At the Intersection of Mindfulness and Compassion in a Complex World (I)

Though my view is as spacious as the sky,

My actions and respect for cause and effect 

are as fine as grains of flour. 

- Padmasambhava

I have a tremendous appreciation and respect for the Buddha-dharma and its teachers. The Buddha-dharma is part of me anywhere and everywhere I go. But if I have a criticism of meditation and mindfulness as they are taught today, it concerns a disrespect of the effects of karma for students. Many of the people arriving at the gates of practice are facing multiple difficulties in their lives. Meditation and mindfulness are a balm, but encourage passivity in the face of those difficulties and, initially, teach only the simplest interpretation of karma by focusing on personal responsibility and self-improvement when the systems of our society, even if not all the people in those systems, are corrupt. 

Has Tibet won autonomy from China? How much harm have its people suffered in the interim? 

Are the only options in the face of extraordinary levels of suffering in the US and across the globe, meditation, malnourishment, deprivation and self-immolation? 

If that's the case then none of us, not even the Dalai Lama, can say we've avoided doing harm by sitting.  

Moreover, the wave of meditation and mindfulness that's sweeping across the US as a counter-current to unregulated capitalism is at risk of de-powering, if not outright harming, some of the individuals most aware of the need for a more altruistic approach. If a major demographic is the white middle class woman looking either for self-improvement, a strengthening of some sense of spirituality, or recovery from depression or depressing circumstances, what are the long term effects on equality for all women going to be if the primary recommended response is passive acceptance? Moreover, in contrast to a view voiced at a Mindfulness and Compassion Conference I attended recently, the Sanghas I've been a member of have been racially diverse and included traumatized, low income and unemployed.

There aren't enough monasteries in the world, let alone the US, to accommodate all the individuals arriving at the gates of practice. A traditional role of monasteries has been to provide protection as practitioners move through the ranks of perceptual shifts meditation gives rise to. 

In addition, the meditation and mindfulness movements, as well as funding for neuroscience research fueling those approaches, are at risk of burning themselves out if they don't recognize a need beyond introspection, one that recognizes the reality of phenomena and circumstances. Precisely because karma is not only the result of our own actions.

From the kamikazi pilot to the middle class white woman to the peace activist, the majority of karma lies in the roles other people project onto us -- good and bad --whether we've recognized and agreed to those roles or not. The lethargy of our social and political systems demonstrate in bringing about positive change is, in part, caused by the inertia of thousands and millions of people accepting things as they are, in addition to different strategies for how problems should be resolved.

I'm convinced that to address the wrongs within corrupt systems we all need to learn to communicate more effectively with ourselves as well as others. 

In that regard, one of the best books I've read in recent years is Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication. If you haven't already read it, read it now! The forward by Arun Gandhi, alone, is worth the price -- or the trip to a library.

For one thing, in my case, Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication put me in touch with the types of questions I should be and should have been asking of my feelings. Feelings are highly sensitive indicators of distress. But if we only sit with them allowing them to dissolve into forgiveness, equanimity and kindness, none of us will ever develop the ability to think outside the box or do more than accept the status quo.

Considering our society's continued inability to identify and negotiate needs-based solutions across political boundaries such as race and/or religion, socio-economic status and gender, and considering the increasingly rapid depletion of our planet's natural and economic resources, accepting the status quo is simply not good enough.

The disconnect we experience in communication about serious problems ranges from individuals to political parties and countries. 

Using some of Rosenberg's suggestions and using my past feelings as a guide, I'm going to unpack some of my experiences as a woman in academia because it's the situation I'm most familiar with. One issue I'll be addressing is the continued low number of women in faculty ranks in spite of being recipients of approximately fifty percent of doctorate degrees. 

My sense, however, is that some of the problems, as well as strategies for resolution, are generalizable. 

My Head-On Collision with the Traffic of Capitalism's 'Golden Gate Bridge' (III)

Back to the hostile take-over. When the biotechnology company failed to respond to my emails over the next few months, it became obvious that the same day responsiveness and collaborative interactions I'd experienced with Research Genetics were a thing of the past. 

