Questioner: It is your birthday in four days on the third of September,
and I am very excited about it. Sadhguru: Oh!
Questioner: I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I could gift you, but in vain.
Can you please guide me on what I could do for you this birthday?
Sadhguru: See, excitement about birthday is probably when you're sixteen or eighteen
because maybe you will get your driving licence.
You're on your own.
Because you turned eighteen, your mother can't ask, Where did you go?
Where were you all this time? Because I am eighteen.
So those were exciting birthdays maybe. At that time,
I didn't even notice which day is my birthday,
because I would be somewhere, and I wouldn't even know.
Now, birthdays beyond a certain age is like a countdown
for you to take off.
So what will you do? Anyway let me make use of it,
because you want to do something.
I'm interested in people who want to do something, not for me,
but you're interested in doing something now that you're asking.
Is this from India or here? You don't know. Okay.
Well, what you could do is, the third of September,
we are seeing how to make this the river revitalization day.
Rally for Rivers was flagged off on third September.
That was, you know, this was... this was my plan to avoid birthday parties.
Cauvery Calling was flagged off on third September,
and Cauvery Calling as, if you have followed, as you would know,
I was soaked to the bone every day,
because of heavy rains and motorcycle.
So my birthday was a really soaking birthday last time,
because we were in Coorg
and the monsoon peaked out at that time,
and those of you who have not seen monsoon in the Western Ghats,
you must someday see. It's like sheets of rain.
Like, literally, like, you know, the word downpour...
most appropriate in that situation .
It's not like raindrops coming down, it's like sheets of rain coming down.
And we were riding in those conditions.
It was like back to my early twenties,
time when I was constantly riding in those kind of conditions.
Anyway, so this year,
we are pushing towards this to slowly establish this as a river revitalization day.
As a part of this,
we have a conversation, a live conversation with the Minister of Environment
in the federal government in... of India, the central government.
Why this is, because Cauvery Calling has been
a massive success in spite of the pandemic.
We lowered our goals a little bit thinking the pandemic may affect us,
but our fantastic volunteers,
their dedication and commitment, the enthusiasm of the local farmers,
and above all
the support that the state government offered in the form of subsidies for the farmers,
and the Karnataka State Forest Department provided massive amount of saplings,
so 11 million saplings have been planted this year in private lands.
You must understand this, farmers are taking high value timber trees
and taking it on their land.
That means for sure they will survive, because for every surviving tree
over a period of four years, there is a subsidy,
there is a certain financial assistance. Having said that,
I gave a call to the youth in India that three years of your life,
if you dedicate for this cause, we will revive the rivers.
That was a big thing to say.
So a little over three hundred youth,
many of them resigned
well-paying jobs, some of them dropped their PhD pursuits halfway,
some of them anyway are dropouts.
They were not fitting into the university, they were looking for a universe for themselves.
So, over three hundred of them dedicated their lives
for this cause for three years.
Now, I have the responsibility and onus, not only not to disappoint the farmers,
and above all, Cauvery,
and many world bodies which are all looking at this project with great hope,
because never before anything like this has been done. Repeatedly,
many leaders in the world bodies have told me, Sadhguru,
if you pull this off successfully, this will be a game changer for the tropical world
and in turn for the entire world,
Because, if you do not know this,
a tree planted in tropical land
is about six to eight times more effective in terms of carbon sequestering
and fixing of the climate change than when it is planted
above thirty-three degrees latitude.
So they are seeing this as a game changer.
So we don't want to fail, we want to win the game,
Because this is not about us,
this is not about a few of us,
or a few hundred of us who are working on this.
And as you know, the contributions for Cauvery Calling,
for this 42 rupees per sapling call when it was given,
came from one-hundred-and- twenty-two countries,
and over 82% of them
had nothing to do with Isha as an organisation. These are just people.
So that is the level of enthusiasm and trust that they have placed in us,
and above all the farmers, because...
their lives in the last fifty years has not been good at all.
That is, in the last twenty-two years, over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide
People have been asking me;Sadhguru, why did you take up this cause?
Why so much involvement? I said, If 300,000 lives committing suicide
doesn't get you into action, I don't know what.
I don't know what else we are waiting for.
Maybe, we have a way of getting used to every kind of tragedy.
