EP 18. Weaving an Indic Response to the Meta Crisis (with Abhishek Thakore)

Light Forest

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EP 18. Weaving an Indic Response to the Meta Crisis (with Abhishek Thakore)

Beneath the surface of modern India, and deep in the minds of the contemporary Indians, seeds for a Light Forest regeneration are sprouting.

Dev Lewis

Sep 21, 2025

Transcript

The meta-crises is a concept that is growing in usage around the world to refer to civilisation crises.

It is developed in the western context with a Global North audience in mind, although in sync with Asian & indigenous wisdom traditions. But for an Asian audience it can seem dry, bland, and not very relatable.

Like it’s missing a burst of flavour that animates your being.

So it was really refreshing and uplifting to sit down with Abhishek to learn what an Indic perspective and response to the Metacrises looks like based on 20+ years of lived experience of movement building in India.

Abhishek Thakore is the co-author of the recently released report "Bodhi Sangha: An Indian Response to the Meta Crisis" - a collection of 15 voices offering indigenous wisdom for our times.

With over 20 years of facilitation experience across 100+ organizations globally, Abhishek is founder of the Blue Ribbon Movement and co-founder of WisdomTree and the Bodhisangha ecosystem - one of India's most innovative mycelium-like networks.

His own work is inspired and informed by elders such as Vinoba Bhave, which spans initiatives across levels—from hyperlocal to global—and approaches, including policy, programs, and practice.

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Keywords
Meta-Crisis, Indic Response, Civilizational Crisis, Inner Transformation, System Change, Relationships, Theory of Change, Resourcing Ecology, financial resilience, ecological systems, collective decision-making, Indic philosophy, bipolar experience, Vinoba Bhave, community building, social change, youth empowerment, India

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The Indic mind sees our current crises — financial, Climate, social, health, etc. — as manifestations of inner spiritual decline. Therefore the root of the response must also begin here.
Seeing our present moment within the context of cycles (yug). This opens us up to ancestral wisdom and lessens the sense of haste and anxiety.
Amidst the confusion and chaos of our time, rather than try to answer the question “what do I want”, we learn to find the Yugdharma, the calling of our times.

"The Indic mind at its surface level is able to hold paradoxes, deal with ambiguity, deal with chaos and so on. And I think the deeper layers of that mind are that the collective mind has had a long time to evolve."

Response to the meta crises: “Inner Work” through Community & Relational Fields

Abhishek has helped build a sophisticated set of social technologies for movement building, social change rooted in relationships, and working with our egos.

Relational fields: the emergent power of high-frequency relationships between groups of people that can become space for a new consciousness to land and for new ideas that will be intuited through a web of relationships.
The ‘inner’-net: The power of relationships within community gatherings as a practise to better see our own egos at play and tune our inner-nets, and bring our spirituality from the temple into the muck of everyday life.
Forest-like Fundraising: An approach to fundraising relying on diverse sources of revenue going beyond the donor-recipient model that he’s honed from his experience with Blue Ribbon Movement and Bodhisangha ecosystem.

What if our deep relationships together are the landing pad consciousness is looking for, so that something can be born which no one mind or heart can hold? And therefore then this work, like this podcast, is a part of building that field.

Abhishek’s Journey of Awakening his Indic Mind

Transmissions from elders and inspiration from the life of Vinoba Bhave the spiritual successor to Gandhi.
His experience with bipolar disorder and manic episodes which he describes as "the most defining experience of my life" and paradoxically a "gift".
Writing his own version of Gandhi's "Hind Swaraj" and awakening to his indic mind.

We notice the (Dark Forest) monoliths and the megaliths very easily because they are amplified and our attention is aggregated around them. And in that we miss thousands and millions of acts of kindness and things of hope and goodness that is scattered.

End Note

I was born in India, but I have always struggled with my identity as an Indian. I felt quite resentful of the chaos, poverty, and religious fervor of the India that I grew up in and was fascinated with the West and the neoliberal stories of modernity. I studied in the US, but I did not find home there and instead found roots in China and now Southeast Asia. Much of my professional career has been about elevating narratives of Asia and telling stories of decolonizing. Yet I've been doing this with a Western mind.

Abhishek also guides me to view contemporary India, which can feel so Dark Forest, within a broader macro view of cycles, and the collective's processing of anger and guilt over hundreds of years of colonization. In some ways, I can see parallels with my own experience of waking up to this in my own life. My Light Forest journey has also helped me find connection to India through these ancient roots and an acceptance of all parts of myself, light and dark.

This conversation with Abhishek felt like a transmission that opened me up that little bit more.