CharityFocus.org: Incubator of Compassionate Action

The Story of Lentils as Anything

Nipun Mehta — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Shanaka Fernando, after a short stint as a Buddhist monk, came to Australia and dabbled in law studies; it wasn't fulfilling, so he gave it up to travel on a shoestring around the third world for six years, learning about culture and community along the way. When he returned to Australia, Shanaka started a business importing saris made from recycled fabrics, which made him enough money to start his current social experiment -- Lentil As Anything.

At Lentils, there are no prices on the menu. :) It's been operating for 10 years, with upto 400 staff in its peak, and still feeds about 1500 people a day (including a school). In 2007, he received a National award from the Australian Prime Minister. Today, still, all Shanaka owns is a bicycle and the clothes on his back. Inspiring story.

Recently, SBS in Australia did an extensive documentary on them. The series was, unfortunately, overly dramatized and chose to focus on gossip over subtler aspects of inspiration. The TV tagline was: "Cnan a place that relies solely on human generosity survive in this world; or will it be torn apart by competing egos, chronic chaos and crippling debt?" 'Lentils' put this disclaimer up on their homepage:

Lentil As Anything had no say in the final production of the documentary on SBS. The company benefited from the openness and trust that lentils exercises and was free to portray the organisation to its liking. It is unfortunate that such a priceless occasion was spent focusing on our financial status and the emotions of some staff. Indeed it is ironic because the gist of lentils proposition is that society is not nourished by money but the unique qualities of its people. What SBS has achieved is a misrepresentation and often gross fabrication of a truly unique social dynamic where a diverse number of people (1500 per day) sit and enjoy a meal served with pride and with no pressure to pay (with money). This I believe is crucial to reinstating everyone as valued members of our community. This culture encourages the best in people - Trust. Not just as a theory but an attitude. Hopefully more and more people will take responsibility for their actions and participate in building a kind, robust and vibrant society - it is still the case that "The revolution will not be televised."

Nonetheless, it was a really well-made film with some educational lessons about gift-economy movements:

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Power of a Genuine Question

Somik Raha — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

I enjoy writing for myself, and one of the pieces I've enjoyed the most is Organic Social Development for the CF Blog. The philosophy of voluntary action at the social level was inspired by my advisor, Prof. Ronald Howard, who has been teaching this for over three decades (probably more), and is a socio-political conclusion when the core values of voluntary action are taken not as an icing on the cake but the cake itself. After Nipun's talk at Stanford, I ended up forwarding the article to Prof. Howard. He loved it, but had this question:

As you acknowledge in your article, Bill Gates spends much of his fortune in an attempt to eliminate malaria. The malaria parasite and the mosquitoes that carry it are also natural phenomena. A similar story is that of the bubonic plague which killed one third of the population of Europe. Can you expand your advocacy of harmony with nature to encompass these and similar examples?

A genuine question that made me reflect. And as I reflected on it, the whole edifice of harmony with nature came crashing down with this one innocent question. How did Jonas Salk think about harmony with nature when deciding to work on the polio vaccine? How do I decide who to include and who not to include in the notion of well-being? Whenever there is a wave, there must be a hollow somewhere to compensate, so I cannot help others without harming others.

I tried coming up with some explanations but they were not satisfactory. Finally, I ended up taking this question to a wise monk who hangs out at Stanford every Sunday. The result of the discussion with this monk and other bravehearts led to some unique insights, which I'm inspired to capture.

1. This question cannot be answered. The question at hand is really a variant of "What distinctions are good and what are not?" The problem with such questions are that they cannot be rationally posed. What distinctions are good? The problem with this is that implicit in the value judgment of good distinctions is the notion of good, which itself is a distinction. We are unable to ask a proper question about distinctions without using distinctions! A question that cannot be properly posed cannot be properly answered.

2. This question can be transcended. We can go to a state where we do not see the distinctions anymore. Hence, the problem has vanished. This is certainly desirable (assuming we are interested in resolving this dilemma). However, the trouble is we find ourselves in confusion-land, stuck in distinctions and having to make good decisions.

3. A relative criterion. From #2, if we accept the notion of being in the spiritual state without distinctions as good, then we have some hope of resolution. For then, we can judge a proposal or idea based on how it helps us expand. Any idea that helps expand our notion of "I" and includes more and more in it is better than ideas that pack less and less.

The relative criterion can now help us look afresh at this problem. If there is a way to deal with malaria that includes the malaria parasite in the notion of my well-being (I'm not aware of such a method, but suppose it were to come up), then this way would be superior to a method that excludes the malaria parasite and includes all else. Until then, we do the best we can.

An implication of this is that we have to always stay open to possibilities for expansion - they may arise from the most unexpected quarters and we wouldn't want to miss it.

In summary, a genuine question has the power of breaking through the loftiest metaphors and taking us into a deeper space of reflection. I wish more such genuine questions upon myself and others to aid our journeys.

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Last Week's Twitter Links

Bhoutik Mehta — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:45:57 -0800

Below are last week's Tweets for CharityFocus. Spread the good!

