My Life

The Problem with Surplus

2012-01-29T14:43:00.001-08:00

*Apologies for contentiousness of this article. It is meant to spark discussion, but does reflect where I've been moving to internally.

Not to state the obvious, but we live in a society of tremendous change. Compared to the way life was lived 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10000 years ago - we might as well be aliens. The scale of time is pretty much nothing if you agree with the myths of science that say humans first came into being ~2 million years ago. But is 'tremendous change' synonymous with 'tremendous progress'?

As this article beautifully states, the accelerated rate of change correlated strongly with humanity's harnessing of exogenous sources of energy (this includes controlled fire, animal power, cultivated agriculture, slaves, and fossil fuels). In each case of technological advancement, we are in effect talking about more work with less human input (productivity). So instead of a person needing 3 hours to find food, he/she now can get roughly the same effect in 2 hours. Creating, in effect, a surplus of time, to be used for other activities (theoretically creating more happiness). You multiply that many many times over, and you have our society today.

All I've said thus far sounds great - more results, less time, more happies. what could be better? Except, that's not how it's actually playing out. How many folks do you know that have a surplus of leisure time? It turns out that there's a few chinks in the way this system is run that create pretty unfavorable results when played out to extremes (which we are now doing)-

1-Most of the surplus is captured by a few private parties: So what happened to all this free time our society has worked so hard to get me? Turns out I'm just another hamster on the wheel, trying to build even more surplus, even though in aggregate we already have more than we need. Why? Because if I don't, I can't pay rent. That's the nature of my surplus - if I save 2 hours a day by driving a car instead of biking, >90% of that saved time goes to my employer. If I save even more time flying instead of driving, same results. At every turn, the majority of surplus is being captured (in the form of profits) by the smallest sliver of people in the corporate hierarchy.

2-Most of the (unannounced) negative externalities do fall on us and the broader environment: Let's take a small example. Technology allows creation of tons of food by very few people. We all save time from not having to grow crops (which is then mostly spent working on other things instead). Now, the private company reaps the time benefits, but when I get diseases from eating this mass-produced food, well that's on me. And when the soils become unusably degraded, same deal. Key negative externalities from surplus - high volatility/inequality, environmental degradation, societal unhealthiness. In each case, things take a while to show up, but results are similar.

3-Happiness may be most easily accessible by not deviating from what nature evolved us to do: All this might even be worth it if human beings ended up quantifiably better off from the changes we're going for. However, I would argue that in aggregate that's not the case! Sure, in a vacuum you may say a Big Mac can make a person happier, but the eventual heart attack says otherwise. The holistic nature of technological progress is such that we cannot selectively accept it - its either all or nothing. Like a celebrity that loathes paparazzi, it is not possible to have one without the other. This means that while the internet may be bringing us together, it's all relative in a world where atom bombs and biological weapons exist. Personally, I have a hard time believing happiness is found by chasing anything outside ourselves.

So, given the above, one can say 'well, at least I have my MacBook and that makes it all worth it', or, one can be open to the idea that it may all be corrosive. Maybe, in aggregate, there is a better answer to be found in another direction.

I am NOT saying that its time to reject everything and become luddites (nor do I believe its possible once Pandora's box has been opened). However, there is value in cultivating intention, and intentionally moving away from pushing for more and more surplus at the edges. One step at a time; towards a way of living that is more aligned with the majority of our history, and away from compulsion towards illusory productivity.

The Secret Document that Spurred Capitalism in China

2012-01-20T16:19:00.001-08:00

i read this article and i think - jeez, clearly profit motive and being self-serving is good! i mean, they all got to eat and then some!

and yet, there are downsides. inequality that supersedes that of US (according to GINI coefficient), environmental degradation on near unfathomable scale (for starters). indeed, there are 'negative externalities'.

but still, the reaction is that at least (b) is better than (a) - but nobody talks about the 3rd way - the ServiceSpace way :) to NOT assume that the design principles between everyone's ears are fixed. to drive action with more foresight than those with pure self-maximizing motive. to recognize that external action is but a fruit born from the roots of intention.

we are that same village in China that wrote the secret document in 1978; we can be the test bed for the transition away from its lessons.

The extremes of uncertainty

2011-12-31T22:24:00.001-08:00

I was doing research on country-specific risks this past week and was met with what seems to be more and more commonplace. It used to be that we didn’t know if GDP would raise by 2% or 2.5% - now the question is if there is going to be inflation or deflation – that’s a lot more uncertainty being brought into the equation! I’m seeing this more and more in almost all facets of life. More uncertainty in global economics, global politics, food production (is there enough wheat this year?), entertainment (who is next years star? In the 80s, the answer was always Michael Jackson), etc.

Uncertainty itself isn’t really what stands out to me, as that’s been evident for a while. However, the (un?)conscious reactions of people to this increased uncertainty has been interesting. There’s one group that chooses to believe the world is getting worse, another that refuses to believe there is anything happening outside of business as usual, and a third group that is in ‘wait and see’ mode. Now of course there’s many more groups out there (including the folks who’ve seen this coming for many years and are working on long-term solutions based on inner clarity), but these seem to be major categories I see.

Between the first two groups, you’re getting bigger and bigger shifts in behavior over time. In the former group (the folks that think the world is degrading), you’re seeing increasing levels of choices made for the ‘greater good’ along with an increasing disdain for those who don’t see what they do. On the flip side, there’s people who are stepping up their business-as-usual habits as they look to show that nothing is amiss (think Palin’s reality show). At some point, this uneasy coexistence is going to break down. In the meantime, the question is which path are each one of us treading and how can we become more clear about our choices in an unbiased way?

Also, happy new year :)

What is growth?

2011-12-03T14:58:00.001-08:00

Earlier today, I had the chance to sit down with Katie Teague, who is making a movie on growth. It is the fuel of finance, thus the economy, and thus the developed world. A world of constant, infinite, compounded growth. Without which the majority of our citizens would literally die, as jobs dried up and people couldn’t afford basic necessities… but is this really true?

What’s true in the macro is also true in the micro. As we all grow in our lives and careers, it's normal to expect a raise every year. Why? Because it's a signal of growth. Growing is good - not growing is downright unamerican. You didn’t get a raise? You’re not growing? Well then you must be no good.

But why only 1 way to measure growth? If I get a 5% raise next year but eat less healthy food, spend less time with close ones, and do more self-serving work, did I really grow? Just because the number is easy to measure, is that all that matters?

Other ways to grow beyond financial-
- Grow in generosity (give more of yourself every year)
- Grow in compassion (connect more deeply with others every year)
- Grow in physical health (deeper care for 'lifestyle habits' every year)
- Grow in mental health (deeper understanding of the world every year)
- Grow in balance (continual movement towards deeper harmony within and without)
- Grow in fun

All of these ideas are tougher to measure, but you know it when you have it and when you don’t. Conversely, financial growth is actually destructive in the long-run. In the macro, we outstrip the biological capacity to match our insatiable needs, we increase inequity leading to crime/disease/uneducated society, we build a transactional (rather than trust) mindset into the culture. In the micro, as our financial capabilities grow, so do our waistlines, our debt averages, and our brotherhood with fellow man.

So what to do? Even if I’m right, that just means we’re doomed because we’re part of a system that demands infinite growth…right? Well, no. Anything can be changed, but some things are harder than others. What we’re talking about is a long project, and a systemic deconstructing of many implicitly held beliefs. There are people that are doing this now. But it’s not easy to deny gratifying easily attainable sensual pleasures.

Here we have another reason to practice turning the lens within. Over time, it may become easier to not react to such desires and really begin to act in a way that brings balance within and without. If that starts to happen in many people at once, you have the start of a movement away from constant, insatiable, cancerous financial growth. And then! Who know what will emerge? They say the future is already here, just not evenly distributed yet :)

Thanksgiving Gratitude

2011-11-29T16:43:00.001-08:00

In my personal journal I was writing about what I’m most grateful for, thought I’d share (not ordered).

- Access to water (clean, hot/cold, on demand)

- Quiet space for regular work, meditation, reflection

- Access to healthy, natural food

- Access to clean air and regular sunlight

- Being connected to truly values-aligned individuals that I can learn from and serve in small ways

- Ability to do physical exercise

- Access to information to understand others, the world, the universe

- Inkling that it is possible for happiness to be had without any of the aforementioned points

Taken together, the list above makes me feel ridiculously rich :)

Buddha’s words (as sung by SN Goenka)

2011-11-12T15:22:00.001-08:00

This are the words of Gautama the Buddha upon enlightenment, and sung/chanted by SN Goenka (until 4:00, after which it switches). The language is Pali, which was colloquial at the time. Beautiful.

Uppajjitva nirujjhanti, (2x)
tesam vupasamo sukho.

When past sensations arise and are met with awareness/equanimity,
their cessation brings true happiness.

Aneka-jati samsaram
sandhavissam anibbisam,

Through countless births in the cycle of existence
I have run, in vain

Gahakarakam gavesanto
dukkha-jati-punappunam.

seeking the builder of this house;
and again and again I faced the discomfort of new birth.

Gahakaraka! Dithosi,
puna geham na kahasi.

Oh housebuilder! Now you are seen.
You shall not build a house again for me.

Sabba te phasuka bhagga,
gahakutam visankhitam.

All your beams are broken,
the ridgepole is shattered.

Visankhara-gatam cittam,
tanhanam khayamajjhaga.

The mind has become freed from conditioning;
the end of craving has been reached.

Sabbe sankhara anicca'ti.
yada pannaya passati,

Impermanent are all compounded things.
When one perceives this with insight,

Atha nibbindati dukkhe.
esa maggo visuddhiya.

then one turns away from suffering;
this is the path of purification.

Sabbesu cakkavajesu
yakkha deva ca brahmano,

May the holy entities
of all the universes

Yam amhehi katam punnam,
sabba sampatti sadhikam.

rejoice in this wholesome meditation process performed by us,
which is productive of all happiness.

Sabbe tam anumoditva,
samagga sasane rata,

May they all,
unitedly devoted to the teaching,

pamada rahita hontu
arakkhasu visesato.

be without negligence,
especially in giving protection.

Punna bhagamidam c'annam,
samam dadama karitam.

We share with all equally the merit
of this meditation and other wholesome deeds.

Anumodantu tam sabbe,
medini thatu sakkhike.

May they all accept with joy our sharing,
and may the earth stand witness to it!

If you could change places with anyone…

2011-10-30T09:22:00.001-07:00

Personal experience of how, over time, I’ve answered the question ‘if you could trade places with anyone, who would it be?’

Initially, the answer was a celebrity of some sort, sports, music, actor, etc. Then, it was someone rich/powerful, like a businessman (Gates) or politician (President). More recently it was a highly ‘cultivated’ person, like a spiritual or religious leader (my favorite was Rev. Heng Sure). Now, I wouldn’t want to trade places with anyone at all – but most interesting to me about that answer is the ‘why’.

My initial answer was due to the sense that attention or popularity was a source of happiness, so those that had tons of it were certainly worthy of switching places with.

Then, my feeling was that happiness and leading a worthy life actually comes from changing the world for the better – and of course the more leveraged one was (having money or power), the more one could do this.

Next came the belief that a worthy life is actually one that is free from mental imbalance (which by consequence would change the world for the better anyways), and so certainly it would be desirable to switch places with a very balanced person.

Now, my feeling is that its not that mental balance is desirable, but that the process of moving towards awareness and equanimity is beautiful. Reason being that my process is uniquely my own, tailor made to help me understand my own blockages. To be free from that process doesn’t free the blockages – I actually need every experience that comes my way. Every moment the process continues is a beautiful moment :)

On semi-related point, I read a wonderful quote by Jack Kornfield recently – “There are many writings on spiritual paths, and not one of them speaks the truth, for the truth cannot be spoken anyways. Such writings are spiritual garbage in many ways. However, eggshells and grapefruit rinds do indicate that somewhere near by there has been nourishment” :)

Happy day!

Latest Vipassana Meditation Experience

2011-10-06T08:54:00.001-07:00

I recently returned from another intensive 10 day meditation experience. Although I’ve written about this experience a few times before, the impact it has on me continues to deepen.

SN Goenka is the teacher of this course, in fact he was the root of many of today’s western spiritual folks including Sharon Salzberg. As a bit of background, he is basically attempting to teach exactly what the Buddha taught, and he is quite qualified. Reason for this is that he learned for ~15 years in Burma, which is apparently the only country to actually preserve Buddha’s teachings entirely. About 100,000 folks take this type of course per year, but as mentioned before, this is more ‘meditation bootcamp’ than ‘spa and yoga’.

To be clear, this is what the Buddha taught, this is not Buddhism (and I am not Buddhist). Buddha taught a way to transform oneself through personal experience of the nature of reality at the root level – something performable by anyone in any system of belief. To literally ‘see things as they are’ – no imagery or mantras, just experience of the moment as it is.

There’s just so many ups and downs over the course of 10+ days that it’s really tough to encapsulate that experience for me at this point. For me, the unique aspect of this is that there is personally experienced wisdom everytime – not something I read from another, not even something I reason out in my mind, but truth experienced. Something about that leading to stronger sticking ability in day to day life, although of course it’s a long path.

Little by little, I’m seeing the importance of the subtle - ones intentions, small actions, and small reactions. They certainly add up, and by the time small becomes big, its really hard to stem the tide. So grateful for the chance to develop in this path and to work seriously on it, at least for a short time.

