Week 3 Video 12: Interview with Nipun Mehta (Optional)

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Khem Cho, my friend.

Khem Cho means hi, how are you in Gujarati,

which is the mother tongue of our guest, Nipun Mehta.

Good to see that you're interested in watching this optional video of my

interview with Nipun.

Let me begin by giving you a little bit of a background on Nipun.

As I mentioned in the last video,

he is one of the most inspiring human beings I know.

Super smart.

He's well educated.

I think he is good looking.

He is very articulate.

He's the kind of person that I think could have been very successful at almost

anything that he chose to do.

In the mid-1990s after graduating from Cal Berkeley with a computer

science degree, Nipun started working for Sun Microsystems.

But within two years of working there, Nipun realized that he wasn't finding

working for corporate America to be as meaningful as he found volunteering his

services at a hospice and, in general, helping people in need out.

So he resigned from Sun and, along with a few other like-minded individuals,

he started volunteering full time.

Eventually he and his like-minded friends started something called Service space.

Service space oversees a bunch of initiatives all around the world, and

they're all aimed at spreading kindness and wellbeing.

With that minimal background, let me get to my interview with Nipun.

As you will see, I start by asking Nipun how he dared to do something so

different from what most of us are coached and socialized to do.

What was he thinking when he decided that he would give up a conventional life, or

a life involving climbing up the corporate ladder,

making a lot of money, in order to pursue a life of social service and volunteering?

>> [LAUGH] It's like how dare I, you know?

[LAUGH] Well, I think for me,

the thing was that it was really rooted in my personal experience.

So I saw that a lot of people around me were going with the de facto

sort of standard that you go out and you get and you get and

you accumulate, and he who has the most toys wins.

That's sort of the narrative underneath a lot of action and that's the dream

that you buy into when you're in college, and that was the dream that I bought into.

But I saw a lot of people.

I was really fortunate because I was in the Silicon Valley and

I came out right at the time of the .com sort of boom.

And so I saw all these people trying to achieve it, and

you achieved it in, that was a time when we were all on steroids.

People were achieving things in two years what it would take a generation

to achieve.

So you saw a lot of people spike up and then just crash down.

And you saw that journey not really fulfill them.

And they often ended up being depressed, or they would do these crazy things that

wouldn't make them happy or those around them happy.

And so a part of me started questioning.

Just seeing all that and

just being a rational person, I was like, huh, does that make sense?

Or is there another way?

I think this is where I was like, wow, I don't know if there's another way.

Being an immigrant family,

you're sort of really cradled into a certain dream as well.

And your job is to get good grades and then go to a good college and

then get a good job and

then go start a company and then become a millionaire and all this stuff.

Get married and have a car, have five cars, and have a huge house.

And I think for me, at some point I started questioning that,

in my early twenties.

And I said, well, is there another way?

And what is that other way?

And I started to say, well, if greed isn't going to do it for

you, how about doing its opposite, which was generosity?

What if we just went out and did something purely for the love of it?

We realized that was very liberating.

We did a lot of projects, but it wasn't even about the projects.

It was how you felt at the end of doing a small action.

It just felt right.

And so you're left with thinking, wow, I want to do this again.

It felt so great to be connected, to give,

to give with no strings attached, like no logo, no prices, no fame, nothing.

We didn't want anything.

And just that simple act of giving, you would think

that you're actually on the losing end, because what am I getting in return?

But it turns out you actually get a lot in return.

You get a sense of connection, you know, like you were saying.

So I think that, for me,

just doing those experiments is what really led me to continue.

I think it was Oprah, if I'm not mistaken,

once asked the Dalai Lama, and she says, what do you know for sure?

Very simple question.

Dalai Lama says it takes giving to be happy.

Absolutely.

I think that's the beauty of it, is that the size of the act or

the impact of the act almost doesn't matter.

It's the space that you're holding.

And if you offer from that space of genuine just one-way love,

right, in effect what happens is any small act of generosity or

any big act of generosity, on the outside it could be small or big, but

what actually happens inside you, is that whenever you are, you move from me to we.

Because you're saying it's not just about me.

Now it's about me and you, so it becomes a we experience.

And when there's that shift from me to we, the mind quiets downs.

