Being the Change

Recently there was an interesting deal on Living Social.com. ``Purchase a $5 donation through Living Social and the popular online business would double the amount and donate it to the Red Cross relief efforts for Japan. My initial reaction was, “Wow, what a great idea! Just click to make a difference.” I believe Living Social ended up raising close to a million dollars through this scheme. However, later that day, I had an interesting conversation with a close friend. He had seen the deal as well and for some reason, the idea didn’t sit well with him. He later understood his uneasiness when he came across a blog entry on Charity Focus.org. After the writer of the blog came across the Living Social deal, his first thought was, “Wow, now donations are for sale!”

It’s interesting to examine the multiple facets of service. The Living Social deal, for example, could be a terrific way to make a quick impact for a worthy cause. In just one day, Red Cross’s budget for Japan relief efforts increased by a million dollars. But what the Charity Focus blog went on to describe was the human to human transformation that is lost in this type of transaction based giving model. Clicking to purchase a $5 donation not only creates zero connection to the individuals in Japan that you are hoping to help, but because of this lost connection, you become detached from a global catastrophe, limiting your own reflection on your individual accountability. In other words, the “click and give” model generally doesn’t lead us to question how our micro decisions impact the world at the macro level, and how these decisions may contribute to global warming, climate change, and an increase in natural disasters.

Without going off on too much of a tangent, there is something to be said about a giving model that creates a human to human connection. While volunteering with Be the Change in DC, I realized at a more profound level the impact of direct service. Offering sleeping bags to homeless individuals huddled under blankets in the cold DC night created a beautiful opportunity. I was able to engage with the homeless at a level which is difficult to achieve when you are rushing to work or some other appointment with a million thoughts flying through your mind. At times, guilt muddled with misplaced generosity might lead you to donate a few coins or bills without making eye contact and rushing onwards. But the opportunity to spend time talking to the homeless, through the medium of a sleeping bag, allowed me to remember how much we fundamentally have in common. So many of the individuals that I met shared with me their struggle to remain positive and revealed terrible instances of misfortune and bad luck. Their personal stories led me to question the impact of my own thoughts, decisions, and actions on the world around me.

Nothing could replace the human experience of direct service. And this is why my friend had that unsettling feeling when he came across the Living Social deal. Choosing to purchase a $5 donation, while honorable in its intent, forgoes the opportunity to connect with each other and experience an inner transformation. I could easily donate $35 for Be the Change’s sleeping bag fund but how would this create a deeper understanding of what homeless people are dealing with and how their dreams are so similar to my own? Why is this important? Because it reminds us that we are not alone….that we are all connected in our desire to live in a better society. Ultimately, to create sustainable change in this world, the kind where all of us are accountable for the impact of our individual decisions, human to human giving is essential. It makes you work harder to be the change you wish to see in the world.

Breathing Prana

As the sun began rising and the ocean waves lapped gently against the shoreline, my body curved into a backbend, creating a shadow in the sand. Sweat dripped down my face in crooked streams. Suddenly an ocean wave crashed against a nearby rock, breaking the rhythm of silence. I fell into the warm sand, salty water gushed into my pores, and my eyes squinted against the sting. I felt so alive. As my energy flowed into the ocean, its waves gave back a cool, refreshing embrace. The sun was now half awake, stretching its golden rays with a slow and thoughtful yawn. Yoga on the beach with the rising sun is like no other experience.

I began practicing yoga near the end of law school because I heard it was supposed to be a great stress reliever. I could honestly say that I felt exhilarated after my first yoga session and wished that the feeling would last throughout the day. Everything seemed possible and not as daunting as before and my head cleared of all the clutter. While all forms of exercise release endorphins, the difference I have experienced with yoga as opposed to running or aerobics is the concentration of my mind on the rhythmic flow of my body in harmony with my breath. For several minutes throughout a single yoga session, I find myself truly living in the present moment and there is something inexplicably amazing about this simple achievement. After continuing with my yoga practice for a few more weeks, I began to think about its larger purpose other than to release stress.

There have been several articles recently, for example in the New York Times and the Guardian, which explain how living in the present moment impacts our overall state of happiness. Without regretting or reliving the past or worrying about or planning for the future, we find ourselves simply content with what is right now. Echart Tolle, in The Power of Now, elaborates on this idea. He articulates that by being present in the here and now, we can release ourselves from all the anxiety and stress that blocks our life force, our prana. He describes the million worries we carry with us from the moment we awake to the final seconds before we fall asleep, but he asks an interesting question. “What percent of our list of worries and stresses are responsibilities that we actually need to address right now at this moment?” Usually, not a huge percent. By concentrating on this present moment, we can be content, or at least feel less weighed down than just five minutes ago.

Now imagine repeating these five minute cycles for only twenty to thirty minutes a day, just focusing on your breath in seated meditation, through pranayama, or with the flow of your body during yoga. These cycles of concentrated breathing in the present moment have the power of creating ripples of positive energy that radiate from your core into the universe you live in. It’s these positive ripples that flow from within us and around us that have more impact on helping us to fulfill our responsibilities than all the precious time lost in worrying and fretting. Just twenty minutes after one yoga or meditation session, makes me feel infinitely times better than before I started. It’s an amazing response that I can feel and see.