Biggest epiphanies of my life

2011-06-26T11:56:00.001-07:00

After a beautiful meeting earlier this week with Allan Savory and Bill McKibben, I was on the train home with my colleague and reflecting on the ‘how did we get here’ question. How did just about everything we believed in change so thoroughly in the matter of a few short years?

There were 7 ‘paradigm shifts’ that we noted that I thought I’d share. Nothing new to the folks who already live in this space, but definitely a shift from the ‘mainstream.’ Each of the shifts is a journey rather than a destination, and consequently, we use the tools we’ve come across to date to simply continue to walk the path :)

1 – Self-orientation towards other-orientation: Simple idea that harmony and happiness comes from moving away from focus on provincial self. Serve others, no strings attached, and happiness follows.

2 – Transaction towards trust: Thinking less market-oriented. Learning that giving and receiving are sacred acts that are two sides of the same coin, like a hug. Approaching more of life with that trust instead of the ‘mental scoreboard.’

3 – Isolation towards community: Community in the deeper sense of ‘noble friends’ – individuals who are cultivating the same values that you are cultivating. Surrounding oneself with these types of folks seems to have strengthened all the other shifts.

4 – Scarcity towards abundance: Understanding that what is most important in life (love, air, water, food, heat) is abundant and learning to operate from that space internally. Minimalism is a paradoxical component as consumerism is less attractive compared to abundance.

5 – Efficiency towards resiliency: Doing things ‘better, faster, cheaper’ reduces ability to handle volatility at every level in the system (from individual mind to global systems). In increasingly uncertain world, efficiency is disastrous.

6 – Reductionism towards holism: Dictionary defines reductionism as “theory that every complex phenomenon can be explained by its component parts.” This ignores subtle interconnections across time and space. Thinking in systems respects these inter-connections and acknowledges the limits of intellectual understanding.

7 – Conquering nature towards mimicking nature: Shifting from man as receiver of natures bounty to man existing in delicate balance with all other players. That means out of balance equals death for all. Consequently, mimicking nature leads toward balance and thriving for the whole.

The Top Risk to Human Extinction

2011-03-15T21:17:00.001-07:00

I’m going to cut to the chase. Over the next 100 years, I see about 4 categories of events (that we have direct line of sight to) that can end human life on earth. I have left out many broad categories (artificial intelligence, meteors, sterilization, volcanic activity, etc.) as we have no line of sight as to how those events may happen before 2100. I’ve outlined them below but don’t think that attacking them directly will lead to any success without deeply understanding the root cause.

Chronic risks (take time to develop but are subject to threshold effects)-

‘Climate change’, as broken down in 3 categories that connect in feedback loops to each other

-Ocean degradation/acidification- Mass aquatic extinction due to myriad factors (pollution, gas release, over-fishing, etc.) leading to depletion of fish stocks and unpredictable climate effects

-Desertification- Mass erosion of arable soil from productive land surfaces through to oceans due to extensive land mismanagement

-Rise of greenhouse gases- Rise in atmospheric heat from numerous gases (due to fossil fuel usage, industrial agriculture, deforestation) leading to massive rise in sea levels, and unpredictable/volatile climate effects

Acute risks (manifestation to extinction in days)-

-Infectious disease pandemic- Increasingly dense population centers of all forms of human and animal life along with abusive use of antibiotics will continue to raise yearly risk of genesis of exotic disease

-Biotechnological virus- Creating a biological virus is increasingly becoming no different than creating a computer virus in terms of the coding process. The cost of development and ease of creation continues to fall

-Nuclear emissions/detonations- Still a massive threat considering there are thousands upon thousands out there, uranium is available, enrichment process is less of a black box than ever, and accidental/force of nature errors can occur

All these major issues have plenty of people working on them, in the form of what people believe are the ‘root causes’ – poverty, nation-state conflict, terrorism, slavery, poor policy, faulty systems, etc. However, I see a few causes lying underneath these supposed ‘root causes’:

‘Secondary root causes’

Greed

Pride

Jealousy

Envy

‘Primary root causes’

Craving

Aversion

Enablers

Pre-frontal cortex

Opposable thumbs :)

What I am seeing is

- A lot of people paying zero attention to any of this.

- Some people paying attention to long-term risks (but with a sizable populous discounting it completely)

- Fewer people paying attention to acute risks

- Very few people focusing on ‘secondary root causes’, which is really about teaching people the golden rule and following it deeply

- Even fewer focusing on the ‘primary root causes’, which is really about developing awareness and equanimity to what is happening in the present moment

I have been working on a couple of the longer-term issues but perceive it as an excuse to work on the primary causes. Whenever I’m asked ‘what can I do to help’, my response is the same – practice meditation. There is a domino effect that comes from bringing awareness to one’s own craving and aversions. It changes EVERYTHING and the virtuous circle is as unpredictable in its harmonious effects as the vicious cycle is in the negative.

The key is in understanding that if primary root cause is not addressed, even if acute risks to humanity are averted today, tomorrow will be an even bigger challenge as the underlying issues have only intensified. As a side-benefit, focusing on bringing awareness to one’s own craving and aversions makes for a happier life anyways!

With that, I will go meditate :)

Trip to India during Business School

2011-02-15T08:47:00.001-08:00

I wrote this in January 2007 but thought it was worth sharing. Reading over it now, the voice it’s written in is striking. Like a constant chase after experiences. I feel like a different person than the one who wrote this, makes me wonder how struck I’ll be in 2015 by the non-sense I write about now :)

-----

40+ friends roll into India, stay in quality hotels in Bombay, Delhi, and Bangalore, party every night, meet with business leaders during the day, and spend remaining time learning about poverty. that's my one sentence overview of what went on over the last couple weeks.

The experiences are too many to relay in a blog entry, but i thought i would highlight one 24 hour period in Bombay a couple days before the end of 2006. It illustrates the most contrasting series of experiences of my life.

Saturday evening, all of us congregate outside of the hotel to pile into our coach and head to north Bombay to meet a friend for dinner/partying that evening. The guy's name is Akshay Raheja, and he graduated from our school a year back. I knew the guy in passing, but didn't know details, so I asked a friend of mine as we were heading down there. My friend points to a billboard we happen to be crossing by at that very moment. It shows the hottest real estate development going on in town, and the name 'Raheja' is plastered all over it. Turns out this guy helps run a real estate empire.

We arrive at his house around 9pm…I use the term 'house' loosely. We're talking 5 stories, several elevators, so many servants that his servants need servants, and literally right on the beach. We walk in and are bussed up to the roof, which overlooks a view of the full moon, palm trees all over the place, and the serenity of the ocean waves rippling in. The light breeze on my face feels like a soothing touch, and I turn to see my friends sipping champagne and eating hor'deurves. It was a great scene. about 100 people were there, top shelf food/bar, and butler's who seemed to be incentivized to get us drunk. In fact, my not drinking caused so much anxiety with the butlers that I had to hold a drink in my hand the whole night just to calm them down!

If this was the crux of the night, I'd have been pretty happy, but then it started getting crazy. A couple hours after our arrival, the personal fireworks show began…and lasted for an hour (this is NOT dec. 31^st mind you!)… after this, 2 DJ's came out and had a competition … and then came the belly dancer lol …

After getting home and 4 hours of sleep at best, I experienced the polar opposite of the material world…

In the morning, about 20 of us eschew the coach and buy a 2^nd class train ticket. A 2^nd class ticket basically means you're traveling with normal Indian folk, and that in itself was a shock for a lot of us. After the opulence of yesterday, we're now surrounded by individuals who are just trying to scrape by a living. One of the lasting images of the trip for me: watching my friend Young hanging off of the side of the train just like any other 2^nd class ticket holder, enjoying the wind whipping by on a hot 90 degree day.

Mere minutes from the previous nights party, we find Dharavi, which is a 'suburb' of Bombay. Dharavi also happens to be the largest slum in Asia, with over 1 million residents (avg yearly income = 300 USD). The slum also has a thriving economy, with 85% of the people holding down jobs (that of course pay VERY little), and a total global export value of $700 million USD. Our tour guide, Krishna, takes us on a walking tour from the early afternoon into the evening.

Throughout the day, we are shown numerous enclaves, where multiple industries seem to be thriving. Plastics, pottery, local foods, oils, and paints were some of the industrial districts we saw. Each had its own flavor, and I noticed each seemed to have its own culture. Sometimes all you had to do was travel 50ft, and the language you'd be listening to was completely different. our tour-guide had mastered EIGHT languages for this job! (his story was an enigma in itself: a guy with a good tech job in Bangalore, comes to Bombay, sees this, and immediately quits to start an NGO to help fight the poverty. What an amazing guy)

It was a day of strong emotions. Intense squalor, unbelievable stench, landfills all over the place, pollution, unmitigated fires, and few education facilities. One specific stretch I remember walking through just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other to avoid stepping in trash. As I'm walking, suddenly I'm faced with the most horrible smell of my life. We're walking through a business that cures animals (basically de-skins them and preserves the skin in salt). This type of business in the modern world is FAR from the city and well-ventilated. Not the case here. As Krishna is telling us about this, I watch them throw the cured skin of one sheep after another onto a 1950's pickup. Each one landing with a THUD and kicking up the salt and stench that permeated the place.

And yet, as we walk by, dozens of children greet us. They scream 'Hi!', 'from what country?!', and look overjoyed just to shake our hands. I'm amazed that they speak English, and their psychological states seem untouched by the life that surrounds them. We saw one group of children playing cricket, the popular European sport, on a landfill. I was even offered a chance to bat!

Later in the afternoon, Krishna takes a left-hand turn off one of the paths we're following and basically disappears. As I get closer, I realize that he has walked into a crevice coming off the main road that basically was just a space between two shanty buildings. The crevice couldn't have been more than 6' high and 2' wide. As I'm bent down walking through this area, I'm amazed and shocked to see that there are PEOPLE that live in here. It is dark, it is small, and I can't help but think 'is this a place for humans or rats???'

As we come out of there, we come to an open area between two buildings. We saw a group of about 50 kids dancing around to techno music playing on old but massive speakers. They saw us, and I started dancing with them. We had a spontaneous rave on our hands! The sight was something I'll never forget. The 4pm sun was glistening through the blue, orange, and red saris that had been hung to dry all over the area, tinting the light as though it was a disco. There were my friends, dancing to 'gasolina' with dozens and dozens of children going crazy along with them. There must have been a hundred 'high-fives' before we moved on…

As we left Dharavi back to the train, my head was spinning. I was so thankful to have the experience of seeing how these people live, yet was heartbroken to know that they were seemingly stuck there. I asked my friend Nick what he thought of the slum. Nick is no newbie to witnessing poverty. He's led 3 tours in Iraq and saw the worst of the worst down there. He tells me, "I thought I'd seen it all, but I've NEVER seen anything like this. I can't believe it."

And I start to realize this is what I feel too. The last 24 hours had been so emotionally draining. I couldn't think, so I just sat there and meditated in my hotel room. We all see the contrasts of life on a day-to-day basis, but the party followed by the Dharavi experience had stunned me into silence…

Couple recent CharityFocus blogs

2010-11-23T15:45:00.001-08:00

The first is on how communication could be viewed as an act of service (by all sides):

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2265

The second are some extemporanous thoughts on the ‘pay-what-you-want’ model vs. the ‘pay-it-forward’ model:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2262

Talking vs. Knowing

2010-11-21T13:14:00.001-08:00

A visual representation of a comment I recently heard :)

I think I’m somewhere in the middle lol…

Two recent articles

2010-07-16T20:57:00.001-07:00

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2214

I always thought of volunteering with CF as more about internal change than external, tried to articulate that thought.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/birju-pandya/the-ripple-effect-of-kind_b_643831.html

Another discussion on internal change.

Keep trying, keep failing, repeat :)

‘Benefit’ Corporations, the Future of Business

2010-05-20T17:08:00.001-07:00

I just had multiple conversations today with people who told me that business that cared about more than money would never account for more than 10% of the market. I hope that’s wrong, let’s work to prove it wrong.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/birju-pandya/benefit-corporations-the_b_583824.html

No such thing as an inconsequential act

2010-04-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

After a wonderful week attending the Skoll World Forum and an impromptu TEDx session, I spent a week in limbo! I was then stranded in London for a while, and just made it back to New York. However, got to connect with wonderful folks so a blessing in many ways (and London wasn't bad either).

Wrote up a quick entry on CF blog about how amazing Paul Hawken’s talk was:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2189

Career transition

2010-04-01T11:36:00.001-07:00

After spending a few learning-filled years at McKinsey, I recently decided to move on. Hard to put into words the gratefulness for the experience. Of course, the rigor and difficulty that led to the crazy hours and intensity were there, but at the same time there was much to be learned and wonderful people all along the way. Might share a longer post on my experiences at the organization, but more time needs to pass before I’d be able to have a holistic perspective.

I next will be joining Armonia, a venture capital firm in the nascent field of “impact investing.” Impact investing is really interesting – it’s basically the idea that society can use capital markets to promote social & environmental benefit (in addition to financial benefit). So, just like any VC firm, the job here is to look for great ideas that can generate financial returns, but that’s only 1 part of 3. If you’ve heard the term “social entrepreneur", you’re familiar with impact investing, because those are the folks that are being invested in. The Monitor Group put out a really great report on this a little while back.

Impact investing matters because it’s so needed right now. There’s many ways service is provided in this world:

+ 100% For-profit (think about how valuable Google or AT&T has in many ways been for society all while purely seeking financial return)

+ Non-profit (Red Cross)

+ Gov’t organizations (United Nations, International Monetary Fund)

+ Philanthropic organizations (Gates Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation)

However, even with all of this, there’s a hole. A lot of times, if someone has a great idea that serves people in a town or a few villages, it’s hard to get more money to do it in other places unless there’s some possibility of financial return for the people putting in the money. That’s where social entrepreneurs come in. They create businesses that generate financial return (above 0%) for at least a portion of their investors, thus keeping money coming in and quickly scaling the idea to reach more people in need.

