Business to the Buddha

Category: Buddha

  • Content marketing – A hedonic treadmill!






    I while back I wrote a tweet. This tweet was about content marketing. Content marketing is becoming so widespread and a demand for digital marketing that everyone is writing something “important” for getting a gaze of the prospective client. How does it work?

    Content Marketing
    Content Marketing

    Say I write on Social Media Marketing, I keep on bombarding my content on Slideshare, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, post blogs, infographics, case studies and Quora (there seems to be no end to the list) etc etc just to get Google/Yahoo/Bing notice me and my content. Whenever a prospect searches for “Social Media Marketing” my name should figure out in the results in say first page.

    It seems this is becoming a race to remain relevant. To be more precise an exercise to just remain where we actually are! Over time, we would realize that we are not at the driver’s seat in “content marketing” type of exercise. The algorithms of Google/Yahoo/Bing are driving us. Instead of we doing what we want to, we are driven by the “outer factors” to take action!

    Let us take an example of a treadmill, the treadmill moves irrespective of man walking – yet goes no where. Who is driving that treadmill? Not the man walking on it. I have written earlier about this blind race we all are running, but have we ever thought where are we going? Are we actually seeing or just blindly running on a Hedonic treadmill?

    I think – like anything else – content marketing is going to follow laws of diminishing returns – we’re on a treadmill (of content marketing), we don’t know how to stop it. We don’t know when will we get satisfied. But it’s for sure we are on the path of diminishing returns having more of something doesn’t make us happy (content).

    Hedonic treadmill is a concept for our daily life just came across this interesting article on Jumping off the hedonic treadmill here

    Related – 1. Why are you doing what are you doing? 2. What more you need? 3. Entanglement of a langot 4. Race – never ending

    Related – 1. Why are you doing what are you doing? 2. What more you need? 3. Entanglement of a langot 4. Race – never ending – See more at: http://business2buddha.com/#sthash.9eIArC2R.dpuf
    Related – 1. Why are you doing what are you doing? 2. What more you need? 3. Entanglement of a langot 4. Race – never ending – See more at: http://business2buddha.com/#sthash.9eIArC2R.dpuf

  • Why do we educate our kids?







    Rat raceWhen I visited my sister last time, I asked her this question – What is the purpose of education? She is a teacher, she was the best person to ask this question.

    I felt pity on my nieces, so I asked this question. My nieces (one just 4.5 years other 10 years) go to school even in April! I went there to spend some time with them and they went to schools! This is their age to try new things – painting, playing different sports, learning some music. Let them find what they enjoy doing rather than forcing them to sit in the classroom in the summers.

    My sister’s answer reminded me of Prof Mankad’s Macroeconomics class of my MBA. His exams used to be unique (not disclosing it though). His reasoning for such unique exam was- Information is accessible now a days; I want you to think, I want you to cultivate abilities to connect the dots of various subject matters you come across and develop ability to make decisions, opinion and inferences. These theories should not be crammed. You can make these graphs / search them any day / any time while you work. Practice of using these theories in making your opinions etc is what I want you to develop.

    Surprisingly, many Google search terms “Exam paper of Professor Mankad” and “Exam paper of Prof Boman Moradian” have ended up on my blog post. Here I never wrote about what they ask in their exams. I feel strange some students search such things also!

    So my sister – who teaches Science – answered – “I want students to see things for themselves, to experimeReady to Racent; science is something which will help them develop analytical skills”. My sister and Prof Mankas’s answers were not what I see the approach of marketing any school – B-School to Medical School to the Public school for K-12 levels. Our B-Schools & Tech-Schools talk about post education Salaries as benchmark for success! In fact, IVY league guys went to jails because of bigger crimes e.g. insider trading; and if not in jails they caused more troubles to an average human being than a pickpocket who also goes to jail for small crimes for troubling one average human being at a time.

    Why should we educate kids? Don’t you think that the purpose of education be set first. At least we have been doing this for executing businesses well. At least ask the kid what he/she wants to do – after a certain age – instead of making everyone an Engineers or Doctor?

    Related blogs – Showjumping, Race – never ending, Entanglement of an undergarment, Neeraj in Kabir’s style

    Image source – Alka Arya’s article http://hillpost.in/2012/04/revised-rate-race/44257/

    Here is what I found on LinkedIn – Engineers in India

  • Moral markets!