And in that calmness of the mind, it falls into more of its natural state.

I mean, of course, ultimate stillness would be great.

But even if it's still if you're at point a, and

you go to the stiller point of point b, in that stiller state, to the degree that

your mind is calmer is the degree to which you feel more interconnected.

And the more interconnected you are, the simpler you are,

the more satisfaction you have, the more happy you are.

So it seems like a very small act of kindness, but the greatest

impact of that small act of kindness is not even the ripple that goes out and

it creates in the world.

Not the awards you might get, not the attention you might get,

not even the feedback that you might get back in return, but actually

what's happening to you there and then in your own mind, in your own state of being.

So the mind calms down, you fall into an interconnectedness, and you're happier.

So it's an incredible, so

if you start to look at it in that way, and if I'm different,

most people serve the world to say, oh, look at this person, let me help them.

There's this famous quote that says, if you help, you see life as weak.

All right, it's like this hand-me-down thing.

If you fix, you see life as broken.

And so much of development work is oh, let me go fix it.

And there's some good to it, but

there's also, on the receiving end, this sense of brokenness.

But when you serve, you see life as whole.

So when you're looking at service from the state of inner transformation,

then you start to really have a very different perspective on it.

And if you change for

the rest of eternity, it's going to have its own ripple effect.

You may not necessarily be able to quantify it in terms of how

many schools I built in some country where there's really extreme poverty.

That's valuable too.

But this is also valuable because you're changing yourself,

you're changing the eyes through which you look at the world, and

that's creating an incredible ripple out.

Your mind starts to become more natural.

So, it's not that, because a lot of people look at calmness and say,

no I actually like the busyness.

You go in New York, there's all this stuff happening on the streets, and you're like,

yeah, that's great.

So this is not that kind of calmness.

This is more that the mind is more natural.

And in its natural state.

If you look at, even if you study all the different saints across the world, and

across time, right, they will all say it's natural to be compassionate.

To be kind.

To be generous.

To be tolerant.

To be forgiving.

Because fundamentally, we're all interconnected, and

all of them get to that in so many different ways.

So for me, I don't know if I would define it necessarily as a calmness.

I think it's a byproduct.

But you may actually get to a state where there's a lot of activity, and you're not

necessarily calm in the traditional sense of the word, but you feel natural.

And I think how do you put yourself in a state of naturalness?

And you can try.

I think you can wait for research to figure this out, or you can just try.

There's really two choices, right?

If you can be me centered, or you can be other centered.

And you can try being me centered.

I have tried it, and I've found,

in my limited experience nonetheless, that it's a bottomless bucket.

The more and more you pour into the me, it's still never satisfied, versus, if

you start to go into the we centeredness, you fall into a natural state.

You stop pretending that you need to do anything.

You don't have the weight of the world.

You're not in a rush to get to the next thing, next thing, next thing, and

you have less fear.

You're not worried about how this thing is going to go away from you.

It's just a more natural, relaxed state of being.

And I think it's, I would just say, experiment.

You know what I mean?

There are those people who really wait for science, and that's great.

There's a lot of science behind it.

I'm aware of a lot of it.

But, I think for me it's just been, it's a more natural way of being,

and I do think it's natural to be connected, and to be happy, and

to be accepting of all things that come our way.

The basic idea of Karma Kitchen, as you know, is that you walk into Karma Kitchen

and you have a meal, and the check at the end of your meal reads zero.

And it's zero, because someone before you has paid for you, and you pay forward, for

people after you.

And so, most people look at that and say, wait,

you mean you trust people to pay forward?

And if, we are self interested, maximal thing for

me kind of animals, then we would just not leave anything, and we said, yeah, maybe.

And then maybe we'll be broke, and we'll find out.

And we found out that actually people pay, but what is it that makes it work?

Can everything work in this way?

Probably not.

So if you start to look deeper in to it.

Is your Lexus car dealership, if you say pay what you want,

is that going to really work?

No, that would be my guess.

But why does Karma Kitchen work?

And I think one of the core things around generosity,

around our response of generosity, when we see other people's generosity, and

when we receive generosity, is the context.

All right. So you have to create

a very powerful context.

Now, if you had a buffet line, and go out and you say, well,

everyone take whatever food you want, and eat whatever you want,

take care of your own table, and then leave some money over there.

