{Seminar} @ CDS: 29th December : “Gently Shaking the World.”

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world,” Gandhi once said. It’s hard to believe that, when we feel disconnected. Instead, we fight for a bigger hammer – more money, more fame, more power. Heartivism, an activism that leads with the intelligence of the heart, invites us to do precisely the opposite. If an intervention doesn’t work, try a gentler one. If even that fails, go gentler still. Today’s culture tends to equate gentle with soft, but it’s hardly so. To be gentle is to be connected, and with that awareness, we can see more and do more. Gandhi’s genius lay in the application of that expanded awareness. He noted that “Law of Love” is more precise than even gravity or electricity. The 78 people who started Gandhi’s history-defining salt march were actually preparing for 15 years, with a strict regimen that profoundly cultivated this subtle “soul force”. Without that nucleus, the movement would’ve failed. Headlines often speak to the sensational, but a heartivist understands that 90% of the iceberg actually lies below the surface of the ocean. That building a new bridge while burning two others isn’t progress; that the human heart is capable of opposing an unjust action while still loving the person; that the world changes, when we ignite a critical mass of gentleness. In this talk, Nipun Mehta will share stories of everyday “heartivists” from around the world, who skilfully weave individual strands of love into a interwoven rope of great strength; based his 22 years of experience in building distributed and decentralized movements, he’ll also offer a creative vision for putting our priceless gifts — like empathy, trust and compassion — into greater circulation for our modern context.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY