Business to the Buddha

Category: Business

  • This too shall pass

    I like Jab we met movie. I have written about it earlier too. Something happened recently that I remembered this movie again. Two of my friends discussed about issues one with girl friend and other with wife. There were conflicts, which relationship does not have conflict? So, we discussed – I am not a relationship counselor though – the troubles and concluded that few things are going to be there, however one must look at the big picture of life than the one of incidents. I narrated part of the movie Jab we met to them. I did not even bother to ask if they have watched it or no, I was too concerned to drive home the point.

    Plot – Jab we met

    Spoiler – part of movie the plot disclosed here. Shahid Kapoor’s girlfriend marries someone else, he is dejected and wants to leave everything. He boards a train where he meets Karina. Karina is in love with someone and wants to runaway to marry him. Shahid starts liking Karina’s carefree attitude and living in the moment. I believe one who is in love starts enjoying everything around. Karina is that person fully in love with Tarun Arora and willing to leave everything behind for Tarun. Things don’t workout as expected by Karina. She starts living on her own without connecting with family, completely changed personality. Shahid tries to bring her back to her family. She has lived like this for 9 months now. Tarun comes back in her life, when Karina wants to leave him. Now, Karina is confused, she understands that Shahid loves her. Shahid tells her – when you will look back in your old age this 9 month time period would be nothing when you have lived a long life with Tarun – which you always dreamed.

    Blogs based on movies (long list)

    Utsav movie – must love what she has and accept the love showered on him
    Kung Fu Panda – …there is no secrete ingredient, you must believe the soup is special…
    Kung Fu Panda – are we in control of our lives? Or it is just an illusion of control
    The Matrix – Morpheus is the best person to learn few things in life
    Ice age – We’ve been living our life like Scrat, there is something more beyond the cornseed
    Gulal – Brexit, Ambitions and unification – I wish in future we would not be driven fear and selfishness and, in future we would see such union and countries coming together to prosper together
    Kung Fu Panda 2 – Peace of mind comes from practicing it, not running behind things, possession for a peaceful mind
    Mehboob ki mehndi – Song Jane kyu log mohabbat kiya karte hai… and its limited interpretation of love, less possession less possed
    Rang De Basanti – Ek Omkar Satnam I am just “an insignificant nothing”, but the mind doesn’t accept it
    Guide – Duel Between Mind & Heart
    Seven years in Tibet – Religion is poison
    Network (1976) – What we see in news or opinions are they real or there are ulterior motives of someone that drive us
    The Matrix – Taking the red pill
    Salam Bombay – Our hoarding never ends, the way protagonist is trying to save 500 rupee
    Ice age 2 – we all exist like the Scrat in the mids of the fish trying to save our corn e.g. ourselves, job, loved one

    Lesson

    The suggestion is so important for everyone in life. We get angry, upset, depressed and frustrated for so many things in life. Solomon was advised – this too shall pass. We get entangled in life for so many things and at times for years we carry those grudges. Effectively we end up spoiling our present and our future for those trifling things. I know it is easier said than done. In fact those trifling things are so big issues for us at that point in life that we make those issues the center of our existence. This must be avoided. We must move on and be in the present moment. There is a great way to do that – meditation.

    It is not that I did not commit mistakes in my personal life. There is a learning curve. You Must Learn from the Mistakes of Others. You Will Never Live Long Enough to Make Them All Yourself. The examples of my friends were personal life examples, however, it happens with us in our professional life too that we end up getting upset, frustrated and angry for some or the other reason. Be it personal life or professional life, one must learn and practice meditation for a calm and peaceful present and a good life.

  • Slingshot

    He was playing with his slingshot. When he released the sling, stone fell down. He tried the slingshot again, failed again. Kunal came to know, he asked me why the slingshot is not working? I looked at the sling where stone was held leather pad. There was some sticky material, mostly a used and thrown chewing gum attached to it. We removed it and Kunal happily started playing with the slingshot again.