Last Week's Twitter Links [more]
DailyGood: Inmates Take Yoga to Reduce Jail Sentence [more]
Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, on roots and details of how the festivals’ gift economy works: [more]
Reality is broken. Jane McGonigal thinks game designers have to fix it: [more]
Letter from UCSL Church: "CF's extraordinary acts of generosity don't go unnoticed in our community." With it, a tithe of $3197.21. Wow!
Birju shares Gandhi's take on exercise, from his autobiography: [more] Time to go for a run! :)
Millions bathe at the Ganges, during the Kumbh Mela: [more] 'Tis perhaps the world's largest self-organizing event.
RT @tonicnews A $1 million stimulus program that gives free BlackBerries to smokers. What's next? iPhones for alcoholics? [more]
DailyGood: Birds Do It. Bats Do It. [more]
Jo and crew just finished the music video for (Black Eyed Peas) Apl's title track, You Can Dream: [more]
Trailer of an upcoming movie of a local hero, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked Pentagon Papers in 60s -- Most Dangerous Man: [more]
"The world will be saved by the Western woman." --Dalai Lama, at the 2009 Peace Summit in VanCouver
Avg. American eat 140 lbs of sugar per year! Great article on the fundamentals of Diabetes and how to avoid it: [more]
DailyGood: The Zero Rupee Note [more]
RT @Help0thers: Random Acts of Kindness Week - want to do something kind but can't think of what to do? You're in luck! [more]
Obese people cluster together in social networks. So do smokers, alcoholics, divorcees and altriusts. [more]
One of the most powerful #KarmaTube videos yet. Moments by Will Hoffman: [more]
Met an amazing sculptor, ex-army captain who was first in My Lai who is sure that "Ultimately, it's love." Gale Wagner: [more]
The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution: [more]
Oprah interviews 83 year old Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: [more]
DailyGood: A Gym Powered By Sweat [more]
Does winning the lottery make you happy? [more]
Madhu & Meghna, on India Today cover-story: [more] "It all started with a gift" & now it's a film-for-social-change revolution!
RT @Help0thers: A 51-year-old embraced the Valentine's Day spirit , giving 7,777 hugs in 24 hours for a new world record: [more]
According to a new survey, Silicon Valley & San Francisco are amongst America's happiest big metro-regions: [more] :-)
DailyGood: No Laptops Allowed At This Cafe [more]
The Rules of Generosity: why do people give more generously to earthquake victims than to prevent deaths from poverty? [more]
From the makers of Inconvenient Truth, comes the upcoming Countdown to Zero: [more]
HelpOthers: A Treasured Gift For A Young Couple [more]
DailyGood: 5 Ways to Start a Kindness Revolution at Work [more]
RT @Help0thers: Looking for a daily dose of inspiration to share your kindness with others? Welcome to Kindness Daily :) [more]
A CEO celebrates his 81st birthday by gifting his entire $20 million natural food company to his employees: [more]
"You know what? Money is just an illusion," Ben Bernanke opened at the Senate. Hilarious(!) spoof on The Onion: [more]
RT @trishnashah What makes couples happy? What makes marriages last? Turns out, it's all about the small acts of love: [more]
DailyGood: Fastest Growing Minor at Cal [more]
RT @docuguy Lee Schneider features CharityFocus on HuffingtonPost: [more] Thanks, Lee!
In a pay-it-forward social network of "collaborative capitalists," participants start by asking, "How can I help you?" [more]
100 most influential books of our time: [more] BBC notes that most people have only read 6 of them!
I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness. --Mother Teresa
HelpOthers: Turning Kindness Into A Habit [more]
DailyGood: Canada's Bravery Awards [more]

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A Day In 1914 When Soldiers Stopped Fighting

Nipun Mehta — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization opens with this remarkable story:

The evening of December 24, 1914, Flanders. The first world war in history was entering into its fifth month. Millions of soldiers were bedded down in makeshift trenches latticed along the European countryside. In many places the opposing armies were dug in within thirty to fifty yards of each other and within shouting distance. The conditions were hellish. The bitter-cold winter air chilled to the bone. The trenches were waterlogged. Soldiers shared their quarters with rats and vermin. Lacking adequate latrines, the stench of human excrement was everywhere. The men slept upright to avoid the muck and sludge of their makeshift arrangements. Dead soldiers littered the bodies left to rot and decompose within yard of their still living comrades who were unable to collect them for burial.

As dusk fell over the battlefields, something extraordinary happened. The Germans began lighting candles on the thousands of small Christmas trees that had been sent to the front to lend some comfort to the men. The German soldiers then began to sing Christmas carols--first "Silent Night," then a stream of other songs followed. The English soldiers were stunned. One soldier, gazing in disbelief at the enemy lines, said the blazed trenches looked "like the footlights of a theater." The English soldiers responded with applause, at first tentatively, then with exuberance. They began to sing Christmas carols back to their German foes to equally robust applause.

A few men from both sides crawled out of their trenches and began to walk across the no-man's-land toward each other. Soon hundredss followed. As word spread across the front, thousands of men poured out of their trenches. They shook hands, exchanged cigarettes and cakes and talked about where they hailed from, reminisced about Christmas past, and joked about the absurdity of war.

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Chasing Away The January Blues With... SMILES! :)

Trishna Shah — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The London Smile Crew was back in full force in January and on a mission to chase away the January blues with... SMILES! :)

16 of us got together on a Sunday morning to decorate some home-baked cookies and cakes with Love and make some fun smile posters. We had also pre-ordered some SMILE wallet calendars to give out with the goodies -- they had a smile card on one side and a handy 2010 calendar on the other. We then got bundled up and headed off to Hyde Park where we began to spread some smiles and share our goodies with passers-by.

Much to our surprise, there were many people and many families strolling through the park on a cold Sunday afternoon in January :) Some of us split up into small groups and headed out around the park to tag people. The general feeling we got was that people were really pleased to come across someone who was being kind just for the heck of it and making them smile in the process. Like last time, families with children especially loved the concept of Smile Cards and the kids really enjoyed finding ideas to pay forward from the Generositree.

After a couple of hours of tagging, we all regrouped once again to share our stories of inspiration from throughout the afternoon and boy was it a warm and toasty circle of sharing despite the cold weather :)

Kunal and Prashil met a couple of guys who were so blown over by what they were up to that they asked if they come and do this every month, every week or everyday because they just couldn't get enough of it :)
The highlight for Paras was meeting a 95-year old lady in the palace gardens who said his kind act of offering her a cupcake was the best thing that had happened to her that week. She said that she had not spoken to anyone throughout the entire week until Paras approached her with a smile and an offering in the park.
Aditi thought this experience was a new challenge compared to last time when we were spreading smiles in beatiful warm sunny weather when everyone was already happy -- this time we were stepping it up and challenging ourselves to dig deeper to find that kindness within so we could share it with others and help to thaw their frowns and turn them into smiles :)
Jackie, Leona and I were honored to be tagged with red roses from a cute little girl (see photo below). As she was looking at ideas from the Generositree, she saw one that said "Give away one of your possessions right now" and so she did!

Thanks everyone for sharing your spirit of kindness with Londoners on a cold winter's day. Stay tuned as the smile spreading adventures continue in London...

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Publishing is the New Literacy

Nipun Mehta — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Shawn Ahmed is a college student from Texas, using his iPhone and iMac to make a difference. Take a look at his video journey about bringing water to a village in rural Bangladesh ... it's touching:

There are so many inspiring parts to this: there is Shawn's journey of service that is off to a beautiful start, there is his creative ability to rally support and encourage activism, and there is a bridge-building exercise across cultures. To top it all off, it's real. As his website says, "This is not a charity, organization, or anything formal."

On the other hand, I see the faces of the villagers staring at the iPhone in awe. They don't have clean drinking water, but now they have Shawn, an outside entity that will bring outside resources to rescue the village. It propagates the subtle myth (like Avatar) that the solution is outside, when that is the same outside that is burning up and living unsustainably. Leveraging the 50-rupees-to-a-dollar conversion rate, it‘s easy to engage in short-term service but I wonder about the repercussions to long-term development.

Overall, though, :) I think Clay Shirky is right when he says that publishing is the new literacy. We haven't quite wrapped our heads around that yet. Sure, we upload 20 hours of YouTube videos every minute; sure, it's problematic that more than half of Internet usage is about viewing x-rated content. But a Luddite response isn't going to help. Modern technology is here to stay. We need to figure out how to make best use of it, and we need service hearted people -- like Shawn -- to usher in a new era of possibilities.

