#60: Do Their Dishes

Lan is a dear friend of Pip's from India, and a part of road makers as well ! 

Lan, I love this insight you recognize and share. I firmly believe that I can find many answers through nature, which reminds me of the term biomimicry. Biomimicry is a new science that looks at nature's time-tested strategies, processes, and designs in order to gain insight into how to improve the challenges humans face... which I think is super cool to look into! Thank you for sharing, Lan ! 

- Amanda

Dear all,

Came across this simple but profound piece and this was the first place where I thought the thought & sentiment would resonate the most!

Best

Lan

Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh probably makes for a very good houseguest. He abides by a simple practice: Whenever you visit someone’s home, do their dishes for them.

Not only is this a nice thing to do for someone else, Thich Nhat Hanh says that it helps cultivate a spirit of generosity. Washing other people’s dishes is a way to counteract the human tendency to be accountants in our relationships, keeping track of how much we give and others take, and trying to keep the two columns in balance.

According to Thich Nhat Hanh, this is bad math. In his view, the more sensible thing to do is to give generously so as to discover abundance. He explains:

There is a kind of vegetable in Vietnam called he (pronounced “hey”). It belongs to the onion family and looks like a scallion, and it is very good in soup. The more you cut the he plants at the base, the more they grow. If you don’t cut them they won’t grow very much. But if you cut them often, right at the base of the stalk, they grow bigger and bigger. This is also true of the practice of [generosity]. If you give and continue to give, you become richer and richer all the time, richer in terms of happiness and well-being. This may seem strange but it is always true.

Spiritual calculations don’t work the way capitalism does—the math is a bit different. The books can’t be balanced because there’s no agreed-upon value for kind acts, and relationships aren’t purely transactional.