Please understand this, getting used to a horrible situation is not transformation,
is not freedom. It's just lethargy of life.
You got used to people dying all around you, Ah, it's okay, they die.
This is not in any way that you are spiritually evolved
and nothing touches you.
No, nothing touches you, because life has not touched you.
Life should touch you.
You say... you call it a birthday, all right.
Birth means life touched you! That is birth.
Only because life touched you,
birth happened. Now that it's happened and you believe in
celebrating that every year,
let's put it to good use. Cauvery Calling,
in spite of the pandemic,
with great enthusiasm, it's been on the ground -
I am putting these young people's lives to risks... risk,
though we are maintaining strict protocols, but still they're out there traveling and doing things.
Fortunately, not one of them has come down with infection, nobody has tested positive yet,
but the way it is spreading, who knows?
But they are putting their life to risk and make things happen.
So the onus is also on me to ensure these young people
who are dedicating three years of their life,
their three years does not go waste.
Unless we are able to make them do something more wonderful
than what they would have done by themselves,
we have no right to call for anybody's lives.
So, in this context,
now I've found you who wants to do something for my birthday.
Tch, there's a lot to be done.
How much of it can you swallow? Please, that much you swallow,
because yesterday night I had a late night call with the Cauvery Calling panel.
All of them are trying to do their best,
but I want you to understand the scale of this project.
It's 83,000 square kilometers of land,
5.2 million farmers, and various struggles and thresholds to cross.
This needs a continuous throttle-on kind of situation.
And the time that it gives you to raise,
to plan, and to plant is a very challenging process.
Raising saplings takes a minimum of eight months -
minimum eight months, up to ten, eleven months.
Planting needs to happen within two months span of monsoons.
Another, a smaller monsoon happens which is called as the Northeast,
little later in the year, but the real thing is only July, August, September.
Already 8.3 million saplings have been taken by the farmers.
This time the monsoon has been a little late,
so this were...11 million saplings will go away very soon.
We could have done more, but we were concerned with the pandemic on
whether we will be able to, you know, really
inspire people to take this on,
because we could not physically go to many villages as we had planned.
There was supposed to be an inspiring tour
that I was supposed to make in the villages of these two states,
which I did not make.
Largely using technology and WhatsApp groups and things like that,
they're inspiring the farmers, which is a... not an easy thing to do,
but it is being done wonderfully well.
Every one of you who have some concern for life,
when you celebrate a birthday, this means you have some...
some sense of celebration about life.
If you have some sense of celebration for what life is,
then you must do this to whatever extent you can.
It's not for me to tell you do this much or that much,
but this must happen in a recurring way.
Every one of you who are with us right now on this Darshan,
you do something. One tree a month,
five trees, ten trees, hundred trees, whatever your capacity,
but do it in a recurring manner, not one time and forget.
Because one thing is it must be on your consciousness, this is very important.
Forty-two rupees -
in United States you can't buy nothing for that - sixty cents.
I don't think even the beggar will take sixty cents from you.
He also puts up a board, five dollars. Even in India,
forty-two rupees doesn't even buy you a coffee anymore.
So money is not the issue. What has been missing is human concern and care.
As a generation of people, let's show that if you're concerned
about celebrating my birthday,
you must understand, it is the birthday which is important.
Birthday means beginning of life.
If you are so inspired about the nature of life...
because that's all we have!
You may think you have many, many things.
You have your lumps of gold,
carry it on your head now.
You have wealth, you have bank balance, you have billions of dollars.
No, no. only thing you have is life. Because you have life,
you pretending to have all these things.
The only thing, and really the only and the only thing you have is life.
We'll do one thing if you don't understand what I'm saying, let's take your life out,
then enjoy the billions and the lump of gold on your head.
That's the only thing we have.
So, Cauvery Calling is a committed celebration of life
because without water, without soil, there is no life.
Let's make it happen. If you want to use my birthday as a...
as an inspiration,
I am fine. I don't mind celebrating birthday every day of the year.
Hello? Really! Why just September 3rd?
If you want, I will do it 4th also, 5th also,
December 3rd also. I'm... I'm okay, I'm willing, I'm saying
if you are willing. Please, let's make this happen. This is very important.
This is not my work.
This is not Isha Foundation's work.
This is a generational of work. We must make this happen.
It's very important.