Open Source - Contemporary YaGYa (यज्ञ) At Its Best

December 30, 2012

Thanks to NPR's TED Radio Hour broadcast on the "Power of Crowds", I present Marcin Jakubowski and Open Source Ecology. It is a great follow-up to my earlier post on Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary. In that post, I had extolled Wikipedia as a great example of the यज्ञ that is at the heart of Śrī Kṛṣṇa's prescription of Karma Yoga as the road to freedom from the bondage of action.

Take this wonderful TED talk by Marcin Jakubowski and take a look at the Open Source Ecology website (OSE).

I realized that the truly appropriate, low-cost tools that I needed to start a sustainable farm and settlement just didn't exist yet. I needed tools that were robust, modular, highly efficient and optimized, low-cost, made from local and recycled materials that would last a lifetime, not designed for obsolescence. I found that I would have to build them myself. So I did just that. And I tested them. And I found that industrial productivity can be achieved on a small scale.

So then I published the 3D designs, schematics, instructional videos and budgets on a wiki. Then contributors from all over the world began showing up, prototyping new machines during dedicated project visits. So far, we have prototyped eight of the 50 machines. And now the project is beginning to grow on its own.

That's not only in the developing world. Our tools are being made for the American farmer, builder, entrepreneur, maker. We've seen lots of excitement from these people, who can now start a construction business, parts manufacturing, organic CSA or just selling power back to the grid. Our goal is a repository of published designs so clear, so complete, that a single burned DVD is effectively a civilization starter kit.

I've planted a hundred trees in a day. I've pressed 5,000 bricks in one day from the dirt beneath my feet and built a tractor in six days. From what I've seen, this is only the beginning.

Geeta 17-11 describes two aspects of Saatwik YaGYa (सात्विक यज्ञ):
1. अफलाङ्क्षिभि: a-phala-aN^kShibhir Not desirous (or attached) to the fruit of the action
2. मनः सामाधाय manah samadhaya, with the mental conviction; इति यष्टव्यमेव iti yastavyam-eva, that it is surely obligatory, their duty is to accomplish the sacrifice just as it should be-with the firm idea, 'I have no human goal to achieve through this'-; (quote from Swami Gambhirananda's English translation of ShankarabhaaShya.

Before you protest, let me accept that Marcin Jakubowski's intent is clear. With OSE's Christmas gift, people round the world will use the published designs for making bricks and succeed at it. Yes, the desire is there and it is valid. The difference is that commercial brick press makers copyright their design, sell expensive maintenance plans, and have a vested interest in the customer coming back to them. Just try breaking down an Apple iPad and try to make your own to see the wrath of Apple (Samsung owes Apple a gazzilion dollars in the US for a patent that the US Patent Office has invalidated?). The selflessness in Marcin Jakubowski's approach is evident at the top of the OSE Wiki:

"Openly licensing allows others to replicate, reuse, adapt, improve, adopt, bring to scale, write about, talk about, remix, translate, digitize, redistribute and build upon what we have done." 

Let me conclude with a quote from Param Pujya Gurudev's Holy Geeta commentary on 17-11:

Sacrifices undertaken by men of purity are always executed in a spirit of selflessness....This (Duty) is the motive that propels the 'good' to act in life. He suffers no dissipation of his inner energies either through anxieties to drive himself to a particular goal or through his restlessness in herding the environments to settle themselves into a pre-planned and pre-conceived system of harmony. His mind is ever at rest in its own native satisfaction. He is consciously happy that he is pursuing a line of action which is most conducive to the welfare of all.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post