Week of Jan 31

A large network of kind souls did incredible acts of kindness to pull together tonight's event. The Graduate Students Council started it off by passing our budget unanimously, and were very gracious to accept our entry at the last minute. People we didn't even know came forward. Someone dropped off their amplifier and speaker. Another got a microphone. Someone in the audience had a mobile set of speakers when Nipun needed it. One student who was helping organize left his class early to make sure the space was setup, got drenched in the rain, and stayed on with a smile. And our caterers gave us extra food - which gave us an opportunity to apply some of the evening's philosophy. More on that later.

Nipun Mehta gave a mind-blowing talk. People were moved beyond words, and many said they felt emotional. We all know these truths and we remembered this evening. We tried making a video out of his talk and should be uploaded soon.

If you have some snippets that are worth preserving in text form, please email them on our list.

Nipun started by telling us about the story of the Dandi March. Tagore was walking by Gandhiji and asked him if he had any plans. This was two weeks before the Dandi March happened. Gandhiji replied, "I don't know, but you can be sure that I'm praying." Gandhiji was trying to create harmony between his thoughts and his action.

Another was (and this is not a quote): Think about how much action by the universe has had to happen to make up our present moment of existence.

Nipun also showed us this cool video clip at the end.



At the end of the event, we decided to put Nipun's smile cards to good use. There was leftover food, so someone suggested we give it to students who were studying at the Old Union. We decided to serve them with our own hands. We walked by each group we could find, and to our surprise, most were hungry and were thrilled to be fed. We tagged several people with smile cards and some delicious Greek food from Gyros.

This was a landmark day for us at Sarvodaya - we hope to internalize these lessons and help each other walk on this path.

Nipun's talk can now be watched below:


Here are some pictures from the event:

# posted by Capital Socialist/Social Capitalist @ 11:38 PM 4 comments

Week of 17th Jan

We talked about focusing on the community around us at Stanford. It is a trap to start thinking of volunteering in old-age homes, etc.. because our purpose is to cultivate kindness and kindness is not something that should get triggered only in old-age homes. We must practice kindness in the environment we are in.

This thought was agreed upon by all present. Based on this, we brainstormed ideas that would help us work for the student community at Stanford. Here are some of them:

• Take the garbage out: Knock on your neighbor's door and offer to take out the garbage in the morning. So they don't think you are wacko, do this initially for neighbors who would know you.
• Cook with love: Make something delicious and give it to a random neighbor, asking them to pay it forward with an act of kindness to someone else.
• Take people shopping: A lot of students don't have cars to go shopping. We could create a website where those who plan to go shopping can post their schedule. Those who want to go shopping can sign up for alerts and be notified. The site can make it easy for people who want to help to be able to do so using simple web-based technology. Anyone interested in helping make this a reality, please let us know (on our mailing list). People don't need to wait for the site to offer this service. You can mail on your local community mailing list.
• Bring your stories: If you've done an act of kindness or been a recipient of one, we want to hear about it in our weekly meetings! Due to the extreme focus on negative news in our society, we tend to believe that the world is a bad place. However, when people are kind to each other and no one blows anyone up, we don't get to hear it. We must balance the negative news we get with the positive news that does exist in this world. We must play a role in creating a community where such news can be gathered and shared.
  

Jan 24: We finished setting up these blogs and are ready to send the word out about this group.

# posted by Capital Socialist/Social Capitalist @ 8:33 PM 1 comments