I remember telling Madhu, co-founder of MAM Movies, that he can either produce content or become a platform and empower people to publish around the values they cared for. He chose the latter, and with projects like 101 hours, 101 filmmakers and 101 NGOS and She Creates, MAM is now doing the work of new literacy. Consider the story of a Muslim woman in the Dharavi slums, Asia’s largest, who wasn't being given her food ration cards; she silently went to the officers with a camera and just recorded the officers’ responses; within 3 months, they all had their ration cards. That's empowering.

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The Joy of CharityFocus Meetings :)

Nipun Mehta — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Many years ago, I used to hang out with this "German guy with a nice car" and share some deep conversations about service. It never occured to me that I should ask him about his work life. At a random conversation, a decade later, I learned that he was the founder of Price Club (now Costco).

Being solidly anchored in your values has the perk of drawing people into the same space -- and rest are details that almost don't matter. :)

Since generosity is one of those anchoring values for CharityFocus, I tend to have conversations with people around precisely those small acts of goodness. At a recent meeting with an established entrepreneur, our lunch meeting turned into a story-telling session of some rather remarkable stories ...

In New York, two friends are seated at Arturo's Pizza and they have this crazy idea. They tell their waiter, "We'd like to pay for the whole restaurant, but anonymously." "What?!?" the sensible waiter responds. The restaurant owner comes in. "Sir, I think you've had too much to drink," he concludes. "Look, I need 19-20 drinks before I get drunk. I'm really serious. Tell everyone that someone anonymous paid covered their tab and that they should pay it forward. " It had never happened in their 28 year history. Almost all of a sudden, everyone in the restaurant gets happy; waiters feel like philanthropists, restaurant diners start shelling out incredible tips, and the restaurant owners are still wondering if that man is drunk. :) Sure enough, they paid. When they found out that their pizza wasn't charged, they went back to cover that too. It's unclear how many people were drunk, but everyone was high.

And another one:

At their company, they had couple of summer interns. To teach them about taking initiative, the CEO calls them into their office: "Our company is about spreading good in the world. So in line with the values of our company, go out to the park and do something that's never been before." "Like what?" the interns protested. "Whatever you want." "Anything?" Yes, anything." "How much can we spend?" "Any amount." "ANY amount? " "Yeah, if it's $3 million, I will write you a check for $3 million." And the CEO was serious. The college interns thought and thought and re-thought. "What could they do?" Then, they hit up a local park with a "Penny For Your Thoughts" poster and created a collage of positive thoughts that random passerby's contributed. And they ultimately donated the collage to a local homeless shelter. It cost $143 in all, but the interns will never forget that experience. :)

Couple days later, I was hanging out with Ashish, and I get an email with "oh my god" as the subject line and "call me now" as the text. It was the same friend, calling to tell me this remarkable story:

On the streets of Downtown Mountain View, he runs into his college friend whom he hasn't seen in years. "AJ?!?" "It's been so long!" As they start to shake hands, his friend holds out a little card. "Someone just paid for my coffee and gave me this Smile Card," and excitedly starts to explain the pay-it-forward concept. "Man, I know all about Smile Cards -- I know the people that started it! Who gave you the card?" "That woman right there. She paid for my coffee and gave me the card." Immediately, he runs up to her and asks, "M'aam, who gave you these Smile Cards?" "Well, there was a guy in front of me who paid for my coffee and handed me a Smile Card. Then, he gave me $60 and this stack of Smile Cards, and asked me to pay forward for all the people in the line!" He couldn't believe it. :)

It's not that everyone is all about giving all the time. But as we sincerely try to be the change we wish to see, it attracts those little strands from each person's journey and pretty soon, our lives are full of values we cherish.

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Distributed Faces of CharityFocus

Nipun Mehta — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Ran into this in my email archives today ...

Paul recently moderated a panel at AHIMSA's event (with Huston Smith!) and his badge mentioned KarmaTube.org :) ... Trishna's CF journey has been nominated for profiling in More-Than-Me book by Kelly Eldredge ... Aumatma is speaking on an Economics of Peace conference call representing Karma Clinic and CF ... Jenny's is working with Bob Eckert, who wants to use his company's webinars to highlight CF ... Pavi will soon share Karma Kitchen/CF stories on Caroline Casey's KPFA radio show that reaches 100K listeners ... Birju rocked the house at a Parabola gathering in NY ... Rohit Chandra asked Somik to speak about CF on his radio show ... in London, Aditi is set to represent Smile Cards on BBC ... Bhoutik is going on a radio show for DailyGood ... Sam spoke at Stanford's Social M gathering on sustainability ...

Surely, this is just a random sampling because I know glossing over bunch of other activity.

The distributed revolution is on! :)

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Three Years of Conversations.org

Richard Whittaker — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Setting down his burrito, he leaned across the table and, looking me in the eye, said, “Richard, how can I serve you?” This caught me off guard. Not that I was especially on guard. It’s just that no one had ever said that to me before. And I’d only met this man twenty minutes earlier. But I’d heard about him, and from a very good source, stories so intriguing that finally I’d said, “Paul, I’d love to meet this guy!” And now here we were, the three of us, having lunch at a taqueria in Berkeley. We were all in high spirits.

What takes place in the lively territory of psychic exchange — very lively, in this case — can be so much more than meets the eye. Later on, when I tried to explain what had happened to some of my friends, they were cautionary. They looked at me with some alarm. You’re going to do what? Give your magazine away?

Let me backtrack…

I’d been struggling with an art magazine I’d founded, works & conversations. I’d tried many of the suggestions I’d be given, but nothing much had come of it. There was always a shortage of money and sometimes, when I’d get depressed, a shortage of energy. But each time I felt like giving up, some new gift appeared. One day I got a subscription from Harvard, an actual check from the Fogg Museum! That kept my spirits up for quite awhile. All along gifts mysteriously seemed to be parceled out just at the right times. And they came in many different forms, all except in the form of dollars.

By the time I met Nipun at the taqueria that Sunday afternoon, I’d been at it for fifteen years. When he asked how he could serve me, I just laughed. It was a laugh of gratitude and delight, and of not knowing how to respond.

Then he said, “I’m serious.” And added, “What you’re doing is a gift and you should be giving it away.”

That stopped me. What I was doing was a gift. I should be giving it away.

I had to let those words sink in a little.

While I was pondering this, he said, “What do you want?” I could see he was serious. This was nothing like how I’d imagined our meeting might go. I thought I’d hear some fascinating stories. That I’d be impressed. That I’d want to interview this interesting stranger. It would be another example of how the adventure of my little magazine was often a real joy.

