Tribal healing and happiness by the founder of Raw Food Festival, Happy Oasis

Kevin: We have a few more minutes. I would like to refer briefly to medicines. You said that water was a medicine. But what other notable medicines or medicines from one or two tribes you were with, what do they use for certain foods?

Happy: Singing is a very important aspect of health and recovery. Singing is used as preventative medicine in many cultures I live with. Chanting every day, again at sunrise, at sunset, chanting throughout the day, the people I live with in the Himalayas, their Muslims actually, and

when they harvest their food, the little children come out to the old man with baskets on their heads and backs, and sing praises to Allah.

Thanksgiving for the food, for the corn they put in the baskets. So there are different types of songs, harvest songs, morning songs, spring songs, basket songs. Their songs are – that the women sing while making clothes for their children with the wool of the various animals. There are songs of deep healing, of someone who is born, of someone who dies. There

there are so many songs, the traditional songs and some of them just mixed it up.

Kevin: That’s great.

Happy: The same as us. So if someone is sick, singing to them is very important. Now, another thing that is very important is that this story of my name is Happy Oasis. When traveling to Bangladesh by bus, I was the only foreigner as an adventurous anthropologist. And it was pouring rain for days and days and I had never been to Bangladesh and being an American I didn’t know much about it. And it is a very flat country. It’s raining in the ocean and an average sea –

height above sea level three feet.

Kevin: Woof!

Happy: So after weeks of rain, it is very common that at the end of the rainy season, much of Bangladesh is under water. And when that happens, the farmers, the millions and millions of people, go to the highest place they can find, and our bus got stuck on one of the highest.

places, because there were thousands of people who would gather there and there was a small hamlet of a town made mostly of straw houses.

And in the pouring rain, I saw thousands of people lying around me. And they were dying, and I thought, oh, I can cash in traveler’s checks. I’ll buy you all a meal. And then I realized that there is no bank. And then I thought I know I have a few hundred dollars in Bengali equivalent currency. I will buy something for everyone, and then I realized that there is no food in the

the whole town

It was still raining cats and dogs, and I thought that the whole Red Cross would come, something would happen, but it was still raining. I was sitting on the bus deeply hopeless and not knowing what to do, and I began to cry softly. When a man came up to me, very weak, and he was a leper. He had no fingers and he looked and took his fingers and brushed my hair, very blonde hair that I have and blue.

eyes. And she has very, of course, very dark skin, almost African. And when she looked into my eyes, I realized that it was over.

His soul was so deep there. But he must have seen me in some kind of illusionist, maybe an angel. And he got off the bus and lay down, he died. Shortly after, another man came. Another old man, who must have been around 35 years old or just an old man in Bangladesh at the time; and he walked right up to the bus with a big smile on his face, and then we were extremely skinny and hungry too and barefoot, and he only had on a dodie, but he had this

radiant smile And I was so sad that I was angry.

Have you ever noticed that anger is like frozen sadness, so I was very upset with him and then I said, “How can you smile in this circumstance?” And he said in perfect Queen English, like she wasn’t in Bangladesh, ma’am, she said. Come, come with me, smiling is all I have to give. Let’s go and smile at this town. And so we went and sang. He sings Muslim songs, and I sing Christian summer songs, and we touch people’s feet and pat their foreheads gently and

she looked into their eyes, like a mother looking at a dying child. And it profoundly changed my life to do this hour after hour in the pouring rain, because the effect that this had on each individual was that

die with loving-kindness. It is that they leave with the feeling of peace and tranquility.

After that experience and many others, I vowed to always be cheerful to radiate joy if I ever found myself in a situation that looked hopeless in that situation. And that’s it. That is the beginning of the name Happy

Oasis, because I’m about to be a happy oasis for everyone on the planet whenever possible.

What happened is that after living with many tribes and being, he entered seven different battles. And most of the people I know, as close friends across the planet, are tribal people and have been disenfranchised and have died due to disenfranchisement and genocide.

I got tired after more than a decade of living with several tribal people that I love, who just disappeared. And I’ve realized coming back to America, to this truly blessed country, I love

America, and I love Americans more than I ever would have and could have. If I hadn’t had these experiences, I would like to be part of a tribe that will be around for a while. At least to be part of a tribe that is just getting out of the mud. instead of one that is on the brink of extinction, and so I thought to myself, who are these people that are going to be out there, and those

people are raw, organic, vegetarian, enthusiastic about seeking equitable sustainable solutions and embracing our international community and co-creating world peace on earth, because we can live

in heaven on earth if we are committed to the blissipline which translates to as Blissian Forth.