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