On a sunny Saturday morning in Berkeley, CA, Vlad Moskovski’s mindful presence was so palpable that it could be felt through the phone wires on our weekly Forest Call.  A west coast transplant from a 9 to 5 job on the east coast, Vlad’s life has literally experienced a 180 degree shift in the past few years.  Kanchan Gokhale interviews Vlad to probe deeper.
 
It all started with a single question that was lingering in the back of his mind.  Life was good. He was content with his job as a landscape architect.  But where was he really going?
 
Vlad: There was no trajectory.  I felt like I was holding myself back from my life, not really putting forth all the energy that I knew I could because it didn’t seem like there was a way to break through.
 
Then I talked with a life coach.  He asked me the same question over and over again, “What is the purpose of your life?” 
 
The first time he asked me the question I gave a two-minute response that he said was too general. So he asked me again, “What is the purpose of your life?”  I tried again. Then I tried again.  And again.  For 45 minutes we went on like this.  Finally he said, “Ok you’re making a bit of progress.” 
 
I got off that call and thought about our conversation for 2 days.  I really considered the question. I wrote about it. I thought about it. I dreamt about it.  And essentially the answer came down to service. 
 
I really wanted to serve humanity in the greatest possible way with the most passion and the most love that I could muster, and use that as a tool to improve myself as well.
 
As synchronicity would have it, I got laid off from my job and my friend on the west coast asked me (yet again) to move out there.  By that point, I had no more excuses but to give it a try.
 
Kanchan: After moving to Berkeley, you started to teach yoga, right?  How did you link that with serving humanity? 
 
Vlad: On the surface it looks like I’m teaching yoga.  But I think I’m doing much more than that and also much less than that!  Yoga to me is a really big spiritual umbrella, while for many people it’s just physical movement.  That’s why I say I’m not really teaching yoga.  I am teaching the movement of yoga and how to breathe better, but really what I aim to do is to provide a space where people can have an experience of freedom, peace, and unity with each other and with the world. 
 
Kanchan: I believe a lot of the yoga and meditation that you teach is dana based (the practice of generosity in Buddhism).  How do you balance this form of service with the reality of making ends meet? 
 
Vlad: While a lot of what I aspire to do is by dana, I would love to do everything on a donation basis.  It’s both a personal journey for myself to figure out how to do that, and at the same time, as a society there has to be a shared value and understanding of what a service is in order for it to be donation based.  I think a lot of times in our society “free” is seen as having no value or being given away.  But in a service that is offered on a dana basis, there is an energetic exchange that takes place. 
 
Whenever I say, “This is on a donation basis and everyone is welcome.  There are no barriers to you being here,” I really mean that.  All the meditation coaching that I do one and one I offer on a dana basis
 
But finding a balance between living in gift economy based and currency-based systems is a hard thing and I still struggle with it.
 
Kanchan: How do you deal with the uncertainty and anxiety that arises?
 
Vlad: I think my greatest tool is noticing and being aware.  There is so much beauty all around us that we frequently miss.  Whenever I’m fearful or anxious, it usually stems from me not being present to notice what’s around me and within myself. 
 
My practice is to both witness what’s going on within and then turn the eye outside and see the similarities and connections.  I notice the simple patterns in the leaves and the beauty in the flowers.​ I live in an urban area and I’ve even been noticing a slow growing appreciation for the things we typically think are ugly.

So my practice is to always come back to myself and then come back to the environment, back and forth. This is what keeps me going.

Vipin: Can you speak more about how you made that shift form east to west and as part of that transition, how you integrated your desire to help people reach their highest potential?

Vlad: A part of it has to do with answering the same question that my life coach asked me. To phrase it differently, “What motivates you,” because helping people reach their highest potential could mean anything as long as it motivates you. So in terms of what you do day-to-day doesn’t matter as much, but it’s how you see what you’re doing in the bigger picture. How do you see your little piece helping others find more joy, peace, and enlightenment?

Also, it really helps to know yourself and you can arrive here by testing out different things. Do experiments and find out what makes you come alive. Is it serving in a kitchen? Is it the job I’m doing right now? Just keep experimenting and exploring in different directions and if you can think of it as a growing star with shining rays shooting out in different directions, eventually you’ll find what aligns with your skills and passions. Even a 9 to 5 job can be really wonderful, as long as you’re aligned.

Kanchan: How does living in an intentional community help you become more aligned?

Vlad: Our home environment really affects our wellbeing and our sense of connectedness so for me it was important to live with a group of people that shared similar intentions and values. I’ve had an interest in intentional communities for a long time and in the past, I thought, “Oh in order to be in an intentional community, you have to live in a forest, separate from society.”