    Playing Slingshot (गुलेल) / Catapult, is an immense learning. You pull the stone back with a sling, take an aim and release. You wait for some time until the stone touched / reached the target. There is an interesting analogy in this.The sling is like your present action, preparation and “now”. Your leather pad is like your past experience, your mind (where many things are held). The aim and trajectory is like future. The better control you have on everything, good it is for your life.

    Kunal’s slingshot gave me another insight. The past / mind, if spoiled with a memory that may hurt your present and future, you are putting everything that you have at a stake. In Kunal’s case the pad had a chewing gum – a kind of adhesive. If you stick to the past – mostly not to an inspiring past memories, you are more likely to be stuck in life. Such things bring you down. Have you ever thought of a moment when you were involved in something wholeheartedly? Did your past experiences interfere your present actions like that gum of Kunal’s slingshot? You were focused on the activity – like pulling the pad back, possibly the size and weight of stone and your aim (target) was clear. There was no confusion, no fear and no blockage. You just did what best you could do – living and enjoying the present moment.

    Image source – Pixabay.

  • Signal and Noise

    In Engineering I studied Signal and Noise, their ratio and results in communication engineering. I am not going to bore you with the math of probability and Signal to Noise we studied in Engineering. Though, before we move to the point, I will try to explain it in laymen’s language. Signal to Noise ratio means how much is the strength of a Signal Vs the noise on the background. If strength of Signal is more than that of noise, communication can be comprehended. A simple case is tuning radio in your Mobile.

    Well, beyond the laymen definition, I am here to share an observation. In our daily life we are so busy that we are overwhelmed by the noises around us. At times we miss on the signals, these can be premonition too. My personal experience is, we miss many things in extreme emotions – joy or sorrow. Yet mostly, the signals can be of the burnouts we are facing, frustration or not even stopping to think why am I running like a headless chicken? In some cases the signal can be to sit back and relax. The signal can be to find purpose of life. Honestly, this purpose of life point sounds lofty to me. My logic of purpose has slowly become (not lofty) very small and unimportant.

    Many a times we define the purpose as some grand goal. Having a grand goal is wonderful. I too have such goals, not just one, a couple of them such as for personal life, professional life. However, when I say small and unimportant, these are living life in small bits and pieces such as spending time with Adviti – even if very small. Some purpose can be insignificant such as going to a grocery shop. The point is – when I am doing such insignificant or unimportant tasks – what is going on in my mind? Is the mind wandering somewhere and the task – that I intend to do – is secondary? That is where Signal and Noise comes in play. Noise is the distraction from your primary activity – focus or goal.

    Just-be

    We went for a vacation last month. There I was lying down in bedroom, relaxing. Mind always needs some activity – so my ears were listening to the wall clock – tik-tik. My wife entered the room. She switched on the fan, this noise of fan reduced clarity of the activity – listening to the wall clock tiks. My eyes were closed, attention still on the faint sound of tiks. Soon I lost the Signal of the tiks to the Noise of fan. Whether you call it awareness or time pass, that is subjective. However, this small incident made an impression, in our day-to-day activities we encounter such noises. We miss the fun of the Signal tik-tik to the noise of fan. At times, the noise is nothing but the grand goals or self importance we have created for ourselves.

  • I want to be the winner

    Couple of weeks back, I was reading a psychology based assessment and relevant review of the same. In the review, I found one particular pointer – “I want to be the winner”. I read it, then re-read it. This stuck me and I paused.

    Winning in corporate battle or academics

    I have always been a very competitive person. However, this time when I was reading this statement it looked too complicated to define a person. So I re-read the statement – “I want to be THE WINNER”. Yes it is always a wish to be a winner, but THE WINNER! This drifted me from the overall review and psychology stuff to a general social issue.

    Are we really making youngsters competitive or we are pushing them to be a “CUTTHROAT”. Just read the word again – cut throat. In another words it means kill!

    So, the psychology questionnaire and its review had my attention even more. What defines a person as most likely or least likely for “I want to be the winner”. If someone is reading it in a passing reference, it will be just a statement, however if you look that statement in a social, personal, academic or professional context this statement may be very fatal.