This is why orgs such as Grameen Bank or Kiva thrive. They seek to help people en masse, in fact, that is the reason for their existence, but they do it by attracting the money of the masses. There are TONS of people who would give to a good cause if it actually generated money on top of it. All of this has been in the public sphere since Bill Drayton started Ashoka in the early 80’s, but after Muhammed Yunus won the Nobel Prize a few years ago, it really got a boost.

One of the bigger reasons I’m grateful for joining Armonia specifically is its belief in the patient capital model. Traditionally, investors come in, get their financial returns, then leave. This doesn’t work well if you have an entrepreneur who has a really promising idea but would take a little while to develop it. Investors don’t have the time, so they don’t bother investing. If this is a social entrepreneur, the world has potentially lost out on a solution that could serve many people. Patient capital recognizes this hole and solves it by not looking at financial returns in a short-term mindset (this is practiced famously by Acumen Fund).

Because this is a nascent field, it’s unknown what will happen over the next decade. I believe it’ll become huge, but I also believe it doesn’t matter compared to the internal shift that happens in myself and others from taking on the challenge. My friend, a successful social entrepreneur, once told me, “You know Birju, I don’t mind going down, but i’m not going to stop putting my full trust in people. If I go down doing that, it’s not a bad way to go.” Indeed :)

Why do charitable works?

2010-02-19T20:40:00.001-08:00

You see a man on the street. He’s asking for change. What do you do?

There’s many reasons to perform kind acts towards others. Depending on the person you ask, you’ll get a laundry list of reasons. Perhaps it’s because it makes you feel good, perhaps because you think it’ll help someone, perhaps because it’ll set a good example.

I believe all of these perspectives have merit, and would add one to the list: because I need to change. I would like to be more connected to my fellow man, feel deeply and be able to serve compassionately no matter what the situation demands. I’m not there, or even close. By serving others, or even cultivating the intention to serve, I am systematically rewiring my brain to think in a different way.

After repeatedly building a behavioral habit to perform acts of giving rather than seeking to receive, there are plenty of examples of folks that no longer see the world as I do. They help deeply, with compassion, almost by reflex. Not only that, but their service ripples out, with many more impacted.

Where does it start? I think it starts on the street with the man asking for change. If you’re looking for the right answer externally, I can’t give you one. But I do know, that if I look into the eyes of that person, even for a split-second, and cultivate an intention to be of service to him/her, it’s a step along the path to compassion and deep connection.

Thoughts after another meditation retreat

2010-01-12T19:04:00.001-08:00

So last month, after taking a break from work, I went on another meditation retreat. As I mentioned previously, the last time I went it was pretty much the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and this time, I’d say something similar but for different reasons :)

This iteration, the mental challenge was much more pronounced compared to the physical one. One has plenty of time to wrestle with ones own demons over the course of nearly two weeks. The main one on this occasion seemed to be my fear, and how many of my actions were (on a subtle level) driven by fear. The most difficult part of this realization was recognizing it was there and yet the recognization not being enough to make it go away. Seeing how deep the issue is, and how it’s something that will take vigilance on a moment-to-moment basis to change. I did all I could do – attempt to maintain awareness and equanimity of what was happening as the feelings arose, and inevitably, passed away.

Few other random thoughts:

1) I’m quite amazed that in the world of meditation, these retreats are basically like kindergarten, while for myself and at least a few people I know, the rigor and discipline involved here is near unfathomable lol

2) Important distinction between swimming and ‘swim-ology’ – Swim-ology is studying about swimming in a book but never touching the water. I spent many years approaching meditation like swim-ology, reading everything there was to read on the subject, but seldom actually sitting. As I am in the process of switching course a bit, I’m noticing a massive difference between swimming and swim-ology in terms of how my day to day life is impacted :)

I’m still not sold on the concept of doing this in such an intensive manner and would not recommend it to everyone (in fact, every time I finish one, I have no idea if it’ll be my last). However, I cannot stress enough the value silence and introspection (free from dogma, religion, etc) has had on my life, and would definitely recommend these elements to anyone.

Enabling voluntary simplicity

2010-01-11T16:31:00.001-08:00

Over the last several months, I’ve learned that not keeping a permanent residence is the fastest way to overtly reduce the number of possessions one has :) It’s been a really helpful way to pare down the sheer number of things I own (which is now down to about a few suitcases), but also to realize that regardless of how little I have physically on me, the number of mental possessions I have remains countless lol.

Part of the reason I’ve been doing this for a while is to try and be a bit less materialistic. It’s funny how I’ve been pretty much looking to give stuff away for a while now, and whenever people comment on it, my reaction is “oh, its not like i’m a saint or anything, I just hate moving with so much stuff!” lol So a good excuse.

That being said, it’s also really hit home that just because one doesn’t have physical possessions doesn’t mean he/she has done anything to actually be less attached to the external world. My mental possessions form a laundry list that is too long to count!

So if the goal is to be environmentally friendly, voluntary simplicity is, i’m sure, a good way to start. However, if the idea is to not be so caught up in one’s life, I get the feeling that the internal battle is way larger than than any number of possessions externally :)

East vs West - what happens when you're both?

2009-11-27T15:16:00.001-08:00

Above is a picture of Devdutt Pattanaik, a mythologist who studies how an individuals cultural mythology affects his/her interactions on a daily basis.

The talk he gives is highly engaging and I'd encourage anyone to watch it, however, I found myself with a different perspective while watching. I am both the east and the west. Comfortable in both, at home in none. If you're reading this, chances are you are in a similar boat :)

I was born and raised in Chicago/Phoenix, and while I went to public school and learned what anyone kid would, I would come home everyday and would hear the stories of the east that Mr. Pattanaik highlighted. In fact, I remember hearing the story of Ganesha when I was 5 or 6 - it was taught to me as a lesson of how important one's parents are and to what extent they command one's respect. Then, I would go to school and be taught to question EVERYTHING - no sacred cows. So what happens when people like ME grow up?

I have a full-time job as a consultant and I spend a large amount of my time 'trying to win the race' (somewhat like Alexander), yet do not fully believe in there being a race to win. Hence, I come home, and somewhat like the gymnosophist, spend long days in meditation or service work, trying to focus on the intentions within that lead to the actions without.

There's a lot of us out there, and I believe our two co-existing perspectives are not necessarily at odds with each other. Clearly on a superficial level it allows us to empathize / connect with folks in either world, but it's even helpful outside of this.

For example, it is my belief in absolute ways of measurement that leads my interest in economic development. If we can measure progress and track it meticulously, we can develop action plans to continue it forward to help others. A more traditionally western point of view. However, the familiarity with 'context' from the east tells me that no measured answer can be correct, and constant changes to the model would be required for optimal results. It is a continual attempt to balance head and heart, without either of which which you can end up with well-meaning but ill-conceived solutions. Furthermore, my eastern perspective makes me think of any action I take not necessarily as something to 'save the world'. but the equivalent of 'action meditation' - something to help me understand myself and my place in the universe. It is my way of 'conquering the world' by 'giving it all up' :)

An Angel in Queens

2009-08-09T14:39:00.001-07:00

A couple months ago, Karmatube featured a video of Jorge Munoz, a bus driver from Queens who came home EVERY NIGHT to cook and feed 150 homeless people. Since then, he's been featured everywhere from USA Today to ABC News, etc. Yesterday, Shephali and I were able to tag along with Toan Lam, the founder of Go Inspire Go and the filmmaker who shared the story, as Jorge's family was surprised with a new stove, refrigerator, and microwave! Really inspiring stuff :)

Will leave it to the video to tell the full story when its released shortly :) but suffice it to say that everyone was very moved by what was happening. One of the things that really struck me about their family was the extreme level of service that was always on their mind. One crazy example: While we are helping cook the days food inside, I notice several younger folks helping us and they don't seem like immediate family. Turns out Jorge not only feeds folks on the streets, but he also takes young kids in while they get on their feet! They also get a lesson in service as they get to help with the daily cooking process :) I was so humbled to be in the presence of this family!

This is not to mention at all the story of Toan Lam, who is the reason we were able to experience this gift! Toan is a TV reporter for a major affiliate in SF who decides to stop reporting major media news and start documenting the truly inspiring. His non-profit is all about that goal, hope Karmatube gets a chance to deepen the relationship with him over time :)

If anyone wants to help the cause, just let me know, we'll make sure you're in touch!

What is 'adding value'?

2009-08-05T11:28:00.001-07:00

I just realized I have no idea what that statement means even though it is pretty much the implicit force behind the business world. Every business activity is an attempt to 'add value' - from company mergers all the way down to a person showing up to work. here's the problem with it: it's calculated from a monetary perspective. the implicit question is 'how does what i'm doing make myself and others more rich?'

That seems all well and good at first glance, but lets play out an example: 2 housewives, each taking care of their own child. This is done for free (clearly) by both people and both are able to tend most appropriately to their own kids.

Now imagine a swap - each woman decides to take care of the other's children, and each receives the same rate of $20K/year from each other. According to the business world, everyone is richer under this scenario (GDP rises) and both women are adding tremendous 'value' compared to the other option.

There is something wrong with a system that applauds such a scenario. We see this again and again all over the world - sports players can act however they want as long as they perform ('add value') on the field and thus make everyone money, companies can treat the environment however they want as long as they create surplus value for their customers, etc.

My goal is to personally operate under a different idea of adding value - switch the question to 'how does what i'm doing make myself and others more happy?' The attempt to not correlate 'rich' with 'happy' means i'm more likely to smile, open doors for people, generally make life a more pleasant experience for myself and others even though none of those activities does a thing to bring more money into life.

cynics say 'but you don't know what makes others happy! you DO know what makes others rich' - if you don't know the path to the right answer and know the path to the wrong answer, does that mean you should choose the wrong answer?

is a smile 'adding value'? YES ... i'm going to start with that :)

Depleted attention

2009-07-24T20:59:00.001-07:00

So i just started a new engagement at work. It's pretty challenging adjusting to a new one and the first week is usually spent working pretty constantly trying to catch up with what's going on (especially when you're not familiar with industry / function).

This is all context for my behavior during this time - pretty meh if i do say so myself. Not really thinking about anybody else, not really trying to be kind, helpful, generous, etc - just trying to get through the day. My cousin has told me this could be because of my attention being depleted through being in a high stress situation. Attention is apparently a muscle, and like all other muscles, can be built up and can be depleted.

I notice this in myself all the time, i call it being frazzled :) when my attention is depleted, the hair trigger approaches - smaller things set me off, I'm less able to keep the big picture in mind, less able to think about others.

Also good to know that meditation is a major BUILDER of attention (along with exercise, etc) - think I'll go sit!

The hidden costs of 'Consumption Philanthropy'

2009-05-31T08:40:00.001-07:00

An amazing article from the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. Small excerpt:

"I do my main charity work once a week—at the grocery store. Like some of you, this week I bought organic yogurt that not only is healthier for my family and the Earth, but also supports nonprofit environmental and educational organizations. I also picked up snack bars that promote peace (no kidding!) and salad dressing that funds various (unnamed) charities across the country. For all of this hard work, I rewarded myself with some Endangered Species Chocolate, which helps “support species, habitat, and humanity,” according to the company’s Web site. Delicious.

...

Consuming more will not solve today’s social and environmental problems. Indeed, consumption may very well create more of the kinds of problems that we had hoped philanthropy would fix. Relying on individual consumer choices, consumption philanthropy is unsuited to the scale or complexity of the problems it seeks to fix. Couched in market transactions, it neither acknowledges the voice of the transactions’ beneficiaries nor gives philanthropists the satisfaction of mindful virtuous action. And caught in the mechanisms of the market, it obscures the fact that the market caused many of the problems that philanthropy seeks to redress."

To some extent, this is why I love the idea of going to Central Park and handing out cookies / lemonade. The point is not to actually give people anything material, but to enhance the feeling of connection and build a space in which to cultivate mindful selfless action. We are all just random people, yet we are all clearly not.

I meditated with my team at work today

2009-05-30T11:36:00.001-07:00

A Chinese parable: an old man set out to change the world. He found that he wasn’t making much progress, so he tried to change his country. This was also too difficult, so he tried to change his neighborhood. When he didn’t have success there, he tried to change his family. Even that was easier said than done, so he tried to change himself. Then an interesting thing happened. When he had changed himself, his family changed. And when his family changed, his neighborhood changed. When his neighborhood changed, his country changed. And when his country changed, the world changed.

CharityFocus retreat

2009-05-16T15:20:00.001-07:00

Last weekend was our yearly CharityFocus coordinators retreat. The people you see in the picture above are amazing teachers, I am blessed to be able to learn from them.

Wanted to share one element of the weekend that really resonated with me. We started the weekend going around in a circle sharing a moment of gratitude for the service of others in our lives. Everyone went around and gave beautiful anecdotes of how kind people had been to them in their life. If only all our weeks could start in such a way...

Listening to the Dalai Lama

2009-05-05T20:45:00.001-07:00

Today, Shephali and I were treated to an impromptu audience with the Dalai Lama (along with about 50 other folks) thanks to our wonderful friend Tashi.

His talk seemed totally extemporaneous and was about his gratitude to India for being such a wonderful host to his people over the past 50 years. A few of the interesting tidbits below.

