JAINA Convention 2005 07 JCNC

SR No.: 527527
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA
Publication Year: 2005
Total Pages: 204
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, USA_Convention JAINA, & USA
File Size: 10 MB

Page 185

2005
I would've said impossible.
But here we are. Impossible is possible.
My life, personally, has had impossible written all over it.
Five years ago, in the height of the dot-com era, when a few of us friends started an organization to put an end to our rampant greed, people said it would be impossible to get Silicon Valley people to give freely. Today there are 5000 volunteers. When we said that we wouldn't ask anyone for money, we wouldn't have a paid staff, we wouldn't have a central office, people said it was impossible. Yet here we are. When I quit my job to live a simple life of service, those same people laughed and wondered if I had a sneaky business plan underneath it. I obviously didn't. When we took over a dot-com and made everything available for free, they thought we had lost our minds; three months later, we had doubled all their numbers. A couple years ago, when the founder of Sony Ent. TV openly offered help, I said, "Instead of venture capital, Charity Focus relies on inspiration capital! We want you to volunteer." Founder of Sony Ent. TV to volunteer? Impossible, even I thought. Today he's one of the most active volunteers of Charity Focus.
To make impossible possible is awe...some -- full of awe and then some! When you realize this power, it'll blow you away.
But you see, that's not enough. The question then becomes -- what do you do with that power? Surely, you can become rich, powerful and famous. Surely, you can go bunjee jumping, sky diving and be a participant in Fear Factor. But so what?
What we need is a four-letter word. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it without all of you cringing. But I'm gonna say it anyhow: love. What we need to do is awaken that power of love. That's the biggest impossibility of our times. Somewhere along the way, our brains neurons got wired up wrong and we started thinking, believing that it's impossible to give unconditionally.
Think of impossible as one circle. Think of love and service as another circle. Each one by themselves is incomplete. Put them side by side and you have infinity -- a cycle of virtue that knows no bounds.
You see, history has been made by people who can do the impossible. But humanity has progressed only by those who are in touch with the infinite. Hitlers of the world have made to our history books, but it takes Gandhi of the world to transform lives.
Gandhi, when he was instructing compassion workers at the Dandi March --
tending Jain Her
mage in Western El
"Stern Environment
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