    This can be fatal when we think everyone wants to be the winner. Our education system makes us compete at times when it is not required! I have written on this reference earlier – the problem of top 5%. Why top 5%? Because I was never in top position in academics :). When I look back at myself 20 years when I was in 12th, I realize that what kind of damage I might have done to the class in which I studied. Now, when I look back I feel most of the times, it is about collective growth rather than me over you. After reading about interdependent co-arising I have always believed in collective growth. Even the economy cannot survive if only some people grow – bad precedent is trickling down economy, that is a mirage.

    I believe, life is like a team sport, take an example Football. When you play, you play with a team on your side, you are competing to score a goal, it is not likely that a football team goalkeeper will score, but if the team wins, the goalkeeper naturally is one of the winners.

    There is no problem in being a winner, wanting to be a winner, however “THE WINNER”?

  • Why-Analysis – Karma







    In operations consulting we used to do why-why analysis. It is a method to identify cause of an occurrence. There are other methods also available for doing such analysis. The objective of such different methods is be to find the root cause of some occurrence.

    Why this happened? Because of that. Why that happened? because of something else.This why question is asked on the answer of previous question until an actionable cause is identified. Mostly a root cause is reached in maximum of 5 why’s. It is a very commonly used cause and effect analysis tool in operations management.

    I watched this video and could relate to karma, our entanglement to karma (Maya) and that root cause analysis technique mentioned above. The lesson here is, one must try to find “The cause of cause”.

    Guruji (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) is saying in this video that when you stick at one or lower levels of the cause attribution you do not get to the real cause. On the contrary that entangles you, in Karma, even more.

    If we do not perform Why-Why analysis correctly, we get frustrated and the operations do not get improved. Thus, properly performing this analysis will get to the root cause – mostly management. How and why a decision was made which resulted in the issue say for example high inventory or poor quality output. Thus that can help improve operations of the organization.

    Similarly when we analyze karma we would reach to the ultimate – the cause of all the causes. Guruji calls it – Shiv tatva in this video.

    Karma plays a role everywhere, be it spiritual life or professional. However, doing a why-why analysis on operations is easy on the contrary doing a why-analysis on “the cause of all the causes” is easier said than done.

  • Grass grows by itself







    For last couple of years, I have been buying stuff (mostly grocery and vegetables) from where I get a bill (invoice), even if I have to pay a bit more. Reason has been straightforward – I am fine paying more because presumably the one who gives me bill pays tax. It reduces burden on my tax and thus country can improve and prosper. Straightforward logic. However, another thought runs in mind – things are getting automated, be it agriculture or industries. Technology based jobs are likely to get automated too. This will create a scarcity of jobs. We should support roadside vendors otherwise how will they sustain their livelihood.

    Next level challenges for Governments and even for private sector will be job creation at grass root. The other thought says possibly there would not be a need of job creation. Things will happens automatically due to automation. On a philosophical level as Ramana uncle keeps on quoting – Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself. ~ Basho. This no one would require to do job, the same possibility suggested by Keynes.

    The world thus would be a kind of utopia, we hopefully wont require ruling over the other. It would be a time of soul searching, digging inside doing inner revolution. I strongly believe prosperity of each individual is the best way to reach the Utopian world. Economics, fails at such Utopian world, because where there is scarcity there is demand and supply. However, if everyone is prosperous probably no one will feel wealthy. Feeling of being wealthy at that time would be defined by some other measures – not necessarily by money. Currently too we are on the verge of redefining wealth, money is not what you have in your pockets or home is no more the only wealth. Wealth is – stocks you have, count of zeros in your accounts, may be in future we would look at bitcoins in your electronic wallets.

    Possibly, the Buddha was disillusioned by wealth – he was a prince after all, wealthiest of kingdom – when he saw a sick old man, a dead body etc. Likelihood of seeing a Buddha like person is far higher in prosperous economy. India was at peak of its economic, scientific and spiritual knowledge. The world now and in future needs to think about spirituality and economics in same plane. The world we are creating for our coming generations should have growth, livelihood, sustainability and spirituality together. This requires learning a couple of concepts of Buddha’s teachings deeper – i. interdependent co-arising ii. the middle path and iii. righteousness (speech, action, livelihood,efforts, mindfulness, concentration, view and resolve).