Our conversation that Sunday afternoon took place almost three years ago and it was all of the things I’d expected, but quite a bit more. I don’t know what it was Nipun saw that moved him to make his challenge to me: “If you’re willing to give your magazine away, I’ll help you.” But it didn’t take me long to accept. Perhaps it surprised him when I said, “Okay, I’ll give it away.” It was a rare moment. I don’t know if there were high fives, but there was some version of that. And I did join forces with CharityFocus, the umbrella organization that Nipun founded along with a few friends.

But of course, there are layers and layers to things. Lest I misunderstood his offer of help as some kind of certain solution, Nipun qualified, “I can’t guarantee that it will work out. One has to be willing to have something fail. But I believe the universe responds to genuine acts of service.”

It would be a great exaggeration to say that my acceptance of Nipun’s challenge was the unmixed response of a pure spirit. In part I’d been giving the magazine away, anyway, through subsidizing its unmet costs out of my own pocket. And making money had never been the motivation in the first place. Over the years I’d adjusted my goals to aiming for some future break-even mark where basic costs would be covered. And I’d accepted the recognition that my rewards would never come in the form of dollars. Instead, I held the cautious hope that the magazine would have some value in a larger sense. And it was already a source of satisfying surprises. But what had suddenly materialized in front of me was of another order. Trusting my intuition, I realized an alliance with the young man sitting across the table would be a very dynamic event even if I had no idea of exactly what it would look like. Everything inside simply resonated with its obviousness. In truth, I realized I’d be crazy not to accept this wild and spontaneous offer the universe had served up.

It has been a joyful ride. And continues to unfold. My reservations—and there were reservations—have progressively been set aside. Although my wife was supportive of what I’d been doing all those years, it was essentially a solitary enterprise. While all along I’d held the unspoken hope of finding a like-minded partnership with someone, over the years, none had appeared. On that day at the tacqueria, I found two partners, Paul and Nipun, a gift from the universe impossible to quantify.

Over the past three years, my participation with CharityFocus has been a door into a larger community, one that continues to grow. And without getting into names, let me just say that the people I have met through CharityFocus have given me a new feeling of hope for all of us. Just a few weeks ago I had the first glimmering of a new sense of things, that perhaps there is an abundance at the heart of things. It was a feeling entirely new in my experience and utterly at odds with the conditioning of… of what? This culture? Of my own past? Of a western, secular view? Hard to say. But not hard to welcome with gratitude.

[Just last week, conversations.org crossed 25 thousand active subscribers to its bi-monthly newsletter.]

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What Fra Giovanni Wrote on Christmas Eve, 1513

Nipun Mehta — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Diane Williams emailed this beautiful quote by Fra Giovanni, written on Christmas Eve, 1513: Written on Christmas Eve, 1513

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

And Jean Houston emailed this wonderful blessing for the holiday season:

Happy Holidays!

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Socially Conscious Business Practices

Nipun Mehta — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

On a recent email thread, CF'ers starting listing their favorite practices in the business world. Here is a compilation of them:

Berrett Koehlers is a reputed publisher, where the president and founder makes only about three times what the receptionist makes -- great Fast Company article on them. Cahnges the culture. Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation, recently noted, "It starts with how you answer the phone, how you treat the people who clean the office…these are the easy things we can do."

UK's Divine Chocolate made its Ghanaian cocoa farmers shareholders in the company!

A recent McKinsey report shows a surprising discovery: how much information and knowledge flows through social and informal networks and how little through hierarchical and matrix structures. At BestBuy, once a stiflingly hierarchical workplace where employee turnover was high and satisfaction low, the implementation of extensive internal social sites that foster company-wide communication as well as forums for the vetting of new ideas from anyone, no matter how low on the corporate ladder, have completely revolutionized and re-energized the company. BestBuy has also instituted a program known as ROWE, for “results-only workplace,” which was actually created by a rogue group of employees that stepped out of “line” in a struggle to eliminate “facetime.”

Ricardo Semler took Semco from $35M to $212M in six years. But he also tells his employees to play hooky, not bother with growth plans, choose their own salaries, and have no job titles. Excerpts from his book Seven Day Weekend.

Timberland's “Path of Service” program allows employees 40 hours of annual paid time off to work on service projects in communities. This also starts to change the work culture towards cooperation -- simple things like having a stash of fun-size candy bars on your desk for people to stop by. A Gallup poll of employees at 700 companies found that workers productivity is directly related to their relationship with their supervisor.

Spain's Mondragon is one of the world's largest worker cooperatives and example of workers' self-management.

Toms Shoes has a simple business model: Buy a pair of shoes, and it'll send a second pair to a child who needs it. This year, it'll send about 300,000 pairs of shoes to the developing world. And because it's the company's genuine passion to do so, Toms can take advantage of the word of mouth built into its product and spend dramatically less on marketing than other shoe companies.

Laser Monks: they are Cistercian monks for the most part, but sell ink-toner during their off hours to sustain the monastery -- PBS story on it. From $5M in sales last year, 80% was for expenses, 10% to support the abbey, and remaining 10% to charity, from a camp for kids with HIV to Buddhists in Tibet.

Small has to be honored. Traditional apple crumble packs were covered by a full paper carton; by changing the sleeve and making the tray container lighter, Mark & Spencer cut the weight of the packaging 70%. UPS famously adheres to a no-left-turn policy by installing technology into its vans that help map out routes that minimize the number of left turns the driver has to take; avoiding left turns at intersections reduces idling, which in turn lowers fuel consumption-UPS estimates it saves approximately 54.4 million gallons a year.

Newman's Own started as a lark -- a way for Paul Newman to show off his salad dressing -- but it has grown into a powerful brand with products all over the supermarket and more than $100 million in annual revenue. All of the company's profits have always gone to charity -- more than a quarter-billion dollars to date. Now, no one buys Newman's Own salad dressing to make a diluted charitable donation. They buy it because it tastes good and they like what the brand stands for.

Case Western has a fantastic BAWB -- Business as an Agent of World Benefit -- unit that provides solutions of how to "do well by doing good".

SAS Institute is the world's largest privately-owned software firm; a 60-minute segment on why it is one of the best places to work in the country. Google also has great employee perks, but their famous one is that each engineers get 20% time for personal projects -- which is a great recognition of individual creativity; of course, projects like Gmail and Orkut were result of this, so they benefit handsomely too.

B Corporations are a new type of corporation which expands corporate accountability and enables them to scale and achieve liquidity while maintaining mission. More than 200 corporations are classified there. L3C is an even newer form of incorporation that explicitly states that you exist for "lesser profit". Robert Lang, its founder, calls it "the for profit with a nonprofit soul." Examples.

Transparency is key. Opening page of Seventh Generation’s 2007 Corporate Consciousness Report leads with a frank admission of the company's failure to reveal to consumers and key stakeholders the problems with purging dioxane from Seventh Generation products.