It felt like I'd suddenly been materialized on a tightrope. Though I didn't have problems focusing on work, once home, my mind would spiral out of control replaying conversations with colleagues, as well as trouble-shooting experiments in my lab. Thankfully, encountering Eckhart Tolle's description of his own mind in a similar state in The Power of Now let me know I wasn't alone in my experience.

I knew that being on hyper-alert, over-sensitive to the slightest rebuff from colleagues and failures in experiments wasn't going to help me traverse the tightrope I found myself on instead of the well-delineated tenure track I'd expected. I started meditating more intensively. I also read ~10 pages of dharma a day and found my first Sangha -- not only as a support for sitting, also as a social support separate from academia.

It didn't take long for me to learn to shut-down mental spirals at the outset. I also grew more attuned to the beauty in my environment and drew on it as source of strength and patience. I rediscovered my amazement and appreciation for simple things. I began to see the many ways the quality of my life had suffered due to gradually increasing stresses of work over the years.

A practice that began, at least in part, as stress reduction, affirmations, and positive psychology, grew to include the four immeasurables, the four foundations of mindfulness, the eight-fold path, and tonglen in its foundation.

When the time came to go up for tenure, I can't say I thought I had a strong case in spite of my lab's extraordinary findings in the interim. So I was surprised that my faculty advisor insisted. (Every assistant professor is assigned a senior faculty member as an advisor and meetings are scheduled a minimum of once a year.) It seemed as though he knew something I didn't.

My tenure seminar was stellar. It would have been impossible for it to be otherwise. I viewed the seminar as the summary argument of a defense lawyer in front of judge and jury. Or perhaps, even more accurately, my last chance to present all we'd accomplished -- in front of a firing squad.

A few days later, my faculty advisor pulled me into his office. I was expecting some words of consolation or an apology for the difficulty of, but necessity for, their decision. 

His opening words: "NOW WE KNOW HOW YOU FOOLED US!"

My response while he continued in a similar vein was to tap into my breath and send him kindness and understanding. Somewhat like the social worker in That Bird Has my Wings that, in complacency, believed Jarvis' second foster parents more than Jarvis, my advisor had failed to listen and do his job. Whether unintentionally or purposefully, I'll never know.

For any Zen practitioners, being denied tenure and being stripped of one's ordination are not that different. Here's the mirror. And the shadow.


A Means-Whereby

As a measure of the seriousness of the circumstances, a few months after the hostile take-over I explicitly told my husband to stay where he was even though, after getting the NIH grant, I'd bought a house in the hopes of encouraging him to join me.

Although I was still working toward tenure, my primary goal became to plant as much of a seed as possible for the hypothesis that the type of protein we were studying, an ion channel, could play a direct role in the intracellular signaling pathways responsible for neuronal plasticity.

The traditional accepted role of  ion channels is the generation of an electric current that is the language used to communicate within and between neurons, as well as muscle fibers. Without the current generated by the flow of ions through the pores of ion channels, information exchange in the brain and body would be forced to depend on the much slower process of diffusion.

Our findings suggested that ion channels are not limited to that role: Channels containing mutations that prevented ions from flowing through their pores were still able to affect intracellular signaling pathways.

[In fact, my lab was not the first to show the potential multiplicity of roles for an ion channel. The first, most well-described example was for the interaction between L-type calcium channels and channels in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. That example was in muscle and seemed to be viewed as a special case, as opposed to an indicator of the flexibility of roles that might be applicable to all ion channels. In addition, the link was direct: conformational changes in the L-type calcium channel directly triggered changes in the sarcoplasmic reticulum channels, as opposed to interacting with intracellular signaling proteins. There are other examples that appeared simultaneously or since. It would be interesting to write a review -- now, ten years after.]

By the time I was informed of the tenure decision my focus was primarily on getting the last two research papers published and my graduate students their Ph.D. degrees. When I rejoined my husband, I pushed my disappointment aside and focused on the papers.*  I also searched for employment in the area and any free-time I had I spent knitting: A sweater for my husband. Ten or more pair of socks.

What happened next is going to break your heart. Well, at the very least, it broke mine.