He considers his mission in life two-fold: 1) espouse the values of compassionate, non-violent existence, and 2) advocate religious harmony through mutual respect. In both regards, he feels heavily influenced by values from Indian traditions (specifically, the concept of ahimsa, which he spoke on at length). In fact, he repeated referred to India as his 'guru' and and himself as a 'messenger.'

Towards the end he implored the group to actively engage in service work as a major key to help him on his mission. He ended with an interesting anecdote about the religious reciprocity between India and Tibet. Just as Buddha was from India, Lord Shiva (from the Hindu tradition) makes his home in Mount Kailash, which is located in Tibet. The two religions are quite interlinked.

The whole meeting was less than an hour long and seemed to fly by. It was awesome to hear him speak so lovingly of India.

My Favorite Karmatube videos

2009-04-26T13:05:00.001-07:00

Karmatube is my favorite inspirational video website (on an unrelated note, I help run it lol). It started as a wish to create a repository for inspirational video on the web, along with providing actions that a person could do right now if they were motivated by what they saw.

Over the course of the last couple years, the video list has ballooned to well over 300, and I thought I'd share my top 10 all-time favorites:

10) The one that started the website: The Free Hugs of Juan Mann. A guy starts hugging people in a town and makes the world smile.

9) Ever eaten at a restaurant with no bill? Seva Cafe does just that, with the twist being that your meal was paid for by someone before you, and you can pay this act of kindness forward however you wish.

8) What about me? This monk makes a compelling statement about a shift in internal perspective being a major cause of happiness - 'when you're happy, i'm happy'

7) How can investing in the monetarily poor be a better way to reduce poverty than donating? Watch Jacqueline Novogratz explain

6) The True Devotee is a favorite song of Gandhi and describes an example of a selfless individual (click link to view video)

5) I'm a total sap for heart-warming videos, and this one definitely qualifies. A young girl starts singing the national anthem... then freezes. Watch her experience what a 20,000 person safety net feels like

4) You've seen Jacqueline Novogratz change poverty through capitalism, now watch how Carrotmob uses similar principles to make it rain

3) One of the classics - Story of Stuff is a visual masterpiece taking the audience through the life cycle of consumables

2) Its all in your mind, watch the inside and watch the outside

And finally, my all-time favorite Karmatube video

1) Team Hoyt is quite possibly the biggest reminder of caring for your family that I've ever seen

So while that's it for now, here's hoping there's many more years of wonderful videos to add to the repository. On that note, how's about one for the road? ;)

Why individual change is our only hope

2009-04-03T14:01:00.001-07:00

I just watched this super interesting talk on TED about the future of war. The gentleman ended his talk by saying 'is it our machines that are are wired for war, or is it us?' Being who I am, I started reflecting on how this is related to service work :)

We already know that the pace of our collective existence is quickening. Computing power is doubling every year, and is slated to be 1 BILLION times more powerful than now in only 25 years. Even the pace of our biological evolution is speeding up to 100 times historical levels!

What does this all mean??? I've heard everything from the end of aging to virtual reality existence to space colonization. Here's the implicit meaning I take from it: leverage. Each human being on average is continually able to do more, of anything, as time goes on. Not only that, but the amount of the increase is constantly increasing. We're getting faster at a faster rate.

Well, this is great for building bridges, connecting people, and acquiring knowledge, but what happens when the motive is destruction? There will be a time, in the not so distant future, that a regular person will have in their power the ability to annihilate millions - for the cost of a big screen. Everyone will have their own personal 'little red button,' for lack of a better term. Regulation can step in to some extent, but look around - we have a hard enough time regulating NOW, much less when it will be ONE BILLION times harder.

If regulation won't work than what will? To me, the answer is individual change. I have to change. That anger that wells up inside when someone cuts me off on the road? That's gotta go. That visceral reaction that occurs when my ego is bruised? Need to ditch it. Time to replace that with a stronger connection to all the people that come into my life and a deeper understanding of why those feelings arise in the first place. This grassroots shift is our only hope, this so-called 'shift of consciousness', to slowly lead to the conditions required to keep US from killing OURSELVES. I can't force anyone else to do it, I can't regulate it. I can only start on the path myself and see what happens...

Defining 'Service'

2009-03-21T22:10:00.001-07:00

I don't know why i'm pontificating so much more recently, but was thinking about the concept of service recently. I got the feeling that there isn't a common definition for what it is, so using this space as away to define what it means to me.

Two years ago George Bush told us that the best way to serve our country was to 'go shopping more.' In fact, our entire economy is built upon the idea that acting in our own best interest is the easiest and best way to act for the good of all. After all, buying trinkets helps the person selling it to you to maintain a livelihood. I'm starting to understand why I have such a viscerally negative reaction upon hearing this.

I feel that the intention to provide value to another as primary driver of action is a prerequisite of service. Greed, contrary to what Gordon Gekko may say, is not good. This is so partially because of the cultural shift that occurs when a person stops thinking about everything in terms of narrow self-interest (although economists would inevitably disagree and reframe the very desire to be altruistic as masked self-interest). I've been taught that this way of looking at things is called 'other-orientation' or 'enlightened self-interest' (instead of 'self-orientation'). In addition, behavioral economics says that our self-interest tends to be short-sighted (and non-rational in general) and so acting in that manner tends to create huge problems over the long haul (e.g. financial crisis, air/water/food quality, drug scares, etc).

The world is filled with people who will say that self-interest is the only way to keep people from being lazy. I urge them to meet the folks tirelessly and anonymously working all over the world to bring better lives to people left behind by this system. Other-orientation is a more powerful motivator than greed could ever be.

In this sense, going shopping can be an act of service to your nation, but it also may not. Did my purchase help some dude buy a bigger yacht? Perhaps it helped an oil baron continue to finance his pet projects? Or maybe my purchase helped children get more access to books? Intention counts. Consumption in a vacuum is not service.

And this brings me to my point: I feel that service is the mixture of the intention to be other-oriented combined with the desire to understand how best to be other-oriented. It is a mindset, and it can exist at any time. While buying food at the grocery store, while selling your services at the workplace, or while having a conversation at Starbucks.

I am of course ridiculously far from this ideal, but having the intention when i wake up every day is something that I think is valuable in itself.

Why I use Smile Cards

2009-03-16T14:02:00.001-07:00

Over the last couple years, I've really become a big proponent of Smile Cards, which are basically cards that track pay-it-forward acts of kindness.

They are wonderful in ways I cannot count. Small, simple, humble, yet powerful. They create ripples so that one act of kindness may or may not be the end of the chain. But for all these reasons, the main reason why I use them is the subtle change in the way I think that has begun to occur.

About a year ago I was riding in a plane reading a wonderful book my friend had given me. As our flight landed I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was an elderly gentleman who asked for my thoughts on the book. Turned out he had heard about it and as curious to read it. I gave him my thoughts (as I found the book to be quite interesting), but then a thought entered my mind. Why not just GIVE him the book??? I was mostly done with it anyways, and at the time it wasn't even available in the US. With that, I handed the book over. Of course, he refused, but I made my best case. After a bit of back and forth, the man accepted the book with tears in his eyes. He told me he had a hard time understanding why I should do such a thing, but that he'd pay-it-forward somehow.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, this story means nothing. I mean, it's me handing a book to someone else. Anyone can do it. BUT... that thought, the 'why not just give him the book?' thought, was very new to me. For the past few months prior, I had been walking around with Smile Cards in my wallet. What initially started as some nice cards to talk about at parties turned into a pile of kind acts that I HAD to unload. And slowly, my mind started shifting. Instead of looking at how I could manipulate situations to my benefit, my mind was always busy trying to think of ways I could make someone's day better. The cards were an excuse to be a better person! The very attempt to be better started shifting my mind. All this leads me back to the day I handed over the book to the stranger. It was awesome BECAUSE it was ordinary. I had experienced a moment where I wanted to give out of habit, almost because that's the only way I knew how to handle that situation. And the most amazing part? After I handed him the book, the person jumping around and giddy for the rest of the day was ME.

Of course you don't NEED Smile Cards to start the shift in mindset to other-orientation, but its another tool to help in the process, and it's been very helpful to me...

Why YOU should join Net Impact

2009-02-23T15:56:00.001-08:00

I first heard of Net Impact while in business school. The organization attempts to connect folks that want to use business to improve the world. It is composed primarily of folks with advanced degrees and hold full-time jobs in industry.

The New York chapter of Net Impact (full disclosure: I'm on the steering committee) has a blog that's really informative in terms of information related to the relevant sectors and opportunities to get involved.

If you have a college degree and want to use your education to serve the community and connect with folks that want to do the same, I would highly recommend Net Impact.

Pics from Karma Kitchen DC opening

2009-02-20T20:17:00.001-08:00

More pics here :)

Karma Kitchen opens up in DC!

2009-02-17T17:34:00.001-08:00

Imagine a restaurant where there are no prices on the menu and where the check reads $0.00 with only this footnote: "Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. We hope you will pay-it-forward however you wish."

That's the tagline for Karma Kitchen, a concept that's been around for quite a while, but is being slowly repopularized by the gift economy culture. Modeled after Karma Kitchen Berkeley, the one in DC is located in the heart of the city, and the opening weekend was a smash. Shephali and I took the bus down to help with the festivities, and as usual, we received more than we could possibly give.

I'm sure the CF blog will have something amazing up on it shortly, but from a personal perspective, it was quite a moving experience to turn a restaurant experience into a family experience.
Many wonderful stories came out from the day, and we heard of multiple instances where people needed a couple reiterations to follow the concept. The Kindness Table was overflowing with gifted items and the day ended with even more items anonymously gifted to future guests.

The night before the opening, a group of us were sitting around thinking about the spirit of KarmaKitchen, and I started thinking about how it broke down traditional economics, which is based on trade-offs. When we operate in the gift-economy, we are effectively cutting the cord connecting happiness and personal gain. Here's an example: if i volunteer at KarmaKitchen it would be a 4 hour activity. an economist would look at this activity as a trade-off, that is, that I am doing this because this provides me more personal gain than any other activity i could do at that time. Furthermore, if there was an option that was more compelling as far as personal return, I would do it. So if the day I volunteered I had another opportunity that enabled me to make $1M, I would ditch Karma Kitchen and pocket the cash.

However, the very act of volunteering at Karma Kitchen infuses the individual with other-orientation - we are not there for ourselves, or i should say we are trying to redefine 'self' to include more than our bodies/minds. if volunteering teaches me to think less about how others can give to me and more about how i can give to others, that economic pricepoint at which i can be 'bought' to do something else, rises and rises and rises, until my thought is eventually, it cannot be done. I look at Viral and Pavi, the founders of Karma Kitchen. I don't think there is any amount of personal gain that would keep them from serving on Sundays. They have effectively cut the cord as there is no amount of gain, monetary or otherwise, that would keep them from serving.

While I am still in the early stages of the cord-cutting process, I'm so grateful that spaces like Karma Kitchen exist to provide both guests and volunteers with constant opportunities to decouple personal gain and happiness..

Life at Manav Sadhna

2009-01-04T09:56:00.001-08:00

This holiday season I had the good fortune of volunteering with Manav Sadhna, a non-profit serving the needs of a massive slum (>150K people) right outside the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India.

The people that work there everyday are basically the most inspiring people i've ever met. love and compassion flow on another level, and they provide family for the kids that have none. My time there was cursory at best, but even in that I was able to help open up a school for blind children from the Tekro (which is the name of the slum). There was a celebration with about 700 kids capped by some volunteers leading everyone to sing 'jingle bells' :)

The next day everyone left to spend some time at a center for people with leprosy. Amazing, inspiring, Mother Teresa-type work.

I also had the opportunity to wash dishes and brainstorm with Seva Cafe, another Manav Sadhna spinoff. What was most inspiring was how well done the operation was. The team was perfect in their execution, and it's a tribute to Sandeep, who runs the show there :) Hopefully looking forward to helping introduce some healthier fare there soon!

On new years eve, I was able to take part in the yearly 'compassion walk', where we made hundreds of sandwiches and then walked to 6 major places of worship (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc) handing out the food to whoever looked hungry. We ended the night at Ram Roti, which is the local soup kitchen, and handed out some prepared food there as well as ate some dinner :)

Aside from all this was the learning experience of what Manav Sadhna does. There was the community center built from the ground up using the most innovative of methods, there was the dozens of experimental toilet designs used to bring sanitation to millions of people who had none, there was the sustainability-minded construction of ESI, a building that would give anything built by Bill McDonough a run for its money, and there was Gramshree, the store that sold beautiful artwork created by women from the Tekro freeing them from rag-picking. And at the center of it all is Jayesh bhai Patel and Viren bhai Joshi, who words cannot describe.

Here is Jayesh bhai congratulating every child for finishing their meal. Grassroots change indeed.

more pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/b.pandya/IndiaChristmas2008#

Introducing Smile Decks!

2008-12-16T21:43:00.001-08:00

Originally written by Nipun on the CharityFocus blog:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2003

Early last year, four of us huddled around the kitchen counter of CF's Intergalactic Headquarters. Whether it was Adam's hour on the NYC streets of New York or it was Birju and Shephali's lemonade in Central Park, the spirit of the radical kindness was very much in the air. Somehow, the conversation veered towards an idea that Andrew and I had talked about at a stop-over in Seattle -- "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a deck of cards, each with its own unique idea?" "Yeah, then small groups could come together and everyone could just pick a card and step up the kindness." "Or people could pick up a new card everyday and keep their generosity muscles in shape."

