Archives: December 2007
Wed Dec 26, 2007
Yo Mind, Body, Spirit...Yeah Baby!
The most important thing this program taught me was awareness. I gained an awareness of myself, my body, my mind and some more options for the different spiritual paths that could save my soul. I've found some peace of mind. I've found some more of my authentic self. I've found out and saw and experienced for myself how wide the world really is and how much is actually going on. I've also realized that what Mother Teresa said was very right - "There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those." Whatever you do that is right for you than you will feel it with your being and there can be no way to take on the entire world only the world you create and live in can you have the greatest impact. Unless you're so awesome you are Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or Gandhi for Christ's sake.
Have Fun and Peace Out!
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Designing the Future through Devotion
When I choose to work at Upasana Design Studio I was thinking in terms of the future. But the most important thing I learned at the studio, and on this program, in general is to think in terms of the present.
Upasana means "devotion." To design devotion is a task we partake in whether we realize it or not. We all choose to be devoted to something whether it be the Divine, money, freedom, academics, our family, friends, work, peanut butter and jelly. We choose to use more time/thoughts/actions on these things than on others and the way in which we utilize our being in this way is how we design our devotion to it. I am in the process of designing my devotion. I am actually in a fight with my devotion at the moment because I cannot decide which direction to go with it.
For my service learning project I decided to give some of my devotional time to Upasana. This design studio creates clothing and socially conscious projects. There are two big projects going on at Upasana right now – Tsunamika and Small Steps. Tsunamika is a tsunami rehabilitation project that provides income and self-fulfillment for some of the village women in the surrounding area. Tsunamika is a doll made of scrap material by these women and given out to people as a symbol of hope, peace, and love. This little doll has touched people all over the world and has generated enough donations to pay the women a decent income. Small Steps is a project dedicated to the elimination of plastic bag usage in India, and then hopefully the world. It is a compactable shopping bag that is stylish and can be carried anywhere and given out to those who would like them.
Both of these projects run on the principle of the gift economy, which tries to eliminate the calculating factor that money adds to the exchange of goods and services and instead focuses on the person to person interaction and the emotions involved in giving. The motivation for all our interactions comes under the category of giver, receiver, or trader. We are either giving something without the expectation of receiving or we are receiving something without the pressure of reciprocation or, most often, we are trading which means we are either giving with the explicit motivation of reciprocation or we are receiving with the known obligation of payment. Our world economy functions in a system based on trading and that system is not limited to money or good and services. It permeates into our psyche and affects the way we approach our interactions with everything. Most of the time we are functioning as traders, even when we smile at someone walking past we are usually not smiling just to be smiling at them but we expect them to smile back at us. If you start to analyze all your actions in these terms I'm sure you will find yourself functioning in this mode of exchange more than you think you are. It takes conscious awareness of ourselves in order to find out how we truly act and think and what our true motivations and intentions are. From looking at the way Tsunamika has progressed to spreading the message of hope and peace through over a million dolls without selling a single one, but relying on the giving nature of some for donations to keep the project going. Their intention were pure from the get go, which was to spread the message that even in the crisis of a tsunami there is still hope and there is still life to be lived. The village women who made these dolls gave them to the world even though most would have thought they had nothing to give and that is why the world gave back to them.
Giving is not something to just be done on birthdays and Christmas, but something to be practiced everyday with a conscious awareness of your intentions.
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Ecological Design
For the Sustainability in Practice Paper I wrote about ecological design and my thesis was: One of the most environementally sustainable methods is the ecological aproach to the design of our infrastructure in which design attempts to integrate into the natural environment's processes.
Here are some sources for that: Rocky Mountain Institute http://www.rmi.org/
Ecological Design Institute http://www.ecodesign.org/
Ecotecture http://www.ecotecture.com/
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Yo Mind, Body, Spirit...Yeah Baby!
The most important thing this program taught me was awareness. I gained an awareness of myself, my body, my mind and some more options for the different spiritual paths that could save my soul. I've found some peace of mind. I've found some more of my authentic self. I've found out and saw and experienced for myself how wide the world really is and how much is actually going on. I've also realized that what Mother Teresa said was very right - "There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those." Whatever you do that is right for you than you will feel it with your being and there can be no way to take on the entire world only the world you create and live in can you have the greatest impact. Unless you're so awesome you are Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or Gandhi for Christ's sake.
Have Fun and Peace Out!
[0] comments (951 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
Designing the Future through Devotion
When I choose to work at Upasana Design Studio I was thinking in terms of the future. But the most important thing I learned at the studio, and on this program, in general is to think in terms of the present.
Upasana means "devotion." To design devotion is a task we partake in whether we realize it or not. We all choose to be devoted to something whether it be the Divine, money, freedom, academics, our family, friends, work, peanut butter and jelly. We choose to use more time/thoughts/actions on these things than on others and the way in which we utilize our being in this way is how we design our devotion to it. I am in the process of designing my devotion. I am actually in a fight with my devotion at the moment because I cannot decide which direction to go with it.
For my service learning project I decided to give some of my devotional time to Upasana. This design studio creates clothing and socially conscious projects. There are two big projects going on at Upasana right now – Tsunamika and Small Steps. Tsunamika is a tsunami rehabilitation project that provides income and self-fulfillment for some of the village women in the surrounding area. Tsunamika is a doll made of scrap material by these women and given out to people as a symbol of hope, peace, and love. This little doll has touched people all over the world and has generated enough donations to pay the women a decent income. Small Steps is a project dedicated to the elimination of plastic bag usage in India, and then hopefully the world. It is a compactable shopping bag that is stylish and can be carried anywhere and given out to those who would like them.
Both of these projects run on the principle of the gift economy, which tries to eliminate the calculating factor that money adds to the exchange of goods and services and instead focuses on the person to person interaction and the emotions involved in giving. The motivation for all our interactions comes under the category of giver, receiver, or trader. We are either giving something without the expectation of receiving or we are receiving something without the pressure of reciprocation or, most often, we are trading which means we are either giving with the explicit motivation of reciprocation or we are receiving with the known obligation of payment. Our world economy functions in a system based on trading and that system is not limited to money or good and services. It permeates into our psyche and affects the way we approach our interactions with everything. Most of the time we are functioning as traders, even when we smile at someone walking past we are usually not smiling just to be smiling at them but we expect them to smile back at us. If you start to analyze all your actions in these terms I'm sure you will find yourself functioning in this mode of exchange more than you think you are. It takes conscious awareness of ourselves in order to find out how we truly act and think and what our true motivations and intentions are. From looking at the way Tsunamika has progressed to spreading the message of hope and peace through over a million dolls without selling a single one, but relying on the giving nature of some for donations to keep the project going. Their intention were pure from the get go, which was to spread the message that even in the crisis of a tsunami there is still hope and there is still life to be lived. The village women who made these dolls gave them to the world even though most would have thought they had nothing to give and that is why the world gave back to them.
Giving is not something to just be done on birthdays and Christmas, but something to be practiced everyday with a conscious awareness of your intentions.
[0] comments (728 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
Ecological Design
For the Sustainability in Practice Paper I wrote about ecological design and my thesis was: One of the most environementally sustainable methods is the ecological aproach to the design of our infrastructure in which design attempts to integrate into the natural environment's processes.
Here are some sources for that: Rocky Mountain Institute http://www.rmi.org/
Ecological Design Institute http://www.ecodesign.org/
Ecotecture http://www.ecotecture.com/
[0] comments (761 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