    Do markets have morals? When I read Mr Rajeev Mantri’s article “The morality of markets” (Link) in the Livemint, I asked this simple question to myself.

    Various things came to my mind – i. financial meltdown(s) there are numerous examples of past; namesake recent one in 2008 ii. real estate bubble (again namesake – Mumbai, I have read of similar bubble in China) iii. stock market speculations (working on scrips – I think in India markets traders call it scrip चलाना) iv. crony capitalism*. All these thought made me think the title of the article itself is an oxymoron.

    I am not against free market economy, I am neither a leftist or socialist. When it comes to economics (and politics) I prefer to take the middle path. Just to give you a perspective on why I am not completely agreeing to the point of view of Mr Mantri, watch the following video (reference – my Oct 2013 blog – The Price of Inequality) –

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM]

    Capitalism has its own’s problems, and morality is questioned more often in those economies – be it environmental damages, besides few points I raised above. I believe we should not assume development that happened in the US/Europe as the only way to grow and to prosperity. In fact, we have written records of prosperous India even before anyone knew of USA. We have history of Utopia – Ram rajya. How was it achieved? Do not you think we should try to study that as well? There are more ways than the Left and Right approach we take.

    Coming back to the article of Mr Mantri – he concludes with India having billions of dreams. I do not doubt but here my difference with our own culture comes as a stumbling block. I do not appreciate the Caste divide and therefore disagree with Mr Mantri there – there seems not to be many diverse dreams. For ages we stifled dreams by asking kids to follow a craft or business of his family caste system of old days. These things are bringing me to some circular logic – where I suggest to study old Indian economics and refute social Caste system. What is circular logic? Listen to this song you would understand – (apologies those who dont understand Hindi, it is in Hindi) –

    [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mchDikR-AAw]

    paisa kamane ke liye fir paisa chahiye.

    Paisa kamane ke liye fir paisa chahiye – Golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai…

    An English translation of this song in some future blog.

    Note – * Crony Capitalism – “Gas wars” a recent book in controversies is in my reading list.

  • Special situation needs special solution







    Crisis unites, for how long? I was thinking about Quantitative Easing of Fed in the US. While thinking undoubtedly read G20 communique of 2009 e.g. London Summit here. A prologue about this communique. In 2008, US financial market collapsed. This resulted in domino effect across geographies. Every country, its financial system and thus citizen of the country were adversely affected. Do not ask me – what happened to those who were responsible for this collapse? Many of them made huge money and (almost) vanished! as – according to the books – they earned legitimately. Coming back to the point – otherwise a competitive world became a co-operative world. The mindset changed like this –

    “…We will conduct all our economic policies cooperatively and responsibly with regard to the impact on other countries and will refrain from competitive…” (source – London Summit communique para 12).

    I am forced to think – do we need crisis to unite the world and people?

    The thought is in the mind because now, when things seem to be fine with the US economy or may be just because US Fed wants to reduce burden on its balance sheet they came up with a solution of QE and rest of the world feels US is renaging the agreement/communique.

    I assume, we may go in another set of moderate crisis in coming time, we have not come out of the crisis completely. However, perhaps, this time world would have lesser belief on Govts, financial system and the cooperation as agreed by the leaders, economists and Financial Organizations.

    The trust deficit we live in – or we will live in – requires special measure. A special situation demand a special solution. Since, I am more of an spiritual person I feel the solution is moving towards spirituality. This can be done two ways – bringing spiritual lessons in corporate life or making corporate values resonate, implemented and executed spiritual life. Signing a document does not solve problem in long term – we are seeing that happen through tapering of quantitative easing by USA.

    Disclaimer – Author doesn’t intent to criticize QE, author is of the opinion of looking at the basics of the problem – Greed. Author has written few blogs on Greed earlier here.

  • Why wait?







    Last week I wrote on being at a crossroad. Generally, we are all making some or the other decision. I specially like entrepreneurs who need to be constantly analyzing situations their business and survival + growth. Life becomes very interesting, challenging and driven by passion. One has to balance between Guts, Analysis and if possible one can work on instinct with the help of awareness. Follow my one tweet recently.

    I am no expert, yet feel there has to be a balance in life. Balance between extremes. Whether its about love or hate, passion or dispassion, emotions and logic or Socialism and Capitalism. The balance (which we professionals) generally is restricted to something such as Work-Life balance. Balance goes beyond that limited definition. Yet for the time being assume balance as work-life balance. I want share a news few months back.