Both manuscripts went through a couple of rounds of review. We had tested the model using transgenic fly lines containing specific mutations in the channel gene to confirm an in vivo role. I had hoped that the fact that four distinct transgenic fly lines confirmed the overall model as well as specific hypotheses would  permit reviewer's comments to be dealt with through revision of the text. That was not the case.

Though 'threatening' might not have been the best word choice in my previous post, any finding that challenges the predominant paradigm or way of thinking is subject to more stringent criteria for publication. And that's how it should be. I remembered the difficulties researchers had encountered decades before when trying to convince the larger neuroscience community that ion channels could be modified by phosphorylation. Unfortunately, I no longer had a lab.

I recruited the help of a longtime collaborator. Her lab's initial findings, a first step before attempting to address the reviewer's comment, failed to replicate ours. There could have been several reasons for the failure, including but not limited to modification, masking, or deletion of the transgenic constructs due to stresses during shipping or deleterious effects of the inserts given that the channel we were studying has been implicated in several forms of cancer.

It gets worse. When I went back to check the files corresponding to the data in question, the relevant files were missing. After trying and failing to contact the graduate student that performed the experiments, I let go of the thought of publishing the papers. It was the only responsible thing to do. And I was days away from starting a new job.

What did it feel like? If you love the Buddha-dharma the way I do, you might understand this comparison: It felt like being Dogen and being forced to destroy half the Shobogenzo, with no possibility of recreating it. It felt like being a witness to the destruction of the final chapters of Buddhacarita.


*Unpublished Manuscripts:

Hegle, AP, Marble, DD & Wilson, GF. Conductance-independent gating of CaMKII associated with Ether a-go-go K⁺ channels.

Marble, DD, Clyne, JD, Sun, X-X, Ganetzky, B, Griffith, LC, & Wilson, GF. Bi-directional regulation of Drosophila EAG potassium channels by calcium-dependent mechanisms.

My Head-On Collision with the Traffic of Capitalism's 'Golden Gate Bridge' (II)

The effects of the hostile takeover of Research Genetics on my research and career weren't immediately apparent. No crowd gathered. No ambulance drove me and my passengers, the other members of my lab, to an emergency room for X-rays. No circle of frowning physicians conferenced around my bed while I lay in a coma. It wasn't a car accident. What it was was a tipping point.

A tipping point is usually identified in retrospect as the critical moment of change in a progression of events. A tipping point affects perception to cause reinterpretation of preceding events. A tipping point is the proverbial straw that breaks a camel's back, but it's only one straw in the bundle.

Good Luck, Bad Luck 

There's an old Zen story called Good Luck, Bad Luck about a farmer who inherits a horse to help him with his field work. This version is as told by Anthony De Mello in The Song of the Bird:

There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbours and friends, trying to exist and fulfil a peaceful life. One day news arrived from far away, that his old loving father had died. His neighbours gathered to grieve, but the farmer simply said, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" 

In time relatives brought a very fine horse of great cost and fine breeding, left to the farmer by his father. All the villagers and neighbours gathered in delight with him to celebrate his good fortune, but he just said, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” 

One day the horse escaped into the hills and when all the farmer’s neighbours sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” 

A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” 

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” 

Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

It would be a mistake to say I didn't know how difficult even a partial recovery from the impact of the hostile takeover would be. What made it particularly difficult is that I was only months away from having to renew my lab funding. Good luck, namely receiving an R01 award from the National Institutes of Health on my first try, even if  only an award for three years, now had turned decidedly bad.

Without the antibodies that were on that truck to California, convincing grant reviewers was going to be nearly impossible. What I didn't suspect were the cumulative effects of lingering sexism and increased competitiveness as capitalistic concerns invaded academia.

I also didn't anticipate that the very thing that was a major source of my enthusiasm and perseverance would contribute to my downfall. My research was threatening to be the start of a paradigm shift. That was why it was worth the work and the other sacrifices in my life, at least to me.

The paradigm the scientific community and pharmaceutical corporations were invested in was that neuronal plasticity, learning and memory, and the resulting changes in behavior were a consequence of activity dependent changes in the concentration of calcium inside cells. To be clear, my research,  if it had been allowed to proceed unhindered, would not have negated previous results but called them into question.