Hearing that idea, Adam, Shephali and Birju stepped it up a couple notches. Now, each suit would be its own theme -- kindness towards yourself, for people you know, for strangers, and for our world. Not only that, the ideas would get harder as you progressed towards the Ace. And of course, we had to have the two wild-card jokers too!

After a whole lot of brainstorming, the original designer of the Smile Card (Michael-superstar-Chang), whipped up a seriously cool deck. In October, we had the first printed deck in our hands!

Since the deck is $5 each, it is unclear exactly how we will sustain this experiment ... but that's never stopped us before either. :) After distributing more than a 100 decks in grassroot ways, we've already received lots of word-of-mouth requests and had to setup an underground page to receive orders! Let's see what happens next. :)

If you're curious about what ideas made the initial cut (some changes might be coming), here they are:

For People You Know
For Strangers
For Our World
For Yourself

Do the dishes...unasked!
Pay for the person behind you in line
Get lifelong bulbs for your house and another's house
Practice absolute silence for 15 minutes and just "be"

Vacuum the house
Give 3 people a hug for no reason
Give away reusable shopping bags
Smile! And say hello to 10 strangers

Help a family member with a chore unexpectedly
Lend an ear to a stranger for one hour
Clean up litter on your block
Give away one of your possessions RIGHT NOW

Take 10 minutes to write a song, poem, or note for a loved one
Tell a public service employee how valuable they are
Hug a tree in public, inspire another to do the same
Leave flowers on a stranger's doorstep and run

Express your gratitude - do a special dance for someone
Give a stranger a candy bar
Shut down unnecessary electricity use
Give away something important to you

Make a bagged lunch for a family member and slip a joke in it
Leave cookies in a public place, ask people to pay-it-forward!
Send a thank you card to a green business
Offer an inspiring reading to someone in the room

Give a favorite inspirational book of yours to a friend
Drop quarters in a laundry machine for the next person
Make and post signs for green ideas
Post a list of random kind acts in a public place

Leave chocolate on a co-workers desk
Play the role of doorman for 30 minutes
Tell someone you love them and why
Pay for a stranger's meal anonymously

Write positive notes about your whole family and leave them around the house
Create a "Take a penny, leave a penny" tray for a local store
Plant something in the ground that can grow :)
Learn a statement of gratitude in another language and share it

Share a couple inspirational stories from today's news
Call out 3 acts of kindness by others and thank them
Give a houseplant as a gift
High five 5 people

Use crayons to draw a picture for someone's refrigerator
Sing a cheerful song to a stranger walking on the street
Go to the nearest park and clean up as much as you can
Wear a red clown nose and "be" for 15 minutes

Write a thank you note to one of your teachers
Have an inspiring quote as your voicemail message for a week
Call an animal shelter and donate one item they need
Play sports with strangers in the park

Help a friend get over a fear
Pick a stranger, make him/her smile at any cost
Make a birdbath and place it on your windowsill
Make up a new word about kindness and spread it

If you have other ideas to add in the mix, please do leave a comment here and we'd love to brainstorm it before our next printing.

Work stories

2008-11-08T09:41:00.001-08:00

As my life is mostly work with intermittent splices of life :) thought i'd share some tidbits.

-I have so far had an 'anti-consulting' experience in that the majority of my work not only doesn't have me traveling, but i'm even closer to home than if i had just gone to the office! the benefits of living in midtown :)

-Contrary to what some may say, McKinsey is filled with people that want to do service in the world. There's an active social sector practice (for which i've been working in some capacity for a while) and plenty of extra-curricular ops (for example, we just had a day to bring awareness to climate change issues and had dozens and dozens of consultants take part).

-We're usually at our client location most of the week, but on Friday's we're in the office. On these days I like to go to random floors, find a desk that is temporarily unoccupied, and drop a candy bar and smile card. :)

'Another kind of bailout plan'

2008-11-08T09:28:00.001-08:00

Shephali writes amazingly:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=1960

My first 10K run!

2008-10-02T20:09:00.001-07:00

After coming home from work i got on the treadmill and knocked out my first 10K run ever! Treadmill definitely not the same as concrete/asphalt (although I ran at 1% incline to compensate), but I'm just glad i could do it. Time was 52:39, which I guess is about average. Now to try and build on this :)

New Apartment!

2008-09-20T15:09:00.001-07:00

I've been spending the last couple weeks moving into my new place on 33rd and 8th. I'm caddy corner from Madison Square Garden. Again, not the best neighborhood and it's basically tourist central, but it's the best apartment i've ever been in as far as amenities, and the view from my room and the roof is amazing!

Downtown on the left and the statue of liberty on the right

Madison Square Garden on the bottom-left

Tried a new experiment with Smile days in Central Park last week. We've normally done these days as a way to connect with people anonymously and provide ourselves in the open spirit of offering. This time, in addition to that, we added what we called the 'generosi-tree' (which was really more like a monster-looking thing because the artsies aren't so much happening). In addition to offering ourselves and some food with smile cards, there were sights and sounds in the form of an acoustic guitar player and massages in sidewalk chalk. But the centerpiece was Shephali's great idea, the generosi-tree. It's basically a large bulletin board filled with post-it notes on 2 things:
-kindness/service ideas that anyone can do (in 4 categories: for your family/friends, for yourself, for people you don't know, for the world)
-inspiring quotes about kindness

The number of people that stopped by was amazing. Even when it started raining, people would stop and spend time reading the ENTIRE board! Then they take one or two along with the smile card and move on. Among the wonderful ideas taken:
-A gentleman came by and plucked "Clean up litter on your block"
-A woman who wanted to cheer up her friend chose "Write a poem for a friend"
-A four year old girl picked one that read "Hug three people for no reason"
-A teenager with broken english who was visiting from France took a quote: "Be the change that you wish to see in the world - Gandhi"

It was as though everyone left with a method to use the Smile card they just received. Looking forward to hopefully doing this a few more times before it gets too cold.

...and sometimes you lose

2008-08-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

Another fun day at the office.

This afternoon a couple of my teammembers mentioned that they were hungry. Well before they know it they return from a break and there are a couple Clif Bars on their desks with SmileCards. They are amused and obviously know who did it. One group member took a bite of the bar, took a look at the card, looks at me, and says 'Oh, because you think you did something nice.' *chuckle followed by patronizing look*

d'oh

but as long as the intentions are good from my end i'm cool with it :)

The art of making a powerpoint slide

2008-08-18T20:14:00.001-07:00

and it is an art. i had no idea, but there's so many components to it, and if it's the only output you have in your profession, you're pretty much going to go to extreme lengths to make sure it's as beautiful as possible.

There has been books written on the subject, so no boring details on the matter, just a short story ;)

So in addition to charts and diagrams and tables and all that other fun stuff, we actually put content on our slides (occasionally). well, we actually start with something that could be termed more of a skeleton and then over time 'flesh it out.' This process (as i now know) is referred to as giving something 'more color.'

When I was first learning about these terms and nuances, one of my guides called me over and told me my slide had good content, flowed pretty well, and was aesthetically pleasing, but needed 'more color.' So i headed back to my seat and spent the next hour banging out verbiage so that I could provide more detail. After looking over the new version, i'm told that i sound too 'consultanty' and need to pull back on the flowery language. Next time i'm asked for 'more color', i think i'll just print the slide out and go to town with my crayolas ;)

On an unrelated note, wanted to point you a recent Karmatube video highlighting a friend of a friend, Robert Eggers, who lives the work we got to try out for a bit when we blogged about serving on the streets...

...then you win

2008-07-28T18:26:00.003-07:00

There's an old saying by Mahatma Gandhi:

'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.'

I had an experience these last several weeks reminded me of this quote. Since the start of my consulting work experience, I've had several folks tell me that I should wait a bit before 'being myself', which I took to mean laying off the hugs/meditation/smile cards/irreverence. however, i've been exceedingly poor at executing that request.

This last engagement I was on lasted 3 weeks. It was really intense, which basically means 8am-midnight (at least) happens often. Consequently, I got to know my team-members pretty well since we were pretty much locked in 1 room the entire time.

Well, I have this habit of taking a moment of silence before meals, and since every single meal was with my team, they happened to be there during this time. Initially, what I was doing was ignored completely. It was as if I wasn't there, and they simply began eating.

After 4 or 5 days of this, the snickers started. I would open my eyes and see someone putting bunny ears over my head and another laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. I just kept silent, flashed a smile and moved on.

These types of jokes lasted a couple more days before one afternoon after silence for lunch I opened my eyes and was met with a pointed question: do you think what you're doing does any good? The rest of the guys started trying to breakdown the reasoning for why I sat in silence prior to meals. Are you doing it for religion? You know nobody is happier for you sitting there quietly, right? Don't you think you're wasting time just sitting there? what exactly are you doing? I responded to everything, one by one.

The next day, the questions continued, as did the day after that, but the following week, on the monday of the last week of the engagement, I opened my eyes after dinner to find the table silent and everyone with their eyes closed. During the course of this last week, we all engaged in conversation about the nature of the mind, we meditated during the course of the workday, and the last day I read a chapter from the 'Tao Te Ching' prior to our dinner. As I left the workplace on the last day of the engagement, there were hugs all around as we all expressed gratefulness for the opportunity to connect through this experience. The job got done, and got done well, but the experience was not limited to just that.

Live your values and folks respond, who knew?

Pictures of beaches

2008-07-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

I spent this last weekend in the Caymans, awesome beaches they have there! thought i'd post a couple pictures :)

Lessons from NYC cookie monsters

2008-07-28T18:24:00.001-07:00

Shephali wrote an awesome entry on the CharityFocus blog about some of the summer exploits in central park, thought I'd link to it as I thought there were really valuable points there:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=1887#more

The chocolate cake

2008-07-18T21:19:00.001-07:00

Today at work we had a chocolate tasting in the evening hours. They even had a person there that apparently taught a lesson in chocolate-tasting (apparently chocolate-tasting is a fine art much like wine-tasting).

Anyways, since i couldn't really stay, and it was partly in my honor as my birthday is coming up, they let me take a bunch of cake/chocolate/truffles back to my desk. cool stuff, most definitely, but by the time i was done working i figured there might be other folks more interested in the cake than i ;)

When I got to the bottom floor of my building I saw about a dozen psuedo-homeless folks playing chess together. I found an adjacent unattended table, dropped the stash (with a smile card of course), and took off!

Tomorrow a bunch of us are heading back to central park to hand out cookies and smiles in central park again. i wish tasty tags to all!

Service in the Streets

2008-06-29T16:14:00.001-07:00

This past weekend a small group of friends in manhattan decided to try sharing smiles by providing food to the homeless. It all starting with one member of our group noticing that there are so many restaurants in the city that have excess food left over after doing business and simply end up throwing it away. The thought was to get a few restaurants to agree to giving us the excess food and allowing us to give it to those that could use it.

The process turned out to be not that easy. Apparently there are laws in place preventing this type of work from happening. Because it is hard to manage the quality of food when it leaves restaurant premises, the city does not allow this type of service because they worry about someone getting sick from the food and suing the city or the restaurants.

Not to be deterred, one of our group-members somehow convinced a couple local restaurants to go against the grain in the name of service, and Saturday afternoon we were near the homeless shelter in midtown doing our best to hand out the gifts we received.

By the numbers, we gave out something in the neighborhood of 100 meals, but the process and the feeling associated with it was much different than our previous exploits with lemonade or cookies. It got us all thinking afterward.

The reactions ran the gamut. Some folks came out of shops and repeatedly said 'this is amazing, god bless you.' The first gentleman that we connected with actually just started crying, as we tried to connect with him as a person instead of creating a transaction. We were trying to not just come to bring food, but to help satiate the part of a person that is beyond food. We wanted to connect. We quickly found out that it just isn't that easy. One guy was trying to grab up as much as he could. When we asked him to share for the good of the whole, his exasperated response was 'I'm hungry… I see what you're doing, but I'M HUNGRY.' And so it was.

There was a desperation in the air, and it quickly went from an attempt to connect with new friends to an operation to efficiently dole out food as quickly as possible. When it was over, we were all left wondering why it felt so different compared to our experiences in central park, if all the smile cards that were handed out actually hit home at all, and if the process was simply a 'drop in the ocean.' Open-ended questions of course.

As for myself, while I certainly felt like the help we gave was relatively miniscule, I also think that there were a few folks that were less hungry because of it and that is good. Also, I think the internal process is really important here. The more I keep trying my best to give, the more I find opportunities to give. This was small in the big scheme of things. So what. Who knows where the ripples will go…

What's it like to work in management consulting?

2008-06-29T16:04:00.001-07:00

I was looking through some blogs of folks that have worked at McKinsey and wanted to share this link as a great synopsis of the life of a management consultant:

http://www.highflyingladies.com/2011/08/hello-world/

Angie goes over pretty much everything, my specific experiences have been fun to far but to speak on it more would probably only be something to be done after walking away from it and having time to digest what happened.

Smile Cards at work

2008-06-22T21:25:00.001-07:00

I've been working at my job with the consulting firm for a couple months now and have been experimenting with tagging at the workplace. I'm still being a bit cautious about it, but with all the traveling I'm doing it makes for fun opportunities to do it all over the place.