    I think we need to think beyond jobs creation, wealth, we need to think about a holistic development of human race because the grass grows by itself.

    Happy Buddha Purnima, may everyone become The One soon.

  • One world







    Can we have a world where there is no need of defense and police?

    Earlier human beings had fear of wild animal now of other humans. Have we become like wild animals or we’ve civilized bit more? Recently there was a terrorists attack in Egypt. I wonder what’s wrong with us human beings, we’ve become dangerous than wild animals. Animals kill to eat and that too when required. One animal does not kill the other because the other is not following what one is following, teaching or has learnt.

    [Tweet “Earlier human beings had fear of wild animal now of other humans.”]

    Recently, when I landed in a country for the first time, my suitcase was thoroughly checked. As usual with most Indians, I too had taken home made, Indian food because the country where I went was predominantly a non-vegetarian food eating country and I am a vegetarian. I opened by suitcase, the security person took out the food and dumped it in dust bean. There are two different types of feeling – 1. individual level and 2. social level. Individual level 1. there is a saying in Marathi – anna he purna bramh (roughly translated as food is divinity) 2. people die hungry and you are throwing the food and 3. that is my at least 10 days ration! and Social level 1. Can someone likely be so dangerous to a country 2. why so much concern even with food items and 3. have we become worst than animals.

    This incident translated into two way thinking 1. defense budget of countries and 2. death due to hunger worldwide. Some statistics (source 1) suggest that USD ~4 Billion is required to feed 66 million school age children per year and daily total of 800 million go hungry worldwide. Defense budget (source 2) of the whole world is USD 1686 Billion. If we do number crunching defense budget comes out to be about more than 10% of budget required for food for hungry people. Alas, effectively the defense budget is utilized to kill people. What have we become? Imagine if we utilize the worldwide defense budget money in doing something constructive.

    The other downside emerging with this thought was a news of likely death of 44 crew members submarine of Argentina. Its not that only others are at risk, even the risk of those who are working in defense are equally there.

    A perspective will be that defense is needed for self defense for example against terrorism or other military hostility. Perhaps there will be time, when we will fight for food and water at that time we will need military! Well, in last so many millenniums we are fighting all in vain, when are we going to have a world – one world, without boundaries – as a family?

    Related blogs – Border-less world, world is imperfect, Ambitions selfishness and fear, size of the universe and dont divide we are interdependent.

    1. Image source –Hindustan Times
    2. Hunger statistics source – FoodAidFoundation and DoSomething
    3. Defense budget source – Wikipedia

  • You Need To Believe







    When I hear the phrase “you must believe” the first thing that comes to my mind is “Kung Fu Panda“. I love the movie and here are two videos that come to my mind when I think of “you need to believe”. First is when Master Oogway tells Master Shifu to believe. The other is Po’s father telling him “…there is no secrete ingredient, you must believe the soup is special…” this gives Po an idea what the message of Dragon scroll is.

     

    I reached in a country (continent) where I never thought I will go. I am walking on the streets and meeting people on the other hemisphere, it is no less than a surprise. This makes the title “You need to believe” apt for me today. Believe is a verb for belief, I am slowly making some perspectives that one must accept things and be willing to be amazed with life as it comes. It requires some sort of trust (trust in who is immaterial and can be explore in some future blogs).

    Change in perspective is happening on other dimensions too for me. I was of the type of liberals who hate present Prime minister of India Mr Modi. In my mind it was kind of dislike for him after 2002 to almost until 2015, even though Indian courts have already acquitted him. Slowly, I started feeling, he being the PM of India is a better choice than any other current politician in India.

    On believing some of his steps, I loved demonetization as a decision. In fact I am a step ahead – wish we do away with denominations higher than 100. I know there were execution challenges, however after a lot of planning too in last 70 years we have seen what the results of planned policies resulted in – roads made but do not sustain, money gets allocated but only 5% of the actual amount reaches the needy. What is the need of such planning in those cases?