 ...to be continued…

My Head-On Collision with the Traffic of Capitalism's 'Golden Gate Bridge' (I)

The last few years my mother was alive a frequent refrain I heard was that she wasn't going to mind when death arrived. She said, now that she was in her eighties, when she looked back she could see the many ways she'd had a good life. Since I retired, and especially during the Practice Period at Green Gulch, I've had the chance to reflect back and inquire about the many ways my mother's statement can be applied to my own life. 

One of the main things that stands out is my contribution as a scientist — not only my research, also my contribution in terms of energy and enthusiasm to the larger community. (Check out my Curriculum Vitae on the Pages of this website! View All.) As a scientist I was very much at the cutting edge of the research on neuronal plasticity that serves as a foundation for the Dalai Lama's efforts to bring meditation, mindfulness and compassion to society. 

image from TIME's Beautiful, White, Blonde 'Mindfulness Revolution 
by Joanna Piacenza in The Huffington Post

Most scientists and business savvy geeks will admit that simply showing that different areas of the human brain light up during meditation is not much more advanced than the archaic practice of phrenology though it might qualify as "sexy" marketing. An irony that may escape any mindful vegetarians reading this blog is that, however regrettable, much of the scientific data that is being used to market meditation and mindfulness relies on decades of animal research for it's interpretation — not just young sexy blondes as some advertisers might lead you to believe. (I'm in my late 50's and post-menopausal, thank you very much!) More seriously, as I said to a handful of people during my visits to Sanshin-ji and Green Gulch this last year, I meditated and 'mindfulnessed' myself out of what some would call a near perfect life, near perfect because all careers, marriages and especially 1920s bungalows need work and cooperation to maintain. It is this observation, as much as my credentials and thirty or more years of meditation and mindfulness experience, that qualifies me to comment on, even critique, the Mindfulness Revolution and the gimmicks used to market it whether in real life or online.


My Head-On Collision with the Traffic of Capitalism's 'Golden Gate Bridge'

So what happened? What was the event that caused me to dare compare my life to Grace's? My head-on collision wasn't with a car, but rather with a major biotechnology company that bought out a much smaller company, Research Genetics, I had hired and was collaborating with to make antibodies to the protein that was the focus of my research. One morning the employees arrived at work to face security guards who escorted them to their offices to remove personal belongings and escorted them back out. A couple of weeks later I received email notification of the buyout and was informed that the animals being immunized, the protein fragments that my lab had worked to purify that were being used to generate the immune response, and the various anti-sera were on a truck transporting them from the east coast to the San Fransisco Bay Area where the biotechnology company was located. It was months before I heard from the biotech company again. Obviously, the immunization protocol was not being maintained during that time…

...to be continued, possibly with the occasional commercial break like my last post. Links and credits for this post will be added tomorrow when I have access to my laptop and wireless... It's not easy being homeless!

An Open Letter to the NFL and FIFA

Many people around the globe rely on football to provide them with an entertaining distraction from otherwise mundane and less than satisfactory lives. Yet in recent years both the NFL and FIFA have been another disappointment for citizens worldwide with the many controversies surrounding players, hosting cities, and organizations. The scandal surrounding FIFA officials and Sepp Blatter is another example in which the morals and ethics implied by the phrase "sportsman-like conduct" appear to have been forgotten.

The NFL and FIFA could use some positive PR, so here is an idea given to you free of charge. It involves each team taking a year off and instead of televising games, televise your teams and players planning and building housing and businesses for the homeless, recently unemployed, and recently released to give them a good chance at life and a real chance at regaining dignity and integrity. 

A very good "how to" example that offers guidance and advice is The Greystone Institute in New York, the building of which is described in the book Instructions to the Cook by Bernard Glassman and Rick Fields. Ideally when finished, the environment should provide: 1) Housing; 2) Employment with on-site training; 3) Health care and day care; 4) Opportunity for study; 5) Some form of spirituality or non-denominational interfaith sharing; 6) Opportunities for social action and community building.

Your organizations and teams have the necessary connections and resources. The necessary steps in the process and any difficulties encountered would give your players the business expertise they'll benefit from when they retire and give them the chance to give back to the neighborhoods and communities they grew up in by setting a good example. Not only your players, all those watching worldwide, would benefit. Televise the efforts of your players and the businesses involved in the planning and construction. (Please don't prey on those who have fallen on difficult times at least not until they've become success stories.) Let the Super Bowl and World Cup wins next season go to the teams with the best design, business concept and finished building in real life.