A couple of examples stick in my head and perhaps might make good opportunities for others. One, several times I'm standing in the lunchline and after paying for my meal I just give an extra bill, drop the smile card in the cashiers hand, and ask if she can give the card to someone after me in line who looks like they could use a pick-me-up. I usually get quizzical looks, but inevitably they get excited about it, and nobody really knows who's doing it. Good stuff. Second, I try and keep my ears open for things that people could really use. Little things, like some water or a snack or some medicine because folks don't have time to get it themselves, and I use my breaks to get it (assuming its in the building, if not, then i get it over the evening). Then, the trick is getting it to them with the smile card without them knowing it was me. more fun :)

Aside from that, have been back to the summer of smiles. Last year, we had a summer of lemonade, this year I think we'll be branching out to a multitude of ideas. We already have done a run of lemonade and another of cookies, but next week we're going to try taking excess food from restaurants and distributing to local homeless. decentralized, distributed, small, that's the mantra. If people look at it and say 'that's amazing!', it tells me that we're not small enough :)

Otherwise, the work itself is going well. I'm learning how to problem solve and use techniques to systematically approach situations I'm presented with and break them down. It's been enlightening, albeit very tiring and humbling.

It's also very hot now. i don't like the stickies. but it rained today and reminded me of the old monsoons i used to witness in arizona for so many years. nothing to flash flood to nothing in 30 minutes. hope we get more this summer, and the dirt keeps that fresh rain smell :)

Started Work

2008-05-17T12:29:00.001-07:00

I started working at the consulting firm almost a month ago now. It's fun so far. REALLY smart people, but even more is that there's lots of people that want to use their skills to help in whatever way they know how. As usual, I'm humbled. I always feel like it's some sort of mistake that I am where I am, and this feels the same. I think I'm still that 15 yr old kid whose voice broke every other sentence...and not just because my voice still breaks ;) ... I dropped 4 smile cards this week! it's the little things :)

otherwise, Nipun came last weekend. we setup a 40 person meditation last sunday pretty much on the fly. it was awesome, right in the middle of midtown, and totally decentralized. we weekend was totally fun too since i got to tag along with Nipun on some of the meetings that were going on. Also went to the midtown showing of Pangea Day which was super fun.

Otherwise, have been spending time trying to be here now. mostly failing. it's all good though...

Hosting a Nobel Peace Prize nominee

2008-04-21T17:29:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday the meditation group that Jenny, Shephali and I started about a year ago hosted a guest visitor who is truly inspiring. He is called the Gandhi of Sri Lanka and leads one of the largest non-violent movements in the world.

Jenny wrote a beautiful blog entry on the CharityFocus blog here, and if you would like to see a short video on him from Karmatube check it out here.

Back in the City

2008-04-17T09:56:00.001-07:00

Hi! Got back in to nyc a couple weeks back for a school reunion, been here since. last night went to a movie premiere for good friend Silas and his film "Release." Powerful stuff. Check out his production company at www.smoothfeather.com.

Here's a couple quick shots of the view from the current apartment and gym:

pretty wild

will probably blog a lot less with this new job coming up. partially because i expect to be working a whole bunch, partially because when i will have free time, i won't know much about anything except work (which i am of course not allowed to talk about). laters

The Man Who Would Cheat Death

2008-03-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

Ray Kurzweil is one of the more interesting people i've ever become familiar with. He's got a portfolio of careers and is pretty hard to classify, but definitely a "futurist," someone seen as an authority on technology's impact on the future. And he's been right in the past, to the tune of getting very rich from his predictions.

His next prediction is that human intelligence will be surpassed by machines, and that this will happen in our lifetime (20-30 years). I actually agree with him.

Here's an article on him in this months' Wired, absolutely FASCINATING.

Also, here's a talk that he gave at the famous TED conference on accelerating technology.

Lessons Learned from a Whirlwind Experience

2008-03-05T22:30:00.001-08:00

After several months working on-site =) at CharityFocus, i'm back in phoenix visiting my family. The last couple weeks have been filled with service activities for all sorts of cool folks and ended with the yearly CharityFocus tiger team meeting. That's basically code for the yearly state-of-the-organization gathering. It ends up being a platform for all things gift-economy. 50 folks gathered in a monastery to share insights from the past year and thought of new paths to express service, including a potential gift-economy wellness center in LA called 'community sweat!'

I'm so very thankful to have had this time. lots of thoughts on what I learned/can take back with me:

-being the change changes the being. need to stop looking outside myself for change.

-every moment is an opportunity to learn about oneself.

-beauty is in small things. think globally, act locally.

-meetings are better with 2 minutes of silence to start. folks can wait, and end up more efficient anyways with the sound start.

-wisdom/change doesn't come from things (books, money, food, etc) as much as people changing their perspective.

-introspection/mindfulness is absolutely necessary for any sort of selfless action.

-there's TONS of good people in this world.

i'll be in phx for the rest of the month, then nyc for next job, at which point i'll probably write less since my life will be consumed by work and the work is probably not sharable :P

Smile! You've just been tagged with kindness =)

2008-02-24T17:50:00.001-08:00

My friend Pavi calls me yesterday while I'm in the grocery store.

"Hey Birju, are you in Berkeley?"

"yeah"

"Close to Taste of the Himalayas?"

"about 2 miles. why?"

"I need you to tag someone right now!"

Her surrogate grandparents were visiting from Michigan and wanted to eat at the restaurant Karma Kitchen was running out of, even if they weren't staying long enough to actually experience Karma Kitchen. Well, when Pavi heard this, she wanted them to experience the generosity of Karma Kitchen. As soon as they left, she started calling people she knew around Berkeley. I was called last and by accident, but through some stroke of luck I happened to be somewhat close.

As soon as I heard about the opportunity to serve, I wasn't going to let it go. I immediately dropped the carrots and asparagus I was carrying, ran out, and started on the 2 mile trip to the restaurant.

I get there and spot the diners. Turns out it is 5 people, all at this upscale Indian restaurant, and they're pretty engaged in conversation so I'm pretty sure they don't see me (not that they would recognize me anyway since we'd never met). I see the restaurant manager, Rajen. He's a great guy (obviously, since he lets us run a gift-economy experiment from the premises every week!) and i thought I could let him know what was happening. He agrees to let me pay for their meal. I write a quick note to them wishing them a wonderful remainder of the day from an anonymous stranger, drop in a smile card, and take off.

They had no idea what had happened! Turns out, neither did I, as I left right away. Later I found out through Pavi that they were blown away =) awesome on so many levels.

It's like nobody can take credit for it, but a wonderful series of conditions presented themselves as an opportunity to make someone's day, and we decided to take the opportunity. just gotta keep looking for the opportunities!

True Life: I Work for CharityFocus

2008-02-14T15:15:00.001-08:00

It's hard to classify what exactly I'm doing here in the Bay Area. Nipun once called me a volunteer executive committee intern, so i've been going with that, but really the job is pretty catch all.

I was thinking about how i'd capture what I've been doing as a job description. So far, I'd say it was

-doing small acts of kindness

-looking to be of service to whoever it is that i meet in whatever way i can

-use my skillset (business, technology) to do 1 & 2, and build on new skillsets

-meditate and practice present moment awareness

Weird job description and yet it has resulted in the most fruitful experience of my life to date. I'd like to share what i've done this week, but the caveat is that it is not necessarily indicative of the work. When this week started, i didn't have much of an idea of what would come up, and yet without any planning plenty of good stuff has happened.

Monday started with a long meeting about our new project. This is part of a new rollout of what CharityFocus is doing to try and make it easier to help others in the world by connecting people who need help to people that are looking to provide help (no money exchanged of course). It's currently in development though, so going to take a bit to go forward. In the evening I head to Nipun's house to have a debrief of his trip to New York City (where he spoke to Columbia on generosity, sparked a movement, etc lol). And there was meditation.

Tuesday was about Karma Kitchen. We were trying to figure out how to proceed with the project, where to proceed, and specific logistics about it. In the evening I went down to Santa Clara to meet 2 wonderful folks and see how we could serve. Joe is from India and he had been selflessly serving for 40 years building sanitation systems in the poorest of villages in rural India as a leader of GramVikas. He has saved tens of thousands of lives and bettered the quality of life for countless people, and recently was deemed a Skoll Fellow (with a $1M offering). Dipti is from the US, but was so moved by GramVikas' work that she has been in India for the past several years building renewable energy systems for rural villages there. The vision is to leap entirely by the system of energy that we're in now. And there was meditation as well =)

Wednesday is meditation day. The evening is marked by 40ish people coming to meditate and share their thoughts. The day is spent shipping smile card orders and preparing food as service for the meditators. There's hundreds and hundreds of orders to be shipped every week, and as this operation runs lean (to say the least), we do it all ourselves. In addition to this, we met up with Andrew Hoppin on this day. Andrew is something akin to VP of Utopia for NASA. He is trying to create open communities for sharing information in that space and get people to learn from each other in ways that aerospace has never seen (and he's trying to add a bit of spirituality to it too).

So far today on Thursday I've been with Pavi and Viral, and we've been writing, trying to get some research for the next thought-of-the-week and doing more work for Karma Kitchen, which will hopefully be re-opening up soon (and perhaps have a HBS case study on it soon as well). and of course there will be meditation ;)

So on this Valentine's day, I want to share this poem (not written by me) and just be open to the good things in life.

one more thing. an old hindi song on this valentines day:

here's a translation i found on the internets:

(1)
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai,
ke jaise tujko banaya gaya hai mere liye.

SOMETIMES THE IDEA COMES TO MY HEART,
THAT YOU ARE MADE FOR ME

(2)
Tu ab se pehle sitaron mein bas rahi thi kahin,
tuje jamin pe bulya gaya he mere liye.

BEFORE THIS YOU WERE LIVING IN STARS SOMEWHERE ,
BUT YOU WERE CALLED ON EARTH FOR ME

(3)
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai,
ke ye badan ye nighanon meri amanat hai,

SOMETIMES THE IDEA COMES TO MY HEART,
THIS FLESH, THESE EYES ARE MY TREASURES.

(4)
Yeh geshuon ki ghani chhaon hai meri khatir,
ye hothon aur yeh bahen meri amanat hai.

THIS DENSE SHADE OF HAIR IS FOR ME,
THESE LIPS , THESE ARMS ARE MY TREASURES.

(5)
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai,
ke jaise bajti hai shenhaiyan si rahon mein,

SOMETIMES THE IDEA COMES TO MY HEART,
AS IF AN INSTRUMENT IS PLAYING IN THE WAY

(6)
Suhag raat hai ghoonghat utha raha hoon mein,
Simat rahi he tu sharma ke meri bahon mein.

ITS THE WEDDING NIGHT AND I AM REMOVING YOUR VEIL,
YOU ARE COMING TO MY ARMS BLUSHINGLY.

(7)
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai,
jaise tu muje chehagi umrabhar younhi.

SOMETIMES THE IDEA COMES TO MY HEART,
AS IF YOU WILL LOVE ME MY WHOLE LIFE LIKE THIS,

(8)
Utthegi meri taraf pyaar ki nazar younhi,
main janta hun ke tu gair magar younhi.
Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai,

AFFECTIONATE GLANCE WILL LOOK UP TO ME LIKE THIS,
I KNOW YOU ARE STRANGER BUT JUST LIKE THIS,
SOMETIMES THE IDEA COMES TO MY HEART.

peace

My first go on the catwalk

2008-02-13T16:26:00.001-08:00

Early last week my friend Mita asked me if I was interested in auditioning for this fashion show she was in. It sounded interesting, and i had no idea what it really entailed, so i was like 'sure!' Well, this set off a series of events that led to me doing a runway show of high-end fusion formal attire created by some designers i've never heard of but that apparently manufacture some really nice (read: expensive) clothes.

I showed up for the initial rehearsals and i sucked. i sucked at walking. i can't tell you enough how humiliating that is, to be told that you suck at walking. lol. after many hours of trying to get it right (and the choreographer yelling at me), i finally got to the point that i didn't embarrass myself. it was fun too, as far as new experiences are concerned.

Earlier in the week I had the opportunity to meet some really cool folks. The first was the CEO of Inferential Focus, a think-tank that basically sees things before they happen and helps their clients because of it (they saw the avian flu, housing boom, etc before it happened). He had this really cool idea about helping people and Nipun and I (mostly Nipun) took part in seeing how we could serve the process. He was a really cool guy and I was glad to have met him.

Also we had a meeting with Mark Finser, the chairman of the board at RSF Social Finance and general partner of TBL Capital. The guy is just awesome in all ways. He's given over $100M to folks running businesses geared to help the world and now switched over from offering debt to equity.

Its cool but weird. I've had the benefit of going to so many meetings since i've been here, but the meetings have no agendas. the idea is to be in each others presence and see what manifests when nobody comes at it from the point of 'i want.' its so refreshing to start a karmatube meeting with a 'check-in' where everyone talks about what's going on in their personal lives before we even say a word about WORK, and how we start and end karma kitchen meetings with a few minutes of introspective silence. it changes the dynamic of the entire interaction. all of a sudden, everyone is talking and thinking about 'how can i help you?' instead of the other way around, and it also doesn't really feel like 'work' anymore. its a joy to be a part of.

i have no idea what the next week will be like but i'm looking forward to catching Shaq's debut in purple and orange. would be nice for my team to win a title once every millenium. now that the red sox have won a couple titles, the phoenix suns are the most cursed franchise in american sport. maybe that ends this year?

Missing Peace Project

2008-02-05T20:25:00.001-08:00

Last night we went down to Palo Alto for a meeting with Darlene Markovich and Tenzin Tethong, among others. These folks are Chairman and Exec. Director of the Committee of 100. Their job is to call attention to the struggle in Tibet in a peaceful way (their members include Pierce Brosnan, Arun Gandhi, Coretta Scott King, Richard Gere, Desmond Tutu and Robert Thurman).