    Founder of Hexaware, Mr Atul Nishar sold off his stakes in the company and the news was that he wanted to go for a 10 day Vipassana meditation. Read the news here – After selling Hexaware, Atul Nishar longs for ‘nothingness’. I am no one to comment on a very successful businessmen yet in the news one point made me think.

    QUOTE – “I have been constantly working for more than last 30 years and never took a break. This is a great opportunity for me to take a pause and feel nothingness,” says Nishar… UNQUOTE

    I was thinking that there are two options – 1. learn from this statement and start bringing balance in life now or 2. struggle tirelessly and – may be and may be – one day we’d be next Mr Nishar to experience “Nothingness”. Question is, why wait? concurrently why go on any extreme? Grow as businessman/professional and spiritually together?

    Related blogs – “Balance”

    The Middle path, Balancing Act, Irony, Dichotomy on happiness…

  • At a crossroad







    Kala Ghoda festival just concluded, in Mumbai. My sister and her four year old daughter – my niece, Chinu – religiously followed the festival. Yesterday was the last day of the festival. I was there for few hours.

    Instead of events, I spent time wandering around. At about 10:30 or so we were about to get back to our car, parked near Westside at Kala Ghoda. My sister looked at a temporary shop of Rajasthani necklace. A flute seller hawker came to us. My niece has already bought a flute, I started seeing flutes. This flute seller was very good with playing flute. He taught us a few thing, in fact he played a raaga and told us its composition Aroh Avroh. Than he told us how to play with different notes and how a Sa, can be played differently.

    My sister came after a while and she made a very strange yet meaningful observation. She said – “Look at the irony of life. Look at the display of Westside – Gourmet. They have displayed exotic foreign brands, especially of hard drinks. Just on the footpath of this display this woman is selling traditional necklace, this fellow playing so wonderful flute and the overall cultural festival of Kala Ghoda. We are literally at the crossroad.”

    We observe rarely, every moment we are at a crossroad. The decisions we make or the market places we obliviously cross in our routine. I have crossed Kala Ghoda numerous times, yet never observed what my sister told me. Few of my friends started their business, they make tough decisions all the time, they cannot be unmindful about their decisions. I know what tough time an entrepreneur goes through in the initial years.

    We are at crossroad; how often we realize it?

  • Morality, who is the judge?







    There is an after life, actions in past life have decided your current birth (Prarabdha) and future life will be a function of what you do in this life time. Does this philosophy remind you of something?

    The above is concept of re-birth, of almost all religion founded in India – be it Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism no doubt Hinduism too. So, there are many questions around this. Personally, I believe in concept of rebirth but I have not understood the concept fully. What defines morality and who defines it, who and how my actions will be judged for next life? All these questions puzzled me, for few months.

    Just to give you a perspective here are few examples. 1. Say I eat non-veg (I don’t). But I don’t kill, I buy “Godrej” packed chicken. I never killed the chicken, who would take the blame of this killing? The poor fellow who killed that chicken; did it for his survival. Who would judge this situation. 2. A company does experiments on animals comes up with a cancer drug, animals are killed but many human lives are saved (prolonged to be more precise). Who to blame – the patient who fell sick of the disease of cancer (due to his misdeeds), the company (researchers, investors) or whole humanity? 3. Now replace cancer with AIDS. 4. Extra-merital affair, who to blame, if it is consensual who would decide the “punishment” for next life? etc

    I have been wondering about this, who decides what wrong I/someone did for decision on next life etc. At times, I say to myself “forget it! we get fruits of our deeds in this life time only, don’t worry about next life.” Than what happens to the belief of rebirth? Well, these questions are currently beyond me, while puzzled, I came across this video of Sadhguru so hope this question of morality dies here! Which actually has not died yet. May be I’d write on this in future too.


  • Eating for the sake of eating?







    I was reading blog of Thich Nhat Hanh – a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk. It is an irony that I’m an Indian, however this Vietnamese monk introduced me to the Buddha in true sense. I read his book Old Path White Clouds and I came to know the Buddha I know now.

    In his blog – The Value of Being Together when I read the point of Happiness, I remembered an incident of my life, sharing here.