It's not going to be Karma Kitchen,

it's not going to trigger a response of generosity, of compassion, of connection.

None of that.

But if you walk in, and you see that, oh, it's a volunteer run restaurant.

So the person who's at the door,

it doesn't feel like someone is trying to manipulate you in some way.

It's like a volunteer saying, look, I could be at home watching TV, but

instead I'm here.

And then, they explain it with, there's just this effusive smile, and

you feel that they explain the idea, and you're just like, wow.

Some people break down in tears just there.

And then they come in, and they start to see, wow,

the whole place is all volunteer run.

There's a guy in the back doing dishes.

There's somebody plating.

There's somebody serving your tables, and cleaning your tables.

And all of them have volunteered.

And they're volunteering just to give me this experience, right?

And then you sit down.

You have a meal.

When you sit on this table, underneath the table, there's a positive quote, right?

So it starts to get you thinking in that way.

So now you're in a different frame of reference, but

now there's this nice quote.

On the side you see that, oh, there's a kindness table.

This is where people have left all kinds of goodies just for other guests.

On your table might be a note that somebody, who came before you on that

table, left for you, and then you write for somebody after you.

In between, especially if you have kids, you're waiting for

your meal, and the server comes, and they bust out a smile deck.

A smile deck, is a deck of cards with a kindness idea on each card.

Right? And it's like a fun little game.

You shuffle up the cards.

You pick a card.

And you have to go out and do that act of kindness.

>> [LAUGH] >> And kids love it, right?

And it's the kind of thing, where you'll hear it, and you'll say, well,

what's the big deal?

But when it actually happens, and in the process of actually taking that card and

saying, wow, now am I going to do it?

Your brain starts to release very different kind of chemicals, and

you feel very different, right?

And then in between all of this, you may take a look at the restaurant,

and you're like, wow, no one is paying for their own self.

And that just kind of fills you up.

And then you get your check.

And the check clearly explains, that look these were the costs.

But really what is such a meal worth?

We're not going to give you a suggested donation price,

because we don't know what it's worth to you.

Only you know.

Right?

And when you trust them, in such a way, it again evokes a very different feeling.

So you put all of these things together.

And in between, you might have had somebody sing a happy birthday song.

You might have had your server come in, and they're a volunteer.

So they're just connecting with you.

And they might tell you a story, that might move you.

Or they might leave you something on your table.

Or a guest might have come in, and they would bring a bouquet of flowers.

This happens a lot.

Right? They would bring a bouquet of flowers, and

we would say, well, this is for Karma Kitchen volunteers,

they would just give it to us.

And we would say well, Karma Kitchen is everybody's, so

let's open up the bouquet, and let's give it to random guests.

Right?

And so when you get it it's not like a promotional material,

that you're trying to spin something.

Literally,it's like someone who came before you,

their cup of gratitude overflowed,

they brought in these flowers, they gave it to us, and we're just distributing it.

And you're welcome to then pay it forward, and

spread the ripple of love in the world.

And this is unrelated to your whole meal all together.

So when you have that kind of thing, or someone singing happy birthday, and then

someone says, oh I can sing it in Spanish, and someone's like I can sing it in Tamil.

It just creates this whole ambiance, and you're just like wow, this is real.

Right?

A part of you just clicks.

And if you can create such a strong context,

then I think this generosity, as reframing, is very regenerative.

Right?

It's not like, if I have to sell you Coca-Cola,

you're going to get tired of drinking it.

So I have to keep on advertising, and bringing all these different actors and

actresses in front of you,

to tell you wait a second, it's cool to keep on going on.

Right?

Versus, like, this thing is supported by nature.

Like there's no one trying to spin anything but

it's just that inevitably you have a propensity towards a greater

connection and that propensity is what is going to propel.

You're going to receive a generous act and you're going to pay it forward because

your cup of gratitude is going to to overflow.

How people pay it forward, how much they pay it forward,

that's going to be very dependent on so many different factors.

Our thinking was in aggregate, it would work out, and it has.

What you said is very legitimate.

Right? It's that how will I respond to this?

Will I respond with gratitude?

All right it's like wow, someone before me did this and

I have a chance to pay it forward?

