the holiday season upon us, it's easy to feel pressure that you aren't spending enough, doing enough or otherwise keeping up with everyone else around you. If that's the case, log out of Pinterest, take some deep breaths and remind yourself that true holiday spirit can't be bought — no matter how good the bargains get. For a refreshing antidote to the consumer hoopla, check out the ad-free, volunteer-run website Kindspring.org, which is "dedicated to fostering and celebrating small acts of kindness around the world." The site, part of the nonprofit Service Space, lists hundreds of ways to show compassion for others, which are organized by theme... posted on Dec 24 2015 (13,828 reads)

Scilla Elworthy, Jean Houston and Rama Mani first met in 2012 there was a perfect synchronicity of temperaments and ideas. Clinical psychologist and business consultant, Dr Hamira Riaz, talks to the three founders of Rising Women Rising World about the goals of this global community of remarkable women and the art of a life well lived. It is an unusual occurrence when the roll call of achievements of just three women includes several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize; training roles for UN Development Programmes, and advice-giving to NATO military officers and government officials. That the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and the Clintons, to name just a few, have sought them out ... posted on Mar 8 2016 (15,546 reads)

It's a word that has tumbled out of use and favor in today's world. And humanity has paid a high price for that loss. In this piece, eight writers, including Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver, speak up in voices that are lyrical, incisive, and urgent, drawing us back to the luminous heart of what it means to live reverently.  So ... why does reverence matter? Paul Woodruff: Because It Is A Forgotten Virtue Power without reverence is aflame with arrogance, while service without reverence is smoldering toward rebellion. Politics without reverence is blind to the general good and deaf to advice from people who are powerless. (…) Because reverence fosters lead... posted on Apr 14 2016 (37,899 reads)

know in our gut when we’re hearing a good story—and research is starting to explain why. Stories are told in the body. It doesn’t seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness—from dreams or fantasies—and traveling through words or images to other minds. We see them outside of us, on paper or on screen, never under the skin. But we do feel stories. We know in our gut when we’re hearing a good one—and science is starting to explain why. Experiencing a story alters our neurochemical processes, and stories are a powerful force in shaping human behavior. In this way, stories are not just instruments of... posted on Jun 9 2016 (19,537 reads)

Then, there's the other perspective which prevails today, which is Thomas Huxley, who was an early advocate of Charles Darwin in Victorian England, that compassion is a social construct, that we're really selfish and base and greedy at our core. Compassion is this ethical principle that we invent as part of culture. What our lab has done is chart the mammalian origins of compassion. We bring people to our lab in Berkeley, and other people are doing this work now. We'll show them images of suffering -- for example, kids with cancer or classic images of kids in a famine, really tough stuff to look at. What we find really requires us to revise our thinking about the human nervou... posted on Nov 4 2016 (30,833 reads)

on – including an old dictionary with the cover and many pages torn from it that someone gave me. I began trying out the new words I acquired in my conversations with guys here, much to their annoyance for they couldn’t understand why I would use what they would call a Five Dollar word for a Two Cents conversation. But I knew that what I wanted to do was master the art of communication. Some years later I began to write poetry and articles but began noticing that I thought in images that couldn’t be conveyed in words. Yet I lacked any measure of visual language. I began scratching around trying to find my voice. Some of my early influences and the people who encou... posted on Aug 9 2016 (15,758 reads)

meet in the parking lot of a grocery store in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday morning. It is the 17th of July, a date I’ve celebrated as long as I can remember. The day I was born. I have driven 5 hours south to meet a group of strangers in anticipation of a different kind of birth. I am here, exactly 42 years after entering the world, to finally become a man. Nervous hellos. Final checks. Cars and trucks packed with camping equipment, rations, and gallon bottles of water. We snake up into the hills in convoy. Shops and signs and other vehicles gradually fall away until the tarmac becomes a dusty track. Huge pines tower above us, almost blocking out the clear blue sky.... posted on Oct 19 2016 (10,602 reads)

I choose characters that can be very expressive, especially with a bigger brush. The big brush has great potential because it can be very explosive, or very energetic. But the big brush, also, with lots of ink, has quite a bit of limitations because it is very difficult to show subtlety in line. And certain words have great meaning for me personally, because I studied Buddhism; so words from Buddhism are very meaningful for me. Or words from my ancestral past; my family is from Okinawa, so images and metaphors from Okinawa have great meaning for me, they resonate. So I would choose those characters. Or ideograms, or words that I think are meaningful for the viewer, because I am not only... posted on Feb 22 2017 (7,933 reads)

April of 2017, volunteers from ServiceSpace convened a special circle on Healing + Transformation in Berkeley. Below are three stories that were shared in the circle. A Lesson in Service from an Art Store What inspired me to become a physician was watching my twin cousins suffer through Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, which is a very severe, debilitating and mostly seen in boys. They grew up with that. As a child, I just saw how their mother would care for her two children, and it really propelled me to go out and really help people who needed it. In my third year of med school, my uncle contracted glioblastoma, very severe brain tumor. As I entered my clinical years, I w... posted on Aug 3 2017 (10,979 reads)

Samen has been a Nurse Practitioner in Maternal Fetal Medicine for over 33 years. In 1997, Arlene met the Dalai Lama and showed him what Interplast could offer children of Tibet. He said to her, "You must go into Tibet and help rural people. When you are on the path of service, all doors will open to you." That meeting deeply impacted the trajectory of Arlene's life of service. In 2004, she left behind her clinical practice to dedicate her life to serving pregnant women living in the most vulnerable conditions in the most remote places of the world. By 2009, she started One Heart World-Wide, which spread its life saving "network of safety" model to 60,000 women... posted on Jul 11 2017 (7,529 reads)

has become a hot topic in recent years. Celebrities from Oprah to James Taylorto Ariana Huffington have promoted an “attitude of gratitude,” and gratitude journals, hashtags, and challenges have become immensely popular. Much of this enthusiasm has been fueled by research linking gratitude to happiness, health, and stronger relationships. Yet there has been a backlash. Some critics and skeptics have charged that gratitude breeds self-satisfaction and acceptance of the status quo. Several articles, including a New York Times essay by journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, have recen... posted on Aug 30 2017 (10,099 reads)

