11. Growing from failures

But everyone had excuses why not to pioneer a new settlement in Mount Halutz: studying, no money, no energy, not knowing how to teach yoga in the Galilee. There wasn't a group anymore; it was all dreams. Mountain Halutz exists today as a moshav though.
So, we went back to the Nachlaot group around John Wood, some of which had already started setting up house at Klil. They built two huts, the first two or three families. We said, "Look, we're joining you. We couldn't set up our own thing. They were a little unsure because they saw me as foreign, academic, a bearded meditator, a Buddhist. I didn't fit their model of a pioneer working the land, developing Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy. But in the end, they accepted us, we were the seventh family in Klil.
We almost felt like failures that we didn't manage to create our own community, our spiritual community. It was a kind of default, with a bit of a failure. We didn't prefer Klil because we felt the people were too materialistic. We didn't feel they had enough spiritual soul. I was a meditator, and Rachel was also spiritual. We felt they were too technical, physical, practical Israelis, not doing anything spiritual.
One family did join us, the guy's English, an old friend of mine. Other members of the Nachlaot group were close to us for years, and they did all kinds of other things. Some helped start ‘Kadita’ community settlement, for example.
We came from Jerusalem and had nowhere to live. I rented someone's house for six months, during which I had to build our own house so we could have a place to live. With no building experience, I essentially built a wooden shack that would be part of the larger stone house I hand built later. I got some help here and there, but it was mostly just hammer and nails. I used an old hut framework from Kibbutz Cabri and built around it, adding sidings. It was a rough, simple structure, but it still stands today. Despite its condition, I never had the heart to tear it down.
Being in the middle of it now and coming from that period, I was very much ecologically involved in the 80s already. We had a prediction, a sense that the world is going into a spiral of unsustainability.
What it feels like to live well, and that's more like today, but also over the years as well.
Looking at things, I make my choices and live moment by moment while saying: 'What is it like to live well, so that you can say, I'm ready to die because I lived well.'"
Being in the midst of it now, and having come from that earlier time, I was already deeply involved in ecological issues back in the '80s. We had a sense — almost a prediction — that the world was heading into a spiral of unsustainability.
What it feels like to live well — that’s more relevant today, but it’s something I’ve thought about over the years. When I look at things, I make my choices moment by moment, always asking: 'What does it mean to live well, so that I can say — I’m ready to die, because I’ve truly lived well.’


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While living in the rented place, I was also working and writing books. As an academic with a love for an alternative way of looking at things and strong interest in alternative medicine, I had an agreement to write a handbook for doctors in England. I did a lot of research in England, but when I moved to Israel, I was living in the shack and building in the mornings, so I could only write in the evenings.
The rented house had a rough, wooden storeroom full of the owner's belongings. I set up a makeshift desk with a piece of plywood on two of his boxes. With no electricity, I wrote with a pencil by candlelight at night, while I was building the house by day. Mice ran across the floor, under my feet, and my papers as I wrote a handbook with hundreds of pages and thousands of scientific references. Despite the challenging conditions, I completed the academic text in the early 1980s.
About the contrast between my woodwork and academic paper writing, it stems from my deep sense of growing up in the 60s with the belief that everything is possible. This mindset, influenced by my time in India, embraced diverse influences—science, alternatives, LSD, Buddhism. I played in many worlds, very diverse. The Dharma also contributed to this openness and flexibility of mind. Meditation helped me embrace the idea that anything is possible, without rigid definitions of roles like scientist or woodworker.
Meditation is about flexibility, allowing pain, pleasure, thoughts, feelings, and even birds, without preference, choice, or judgment. This direction of Dharma fed into my flexibility, enabling me to dance in these worlds.