While there, we learned about the Missing Peace Project and were treated to a presentation by the only art therapist in the Federal Prison system. The Missing Peace Project was created to call attention to the core values espoused by the Dalai Lama using art. It resulted in an award-winning art exhibition that is currently touring the country (and drawing tens of thousands). Here's a couple of the art pieces:

If that wasn't awesome enough, the presentation was spectacular. We heard about the only prison that involves art therapy inside its walls. I can't share specifics, but the presentation showed slides of art created by the inmates and how they changed and embraced peace through the process. It was truly amazing, especially considering that every art piece came from the part of the prison for the mentally ill/criminally insane. Makes you think why this isn't incorporated in more places, jails as well as corporate America! Art builds community.

We're going to do an article on her on DailyGood pretty soon, so if you're not on there, get on there (it goes out to hundreds of thousands of folks)!!! One of the things she needs is pieces of fabric (as her budget doesn't allow for much latitude), and we'll call attention to how you can help with that if you wish. Also, if you're interested in related stories of prison reform, check out this film about mindfulness meditation being incorporated in jails, with stunning success. That's all for now...

The Gift of Gratitude and Concentrated Experience

2008-02-03T21:35:00.001-08:00

I'm writing this on a saturday night and trying to figure out how to coherently write about what happened just from wednesday until now. every day here contains about a month worth of experience. perhaps it could be called a spiritual mba, i don't know, but i feel like i have to get it down so i don't forget it. apologies for the long post.

there are people here doing amazing things in the space that i'm interested in: the confluence of business, technology, and spirituality.

alright, wish i could write a beautiful and touching narrative but will have to stick with brute force hard nosed chronology:

wednesday:

weekly wednesday meditation night. I meet a gentleman at the end of the night that's amazing. He is a serial entrepreneur currently the CEO of a tech company. Pretty young guy (maybe 5 years older than me), and he's just quit his job. he turned down millions of dollars. instead, he bought a ticket to thailand and will be meditating in some off the grid monastery for the forseeable future. hearing this guys story was inspiring, especially considering he didn't even quit because he hated what he did or he only did it for the money. he loves what he does, but he'd rather devote his precious time to introspection and service. amazing.

thursday:

this was a long day! into the early afternoon I had a charityfocus meeting with a friend in London. we're planning to build something really cool here in the near future and started working on plans for it.

after this a few friends headed to visit Professor Shariq at Stanford. This meeting was unbelievable. Professor Shariq is amazing, the guy has basically accomplished every form of material goal you could have, and now he's a program director for Stanford in a social entrepreneurship program that can only be described as spiritual (in my minds eye). He has discovered that the best way to create an effective leader (especially one that is socially conscious) is to make sure that the persons actions, words, and thoughts are aligned. of course, this is hard, each one of us lives a life of contradiction in many respects. so he patented an intense technique to allow the person in the hotseat to recognize that which they stand for deep in themselves. He calls it Real Time Venture Design Laboratory (ReVel). it is intensive. 10 hours of sitting in a room with experts who are there with nothing on their mind but service. however, i'm doing a horrible job of explaining it, so i may just leave it at that. however, i will say that what is happening here is the incubation of a practice that is going to change leadership, and i want to be more involved in it.

from there we head to another building at Stanford to see a talk given by Reverend Heng Sure. Gotta say, of all the 'monk and nun homies' that Nipun has introduced me to, i feel most connected to Heng Sure. He sang some songs about Buddha with his guitar and answered some very deep questions, including why celibacy is included as part of the buddhist path (as one continues along in the path, not at the start!) The question was asked by the director of religious studies at Stanford, and we had an interesting conversation after about the nature of desire. cool stuff.

Next we head to another room at Stanford where a class is hosting Nipun to come speak to them, as it is the anniversary of Gandhi's assassination. Nipun proceeds to deliver a one hour lecture with no preparation, and it is the most moving talk i have ever heard. he talks about the value of selfless service and how it can be implemented in our daily lives from the smallest level. He is bar none the best speaker I have ever seen. people were leaving with tears in their eyes and talking about how they needed to rethink their lives. Every day with this guy is a blessing...

From there we take a trip back to Berkeley with friend Hitesh. He shared with us his social entrepreneurship plan to help the downtrodden in developing worlds be able to compete (can't share much more than that), and we discuss ways to be of service.

that was one day. lol

Friday:

After lounging around in the morning, I spend the afternoon moving into my new apt in Berkeley.

The evening is spent in a dinner meeting with a veritable who's who of service all-stars, pretty much every one of them sub 30 years old. we talked about synergies between what we were doing and perhaps how we could serve together. the roster of accomplishments for these people was awesome:

-prof. srikumar rao, who runs a personal mastery course in various top schools all over the world and has been featured in Time magazine, NY Times, and Wall Street Journal.

-a stanford phd student who is using technology to help farmers in developing countries

-a berkeley phd student that is using wireless videoconferencing technology to bring medical attention to villages in developing nations

-a columbia mba that is running an online video website owned by a major media company

-a former dot-com entrepreneur

-a stanford mba student who had national acclaim starting a non-profit to help Argentina and also lived as a homeless person to get a feel of what it was like

-another berkely phd student using persuasive technology to get developing nations to adopt basic medical standards

and then there was Nipun, Guri, and I. what a trip this night was...

Saturday:

Had a long afternoon meeting about Karma Kitchen. We're hoping to get it up and running again shortly, and I plan to play a role in it while i'm here. It should be awesome!

Ended the evening by heading downtown with my friend Mita for a birthday party. SF is very hilly =)

I've been asked a few times 'why do this?' i mean, i just go around meeting people and learning about what they do and see if i can be of service in any way. you'd think that it'd be hard to get a real deep experience going this route. traditionally you'd be correct. however, when the connection you bring to the table is a spiritual one, something that is based on a shared experience of introspection, the amount you get out of every meeting is .... just more. This is why i'm so thankful to Nipun, who has been arranging a lot of this as part of CharityFocus. I just get to ride the high of this job. its nice being an intern/executive committee member of CharityFocus :P

to add to that, the broadening of perspective i've been lucky to experience as a result of this is worth its weight in gold. i mean, a lot of this stuff i didn't even know that people did at all prior to coming here. turns out not only do people do it, but they need help, and will take yours, especially if you offer it freely. i'm trying to think more and more about how to incorporate this element of life into my future consulting life. it would be nice to connect McKinsey to some of these people doing such great things and use the business sense to discover ways to get more people access to the solutions. still a ways off to do that though ;)

One thing I didn't mention is that through everything i've been doing here, we've been meditating 1 hour every day. its not much, but maintaining that has really been useful.

alright, time to sleep so i can get ready for another week of 'retirement' life! =)

Mindfulness Meditation in Oakland Public Schools

2008-01-24T23:23:00.001-08:00

Quick blog about yesterday. I spent the morning/afternoon with my friend Megan. We went to a local high school in the Oakland area where I watched her teach sessions of mindfulness to students. My job was to provide an extra set of eyes and see if there was anything that I could suggest. We had lunch afterwards with the program director. Lots of amazing things happened, students seem to really be impacted by this practice. Can't really elaborate further in a public context though.

In the afternoon, met up with a gentleman I'll call Hugh (for anonymity reasons). Amazing dude. Has been the CEO of multiple organizations, now in his 60's or 70's. He chooses to have no car and no cell phone and remains a fan of simplicity. He and his wife take daily walks, and about a decade ago he realized that there was a lot of change lying around on the ground. He started picking it up and giving whatever he found to the local food bank. When he met us he said he had found and donated THOUSANDS of dollars in this way. But that was just the start of it. Then he started telling us his stories. How even though he and his wife tried their best to remain anonymous, somehow people found out what they were up to, and on many occasions even homeless people were moved to give spare change in the hopes of helping others. generosity at its purest. he wanted to see if it was possible to get the word out about doing this to others and have more folks donate in this way to good causes.

The evening ended with the weekly Wednesday meditation in Santa Clara. The thought of the week was on blessings. Seems like all I've done in 2008 so far is receive blessings. I can't tell you how much gratitude I have. Sometimes i just spontaneously tear up for no particular reason other than gratitude. Tomorrow I have a karmatube meeting and more chances to connect with folks that are being the change they wish to see in the world. Life is good. Onward.

Living in Berkeley

2008-01-22T16:06:00.001-08:00

Since I got back from my time in heavy meditation, I've been in Berkeley hanging out with Adam and Shephali from new york (who have since gone back to the city - and i miss them a lot) and the entity that is CharityFocus. I'll be here working most heavily with them throughout this period and so I've found an apartment here in Berkeley where the founder and my good friend Nipun Mehta lives with his wonderful wife Guri.

Last Wednesday I was again a part of the long-running CharityFocus Wednesday. There was a gathering of 40+ people who had come to meditate together, share wisdom, and eat in silence. The 'Thought-of-the-Week' from which we shared posed the question 'Why do you meditate?' What a great opportunity for me to hear so many varying reasons from people who had started meditating a week ago all the way to actual monks. And I haven't even yet mentioned the food! Totally amazing tasting and given from the heart. All of this is provided by the hosts in a 'gift-economy' fashion. No money/business cards/etc has ever exchanged hands in over the decade that this has been run, and it has been attended by monks, nuns, world leaders and some of the most financially wealthy people in the world. The hosts provide with no expectations of receiving (even though they are not independently wealthy by any means). I am blessed every time I get to attend one of these gatherings.

The next day, we met with the co-founders of Zicasso, an online travel planning website. Brian and Yuchun (alumni of MIT Sloan and Wharton, respectively) started the company wanting to make it easier to plan international trips while going through local trip providers, thus making is simultaneously cheaper and boosting the local economy. Their network of relationships takes the guesswork and fear out of the process. The worldwide release will occur shortly, but take a look now for a sneak peek!

That same evening, we met with Jean Yao, a wonderful woman, graphic designer of many things in CharityFocus, and who has spent 30 minutes in private audience with the Dalai Lama! I peppered her with questions as to what that experience was like and what was learned from it. It was awesome.

The next day we (Adam, Shephali, and I) had lunch with a college professor of education and consciousness (Mali) and my friend Megan, who is a former Buddhist nun and currently is one of the leaders in bringing meditation to schools (here's an article about the effort from the NY Times).

After this we headed to meet Emmanuel Lee, the founder of GlobalOnenessProject. There was a bunch of brainstorming and wild performances by Adam, but can't go in to much more depth here. Keep an eye out for these guys though, their video content is some of the best and most uplifting in the world.

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, we first went to the Buddhist Monestary and met with the Abbott monk Rev. Heng Sure. This is a man that did not lie down for 25 years and maintained a vow of silence for 6 years. His bowing pilgrimage is the stuff of legend. Just happy to be in the same room ;)

The rest of the evening was spent at a dinner with guests who were involved in various yogic activities, including one gentleman, Jonathan, who had spent 35 days in zen meditation and had done a 4 day 'vision quest' (no food, constant meditation, enclosed in small circle in open space) in the middle of death valley. crazy!

Saturday we go straight to visit and learn from Prasad Kaipa. He is an IIT ph.d. physicist turned Apple Computer fellow turned college professor turned CEO coach. We spent the afternoon together and he told us about how to 'ignite the genius within' ;)

Since then I've hung out with great friends Pavi (the link is to the best poem i've ever read), Viral, and Ragu before coming back here to Berkeley, and have also been working on some top secret CharityFocus stuff. Will keep that under wraps until the time is right ;)

My Life As A Monk (with Fiona Apple lol)

2008-01-15T12:20:00.001-08:00

Annicha! Annicha! Annicha!

The powerful words of my sensei still ring in my ears. It is the Pali word for impermanent/changing. I'm still reverberating from the sound.

I just got back from one of the most intense experiences of my life. I rung in the new year of 2008 by trekking to the woods in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains in central California for an intensive meditation experience. I went with my friends Nipun, Paul, Shephali, and Adam. From then until now I subjected myself to living as a meditation monk. I would not be exaggerating by saying this has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life.

The concept of the experience is to cut down sensory stimulus to a relatively extreme point and then to intensely focus on present moment experience. The idea is to sharpen the mind through the process to be able to be more acutely aware of present moment and experientially recognize the impermanence of all phenomenon.

The rules and regulations were very constricting:

-noble precepts: no killing (vegetarian/vegan food only), stealing, sexual activity, lying, or intoxicants (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, etc)

-noble silence: Noble Silence means silence of body, speech, and mind. Any form of communication with anyone, whether by gestures, sign language, written notes, etc., is prohibited

-contact: complete segregation of men and women, no physical contact of anyone (male or female) during your time there)

-food: 2 meals, 6:30am breakfast, 11am lunch. that's it.

-outside contact: no contact of any sort, including laptops, cell phones, letters, visitors.

-entertainment: no music or instruments, no reading/books, no writing, no laptops.

when you cut out this much stuff, basically all you are left with is sleep and meditation, and this is what happened. You turn in all of your personal items: cellphone, wallet, keys, books, writing materials, medication, electronical items. I had nothing for the entire time except for myself and my own crazy head. my daily schedule was as follows:

4:15 am
Morning wake-up gong

4:30-6:30 am
Meditate in the hall or in your room

6:30-8:00 am
Breakfast and Introspection

8:00-9:00 am
Determination meditation (no moving allowing)

9:00-11:00 am
Meditate in the hall or in my room

11:00-12:00 noon
Lunch

12-1:00 pm
Introspection, walk outside

1:00-2:30 pm
Meditate in the hall or in your room

2:30-3:30 pm
Determination meditation (no moving allowing)

3:30-5:00 pm
Meditate in the hall or in my room

5:00-6:00 pm
Tea and introspection

6:00-7:00 pm
Determination meditation (no moving allowing)

7:00-8:15 pm
Meditate/Listen to discourse

8:15-9:00 pm
Determination meditation (no moving allowing)

9:00-9:30 pm
Mundane activities (shower/shave/etc)

9:30 pm
Sleep

As you can see, this adds up to about 12 hrs of meditation every day with no real respite for days and days, not to mention no knowledge of ANYTHING outside yourself due to absolute silence in all ways.