GREENE uses her experience of planting seeds to discuss the idea of not expecting anything from the work we do. LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN In my Educational Psychology class, I learned about delayed gratification, the ability to wait for a desired result, to postpone an immediate reward for a greater one later. A study of preschool children had been conducted to determine their capacity for delayed gratification. Each student was offered one marshmallow now with the promise of another marshmallow as well if able to wait fifteen minutes without eating the first one. Some gobbled up the marshmallow immediately, others struggled and finally succumbed before the time was up, ... posted on Jul 22 2017 (10,314 reads)

Remberance of Peace  Several years ago, I traveled for two days on planes, trains and in a tiny car to sit at a Buddhist retreat in the French country side.  The hope was to discover what the Buddha could teach me about how to be alive in the present moment and experience peace. This was the peace I remembered as a child while standing by my mother’s side in the kitchen where we made peanut brittle together, canned tomatoes and washed dishes. It was the peace I felt sitting next to her in church.  It was the peace many others felt too as they would sit with her at the kitchen table, drinking endless cups of coffee as she would laugh and talk with visitors—anyo... posted on Jul 26 2017 (17,358 reads)

is a time finally away from bosses and schedules, stress and assignments. Yet, once retired, many miss the sense of purpose and community their jobs provided. Where retirement once called to mind visions of rocking chairs and mid-day snoozes, many in the Baby Boomer generation are shaking things up, turning their focus in retirement to encore careers and volunteerism. In this Spotlight on Seniors Who are Changing the World, we take a look at some extraordinary individuals who have used their 'retirement' as an opportunity to give back to the world and their communities in remarkable ways, finding along the path both passion and purpose in their golden years. From Me... posted on Aug 14 2017 (14,556 reads)

the teachers in my life, there is one person whose name I don’t know, nor do I know where he is today. I first encountered “Old Uncle”, (this is how I addressed him in Chinese) a decade ago when I was in elementary school in China. He sometimes took me to school in his tricycle. During those morning rides, while riding the tricycle with full strength, ensuring that I would not be late for school, Old Uncle told me about his life. His words still bring up tears as well as smiles when I contemplate them ten years later. Old Uncle’s wife had passed away when their two children were still young. He made a living by riding tricycles, and raised the children o... posted on Aug 13 2017 (11,541 reads)

When we have a family reunion, we all tell stories about our own childhood, and everybody always listens to everybody else’s stories — says, “Did you grow up in the same family as I did?” MS. TIPPETT: Right. There are five versions of every story. DR. VAN DER KOLK: Yeah. There’s all these very, very different versions, and they barely ever overlap. So, people create their own realities in a way. What is so extraordinary about trauma, is that these images or sounds or physical sensations don’t change over time. So people who have been molested as kids continue to see the wallpaper of the room in which they were molested. Or when they exami... posted on Oct 20 2017 (66,880 reads)

9, 2015 I first heard of Vaea Marx from John Toki. Vaea is an old family friend of the Toki family. John’s parents founded Leslie Ceramics Supply in Berkeley in 1946. Their business was built on integrity and a deep spirit of support for both aspiring and established artists who came into their shop, first as customers and then, quite often, as friends.        John told me stories of Vaea and Peter Voulkos, both friends of the Tokis, who worked closely together for decades. Then one day artist Ann Weber handed me a catalog saying, “Here’s an artist you really should interview. He’s been around for a long time and should get more atten... posted on Jan 31 2018 (20 reads)

discoveries happen thanks to a fluke. It’s how I ran across a Japanese practice of stone appreciation called suiseki. I’d arrived at the Oakland Museum in order to plan a studio tour for the Art Guild. As time passed I wondered where the person I was to meet could be. Finally, I called her. Turned out I was a day early. “But listen,” she said, “there’s a great exhibit in the main hall. Look for the rocks.”       Did she say “rocks”?       She did.       I like rocks. (Who doesn’t?) So I decided to follow her advice.       The Oakland Mus... posted on Dec 4 2017 (26,311 reads)

the past ten months I have chaired and co-facilitated MIT’s IDEAS China program—a ten month innovation journey for a group of 30 or so senior Chinese business leaders. This year the IDEAS China program enrolled executives of a major state-owned Chinese bank. One goal of this team was to reinvent the future of their organization in the face of big data and other related disruptive changes, which provided me with a little more exposure to that aspect of the world economy. For example, Jack Ma, the visionary founder of Alibaba, says that “In five years, we anticipate that the human era will move from the information technology era to the data technology era.” But... posted on Oct 4 2017 (10,432 reads)

March 29, 2017, the very unique C3 A/C Coach on the Panchavati Express observed its 10th anniversary. More than a thousand passengers who regularly travel on this superfast train (that runs between Mumbai and Manmad in Nashik district) participated enthusiastically in the celebrations, with 90 passengers making the anniversary trip. The elated railway officials also pitched in by treating the passengers to chocolate cake. The C3 A/C coach, or the ‘Adarsh’ coach as it has been aptly name, allows entry only to monthly season ticket (MST) holders. What makes it unique is the fact that all of its passengers follow a voluntary code of conduct that has ensured it a place in the L... posted on Dec 17 2017 (10,376 reads)