And there is a gratitude that emerges in many people.

But, like you said, there's also a sense of guilt.

A lot of people will say, oh wait a second, yeah I kind of, yeah all right,

I kind of should and I'm going to go and okay fine you know I'll do that.

Or it can even be more complex than that because, if you're in a peer group

then it's like okay if everyone is leaving at 20 I don't want to leave at ten.

And then you know and then it can create that kind of setting, right?

But I think that if you look at the whole supply chain,

if you want to call it that, right.

[LAUGH] If you look at the whole process of what actually happens,

our purpose is not to tell you whether you go in gratitude or guilt.

But, our purpose is actually to help you just ask the question,

which is one step before that.

Is that we actually want to confuse you with that very question.

Cause if we're out there to get money, there's so many different ways to do that.

You can even start to benchmark it at a certain price.

You can say but we don't even have a suggested price.

The reason why we don't have a suggested price is because we want people to

ask this question.

Which is that if something is offered to you without a price,

how much is its value?

Which is to say, what is something worth without a price tag?

And we have to have, you cannot turn everything into a market.

You can have a market economy,

but really it's not a good idea to have a market society.

Society has to have things that don't have a price tag.

And so here we are sensitizing people.

To learn to navigate their own terrain.

Whatever's in them is going to come out right?

And which is to say is it going to be positive or is it going to be negative?

Or how do I handle it with other people?

How do I process a whole community that's behaving in this way, right?

How do I process receiving from volunteers?

In our house, we run these awaken circles, which now run all over the world

as well, but 17 years ago my parents and I, actually my mom,

another friend, and I, we sat down and we said we're going to sit in silence for

an hour and we're going to open up the door.

If anyone else wants to come, they can come in.

And second hour, we would have dinner in silence, because my mom was thinking,

you know this was 17 years ago, she's like I gotta feed you Nippon So,

anyone else who comes, I'll feed them too.

And then in the third hour, sorry, in the second hour we would do a circle of

sharing and in the third hour, my mom would feed everyone.

And over the years, tens of thousands of people have come.

And, forget it, there's no price, there's no donation box.

And you would be surprised, Raj, a lot people would come in not a lot, but

there are people who, I met this one particular guy,

met him in a different city in southern California.

And he was like, man, what your parents are doing is amazing, and he kind of knows

that there's like 65 people that come every week, and that's our limit, and

there's like wait list, and everyone feels elated and all this.

But he's, so I said oh, you go?

I travel so sometimes I can't make it, I thought maybe I haven't seen him.

And he's like yeah, I've been there once.

And I was very confused.

I was like, wow if you're raving about this,

how come you've just gone once, right?

And he said, I couldn't go a second time.

And I said, well, what do you mean?

It's open.

Anyone can go.

You just have to RSVP.

And he's like, yeah, but, there was no donation box.

And I was just uncomfortable having a meal without paying for it.

Right.

And what is that, right?

As a culture, what is that kind of a response to say I

don't want to take anything from somebody, because I haven't paid them back?

You're so entrenched in the transaction mindset

that you feel like you need to pay everyone back.

That you feel, and that's a very arrogant position to be in.

That you feel that you have the capacity to pay everyone back.

Because if you break it down, think of our moms.

How in the world are we going to pay

back nine months of a gift that starts our life?

But that was asked at one point.

Someone says, talking about parents.

Buddha says you can have your mom on one shoulder and

dad on the other should and you can, ever since you were born.

Well hypothetically speaking you take care of every single one of their desires

till they die.

You would still be unable to fulfill their debt.

And this is the Buddha talking about this.

So it's we are to think that we can pay back for

everything, is sort of a mentality that we have created.

But how can we start to undo some of that and

realize that, look, our life start with a gift.

And then it incumbent on us, since we can't pay back, what can we do?

We can learn the art of receiving it, and once we learn the art of receiving it,

a part of that process is to allow your gratitude to overflow and pay it forward.

>> Thanks for watching my interview with Nippon.

I hope that you found it useful, and I also hope that it helped you gain

greater clarity on many of the concepts that we discussed this week.

With that, let me say Ävjo to you, which is bye bye in Gujarati for now.

Please don't forget to watch the next video in which we're going to be measuring

your happiness levels for the second time in this course.

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