    We need a kick to start a bike, isnt it? Perhaps some decisions of Mr Narendra Modi are like that. If someone who has the guts and takes decision and makes course correction – we think planning is less but at least some actions are taken. Those who start have the possibility to reach those who do not start cannot go anywhere.

    We need to believe. I live in Mumbai, I have seen stagnation of property prices in there. I am a fence sitter for buying home, after demonetization the prices have come down, not to my expectations though but yes some things have change for better. The artificial inflation is low now. It is possible that growth number at the time of previous government were impacted positively due to such inflation.

    I believe, artificial property price rise and corruption was “Organized loot and legalized plunder” what we saw in Manmohan Singh government of Indian National Congress. It is when CWG, Coal and 2G etc scams happened – that is organized loot and legalized plunder. All the scams were kind of legal activities but organized such that payments were made under the table to those who were in government. I hope former PM Manmohan Singh who presided over these scams will know what a common-man sees as Organized loot and legalized plunder.

    We need to believe things will be better – be it GST or demonetization. Who knows perhaps in 2019 it will be a hung parliament?

    You Need To Believe was last week’s LBC topic where Maria, Ramana uncleji, Ashok and Shackman write. You can see what the other writers of the LBC have to say in their respective blogs.

  • Constraints and contradictions







    This blog from business to the Buddha was started when I was completing my MBA. Few of the sessions on economics, marketing, Organizational behavior and supply chain made me realize that there is more common to business, economics, management and spirituality; in particular concepts of Buddhism than what we think. Though I used to feel it since I moved to Mumbai a decade back in 2006. This thought moved into a wordpress blog – business2buddha.wordpress.com because MBA gave me not only a formal education in management but also time to think about the relationship. At that time, I never thought that this choice of writing can be such that I keep on writing for 7 long years. Of course there was a hiatus in 2017 due to some other personal commitments. My thoughts have always been on finding out relationship between business / economics concept to spirituality (in particular Buddhism). The fascination makes me feel that we are on a path of moving from “me” to an “us” society. A society from competition to co-existence, from Business to the Buddha. I wish this comes out to be true.

    Off late I am hearing a lot about “mindfulness”. Some months back Harvard Business Review wrote about it. Initially it made me happy. I was thinking that mainstream is accepting the concept which I had been writing about for some time. Occasionally, I feel that this “mindfulness” thing has become more of a buzzword than a real practice. Hope it does not end up being – six sigma, innovation, analytics and big data type hype. The purpose of mindfulness is for “self”, in effect helping organization and society. Hope mindfulness does not end up like the other buzzword of management jargon; hope people do not end up making it a business and “whats in it for ‘business‘” alone and keep it more practical and individual practice than a corrupt practice of survival of business.

    The contradiction here has been the approach. I have moved from Business to the Buddha. The movement from business to the self and self realization and coexistence. The approach of management jargon seems to be the other way round. Making business out of the mindfulness or possibly trying to get “competitive advantage” or some sort of “benefit” for business from the path.

    I am optimistic about the move from business to the Buddha. In fact when I realized that I might be making a mistake of showing or possibly thinking of a movement from Business to Buddha I bought a domain – www.SaintInSuit.com though I am yet to write on that. I am thinking that I will let people write on the website – their experiences, their relationship between business, management and spirituality. The idea is not to restrict to the Buddha alone. There are other methods, thoughts, concepts and teachings on the path of spirituality that have strong affinity to business. Though I personally can recount more examples on business and spirituality with Buddhism than other religion.

    The concept of Saint In Suit is a thought of middle path, the method that says one can be spiritual without renouncing. One can do business without negatively affecting his/her personal choice of following spirituality. We (predominantly in India) think that there is a constraint between business and spirituality, however we miss out – Saint Kabir was a businessman, so were many others just few examples Gora Kumbhar or even the worst you can think of Kanhopatra was a prostitute. Even the Buddha at a later stage of his life accepted that – one does not necessarily renounce to self-realize.