Ethics are a big part of a conscious corporation. In Dec 1995, The Malden Mills factory burned down; CEO Aaron Feuerstein decided to not only use his insurance money to rebuild the factory, but also to continue paying the salaries of all the now-unemployed workers while the factory was being rebuilt.

SouthWest CEO, Herb Kelleher, had a famous interview where he lambasts MBA professors for not knowing who to put first -- employees, customers and shareholders. "We basically said to our people, there are three things that we’re interested in. The lowest costs in the industry — that can’t hurt you, having the lowest costs. The best customer service — that’s a very important element of value. We said beyond that we’re interested in intangibles — a spiritual infusion — because they are the hardest things for your competitors to replicate. The tangible things your competitors can go out and buy. But they can’t buy your spirit. So it’s the most powerful thing of all."

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Power of Voluntary Action: Hank Fischer's Wolves

Somik Raha — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Most of us who are exposed to social-cost thinking fall prey to the trap of duality. Social-cost thinking is about figuring out the social-cost of someone's actions, and penalizing them for it. Using this argument, many have asked for penalizing tobacco companies for the harmful effects of tobacco on those who don't want to smoke. Others have suggested putting a tax on those who pollute to compensate those who receive the pollution. While this thinking sounds reasonable at first glance, it suffers from the insidous problem of duality.

The law of duality is there for all to recognize. There is no action that does not have a reciprocal reaction. By recognizing only one aspect of the problem, where harm flows from one party to the other, we deliberately ignore the reciprocal nature of most social problems, and this is not a holistic view of the problem.

Ronald Coase created a sensation when he challenged the prevalent myopic view of the problem. He showed that if we alter the frame of the problem and recognize the rights of both parties, we allow for the parties to trade such rights and come to a voluntary agreement that is satisfactory and efficient on both sides. If this is indeed possible, then why waste time demonizing others, or fighting battles in courts? By recognizing the duality in the situation, that everyone at once harms and helps others, he trascended the oldest dilemma of humanity.

For most typical social cost problems, Coase focused on assigning property rights and letting both parties trade on that foundation. He showed (in this paper) that it was economically irrelevant who was assigned the initial property rights if there were no transaction costs. If there were, property rights should be assigned such that the owner of the rights wants to take the economically efficient action. Coase went on to win the Nobel for economics, and this argument is now known as the Coase theorem. In real life, his idea manifests in creative non-violent resolution of disputes. Here is a fascinating example that speaks to this.

In Yellowstone National Park, all the wolves were shot dead by farmers, because the wolves were killing their cattle. To keep the wolves in the natural ecosystem, the government spent millions of dollars (under pressure from the environmentalist lobby) to airlift wolves from Canada. The farmers got their guns out again.

This time, though, instead of fighting a legal battle, one activist tried the voluntary approach with Coase's idea. Hank Fischer recognized the right of the farmer to protect their cattle, and decided to honor that. He also wanted to honor the desire of the environmentalists to bring the wolves back to Yellowstone. For every cattle killed by a wolf, he offered to compensate the farmer, and in return, they had to promise not to kill the wolves.

Then, he got an artist to make a painting of a family of wolves basking in the moonlight, and sold posters of this to those who were sympathetic to the cause, and raised fifty thousand dollars for the fund that would compensate the farmers. More money was also raised by asking for direct donations. After the farmers saw that Hank meant business, and would indeed compensate them, they stopped killing the wolves. Read Hank's story in his own words.

A non-violent, non-litigational, creative solution that honored both parties actually worked. To me, the beauty of this story is to recognize the need to honor the truth of duality in order to transcend it.

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Seth Godin on Generosity

Nipun Mehta — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seth Godin put together a free 'What Matters Now' booklet, with ideas from some leading thinkers. It opens with his riff on generosity:

When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first. You have a family to feed a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business.

It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead, we’re rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money but most important generous with our art.

If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.

In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs.

If you make a difference, you also make a connection. You interact with people who want to be interacted with and you make changes that people respect and yearn for.

Art can’t happen without someone who seeks to make a difference. This is your art, it’s what you do. You touch people or projects and change them for the better.

This year, you’ll certainly find that the more you give the more you get.

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Letter From a Proud Mother

Nipun Mehta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

[A touching essay in 'Inquiring Mind', by Rev. Heng Sure's mother -- Deborah Kerr Metcalf.]

After my son Christopher Clowery's ordination with Ch'an Buddhist Master Hsuan Hua, he and a fellow monk made an 800 mile "three steps, one bow" pilgrimage up the California Costal highway, from Los Angeles to City of 10,000 Buddhas, north of San Francisco to promote world peace. They made a full prostration to the ground every three steps. This spiritual journey took two years, nine months to complete. For those years and three more Heng Sure (as my son was now called) kept a vow of silence, speaking aloud only to his teacher, Master Hua. I had not received any letters from him for five years because his vow of silence also included correspondence by mail. Therefore, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I flew from Ohio to California for a visit with my son when Master Husa, the abbot of the City of 10,000 Buddhas, invited me to celebrate my sixty-first birthday with Heng Sure.

As a lifelong Methodist (Heng Sure had been an active Methodist in his younger years as well), I was eager to learn all I could about the religion that had captured my son's interest so completely that he had dedicated his life to it. I had never doubted Heng Sure's sincerity, but it was the era of cults and I was skeptical about whether the abbot's motives were altruistic; many other movements were not sincere.

As I drove through the impressive red, pagoda-roofed gates of the City of 10,000 Buddhas with Fang Guo Wu, the laywoman who had picked me up at the airport, I felt as one does when approaching a foreign country; I knew I wouldn't understand everything that was said or done, and I didn't know what was expected of me. Up the hill from the gate I could see a large bronze sculpture of a Buddha under a high roof and beside it, an enormous bronze bell.

In the dining hall, the Abbot sat on a raised platform in the center of one wall with about twenty five monks and as many male guests to his left and about fifty nuns and female guests to the right. The Abbot was a stocky man in a gold-colored robe. His face was unlike anyone I had ever met. His expression was one of compassion that was guileless, yet wise. After getting acquainted with him, I had the eerie feeling he knew what I was thinking.

At the first dinner, we ate our meal in silence. I discovered it allowed me to concentrate on the food in a way conversation prohibits. Buddhists not only savor each nuance of flavor, they contemplate the work it took to bring the food to the table. They consider whether their conduct merits receiving it, and how greed is a poison to the mind. They think of food as medicine to cure the illness of hunger. They take the food to help them cultivate the Way to benefit all human beings.

I tried everything that was served, but I still had some food left on my plate at the end of the meal. I didn't realize this was a faux pas until I followed my hostess in a line that led to two large dishwashing kettles. We were to dip our plate first in the soapy water, then the clear water. Someone had to clear mine before I could follow the routine. Obviously Buddhists waste no food.

