Published: December 2022

Keywords:
Ward Maillard, Weaving in Love, Humberto Maturana, Legitimate Other, prejudice, Empathy, Reflection, Dualism, Language, Curiosity, Criticality, Observer, Observation, Yoga, Baba Hari Dass, Sutras.

Ward Mailliard

Ward Maillard is one of the founders (in 1978) of the Mount Madonna Center near Watsonville, California, and Vice President of the Board of Mount Madonna School, a K 12 school, committed to "whole child education" integrating intellectual, emotional, social and creative learning.

As an educator for over 25 years, Ward Maillard is deeply committed to the learning process and to building bridges of understanding cross-culturally and between the secular and spiritual aspects of life. He has been engaged in creating the "Values in World Thought" curriculum at Mount Madonna High School since 1992 in cooperation with Bill Moyers, whose ground-breaking interviews with anthropologist Joseph Campbell on the Power of Myth captivated Ward.

In 2007 Ward co-sponsored "Project Happiness" with the Dalai Lama Foundation, a project that developed a student-oriented curriculum based on the Dalai Lama's book "Ethics For The New Millennium." Their journey to India was the subject of a documentary film released in 2009. More recently, in 2009, Ward Maillard travelled to South Africa with his students to interview Archbishop Desmond Tutu as part of the Mount Madonna School Ubuntu and Sawubona Projects.

Ward has served for 35 years as President of the Hanuman Fellowship, the non-profit corporation that sponsors Mount Madonna Center and that is a vehicle for the teachings of Yoga and for the variety of projects that have been developed by the Fellowship Members.  He is Vice President of the Sri Ram Foundation, which sponsors Sri Ram Ashram, an orphanage and school in Northern India, where he spends two months each year.

wardkranti@gmail.com

Abstract

Τhis video contains the first part of a ZOOM discussion Ward Maillard had with members of the Metalogos Editorial Team. It was presented at the Metalogos Day Event 2022.

Ward Maillard, having studied both Maturana and Yoga for a long time, shared with us some of his inspirations. He talked beautifully about the main notions of Humberto Maturana and how those are seen and applied in everyday life, in education and in therapy. He stresses the need for educators and therapists to have greater curiosity than criticality when relating with human beings; how “love”, acknowledging the legitimacy of the other, can help us see their reality, understand ourselves and the other, and co-exist as well as co-create; and how important is reflection. “When we listen to see if we agree with the other or not, we actually do not listen to him/her, but to ourselves”.

Ward, as a student of Yoga, shares three “sutras” he created, out of the many, expressing Maturana’s wisdom.