Earlier this week, Jin Wei hosted a beautiful ServiceSpace circle at the Berkeley Monastery on creating systems change with compassion -- with Terry Patten, and many others from the local community. I was quite deeply moved by this circle, and particularly Marty Verhoeven who joined as a last-minute guest.

Below are some of the profound questions that emerged during our time together ...

Can we organize as a fractal and hologram, such that collective systems contain patterns of inner transformation? (Terry)

What will enable love to speak with it's actual, inherent authority over weaker forces? (Terry)

What does it take to transform the identity from "radically autonomous individual" to "sum total of all my relationships"? (Marty)

How do we provide palliative care for the old, while midwife-ing the new? (Preeta)

Post independence in India, when Gandhi was asked, "What do you fear most?" His response: "Heartless Intellectuals."

The dominant paradigm is busy monetizing (and hence cheapening) relationships. How do we get ahead of the curve and preserve the sacred? (Rajesh)

In any particular moment, we are embedded in multiple systems. Is cooperation and synergy more feasible vis sub-systems in the middle layer? (Chris)

"This laboring of ours with all that remains undone, as if still bound to it, is like the lumbering gait of the swan. And then our dying -- releasing ourselves from the very ground on which we stood -- is like the way he hesitantly lowers himself into the water. It gently receives him, and, gladly yielding, flows back beneath him, as wave follows wave, while he, now wholly serene and sure, with regal composure, allows himself to glide." --Rilke

What is the role of human intentionality? Is effort stronger than doing nothing? (Preeta)

Compassion can't be manufactured. It emerges. How do we meet suffering in the world in a way that we don't cry and go home, but shed tears of compassion and respond? (Marty)

When researchers asked people if animals feel pain, they were more likely to say yes if they were fed fruit products over animal products. Can behavior change emerge before mental change? (Ari)

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian." --Paul McCartney

How we operate from the head to create systems, while still leading with the heart? (Wendy)

If we can differentiate method from intention, perhaps we might be able to create a universalized intention? (Joserra)

Whole-systems change is imperative, but in a real sense it must begin inside ourselves. Where to begin? Outside-in or inside-out? Facing impossible questions is like confronting a multidimensional koan, an impossible Zen riddle that has no direct answer the mind can devise and understand, but which must nonetheless be answered. What is an impossible question you're holding? (Terry)

At what level of scale, do we start losing our connection to the heart? (Marty)

"Clay Boddhisattva can't serve in a rainstorm."

How do we practice as if our hair is on fire, while patiently trusting in nature's emergence? How do we balance the ripple effect of love with the tyranny of the incrementalism? (Aryae)

Can we achieve scale with powers that are stronger than our minds? (Paul)

Can we lean in with surrender? (Nipun)

"This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger ― much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire." --Mister Rogers

As new research indicates, organisms are algorithms -- and new technology is now manifestly the converse: algorithms are organisms. What are the new algorithms that will allow us to lead with compassion? (Rahul)

Today's world: kids spend 10 hours a day in front of a screen, and we teach workshops on "forest bathing". Will we soon need a recipe for basic human connection? (Jin Wei)

"Virtue can cut without harming."

(Overhead at dinner)

Is it good design to "buy the space to be the change"? Or does the money system crowd out other systems?

What is the distinction between strategic virtue versus principled virtue? Example: Gandhi practiced principled non-violence, not strategic non-violence to get ahead. What's the difference between leading with principled virtue and allowing strategies to emerge, versus leading with strategies and allowing principled behavior to emerge?

What is the architecture for synergy? Is an institution limited by the consciousness of its leadership, or by the consciousness of its ladders (the mycelium network of roots underneath the ground)?

As we ended our circle, Marty concluded, "Monasteries are meant to be places of bright light in dark times. Thank you for upping the wattage here today." That sense of sacred was very present in our circle.

Terry also shared this beautiful note of gratitude on our email thread:

Dear Friends,

I am so delighted to meet you all. Clearly, the quality of the spirit that animates the circles that ServiceSpace convenes is very special.

It has taken me a few days to find my e-voice to respond to these lovely digest of questions. Perhaps it’s because I feel disarmed.

I circulate pretty widely in the world and in most circumstances, I encounter familiar approaches and ways of being. But there is something different here. And it leaves me listening and being quiet.

I sense a uniquely pure and light and playful and alive quality in the spirit, Nipun, with which you exercise your gentle leadership.

It is no wonder that such clear and strong and good hearts are magnetized. It is an honor to meet each and all of you. I look forward to getting to know you better.

Sincere thanks for holding space for my offerings. I look forward, sincerely and humbly, to discovering the greater purposes that are drawing us together.

_/\_

Terry

Post circle, we've already circulated various ideas as ways of follow-up. I'll also be taking a lot of this inquiry to our upcoming meetings with government leadership in Costa Rica. Thank you, all!