Business to the Buddha

Author: KRD Pravin

  • The book of Mirdad







    “Interestingly philosophical and strangely confusing”, profound and spiritual.

    I have read the book twice, once in English and second time in Hindi recently. When I read The book of Mirdad I had a strange feeling both the times, I either get into profound silence or an eternal turmoil of thoughts. I try to comprehend and I try to fathom the depth of the book. I believe I can write a lot on, about, around and in relation to the book. However, with my limited knowledge and depth of many things, this blog is sharing the following from the book of Mirdad –

    ‘Less possessing – less possessed.
    More possessing – more possessed.
    More possessed – less accessed.
    Less possessed – more accessed.’

    In Hindi it is –

    कम परिगृह – कम बंधन।
    अधिक परिगृह – अधिक बंधन।
    अधिक बंधन – कम मोल।
    कम बंधन – अधिक मोल।

    I liked many parts and I would love to share those at occasion in future blogs. You can buy and read a Hindi translation of the same book at throw-away price from Radha Swami Satsang Beas or the English version at The Book Of Mirdad

  • The Middle Path







    I was thinking about the change happening around us on a daily basis. On a lighter side – roads of Mumbai with so many potholes. Well, on a serious note the economic situation in USA, changing thought process of middle class Indian etc etc. Keeping so many thought aside and together what I was thinking to write is about the middle path suggested by the Buddha.

    I believe the challenge economies are facing and have faced are because of their lopsided strong stance. USSR failed (various reasons) one reason was strong rooted socialism. USA is facing great challenges one reason – blind faith in capitalism. I see the good part of Indian economy is balance between socialism and capitalism e.g. public private partnership. The message I see is – there has to be a balance. The balance is needed on various fronts such as the one I suggested earlier e.g. controlled aggression in earlier blog on Balancing Act.

    When I think about following the middle path, I see many avenues for the same in our daily life, in our profession. Think of emotion and logic there has to be a balance. If one is too passionate about something, it may turn into obsession which may be harmful. There is a thin line difference between being a Courageous person and being a foolhardy. Balance between work and life. There are various personality type that need balancing.

    Further, I thought about Prof Lopez and my class of Marketing and his advise to me. I realized – what is required is an accountability when any Marketing activity is pursued. I heard someone saying that Marketing is a bottomless pit. Now – and in the future – there would be a great demand and pressure on Marketing departments for controlling the expenses and achieving the results e.g. Return On Marketing Investments (ROMI). This would require a balance between Marketing analytics and creativity. Message should be conveyed creatively yet keeping the returns expected and doing a first hand analytical research on the ROMI.

    Net net, we have to follow or learn to follow the middle path – economies, Governments, businesses, society and individuals. Isn’t it?

    Related blogs – Irony! Balancing Act and Cause…

  • Red pill







    These dialogs of the Movie Matrix are very dear to me. The Matrix in Hindi was translated as Mayajaal. Maya means illusion. When this movie was released I was doing my Engineering and by chance I was learning about control systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer Networks. I along with one of my friends Vijayant Thakur did extensive work on the same.

    When I watched that movie, I could relate to so many things of my education that I started thinking that one day I will make my own AI based matrix :). Finally, I did my major project thesis on AI. Besides the technical aspects of the movie, it touched me on a spiritual levels too. Though I did not and (feel do not) understand spirituality much, I could feel some very strange relation between technology and spirituality. I thought to put the blog on Matrix because of the following few sentences of another beloved book of mine – Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama (page 62).

    “… My master said that avidya means individual ignorance while maya is both individual and cosmic illusion. Ma means ‘no’ and ya means ‘that’. That which is not self-existent yet appears to exist, like mirage, is called maya. Then he explained another school fo philosophy which maintains that maya is universal illusion and also the mother of the universe…”

    In the movie The Matrix the same happens – a universal illusion is created which makes people feel that it is the year 1999.

    The dialogs which I am sure many people know and admire (hats off to the screenplay and dialog writers).

    “Don’t think you are KNOW you are!” – and very interestingly this statement of Morpheus is contrary to Greek philosophy – Cogito Ergo Sum!. That is where difference between philosophies of East and West comes alive.

    “Com’on don’t TRY to hit me and HIT me.” Do not TRY, DO it.
    “The body cannot live without the mind.”
    “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

    I used to tell my friends if given a chance to work in that movie, I would want to play the role of Morpheus rather than Neo. I enjoyed watching the movie, it relates to us on different levels and specially to us in professional and spiritual life. For example –

    [Conditions applied] One should do what one is passionate about (believes in) – Neo takes ‘red pill’ to know about the Matrix. [As long as one is not hurting the others privacy and not killing other – read terrorism].

    …Take a ‘red pill’ and see how deep the rabbit hole goes…

  • Irony!







    I remember an opening of Prof Mankad’s class. He asked ‘What is money?…’ and so on and so forth. Money is what is accepted as money. The trust of acceptance gives value to money. Irony is this TRUST. This concept e.g. money creates maximum MISTRUST. The concept which, I believe, we think gives power, empowers us, creates fear of losing it. Money which should give us some security creates insecurity. Is not it an irony?