Of course this isn’t the case. In Berkeley, I’ve been living in very intentional house that is based on a core set of values that we all agreed upon in the beginning when we moved in. While we have daily routines that we practice together, such as sitting in silence, perhaps more significant is that we’re all committed to improving ourselves through both meditation and communication. I feel that we grow just as much from our silence as we do from our interactions with each other.

And when we talk about community building, this is what I feel it’s all about. It’s a group of people that get together around a shared intention. It’s the intention that really gets the ball rolling.

There is a piece to community living that we can often romanticize. Something I don’t hear brought up a lot are all the challenges that come up, the interpersonal challenges of living with people, the challenges with miscommunication. There is a lot there and it’s very rich, complex, and beautiful to see it evolve and grow. I’ve found that a community is like a living organism that is constantly growing and having breakthroughs and insights.

None of the things that I am doing here was I doing on the east coast, which I find really fascinating. I have no explanation other than the fact that I feel a strong sense of community out here, a community that I feel welcomed and invited to participate and co-create in.

Kanchan: In trying to create a community, how do you try to create spaces where people feel safe and are able to authentically express themselves?

Vlad: I think about it in two ways. There is an environmental safety and an interpersonal safety. What I’ve noticed in my household is the more frequently we come together as a group to do fun things or creative things or even educational things, the more we bond with each other, the more cohesiveness we feel, and therefore the more safe we feel. Because I think inherent in safety is first that you are comfortable within yourself and second, you trust the people around you and the environment around you. You trust that there’s not going to be any harm, that people care for you, and there is an attentive awareness of your needs.

The next piece is more structured and more difficult to achieve, but there needs to be a set of processes around both communication and conflict resolution. This is part of safety because safety is also in part being able to be vulnerable and know that the community is not going to blow you off or laugh at you and that it’s going to really be there for you and listen.

To create this safety net, you need to have processes in place. In our intentional home, we have weekly meetings and feelings and needs meetings. In the latter, each person is put on the hot seat where they are asked questions and the whole community creates an intention to really create a safe space for that person to be open and honest and go as deep as they want to go and for people to ask questions so they can facilitate that person going deeper.

Kanchan: I know you’ve also been teaching yoga and mindfulness at assisted living centers as well as anger management at San Quentin prison. These are different kinds of communities. Can you share a story of transformation that you experienced?

Vlad: For a while I was involved with the Alternatives to Violence project, which goes into prisons and facilitates workshops for prisoners. Many of these prisoners are serving life sentences and this project tries to help them find alternatives to violence.

A story that comes to mind is an exercise that we did in the class. You have to keep in mind that there is no teacher, only facilitators, so you’re creating an environment where the learning happens on its own. We were doing an exercise, which consisted of everyone sitting in a circle and in the middle were 25 to 40 photographs of various images. Each person is asked to select one photo that calls to him. Then he has to partner with someone else and discuss why he picked that particular image. At the end of 3 minutes the two partners have to drop one of the photos and agree on one. They keep doing this over and over, partnering with a third person and then a fourth person and agreeing to select one photo each time. By the end, there is one group and there has to be a consensus on one image.

I was in the group where there was a strong disagreement by the end between two very different photos. One photo was of a young African American man standing on the highway next to car and it looked like he was being interrogated by police officers. The other photo was of a withered hand of a small, malnutritioned child and he being held by ah healthy firm adult hand. These were the two competing images and it was fascinating to hear how the group was engaging around the ideas that these images represented. The first photo made the prisoners feel like while things are good right now and we’re glad to be in this workshop, when we get out of prison this is the reality of the outside world. The other half of group believed that the second photo was the story of what they could become, which was hope or love or an offering of something beneficial to society.
They eventually dropped the photo of the police officers but it was a very hard decision for them to make, moving away from what seems like a very harsh reality to something positive and benevolent in the world.

Kanchan: Another community you’re working to create is called Compassionate Leaders? What’s the goal of this community?

Vlad: This is a program that I’ve been thinking about for a while now and it finally came together 6 months ago with a friend who teaches meditation and works a lot with youth. We wanted to do a program for youth that involves service, mindfulness, and leadership and in October we will be launching a yearlong program for high school juniors and seniors. The actual program will take place once a week and teens will have an opportunity to create their own service project in the community and we will also come together as a group to learn about mindfulness. Members from the community will be invited into the classroom to teach workshops on writing, technology, leadership, social innovation, and much more. There is going to be a money component as well. The teens will have to fundraise a descent chunk of money by the end of the school year so we can fly to Mexico and work at a foster orphanage in connection with our parent organization in Idaho. Hopefully teens from Idaho and the east bay will meet and work together!

Vlad also inspires our shared community through interviews with local changemakers in the bay area. Thank you Vlad for all that you do to create a compassionate and mindful community!