One day when we had finished the meal, the Abbot began speaking in Mandarin Chinese as one of the nuns translated into English. He announced, "Heng Sure's mama is with us to celebrate her birthday." It was the signal for one of the nuns to bring out a cake for us to enjoy. I had not expected the Abbot to observe our Western tradition. It reassured me that he was ready to adopt American customs.

The exchange afterward with other mothers touched me on a deeper level. One of the American nuns, an Asian guest and I were asked to talk about our sons. The nun was a "Left Home" person---a man or woman who has taken the Buddhist vows and broken family ties to be part of the Buddhist order. In her earlier life, she had a son. The Malaysian mother and I both had sons who had left home to become monks. We were of different ages and had come from different cultures but we had the common bond of a mother's love for her child and we shared the same sense of loss.

The Malaysian mother also had my concern for our sons being swept up in beliefs we felt might exploit their youthful zeal. But my stay at the monastery convinced me that my mistrust and doubt I had carried were of my own making rather than being based on reality. I realized, after getting to know the Abbot, I had misjudged his purpose and Heng Sure's judgment. I agree with the nun who said, "Now it is time for you to learn from your son."

One day the monks arranged for a "liberating of life" ceremony, planned in honor of my visit. Buddhists in San Francisco purchased turtles destined for the city's restaurants and brought them in crates to the monastery. They were carried into the Buddha Hall and laid in front of the altar where they scrabbled and clawed the wooden crates frantically. When the gong sounded for the prayers and the chanting began, the turtles became very quiet, almost as if they were soothed by the sound. The prayers were for their well being because the Buddhists believe that by not ending their lives, the turtles can continue to strive toward a higher form, rather than having to start over again in the endless cycle of birth and death.

After the ceremony, my hostess drove me to a nearby lake where the turtles were to be released. I had never held a turtle larger than a silver dollar, and these were the size of dinner plates, but each person there was expected to pick one up and carry it to the water. I chose one that looked docile, but as I took hold of him "midships", his little feet became four rotors that I had to keep from clawing my shirt and slacks. He was as anxious to gain the water as I was to put him down, so it was a quick trip. When I eased him into the water, he disappeared beneath the muddy water immediately and I thought the ceremony was finished.

Gwo Wu said, "Watch. They will thank us." I thought she was joking, but out in the lake about fifty feet, little heads began to pop up. The turtles turned, looked at us, and disappeared again. Gwo Wu said, "Keep watching." In a minute or two, farther out in the lake, turtle heads appeared again, turned, and looked back. I couldn't believe it. Gwo Wu said, "They will thank us three times", and they did. I can't explain it; I just know it happened, and it was a very satisfying act of kindness that I enjoy remembering when I see turtle soup on a menu.

Before I returned home, the Abbot and I had a conversation through an interpreter. He told me, "The Buddha says you can believe in your God and Buddha too. Your God is like a parent to you, his child. If you do something bad, he forgives you. Buddha has an adult-to-adult relationship with you. If you do something bad, you are accountable for your actions."

The many kindnesses of the Buddhists made an impression that has stayed with me. They live their religion in a way that I admire. I know Heng Sure will never marry or give me grandchildren, which is disappointing, but as a Buddhist teacher he is influencing many more children than he ever would as a father. It makes him happier than anyone I know, and I can honestly say I am proud that my son is a Buddhist.

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You In? Purple Acts of Kindness Campaign from Yahoo

Nisha Srinivasan — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It's nice to see Yahoo inviting users to share their “purple acts of kindness”.

From their web site:
“Help us create a ripple of good around the world with purple acts of kindness. Update your status to share what you’re doing to spread holiday joy, then inspire others to join you by asking, “You in?”

Yahoo! will also be doing our own purple acts of kindness inspired by your updates. So whether you pay for someone’s groceries or drop off a coat for the homeless, you’ll be encouraging people around the world to join in acts of kindness.”

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Mother Teresa on Gift Economy

Nipun Mehta — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Lynne Twist has raised over $800 million dollars for worthy causes; she's as good a fundraiser as anyone can be. Yet, in Soul of Money, she speaks about a person she knew really well and who beat to a different drum:

Mother Teresa never kept any cash reserves. When I visited her at her orphanage in India, I asked her if she had any advice about fund-raising. She replied that her method of fund-raising was to pray, and that God had always provided what she needed, never more, never less. She operated with no reserves, trusting that God would always provide, and in her experience God always did. She operated more than 400 centers in 102 countries, and they always seemed to have exactly what they needed. Not excess, not more. But not less, either.

Most of us can't imagine living in that way and I'm not even suggesting it, but the knowledge that Mother Teresa operated a successful multimillion-dollar operation just that way, makes you think anew about money and flow.

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Gameshows, Quizzes and Sing-a-Long Songs with Elderly Folks at a Nursing Home in London

Aditi Khimasia — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Last Saturday, a small group of us had a fantastic time volunteering at an old people’s home in South London called Woodlands House. It was a lovely home with about 60 residents, most of whom had Alzheimer’s or Dementia. We were planning to spend the morning doing some activities with the residents including a ‘pub quiz’, a game of ‘family fortunes’ and a sing-a-long of some songs from the good old days ;-) We had also taken along some treats for a small tea party.

When we first got there, a lot of the residents seemed to be sleepy or weren’t very engaged with what was happening around them. We later learned that that drowsiness is one of the effects of Alzheimer’s medication. We were a little nervous about whether we would be able to get them involved in the activities we had planned, especially because a lot of them were partially deaf too. None of us had done anything like this before and we had lost our fearless organizer, Trishna, who had the most experience with these sorts of events. We decided to just dive in and see how the morning unfolded.

We started with ‘Family Fortunes’ (Family Feud in the US). The initial plan was to get Ram to yell the questions out at the top of his voice, Jenny and Aditi to keep score and Priya to use the buzzer. We quickly realised that it would take all of us to just get the questions heard and help the old folks get the answers.    So, we put the pens and the buzzers down and started moving around the room trying to make sure as many residents as possible were participating.

We had prepared questions that we thought would be easy enough but we realised that most of these were still too difficult so we just started making questions up. “Name some planets?”, “Name some colours from the rainbow?” Anything we could think of. We had a couple of lovely old ladies who were able to answer a quite a few of the questions and were actually quite entertaining. One of the old ladies, Bette, had a loud voice and a contagious laugh and a great personality. She had joined us with her friend from the floor above and their enthusiasm definitely helped everyone else get more involved.