In these troubled economic times, when our countries and governments are offering more spectacle than solution, dare to set an example of good that will stay on the record books of your organizations and our shared history for all time.

At the Intersection of Mindfulness and Compassion in a Complex World:Intro

A few items of note to start. I'm in the process of redesigning this blog, including getting a Creative Commons license and changing over to my real name. I thought of starting a whole new blog. On second thought though, in the spirit of Dogen's "one taste", I've decided to stick with this one. 

In regards to my name, using the pseudonym Happi was a compromise to appease my family. But like our country and government can attest, compromises can result in outcomes that are worse than nothing. After so many years it's beyond time that my writing be backed by the weight of my credentials as well as beyond time that I take ownership of what I've written.

I also want to formally welcome Gesshin Greenwood and her blog, That's So Zen, to the blogosphere. I've been following Gesshin's blog for some time and enjoy her light-hearted writing. Hey Gesshin, you'll be happy to know I don't do p0rn either! It's been wonderful to hear about your time in Japan and your efforts to learn Japanese. The world can only benefit from having another female translator. I know from my own efforts trying to translate Shiki haiku right before leaving for Antai-ji how difficult the translation process can be.

A few days ago I loaded up my car and took a route away from the beauty that is Green Gulch Farm where I've been practicing for the last 7 months. By far the pièce de résistance was the chance to practice together face-to-face with such a rich diversity of people from all walks of life. On the day of my departure, in addition to expressing my deep gratitude, I mentioned that I wished that the friend who suggested Antai-ji had suggested Green Gulch Farm instead. It would have made the last few years so much more straightforward. That's not a knock against Antai-ji at all. It is what it is. Speaking for myself, Green Gulch Farm was much better at providing the answers and experience I needed in order to find a better direction for my life than the direction it seemed to be heading in six years ago.

Besides the rich community life that Green Gulch offered and the model it serves as a simple way to step out of the mainstream capitalistic lifestyle, there was a clear advantage to becoming aware of all the San Francisco area has to offer in line with my interests. I had the wonderful opportunity of attending one of Joanna Macy's talks and was able to take enough time off to attend the 2015 Mindfulness and Compassion conference which I'll comment on in a subsequent post. In fact, there were so many area resources that I did not get a chance to explore and I hope to change that at some time in the future.

Today I have a different agenda. Today I want to introduce you to one of the truly remarkable women I had the opportunity of meeting and practicing with at Green Gulch: Dr. Grace Dammann. Grace is an especially warm-hearted powerful woman that developed comprehensive care for terminally ill AIDS patients in their final stages. Her life and her ability to continue on that path, as well as fulfill her intention to become a Zen priest, were derailed by a head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge. You can imagine that meeting and learning her name and story was a jolting and transformative experience given the poem that I wrote so many years ago in reference to Avalokiteśvara without knowing of Grace Dammann's existence. Grace etched in that poem's meaning, for humanity, for Grace's life and for my own life in ways that only Grace and I, and the other refugees on the planet can know. 

While at Green Gulch I was truly amazed at Grace's quiet courage, patience and warmth in spite of what must be nearly constant frustration at her multiple injuries -- injuries that she never will entirely recover from, injuries that keep her wheelchair bound. I had the opportunity to see her film States of Grace just a few days after writing my post for Earth Day and I thank you, Grace, Fu, and the producers and directors of the film for providing me with the first step of an answer for my life, even though Grace and I asked different questions.

It is through Grace's courage that I've decided to tell my story, a story that began long before my presence on-line. I'm telling the story, or at least bits and pieces of it, not so much for myself since I know it will be viewed with a more critical eye. To a certain extent, by analogy, Grace's story is to my story like the victims in Nepal are to victims covered by the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter even though I'm white and middle class and the systems of oppression I faced when facing white patriarchy are admittedly no where near as severe.