    There is neither contradiction nor constraint of being a saint yet a businessman. Though, I am worried if people make business of mindfulness specially when it is a showoff than for real change.

    Constraints was a topic for LBC in Sept 2017, as usual I changed the topic a bit and wrote on it well past the week when it was due. You can see what the other writers of the LBC have to say in their respective blogs.  Maria, Ramanna Uncle ji, Ashok and Shackman.

    Image source – first image my creation and second image – Image source – http://www.bravefury.com/six-reasons-men-should-do-yoga/

  • Leaking pipe, economics and politics







    Recently I went to meet one of our relatives. We were generally speaking and his plumber came, I asked what happened? He said – Pravin, we requested our plumber to fix the leaking pipe. Later we asked him to put blocker from where the leaking pipe was having water inlet. I said why did you solve the problem of leaking pipe twice? He said the fixing the pipe with m-seal and other plumbing means was cheaper. But second time you had to put a blocker, isn’t it? It costs and your plumber might have charged you twice too. I curiously went to check the place – being an insider to this family it was alright. I repeated – you tried to fix a wrong problem and you did it twice! and also by putting blocker you made the pipe irrelevant too…

    The same keeps on happening in our society be it bailout or loan waiver to farmers. Those who cannot get in such beautiful moral hazard go to UK or become part of crony capitalism.

    I was speaking with my wife today, she said “loan waiver is not a permanent solution”. Yes she is right. This endemic was started by government of our own very famous economist Mammohan Singh and his another gem of an economist finance minister Chidambaram in 2008. It was a waiver of 60,000 cr, largely to win upcoming election. Manmohan Singh government won that election too, just to end up embroiling themselves in scam after scams. The scams resulted in public anger and protest – India Against Corruption. There are long lists of corruption under the Manmohan Singh government however the point of discussion currently is farmer’s loan.

    The kind of waivers offered mostly result in moral hazard. Just imagine, if I am a farmer – this year monsoon is expected to be good – why would I care to pay my loan EMIs when everyone is getting sops? The other trouble is – even after 70+ years of independence of India we are more dependent on monsoon rather than our skills of farming! Connecting all the rivers was a dream project of Atal Bihari Vajpayee 10+ years back, yet it has to see light of the day. Furthermore, we ignore solving the problems we created ourselves such as depleting underground water level. Mostly, the reason is – we are individually smart but collectively dumb. We assume that I cannot control where the underground water goes – why should I?

    Imagine, the amount of 60,000 cr farm loan of 2008 – had it been utilized in making canals and rainwater harvesting, educating farmers for better methods of farming and technology interventions in agriculture and post harvest we might have been able to solve the problem to some extent if not completely. The other thing to note is – how can we ascertain the benefits are transferred to the right people? Those who have small land holding may be taking loans from local private lenders, also they might not even have their credit ratings for bank to offer them loans. Where exactly does such huge amount go?

    Now think again about where the government gets this huge amount from? Have you ever seen your bills? Did you see Krishi Kalyan Cess? Government generates parts of such sops from us when we pay taxes – indirect tax. This is a problem to worry for middle class only. They earn and pay income tax, they buy and pay Krishi Kalyan Cess and when farmer’s are on strike they pay exorbitant amount for buying vegetables too. Mostly this expensive vegetables are procured by middlemen at cheap prices – all cash business less or least tax with black money. A better option for middle class Indian is to either become a farmer and get loan waiver or become an industrialist take loan and leave India!

    When I completed my sentence – “you tried to fix a wrong problem and you did it twice!… …The leaking pipe was old and rusting, you should have changed it at first instance. why don’t you fix it permanently? My relative said “why should I? It is a rented property? I may go next year, someone else will come, so I am fixing it temporarily.” Same is with the governments – they solve a problem as temporary fix – farmer loan waiver for winning next election and not solving problem which causes farmers to take extreme step of committing suicide or protesting for loan waiver.

    According to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch the farm loan waiver will cost 2% to the GDP of India by 2019. This wrong precedence was set by two of the most knowledgeable economists of India – Mammohan Singh and Chidambaram. Go figure what it means to be subject matter expert!