One of the questions was “Name some people who wear big boots to work?”. People were calling out a couple of the expected responses – “Policemen”, “Fireman” etc... when Bette called out “Lucy” (who is one of the care givers who works there). This made the care-workers and us laugh. When we asked “Who is the head of the Tory party?” she asked “Is it David Cameron?” “Yes – that’s right!” “Isn’t he the guy that doesn’t want us to join Europe?” “Yes – I think so.” “Bloody idiot he is!” she retorted, which was so unexpected that it also gave us all another laugh.

All the residents in the room seemed very keen to join in, but for a lot of them it was very difficult to remember even very simple things. However, they still seemed to be really enjoying the fact that we were there and that there was a great buzz in the room – whenever anyone got a question right, we made a big fuss.   Even the care workers, who were in a room on the side doing admin kept wanting to get involved and started yelling out responses to the questions! About half of they way through, the residents enjoyed a cup of tea and some of the treats we had brought along, but they seemed to be more interested in getting on with the quiz!

After about an hour or so we running low on questions to make up and decided to wind down the quiz. We gave out some prizes at the end which were a great hit with the old folks! We then moved into the sing-a-long. We started with a CD that we had prepared with some Christmas songs and a few old classics but we learned that they had a CD that they listened to more frequently and knew the songs well, so we played that CD instead. We danced around the room and the care workers joined in while the residents sang along. It was interesting to see that some of the residents that had not really been able to participate actively in the quiz or Family Fortunes knew all the words to the songs and were able to sing along. The ones that weren’t singing were still clapping and smiling.

The sing-a-long was a really nice way to end our morning together with the group. Everyone was in great spirits and the residents were beaming away as we danced and sang. The residents and the care staff were really happy and grateful that we came along to spend some time at the nursing home. They said that nursing homes don’t generally attract a lot of volunteers.

We all felt incredibly uplifted and happy to have been able to engage the residents and bring some smiles to their day.

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Why Everyone Can Now Be a ChangeMaker

Nipun Mehta — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka and a person who coined the phrase 'social entrepreneur', recently shared a historical analysis of why he thinks everyone can now be a changemaker:

The agricultural revolution produced only a small surplus, so only a small elite could move into the towns to create culture and conscious history. This pattern has persisted ever since: only a few have held the monopoly on initiative because they alone have had the social tools.

That is one reason that per capita income in the West remained flat from the fall of the Roman Empire until about 1700.

By 1700, however, a new, more open architecture was beginning to develop in northern Europe: entrepreneurial/competitive business facilitated by more tolerant, open politics. The new business model rewarded people who would step up with better ideas and implement them, igniting a relentlessly expanding cycle of entrepreneurial innovation leading to productivity gains, leading to ever more entrepreneurs, successful innovation, and productivity gains.

One result: the West broke out from 1,200 years of stagnation and soon soared past anything the world had seen before. Average per capita income rose 20 percent in the 1700s, 200 percent in the 1800s, and 740 percent in the last century.

The press reported the wars and other follies, but for the last 300 years this profound innovation in how humans organize themselves has been the defining, decisive historical force at work.

However, until 1980, this transformation bypassed the social half of the world’s operations. Society taxed the new wealth created by business to pay for its roads and canals, schools and welfare systems. There was no need to change. Moreover, no monopoly, public or private, welcomes competition because it is very likely to lose. Thus, the social sector had little felt need to change and a paymaster that actively discouraged it.

Hence, the squalor of the social sector. Relative performance declining at an accelerating rate. And consequent low repute, dismal pay, and poor self-esteem and élan.

By the nineteenth century, a few modern social entrepreneurs began to appear. The anti-slavery leagues and Florence Nightingale are outstanding examples. But they remained islands.

It was only around 1980 that the ice began to crack and the social arena as a whole made the structural leap to this new entrepreneurial competitive architecture.

However, once the ice broke, catch-up change came in a rush. And it did so pretty much all across the world, the chief exceptions being areas where governments were afraid.

Because it has the advantage of not having to be the pioneer, but rather of following business, this second great transformation has been able steadily to compound productivity growth at a very fast rate. In this it resembles successful developing countries like Thailand.

[Our] best estimate is that the citizen sector is halving the gap between its productivity level and that of business every 10 to 12 years.

This rapidly rising productivity means that the cost of the goods and services produced by the citizen sector is falling relative to those produced by business -- reversing the pricing pattern of the last centuries that led to the much-criticized “consumer” culture.

As a result, as resources flow into the citizen sector, it is growing explosively. It is generating jobs two and a half to three times as fast as business. There are now millions of modern, competing citizen groups, including big, sophisticated second-generation organizations, in each of the four main areas where the field has emerged most vigorously: Brazil-focused South America, Mexico/U.S./Canada, Europe, and South and Southeast Asia. (The field is also growing vigorously in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and Australia/New Zealand, but these are much smaller clusters.) All this, of course, has dramatically altered the field’s élan and attractiveness. This is where the job growth is, not to mention the most challenging, value-rooted, and increasingly even well-paid jobs. Just listen to today’s “business” school students.

Given the results-based power of this transformation of the citizen sector, more and more local changemakers are emerging. Some of these learn and later expand the pool of leading social entrepreneurs. To the degree they succeed locally, they give wings to the entrepreneur whose idea they have taken up, they encourage neighbors also to become changemakers, and they cumulatively build the institutions and attitudes that make local changemaking progressively easier and more respected. All of which eases the tasks facing the next generation of primary pattern-change entrepreneurs.

This virtuous cycle catalyzed by leading social entrepreneurs and local changemakers is the chief engine now moving the world toward an “everyone a changemaker” future.

We are certainly witnessing this in the context of CharityFocus!

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Don't Curse Darkness, Light a Candle

Somik Raha — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The work of CharityFocus in encouraging the Gift Economy has been nothing short of phenomenal. People read about it and get deeply moved to do something for someone without any expectations, thus turning the wheel of "dharma" in their own heart. However, there is also a great danger of misunderstanding these ideas. At a 10-day meditation retreat earlier this year, as time slowed by orders of magnitude, it became clear to me how this misunderstanding happens.

Why is it so difficult to see?
My first example is from the 10-day retreat itself. The retreat operates on a gift economy principle, where the material needs of participants are taken care of so the entire focus may be on the task at hand. After the retreat ends, participants are given the opportunity to pay for the next group of participants, whatever they wish, if they are so moved. This principle, when experienced, makes one delighted and wonder why we don't see more of this.

At a lunch on the last day, a co-meditator shared, "I've been to another place to learn meditation, and they charged $400! I wish they'd follow this model." The moment I heard this, I knew we had moved away from the spirit of the offering. I shared, "I am sure the people who run that place are doing their best and don't have experience with this. Perhaps you can pay $400 here, so they may gift a spot to someone and start on their own journey of giving." The co-meditator agreed with this.