Sometimes you're just sitting around waiting for time to pass, and the faster your mind goes (and it goes FAST), the slower the subjective experience of time becomes. Not only that, but meditation is no slacker activity. There's not even a moment to slack off. The SECOND you're not observing your mind, your mind starts flying around from one random thought to the next. You have literally zero moments rest for those 12 hours.

The actual activity of meditation was very focused. The first several days I was asked to observe my breath. Literally just focus on air entering and leaving the nose. For 12 hrs a day. For days on end. What this did was focus and sharpen my mind to experience sensations that otherwise went unnoticed. The remainder of the time was used to utilize that sharpened focus to be attentive to sensations on the body and recognize what exactly was going on in my system.

When my time there ended, I was taught a 'metta' meditation, which is where one's heightened attention/awareness is used to spread feelings of love outward. I'm not a really emotional person, but for the first time in over a decade, this experience had me sobbing. I mean absolutely uncontrollable.

As I was leaving, I noticed that on the woman's side of the monastery was Fiona Apple, who apparently was having a nun experience of her own. Apparently we had meditated 10 feet from each other for the entire time in the main hall and I had not known. She seemed like a nice girl. I was surprised initially, then I remembered what Nipun told me last time he was here. His roommate had been Rivers Cuomo, the frontman for Weezer.

So, obviously, this is not a standard way to spend a couple weeks, and I've gotten a lot of questions as to why I'd do something like this. There's a couple reasons:

-my friend Nipun said it's a good experience. i had no idea what I was getting into, but it seemed like it would test my limits and I trusted him, so i went with it.

-I wanted to learn more about the depth of myself. I don't know about anyone else, but I see in myself that A LOT of the time, i respond with blind reactions to things. I judge them. good, bad, bad, good. everything is given a label. I also realized that because of those labels i wanted what was good and didn't want what was bad. I wanted to know more about that. why do i do that? It obviously is the reason that i have ups and downs in my life, but there was no real rationale for it occurring. That desire to understand played a large role as well.

Now that I'm out of there, I'm thinking to what i'm going to take with me from this experience. I think 3 major elements stand out:

-1: my ego is HUGE. its an amazing intricate carving i have made of what i believe 'birju' is. and as the carving includes labels such as 'humble' and 'modest' and 'other-oriented', it is incredibly difficult for it to leave.

-2: present moment awareness is an evolving state. I sat and meditated for a hour on many days for the past 10 years. It brought me a sense of understanding what was happening in my life and awareness in general. sitting in the manner i've been sitting through this time period, i've realized that i became aware of A LOT more that was happening. some of the cravings and aversions that are there and lead to unconscious decision making don't make themselves known until you sharpen your mind to an obscene level.

On an experiential level, this meant that I started feeling sensations on my body that I had never experienced before, and also recognized that whatever it was that I was experiencing was constantly changing, not lasting. Seeing this kind of shifts my focus to understand even more and more about how things I want in this world are really just cravings and aversions to sensations felt on my body... cravings and aversions that result from sensations that are really quite temporary. makes me wonder why I react to the sensations at all sometimes.

-3: I'm not as materially simple as I thought. I was previously of the mindset that I was a very simple person who could live with only the bare necessities and I've be just fine. When actually put in a position where all i had was the BARE NECESSITIES, i was really thrown for a loop. I really how much I crave connection with others, how much i crave laughter, how important it is for me to feel I have a full stomach.

Overall, this was a very humbling experience. I feel like I got through something that pushed me to a level I've never been pushed before. I don't know if I'd ever do it again, and to be honest, I'm kind of afraid to think about it. But who knows what will come of it. Right now, I know that awareness is really important in life and this is an excellent way to sharpen awareness.

I'm going to be in SF for the next little while continuing to meditate and working with CharityFocus...

Yikes, it's been a while!

2007-11-21T20:15:00.001-08:00

So I haven't posted in about half a year... that's no good... especially considering the time has been spent doing more amazing amorphous stuff than at any time prior in my life. To go through it in narrative would be too long and tiresome to read so...

to continue my life story in bullet point form =)

tried to go out to the clubs at least once in a while (ever seen a sober guy scream Bon Jovi at 3am?).
had a visit from brother/guru Nipun and started becoming A LOT more involved with non-profit and CharityFocus.
visited the supercool indo-tibetan museum of art
had a squishee in midtown on my birfday.
started an intentional community in nyc that regularly meets for the purpose of mindfulness meditation. helped start another one in phoenix, and tried to help with teaching it to kids in oakland. and i meditated...a lot.
co-created an idea to rethink the process of philanthropy using lemonade, smile cards, great friends, and central park.
continued to ship out hundreds of smile cards weekly to folks everywhere to promote kindness for kindness sake.
Spoke at the OneWebDay technology conference on the confluence of technology and non-profit (video below).
Continued deep involvement with gift-economy online video website Karmatube.
took pictures of really cool random phrases around town.
Met with the CEO's of dozens of companies oriented to non-profit technology and health and wellness (Michael Smolens of dotSub, Zak Zaidman of Kopali Organics, Pete Slosberg of Pete's Wicked Ale, Doug Jaeger of thehappycorp, etc).
Sat courtside with my boy Vince Carter.
Got on the steering committee of NetImpact New York, a non-profit of 10k+ members who have joined together to try and help the world.
Played lots and lots of row-row. =)
Co-created/joined a sustainability-oriented student design competition. The organization is called RevolveDesign and we'll be releasing our new website shortly.
and most recently, i actually decided to take a full-time job. =) I have accepted a position with McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm, as an associate in their New York office.
Arvind and Shephali

I spent the last 3 months at Hudson Heights in Manhattan, but now the lease is ending and I'm planning to visit family in Phoenix for the month of December. After this, there are a couple options, but need to keep it under wraps for now =)

Wednesdays with the Kindness Crew

2007-06-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

I am in love with San Francisco. I just came back from a week there with Nipun, Guri, Viral, Pavi, and the rest of the Kindness Crew. These people may just be the most impressive human beings I have ever come in contact with.

An interplay of consciousness

The evening I arrive the family stages a musical performance at their house (Indian classical) with the purpose of sharing gratitude. They ask me to share a few words on gratitude, specifically as it relates to my parents. It was fun to share my thoughts and hear great stories from others in the circle. There were definitely some tears being shed by the end of the deal!

As the week goes on I meet all sorts of people in the community whose sole purpose is seemingly to be of service to others. The mindset is completely contrary to what I’ve been taught: live in the spirit of abundance rather than scarcity and always think of others before oneself. These are thoughts I have heard before. They’ve always been discussed theoretically, or in talking about great saints. Then I met Nipun. This is a guy that talks about such things believing they are possible NOW, by everyone, and he walks the talk. I actually wrote a paper on his (massive) organization, CharityFocus, where can be accessed here.

On this trip, I first saw him as he came back from a 10 day Vipassana meditation (an intensive course of at least 10 hours of meditation a day, no books/cells/laptops/etc, and complete silence the entire time). The first thing we did was go to see his good friend Prasad Kaipa. This is a guy that coaches executives, using spirituality, for a living and has a going rate of greater than $1000/hr. We spent a couple hours with him. Amazing bits of advice that he shared along his spiritual journey, pieces that I am now more aware of. Prasad has a seemingly unique way of living. He calls it “earning, learning, and giving.” He splits his year into those 3 equal parts (100 days each), and devotes himself completely in each area. Rather than constantly chasing money (which he can get anytime), he chooses to focus on other areas where he can be of service and provide some value in a community setting.

We discussed the idea of why we must cling to an identity. We are frozen, then something happens to make us melt, and then we re-freeze to something else. For instance, I think of myself as a religious person, then I critically analyze how religion polarizes, and then I change to a person against religion. This goes on and on. We think these changes are taking us somewhere…that we’re ‘learning’ along the way, but is that really the case? The question is ‘why must we “re-freeze”?’ why not stay melted? In a constant state of curiosity and wonder, but not NEEDING to cling to a certain idea to feel comforted in the nature and order of things.

We also discussed the idea of motivation, and how in current society with the need to fight for resources amongst each other, our primary motivation tool is the thoughts of our peers (which, of course, only exist in our heads). He calls this our personal GPS (guilt, pride, and shame). I love this. So much of what I do is driven by one of the 3 (or in some cases all of the 3!). Can we move beyond such a state so that our actions are driven by no-mind/love? I think that is the potential of humanity, but something needs to happen to snap us out of GPS mode.

He left us with his personal belief as an advisor, which I GREATLY appreciated and am already incorporating. He said, “When I discuss anything with you, if you leave with more of me than before, we have failed. If you leave with a greater understanding of YOU than before, then we have something.” I realize how right he is. The greatest discussions I’ve ever had, and the people I hold in highest esteem, are the one’s that have shown me levels of myself previously unknown.

Sri, Nipun, myself, Prasad, Mrs. Kaipa

That evening I attended my first Wednesday. To bring it in the mundane, I guess you could call it something of a spiritual support group. What makes it amazing is its selfless nature. For 10 years, they’ve been doing it. No strings, no desire for monetary gain, nothing. Just service. This is a common theme from spending time with Nipun’s family. HAVING is just not important…GIVING is. Nipun’s latest project is something of an off-shoot of my previous blog entry about generosity entrepreneurs. Will definitely go into it when the idea is publicly released, until then, rest assured that it is paradigm-shifting in the truest sense of the word.

So much more happened, I can’t even begin to discuss: meeting Shankar and his beautiful gift-economy idea, Hitesh and his service trip to South America, Dr. Sri and his radical idea for medicine gift-economy style, not to mention good friend Kristy’s stepmom and my awesome cousin Neshani. I’ll just end with the quote of the week, from Nipun: “This product is too valuable to be sold…let’s give it away!”

The First One – Generosity Entrepreneurs

2007-06-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted at blog.myspace.com/bpandya on 5/15/07)

The beginning of my time at blogspot marks the end of my time at business school. Last week at bschool was all about hanging out one last time as a big group. I ended up doing as many activities as I could. We’re talking about paintball, a day at sheep’s meadow at central park, 3-on-3 basketball, a Mets game, private shows at the tribeca film festival, and a big party at some hot club every night. My favorite school-associated time of the week was at Pink Elephant, which may be the hottest club in NYC. Great music, fun people, nice ambiance, open bar (though I still didn’t drink), & did I mention GREAT music?

However, none of that touched by far the highlight of my week. My good friend Nipun was giving a talk at a retreat by the Catskills in Upstate New York. I went over to visit, and as is always the case when I meet him, my life changed.

I’m going to have a hard time explaining this because the premise is SO radical but bare with me. Nipun, and I also to some extent, is a proponent of the gift economy, the root of which is basically to give freely and generously with no strings attached. Our meeting started with a passing of the mic to most folks in the group to talk about an event where someone’s spontaneous generosity impacted them in their life. If you’ve never done this, let me tell you, there’s not much better feeling than to be surrounded by this.

We heard the story from the chaplain about the Zen priest who taught 6 new apprentices about chaplainship out of pure generosity, an actor talked about generosity impacting his ability to spontaneously play soccer downtown, the TV producer talked about the holocaust survivor that treated her as a daughter, and Nipun himself talked about his last visit to NYC and Hector.

After this came the premise of the meeting: generosity, even in the smallest doses, impacts lives STRONGLY. Nipun told us that last month a woman approached him with a check, no strings attached. He was trusted to do with it as he will. That was the point of this meeting. The money led to the idea of generosity entrepreneurs. The idea was to use the money to begin a pay-it-forward campaign from the spirit of abundance. A $500 check was handed to 5 people in the group. I was one of them. The goal is to use it to help, no strings attached, and we came up with some guidelines on how this should be done:

Be volunteer run; no one is paid for anything
don’t ask; serve with what is given
Focus on small acts; be the change you wish to see
serve strangers; consider everyone your family
don’t involve institutions; deepen person-to-person relationships
expect nothing in return; be selfless

This happened a couple days ago. I’m still flabbergasted. How often does someone give you $500 and asks you to use it to help people in whatever way you see fit? I want to come up with a creative way to use it.

So far, I’ve actually used $4. Not much, but what’s most amazing to me is how I have changed already because of this. My spirit has completely changed to one of abundance. Every place I go, everywhere I look, I a wondering how I can help some random person (who all of a sudden is not so random anymore).

Yesterday night after leaving a party, I was with some friends by NYU at Mahmoon’s, which is this totally awesome falafel place. We notice a homeless man rummaging through a trash can for some scraps. My best friend Arvind looks at me and says ‘$498!’ Agreed. I quickly purchase another falafel, set it down on the table outside and let my new friend know that I had no further plans to touch it. We quickly take off.

Today, on the way to pick up my parents from the airport, I paid for bus fare for the old woman behind me. She was so surprised that she started giggling like a schoolgirl! I figure, while I wait for that big creative idea to strike, this type of stuff should continue happening. Hey, so anyone have any ideas to share for how I could give this money away??? =)