    I heard someone (If I recalled correctly it was Osho) saying – opposites are always together, if opposites are not together their value is nothing. White is white and does not hold much value if Black does not exist. Lord Rama and his values were/are magnified by none other than the existence of Ravana. If Jesus were not crucified we might not even have found records of him or might not have bothered about his greatness. For safety and security of our ‘Nation’ we buy/make arsenals and prepare for wars, is not it an irony?

    We avoid

    WAR by aggrandizing weapons
    Trust on Money, which creates lots of, perhaps maximum, Mistrust
    Good people are good because their are bad one’s out there.

  • Retail update







    I could not resist myself from posting this blog. I am passionate about retail industry and therefore since last three days holding on to the news and finally posting on the blog.

    Govt of India (CoS) has recommended to 51% FDI in Retail industry. As there are always positives and negatives in any decision we make. The FDI brings positives as well as negatives. According to various sources retail adds 13% to Indian GDP of 1.3 trillion, organized retail is only 4% (in any case less than 10%) of the overall retail business in India. So there are immense opportunity of growth for organized retail. If we compare the organized Vs unorganzied retail UK has about 85% of retail done through organized retail. Such high dependence brings a huge risk (take an example of diversifying risk in financial portfolio management).

    The positive for Indian economy here is – lots of jobs, increased in quality of service and affordability of products (due to inherent reason of business of retail). At the same time the challenge is – how to manage possibility of loss of Mom and Pop stores? These are small business people running their small shop for livelihood. A rider to manage that situation is – retailer can operate in cities with populations more than 1 million. Well no sane retailer would want to operate in all nook and corner of India from day one also smaller cities would not provide that much profitability to the organized retailers.

    Growth of Indian economy and possibilities of more growth (compared to other developed economies) brings in more questions (as opposition is asking) regarding the number of 51%. Someone said – is it giving giving control of our retail industry to foreign based giants? I said yes and no both. Yes because 51% investment and No because at the end of the day people and the Govt will control buying decision and policy decisions.

    The competitions will teach few lessons to local retailers as well as learn few lessons on the cultural. As they said – think global act local… let us see whether this lesson of books comes to practice, otherwise we would have other lessons from failures of foreign retailers in India.

  • This is how I remember it.







    When I was in Engineering, I used to write poetry, generally in Hindi and sometimes in English. I also maintained a diary however with time I lost touch with both. I used to bore one of my very dear friend, Vijayant Thakur, with those poems. Yaar Vij! you have a lot of patience. 🙂

    The way I remember few lines of one of my Hindi poem are here. Of course forgot the exact composition so trying to translate and write it in English here, keeping the crux. The following lines define where we are?

    Heaven and Hell are ‘here and now’
    The way you pass each moment
    You define whether you are in Heaven or a Hell.

    I sent the above poem for publishing in NCC magazine (I was in NCC in college). What happened to that poem and that diary, I do not recall now. Also, what are the next few lines, I do not remember that too. Its been more than 10 years. Oh! I remember its almost been a year I am writing blogs, I would take a small break from writing. Reason? I felt I am becoming addict to write blogs, so thought to check myself and see if I can control on myself.

    In this post I would want to thank everyone who was the driving force for the past blogs (…and of course the readers too). Specially, Prof Lopez who was the driving force right from the beginning of blogging – Playing Golf, Work and Meditation to Business of Religion! Prof Mankad who always supported my blogging and shared many things (I wish I could record them), Prof Natarajan, Prof Moradian, Prof Ramkumar who inspired me to put some thoughts together. Thanks you Akshat and Ramanan (Six sigma failed… not in reality but in the class simulation). KR (Kaushik Ramchandran) for suggesting and encouraging to continue writing.

    … and I am defining the time I invested with you – HEAVEN :).

    Heaven and Hell are ‘here and now’
    The way you pass each moment
    You define whether you are in Heaven or a Hell…

  • Business of religion!*







    The first message we heard in the class of Brand Management of Professor Ram Kumar, was “It is an eco-system…”. An entangled, closely knit or perhaps confusingly mingled ‘Eco-system’. Econ-system of brands, products, product variants (variants are very confusing, no doubt) and bombardment of marketing messages (communication). Here everyone wants to say that our product is the best using different channels and different language. Hum! it sounds very common, right? So common that we overlook it.

    In another class of Marketing we were asked which is the oldest business in the world, still running successfully? I (when I say ‘I’, literally I) responded ‘religion’. Every religious institution says our religion is better (perhaps the best) than others and is the only path for salvation. Walmart, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Tata or Reliance might exist, or not, for 1000 years but for sure we will (and had) many religion for 1000’s of years and we will have them in future too. Why? Because – religious institution sells itself on emotions. Even without learning any Marketing concept, religious institutions learnt that emotions should be hit directly to let people decide emotionally and justify rationally.