I remembered many times when I've lectured others on going gift-economy, but the only time the wheels of kindness have started turning is when I've been the change and done an act of kindness myself. The only decision in a gift-economy that we can make in a wholesome way is whether we want to be the change or not. Others respond to our decisions, but we must recognize the central role we play.

A Fundamental Disconnect

In a car conversation, a friend told me that he had read about Nipun Mehta a couple of years back, and he told the folks who used to work for him that they ought to learn from Nipun and not be greedy about making more and more money. Something struck me as odd about this, and took me a year to figure out what that was. It became clearer in a conversation with another friend in a non-profit, whose employer was very impressed with the gift economy, and decided to halve the salary of my friend to be consistent with his understanding of the gift economy.

Both stories have a common thread -- a fundamental misunderstanding of the gift economy. The first story manifested this misunderstanding in thought, and the second one in action, with damaging consequences. Both show a disconnect with one's own heart, for where is the heart in cutting an employee's salary because I think that employee should be charitable? When someone else does this, I feel depressed and tempted to classify such an action as vulgar.

The Root of the Problem

In each of the three stories shared, there was a pure volition -- when hearing about the gift economy, something clicked, the heart swelled with joy on hearing stories of unconditional kindness. However, because most of us have not inculcated such a habit of unconditional kindness, the first involuntary reaction is -- I wish that person over there can do this, because that person is so selfish (or a jerk, or whatever other negative label we want to apply). When we act on this reaction, we solidify the bad habit-pattern and get trapped even more. We philosophize, sermonize and even harm others in the name of kindness.

What we don't realize is that we cannot transfer our volition to others. What started out as the recognition of a great truth needs to be carried out with individual action by the realizer. In the case of the employer, how about doing something kind for the employee without any expectation that the employee will pay it back? What if the employer says to the employee: "I know you've been working so hard. Since we can't afford to give you a raise, I am going to take a pay-cut myself to make this happen." Or even better, take the pay-cut, don't tell the employee and give the raise. It is a great test of unconditional kindness. A simpler way of remembering the transfer of volition problem is the old adage - don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

The Vacation Quota Problem

The darkness-cursing problem arises not just in employer-employee relations, or in situations with monetary implications, it also arises in common everyday situations.

Imagine a couple living in a foreign country, with their parents and in-laws in their home country. The wife plans a vacation, which the husband cannot join due to various commitments. The wife then announces, "I am going to spend most of my trip with my parents because that's why I am going. I will however spend two days with your parents." The husband's monkey mind kicks in. He thinks, "Since I could not go visit my parents, it is my wife's duty to be my representative and spend equal time with both families." He then acts on this thought by insisting that his wife increase the time spent with his parents. And of course, the wife refuses - that is not why she is going. And then we get into the familiar quarrel situation. Lets back up a bit. When the husband first heard the wife's plan, before she announced the time quotas, there was a volition that sprang - that of kindness and service for his own parents. This is a pure volition. However, upon hearing about the inequitable quota, he reacted by trying to transfer his intentions onto his wife by insisting on her duties. That cannot and does not work.

As an alternative scenario, the husband could bless his wife and wish her a happy trip. There will be a day when he can make his own trip. It is then that he can carry out his volition of service, and develop the volition to a level where he sees both sets of parents as his own, and devotes equal time to both. Maybe his wife will be inspired and maybe she won't. But this is the only decision he really has in front of him. And if the law of nature is indeed a law, then his wife is bound to be touched by his action, provided it arises out of a pure volition and not out of a desire to manipulate.

The Angry Activist

I've had many dear activist friends who've been bothered about legitimate causes. Some are angry about the socialism of the left, while others are angry about the fundamentalism of the right. Both fall prey to the cursing-darkness trap, arising out of a failed transfer of volition. One of the consequences of cursing darkness is that we expend a lot of useful energy on matters that can only cause more grief.

A friend was visiting from India, and in a conversation, he lashed out against a particular political party in India, saying, "Political parties may be bad, but this one is surely evil. They have otherized the community of purple people. I have no sympathy for this party - they are pure evil." The irony was not lost on me that a staunch critic of otherizers had just committed the sin he opposed. When I asked what concrete idea he had to help the situation, he had none - it was all despair and criticism, arising from a frustration of being unable to transfer his love volition to others.

An angry activist has to expend so much energy on hate, however legitimate the reason may be. Unfortunately, that hate only begets hate - nothing good has ever come of it.

Implications on Government

If the problem of transfer-of-volition is evident from observing our own lives, then how do we explain our decision to transfer the volition to serve to government or to politicians? In fact, this is perhaps the key reason that most government initiatives fail to do any good. The ones who wanted to make the difference are not being the change anymore and have outsourced their work to the government. If we acknowledge the simple truth that "I can be the change" and "I cannot transfer my volition to others," our upside-down government thinking (that almost completely relies on transfer of volition) will have to be abandoned in favor of voluntary approaches that shun coercion.

We have to stop demanding change, and start being the change.

The simplest way to be the change is to be. That will be the biggest change of all, because we are all so used to being something we are not. The message of "be the change" can then be shortened to "be."

In summary, we seriously misunderstand the gift economy principle when we try to transfer our volition to others. This happens due to confusion about the decisions that are available to us when we feel a volition to serve. Developing the wisdom to identify what we can decide and what is outside our influence will lead to equanimity (or vice-versa). From equanimity comes the strength to light a candle, and that light is enjoyed not just by the lighter but by all those who are willing to keep their eyes open. Even those who live with their eyes shut will be touched by the warmth of the light when they come near its source. Therefore, why not be a source of light on this planet? Better still, why not just be?

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Sharing Gratitude for Anonymous Gifts

Trishna Shah — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

As Nipun recently said in an email, most CF people love to give gifts :) And, we especially love to tag people anonymously! Wouldn't it be neat if we had a little way to offer the recipient of the gift the opportunity to share their reactions, thoughts, gratitude? I think it would be lovely, as I know how much I'd love to share my own gratitude when I've been tagged anonymously.

Well, that's just what happened to us in London recently - totally organically, without any form or mechanism in place :) You might recall a month back I had shared a story about how a few of us tagged a fellow Smile Card shipper in the UK, who is going through a particularly tough time. We put together a care package filled with lots and lots of love and good wishes and sent it off, expecting absolutely nothing in return, shipping out some kindness just to make someone's day a little brighter. Whilst many stories end there, some come full circle...

Recently, Deep brought up the mail from the lobby and handed me an envelope addressed to "Friends at Help Others." Hmmm.... what could this be? I opened the envelope and much to my surprise I found a "Thank You" card from our fellow Smile Card shipper! Here's what it said...

I was nearly moved to tears myself as I read her note. Thank you to the London crew for all your heartfelt wishes that you wrote to our dear friend. It's so lovely to see how the smallest act of kindness can brighten someone's day and we hope her days ahead continue to get brighter.

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