I'm telling my story to comment on systems and groups and minds that fall into habitual patterns of lethargy and/or tupor, and a system of Mindfulness and Compassion that can hurt instead of help in spite of the very best of intentions.

I'm telling my story so that fewer people arriving at the gate of practice will be lost and/or injured. I understand the world is a complex system, and that there is a certain amount of inertia in systems, group dynamics and individual minds. Nonetheless, I'm certain there is room for improvement. Every Sangha I've been a member of has lost sincere people. So I'll also be making suggestions for ways that mindfulness, or even mindfulness and compassion, as it is most commonly taught and received  these days could be made better.  

An Open Letter to the Dalai Lama

For the record my favorite cooking movie, among those I've seen, is Babette's Feast. 

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3691348992/tt0092603?ref_=tt_ov_i

Some might think Babette's Feast is a little old-fashioned though it's really quite lovely. Since I suspect you are likely to be a vegetarian, I apologize for the turtle soup.

From the Zen tradition, nine full bows.... Or 1008.

- Happi

Reflections: True Practice

True practice cannot be lost.

Mirror, Mirror: What Kind of World Do You Want? All Lives Matter.

Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week now that we've switched over to the summer schedule. The main reason is, after the first hour of sitting, we work in the fields for an hour. Most everyone joins in regardless of their normal role. Today, within an hour, we had covered a field of spinach, young Boston and red leaf lettuces and I don't know what else in silence so it felt incredibly peaceful and miraculous. Plus, this morning the moon was still up while the sun was rising.

Yesterday I tried to write, but after not writing much last year, my thoughts were like a tangled mess of different colors and textures of yarn. Too frustrating to unravel into something coherent. To give you an idea though, over the last week I learned more about the situation in Nepal: how there's been civic unrest, disagreements between people of different religions, less than perfect NGOs, corruption in politics and the government. About the rising price of food, not only due to the disruption caused by the earthquake, but also the influx of aid workers. About the likely gentrification of neighborhoods as a function of rebuilding. In short, it sounds a lot like the U.S. despite differences in culture. Or, for that matter, the tangled mess of thoughts that gurgles through my brain sometimes. 

And then there's Baltimore. I read an exceptional opinion piece concerning Baltimore that seemed to intuit out loud some of what I was pointing to. Omid Safi, a Muslim scholar, said it better.

My view of the affluence of our country is that, in addition to our own efforts and the efforts of our forefathers, the affluence of our country was built off the lives and livelihoods of the Indian people using the labor of African slaves and neither culture has recovered. Given karma in the three times, we shouldn't be killing them. We don't own them, we owe them. 

When we look in the mirror, do we want to see water shut-offs, uprisings, killing either directly or through neglect and incarceration? Because that's one face of the overconsumption and greed of our society and un-regulated capitalism. I'm not making that face up. 

One thing for sure, if we're going save the world, we can only save it if we're working together.

Reflections: Nepal and Mountains Walking

By now I imagine anyone reading this blog has heard about the earthquake in Nepal. I don't mind saying I've wanted to visit India, Bhutan and Nepal for as long as I can remember. That desire has only increased in recent years thanks to Dogen's metaphorical use of mountains for sitting and practice.

Yet today I'm not thinking about mountains. I'm trusting, that for the time being, these magnificent mountains remain largely intact.

Instead I'm thinking about people. Where is the hashtag #NepaleseLivesMatter?

Considering the probability of earthquake in this region, why wasn't more done to prepare for the eventuality? How many structures were built without relying on what is known about earthquake-resistant building? Were the Nepalese ignorant of the possible technological innovations? Were more affluent countries reticent to disturb the largely peace-loving culture – a culture that, in spite of the industrial and technological innovations of our time, continues to exemplify small desire? As Dogen suggests we could and should ask hundreds and thousands of questions
like this, and not only for Nepal.

In addition to the news agencies, Genju at 108 ZenBooks and Justin at Buddhist Ethics have listed donation sites for organizations involved in relief efforts. Upaya has created its own fund. And here's one more from TheDoDo: How You Can Help Animals Affected by Nepal's Earthquake.

It's good to see such organization and willingness to help following a natural disaster. And troubling to realize that we could have done better. I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to visit Nepal. I still can ask what can we learn and how can we improve?