    Let us talk about the channels they use. It is similar to what we learn in distribution channel or managing supply chain. ‘Retail store’ of Religion or distribution channels are found everywhere, and finances? Well there is no limit to it (find it for yourself – a recent News in an Indian Newspaper The Hindu or Google search for $ with any major religion of the world…). Every religion has a source of income this source of income germinates from the EMOTION we talked earlier about. Yet there is a lot to learn from religious institutions, learning the administration, Marketing and distribution channel and much more, is not that true?

    Personally, I am a strong believer that religion plays an important role in building and binding society. Religion is a path wherein you have to follow the traffic rules. If you do not follow the rules you are likely to meet with an accident. What is the question of saying rules of left hand drive better than right hand drive? The rules are there to avoid accidents and make the journey safer and easier. When I say ‘firm believer’ I mean the rules taught by the religion, and not the comparison of one to the other.

    Well, not only for business but also for being righteous person we can learn a lot from religion!

    * Conditioned applied – Thoughts presented here are my own and learnt from different sources, I do not intend to hurt any sentiment or question any religion.

  • When will we stop?







    I watched this movie – Salaam Bombay! directed by Meera Nayar (1988). This movie was nominated for Oscars as Indian entry. A sad movie with only one good thing – a character ‘Baba’ dies, receiving the fruits of his deeds.

    The end of the movie seemed very artistic, philosophical and thought provoking to me. The hero – Chaipau or Krishna – is back to square one. Khali haath aaya tha aur khali hath hi hai. (in Hindi) He comes to Mumbai (Bombay of that time) empty hands and is empty hands in the end too. He has a beyblade (or torque) in his hand. That toy to me was the vicious circle of life.

    The protagonist has to collect INR 500 for his elder brother for a damaged bike. Circumstances happen such that he could never save that much. It seemed similar to me as the Ice Age 1 2 3 squirrel on which I wrote earlier in the blog Cogito Ergo Sum meaning “I think, therefore, I Exist”. The squirrel is behind the corn and our protagonist is for collecting INR 500. A sad truth – we are always running behind something. When the Buddha told to Angulimala – “I stopped long back, when will you stop?” Angulimala – a hardened criminal – stopped.

    Our INR 500 will never be saved and the corn will always elude us… When will we stop?

  • Euro! is it dead?







    For some time I did not write. I was considering writing either on “Utopia – the Dream world” (in Hindi – Ram Rajya) a type of communism in my opinion or on economics. A news item of yesterday made me select economics the later one. This news read “Deutsche Mark set for comeback instead of Euro in Germany”. I thought that Euro may die soon, so first thing I wrote to Prof Mankad (he is an expert of Macroeconomics) for his opinions on my fear of disintegration of European Union or dilution of the currency Euro.

    I believe that the concept of EU is very interesting and appreciating. However the question to ask is – who would tame the monkeys, those who are more interested in personal gains rather than collective wisdom? I read a book on similar concept of being individually wise and collectively dumb – “Games Indians Play“. The same is happening with different economies. Austerity measures – why there is so much of hue and cry? Because as per my understanding of austerity measures – “maximum of expenses to be controlled by austerity measures are on usage of tax payers money”.

    Earlier, when I read the Financial Times often I used to wonder about the crisis in EU. And I wrote about Germany as probable next super power. I had few reasons to think that way. However, later and now when I see economic crisis in EU (Greece, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and Portugal the list may become bigger in future) I changed my mind. Even further, when I read the news yesterday about ‘Deutsche Mark’ I felt more compelled to think of bigger consequences – could EU disintegrate? Is Euro dead?

    The other reason to dwell on my fear was another discussion with Prof Mankad some time back. He said UK has foreign debt in multiples of its GDP, what could happen to UK? UK has 400% of external debt to its GDP. So, are we seeing Euro as dead in future or Germany would have two currencies running in parallel – Euro and Mark? only time will tell us.

  • Blind men and the elephant







    I read this story in a book. A father once gave his son a telescope. One day the boy was using the telescope, he was little disappointed with the performance, he went to his father and said “father it is useless, I can see better without it. Everything is too small.” Father smiled, the boy was looking from the wrong side, he was not getting the BIG PICTURE at all. The boy had a narrow outlook through the glass. The father turned the little telescope around.

    The father had widened the son’s outlook. The boy grew up and improved the primitive telescope and with it discovered the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and the Mountains on our moon. The boy was Galileo.

    What is important is seeing things in proper perspective and we must widen our outlook. So it is generally about the perspective, outlook and the way we look at things on which I wrote earlier. Similarly, there is a story about blind men and the Elephant. I took it from Wikipedia for the blog, however this story is very famous in India and we learnt this as kids. The story goes like this…


    A king has the blind men of the capital brought to the palace, where an elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it.”When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?” The men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephants’ head), a winnowing basket (ear), a plowshare (tusk), a plow (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail).

    I searched for books on blind men and the Elephant and found out that there are many books with this title for professionals are –
    Blind Men And The Elephant : Demystifying The Global It Services Industry
    The Blind Men And The Elephant: Mastering Project Work and
    on spirituality The Elephant And The Blind Men, Finding The Oneness Of God And Man you can check these books if you want to read them.

    Image source – http://history.cultural-china.com/en/38History960.html