Having grown up in the Jain tradition, I began observing the meditative postures of Bhagavan Mahavir and the other great Jinas and asking myself about the significance of yoga in Jainism. Ahimsa is more than being vegetarian and living in peace; it’s also about controlling our unproductive and counterproductive thoughts in order to prevent the creation and attraction of negative energy to our souls. Sending negative energy out into the world and attracting it to our being is another form of violence, and sometimes an even more powerful force because our thoughts and resulting vibrations ripple around us, impacting our friends, family, co-workers, and even people we pass on the sidewalk. There is a domino effect and through yoga, I feel like I am able to control the force I release into the universe, at least for a few hours a day. Contemplating on this peace of mind through meditation is even more powerful.

I remember when I first began learning pranayama in order to complement my yoga and meditation practice. I was asked, “Imagine how your breathing changes with your emotions. For example, it becomes fast when you’re nervous and heavy when you’re sad. Now, imagine utilizing your breathing to control your emotions, and ultimately, to control your life.”

Women Rise in Egypt

The past few weeks have represented a dream come true for the women’s rights movement. Across Egypt, women and girls united and stood as one alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons in the country’s fight for democracy. As the world watched the celebrations in Egypt, news analysts began discussing the country’s future, debating whether a true democracy will have an opportunity to emerge in the coming months. Thus far mainstream media has failed to point out both the integral role of these brave women in the protests as well as the incredible opportunity the Egyptian revolution presents for realizing women’s rights not only in Egypt, but also in other countries in the Middle East.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to befriend an incredible woman from Egypt named Ms. Fatma Emam Mohamed Mokhtar, who is a Research Associate for the Nazra Association for Feminist Studies based in Cairo. Fatma is a passionate, young woman in her late twenties, who has struggled to realize her identity in the midst of gender inequalities that are entrenched in this country’s public and private spheres. Despite being raised by a traditional Nubian, Islamic mother that strongly opposed Fatma’s participation in the protests, Fatma found the courage to join her fellow Egyptians in Tahrir Square. On her first day of joining the protests, she was wary of identifying with any sub-group, focused instead on supporting the great movement for a democracy in her country. But after some time she was truly amazed by the general unity that was demonstrated between all Egyptian women, regardless of their political or religious beliefs. This is not what she had expected.

This uprising unintentionally created a public space for all Egyptian men and women to come together and hear each other with open minds because they were unified behind a common purpose. The kind of revolution that resulted, where the government was overthrown not by a military coup or a political or religious ideology, but by a people that were united in their thirst for freedom and equal opportunities, this kind of revolution presents the foundation from which women’s rights in Egypt can be realized in an organic way, from the bottom up. Egypt’s new government has the potential for involving women at the grassroots level in an honest conversation about their country’s future but in the coming months this conversation must involve both men and women. Without undermining the unified force that overthrew the regime, it is imperative that Egyptian women play a key role by voicing their opinions and shaping legitimate political parties with meaningful solutions for improving gender disparities. The firecracker that set off the uprising was large numbers of unemployed or underemployed youth, frustrated with the status quo. If the male Egyptian youth are looking to create a more robust economy for their future, equal opportunities that allow women to fulfill their potential and contribute to a thriving economy is essential.

A debate between overlapping individual rights and religious and cultural norms is surely to arise at home and in public life. The women’s rights movement within Egypt is complicated. There are religious Muslim women who believe there should be a completely secular legal system and religious Muslim women who believe the Sharia legal code, the system of laws based on the Koran that determine women’s personal status rights, should continue to be applicable to family law cases. In Tahrir Square, there were women with head scarves standing with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim women without head scarves standing on their own, and Muslim women like Fatma, standing with head scarves but unaffiliated with any political party or ideology. It has only been one week since the revolution, but as they begin organizing around pressing issues, the old debates that not only divide men and women, but also women from women, are already returning.

According to many western scholars and policy makers, Fatma represents the next generation of Muslim feminists in Egypt who are integrating and harmonizing Islam with progressive feminist ideologies. In college, she was greatly influenced by the Arab feminist Fatima Mersini, whose criticism of religion opened the door for Fatma to begin questioning current Islamic jurisprudence. Ms. Mersini describes how men in Arab society supplement personal status Sharia laws with customary privileges that favor men while subjugating women, causing a view of themselves as lesser beings and discouraging full participation in public life.[1] Both Ms. Mersini and Fatma argue that a correct interpretation of the Koran empowers women and values their contribution to society as equally as men.

Currently, Fatma is working with the, “Going Visual” unit of the Nazra Association for Feminist Studies, in order to develop advertisements that depict women on the streets doing what is only socially acceptable for men to do. For example, there are snippets of women smoking hookahs and getting their hair cut in public by street barbers. They are meant to be provocative and humorous at once, with the aim of planting seedlings of change in the minds of both Egyptian men and women, leading them to question mainstream Islamic identity. Forcing Fatma’s generation to examine how and why they identify with the Islamic faith is crucial to Muslim women’s rights as well as Egypt’s advancement.

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[1] Elhadj, Elie, “The Islamic Shield: Arab Resistance to Democratic and Religious Reforms,” 52.