Last night, my very close friend Rahul, invited me over for something similar to a spiritual gathering at his place by the name awakin’ meet. It was to be led by one Nipun Mehta – a gift activist of international repute. Nipun has been facilitating these worldwide gift economy initiatives – under the title Service Space – random acts of kindness that seek nothing in return, besides possibly a small request to keep the good work going. A Ted talker and also a dignitary selected by President Obama for an important committee on inter-faith harmony, Nipun is a name to reckon with.
There were sixty odd enthusiasts who had come to listen to Nipun. The evening started with an hour of total silence followed by his address that was perhaps as deep as the silence itself. Listening to Nipun, his values and his conviction in the value of generosity was a total delight. With his every word, I got reconnected to my master Guruji Rishi Prabhakar who was another embodiment of selfless living, of not stopping at anything short of seeing godliness in every living being.
Of all the wonderful things he spoke, what stayed the most with me was the soft fervor with which Nipun drove home to each of us the power of the human heart. At one point, he illustrated it through an example of the space from which Gandhiji exhorted his freedom fighter friends. He didn’t ask them to receive the beatings of the oppressive British like a heartless stone would. In fact, he would ask them to receive the blows actively with a heart-felt smile to demonstrate the power of human love. Sooner or later, the oppressor would see the point. This would be what we call a hriday-parivartan, a moment of truth. After all, the oppressor is no less human than the oppressed.
Following the soft speech that Nipun gave, he turned into a total extrovert during his casual interactions. I took some time to adapt to his social energy which was surprisingly too overwhelming. After being on the fringes for a while, I finally walked up toward the random group he was chatting up with to listen to their conversation. While discussing with one of the participants, he surprised me with challenging the famous Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For those who are not in the know, by and large, Maslow postulated that one needs to be done with ones fundamental needs in life before taking on spiritual needs like generosity and enlightenment.
As per Nipun, however the world and particularly India has been full of so many rare gems who have always placed others needs above their own even if they wouldn’t have much for themselves (just like the story of Shabari and Rama ). And he vehemently mentioned that we have many unsung heroes even today. Just that we haven’t sung their stories rather their glories loud enough and often enough, nowhere close to outsmart what the doomsayers have to say of a morally debilitating world.
During my one on one chat with him, I mentioned to him my observation that I meet lots of people who happily offer time and energy to others but not money though they have enough. And so isn’t having a loose grip on money a big test of one’s vairagya? And by that standard aren’t the Bill Gates and now the Zuckerbergs of the world epitomes of generosity? He gave me an extraordinary answer. While he lauded the Bill Gates and Zuckerbergs for having finally outlived money, he also told that the higher souls are the ones that give the money away before it accumulates into even a small personal fortune. He mentioned how he often does this exercise of spontaneously emptying whatever he has in his wallet into the hands of an earnest receiver, regardless of the amount. Partaking of this example I guess was an apt culmination of an evening spent with a very inspiring man.
I left the assembly murmuring to myself how my late master keeps his presence alive by sending me such divine guides so that I do not forget the lofty values he happened to instill in me and also promising to myself that my contribution to what I heard from this noble man would be to further internalize the value of generosity he spoke so passionately of. This I thought was also possibly the only contribution that this loving proponent of pay-it-forward would agree to receive.
(Friends, you can know more about Nipun and his work on www.servicespace.org)
