Badger, CA (March 2011) Henry David Thoreau, who read and admired Bhagavad-gita, stimulated the American imagination with Walden. In Harmony and the Bhagavad-gita, Visakha and her family follow Thoreau's path, stepping out of the daily grind into a simple, introspective life in the woods, with Bhagavad-gita lighting their way.
Harmony is a contemplative memoir accompanied by sixty-two lyrical, black-and-white photographs. Weaving the Bhagavad-gita's age-old wisdom with contemporary concerns, this book explores an enduring basis for personal, ecological, and social harmony. Harmony serves as a spiritual compass for those who dare to look afresh at the attitudes and goals we sometimes blindly accept. The author, her husband, and daughter lived ordinary lives in an ordinary home on an ordinary street in Los Angeles. Longing for something more, they gathered their savings and gumption and, in the summer of 1999, made a leap to a rustic homestead in a pristine, raw 1,600-acre valley in British Columbia. There they shared the open air and changing seasons with loons, black bears, aphids, ants, forest fires and rugged, spiritually-inclined individualists who were inspired by a culture as old as history. There they took in soul-stirring, sweeping life lessons that are suited for any time, place and circumstance.