    Once, I went to a restaurant – Annapoorna Bhojanalya – in Indore with one of my friends Vijay Sharma. It is a rajasthani/Gujrati thali style joint at Jail road in Indore. Its quality of food is very good.

    We sat and ordered our thali. I was eating very slowly, not noticing anything. I was enjoying the food. I was completely into the process of eating. Well, may be that is called meditation. After some time (usually time in which a sane person should complete eating his meal) almost every second person was looking at me. I was still eating, slowly and in all likelihood mindfully. On a lighter note, I did not over eat! 🙂

    I remember, while going out after the dinner Vijay told me “…what was happening?” I didn’t understand the question. He said everyone was looking at you the way you were eating. I had no idea what that meant. Well, he completed the sentence by saying – “…that was not in any derogatory terms. Something was different than usual while you were there.” This was what was happening there “…we eat as slow as we can so we can enjoy our freedom. . We can listen to the taste in our mouth.” (from Thay’s blog)

    Do we eating for the sake of it or we’d do this also completely, in meditation?

    Disclaimer– Author is neither Buddhist, nor a seasoned practitioner, just an explorer of the path; not authority on meditation either.

  • Entanglement of a langot (undergarment)







    I heard/read a story when I was a kid, I think in some Osho discourse or book. Well, I have been thinking about writing this for a long time, but I didn’t remember the whole story so I called my gateway of last resort (Ramana Rajgopaul uncleji – he blogs here). “Gateway of last resort” is a Computer Networks term, when every other link fails send data packets to gateway of last resort, is how any router is configured.

    Actually, he is very different person – you (I mean, I) can speak with him on any subject matter (from Sex to Super-consciousness). He guides with different points of views and references (he speaks great sanskrit, speaks Shlokas of different scriptures and mind you – he is an MBA from IIMA OK!). By the way he is 70 year young; young because when I talk to him I feel as if I am an old man, he is full of life as young as a 15 year old can be. Coming back to the story…

    Entanglement

    There was a saint, ascetic. He used to live outside of a village as used to happen in old day India. He owned only 2 langots (Nappies, or undergarments), nothing else. One he used to wear while other is washed. As any Indian saint could be – he was fed by villagers. Once, one of his langot was nibbled by a mouse. So villagers gave him cat to shoo away mouse/mice. In some days our saint realized that he needed to take care of the cat and to feed her he needs something. Villagers gave him a cow for feeding milk to the cat.

    Well, now he needed someone to take care of his cow, he hired someone to take care. The story goes something like this – this hired person needed monthly salary so saint started teaching as well. Slowly, this saint – an ascetic – becomes a family man. This langot converts an ascetic to a family man…

    This is how (may be not because of your undergarment) all worldly entanglements are woven around our life.

    Life is like this, we try to do something and end up doing something else. May be to take care of a langot (business, family, self) your whole focus changes. So, take care of your purpose otherwise you would be entangled such that you would run around in paraphernalia than the focus.

    Oh yes, this story reminded me of Novel by Herman Hesse – Siddharth. Ramana uncleji has also written a story on similar lines here.

    Related blogs –

    What more you need?

    Why are you doing what are you doing?

    Race – never ending

  • Cast(e)ing doubts – Crematoriums in India







    This blog is in the series of blogs on – against – the caste system of India. In the new year once again* I wish some day we would value people on their

    Capabilities and not Caste
    Action and not Ancestry
    Character and not on Color of skin

    Disclaimer – I belong to Lingayat (Veershaiva) community. Here is the blog I wrote on the community I am born in  Cast(e)ing doubts – Lingayats!

    I strongly feel that we need to grow as human race. I am critical about my community but the problem is with all communities in India. As always I wish we would all be more just and value person as a human and not as his/her caste.

    Unfortunately in Sept 2013, I saw a front page news in The Times of India Mumbai edition – “Jaisalmer will have crematorium based on caste“, yes that was front page news. A long way to go for us.

    I feel utterly shocked that even a dead body is considered Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya etc… that is height of stupidity. Thankfully, in Rajasthan, people this time around have voted out such government which could plan to make crematoriums based on caste!

    Hope and wish one day sooner rather than later we would value people on their being what they are rather than what caste they belong to. And specially at least we will consider a dead body, well “a dead body”

    Note *-

    My Barasti Dubai experience – racism

    Other blogs on cast(e)ing doubts