Business to the Buddha

Tag: eight fold path

  • Happy Dussehra

    We celebrate the festival of Dussehra as win of good over evil. The conflicts were between two different parties – be it Rama and Ravana, Durga and Mahishasura. We are taught these overt conflicts. There is a subtle / covert lesson in these conflicts – the duality of mind. Our contest is with us inside our mind.

    Ravana was very intelligent and capable ruler. As a kid, I watched Ramayana on TV. I used to ask this question to my siblings and parents – “how can a person have 10 heads?” To this I was told, it is symbolic. Ravana was so intelligent that he could have shashtrarth / serious discourse (discussions) with 10 different people simultaneously. Ravana was scholar of Shastras and Vedas, that’s the logic of saying 10 heads etc. Besides all this, Ravana was most respected devotees of Shiva. How can a devotee of the supreme lord be evil?

    Happy Dussehra

    Imagine, a person of such caliber, such profound knowledge and power be known for all the wrong reasons! There are a couple of reasons for that; one is power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Further, we need to learn – “with great power comes great responsibilities”. As Uncle Parker says to Peter Parker in the Movie Spiderman.

    When, I look at these historical (for some people mythological) events, I see the easiest way to avoid such conflict is the eight fold path of Buddhism.

    1. Perfect Vision,
    2. Perfected Emotion,
    3. Right speech,
    4. Right action,
    5. Right livelihood,
    6. Right effort,
    7. Right mindfulness, and
    8. Right meditation / Samadhi

    These are the virtues that can be explained to our generation in different manner for example – right livelihood for the Buddha was dependent on begging. In current generation I believe everyone should be self-dependent for livelihood. When some scholars say Right resolve (in the above list it is replaced with emotion), they explain it as life of a hermit giving up the world. When the Buddha attained enlightened I remember reading in some text he said, “It is not necessary to leave the world, one can be enlightened being a family person”. He propounded the Middle path for the same.

    The real flight or contest is within, we can be the best in anything – as Ravana was. However, what matters is how we remained centered to be good. So, if we start taking these eight fold path doctrine in context of our generation, we can be as intelligent as Ravana and as good as Rama. The choice is always ours. This Dussehra I wish we all learn to fight our internal conflicts and Good wins over the evil within.

    Image source – Amar Ujala

  • 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.

  • Kanhaiya to Mallya why lessons from Buddha Prevail!







    Recently India saw two very poles apart events and both can make us learn – the Middle Path of the Buddha. One incident was of JNU – ultra leftist & anti establishment – and the other was bank NPAs (one example of Vijay Mallya) – ultra rightist & Crony Capitalistic. I did not write anti-national as those who read news or biased towards one side would find my opinion biased even before reading the post fully, so ‘anti-establishment’ was the word used.

    The backdrop of Javaharlal Nehru University row is this – students union of JNU requested for a cultural event. Well, for those who do not know JNU is a University in Capital city of India. JNU students union is a leftist union. This event turned sloganeering against India. The slogans – besides anti India – included supporting terrorist who (in rarest of rare capital punishment in India) was hung during previous Govt. The previous Govt was run by the  parties currently in opposition – including left front. In twists of the whole drama a hero emerged named Kanhaiya Kumar. When I searched and heard one Professor of JNU, I came to know more about left front. They seem to support the whole drama where slogans were raised against India. This support goes deep down in the intellectual class sitting in news channel studios in Delhi.

    Domestic helpThough anti-establishment word sounds weird because where was the class of Kanhaiya Kumar for last 10 years? Where were they when there were a lot of corruption cases? Suddenly that class is demanding Azadi (freedom), well freedom from whom and what? If you demand freedom from poverty – work! Isn’t it a better solution? Azadi from toot-phoot (breakup) – better you do not do it, isn’t it? Currently who is involved in toot-phoot (look at parts of India where Maoists are active & killing). Azadi from terrorism – better you support or join security forces isn’t it? Why were student’s slogan in support of Afzal Guru (a terrorist)? Azadi from Manuwad & Brahmanwad (it is related to caste system of India) – I too am against caste system. Would it be better to do something at a grass-root level instead of sloganeering ‘against India’? Azadi from suit boot (economically better off) – isn’t it good if you do any of the other things listed above you would get in suit boot? Perhaps someone else will raise voice against you! But does it mean you and the other economically better off should leave everything and become poor in support of you to have Azadi from suit boot? The logic of communism is at question here – to bring affluence or wealth to less privileged is a better approach rather than making everyone equally poor to bring equality. Isn’t it? Read about Aarti Amma here these people should learn from her.

    Indian Big Corporations debtOn the other hand there is another class in India – capitalists. They are those who either mend rules or get rules created to favor themselves. According to some reports the amount of debt big corporate houses in India have goes in lacs of crores (of trillion INR). The example of top 10 debtors is below in image. These corporate houses are those who keep close relations with the law-makers (political parties – either in opposition or in power). So, these debtors enjoy the debt money lavishly. Once they kind of run out of money, they get debt restructured (happens to big companies only). There is a fancy word for that – Corporate Debt Restructuring. One such example in India is Dr Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher Airline. We’ve heard of his lavish birthday bashes and Calendars; he owes 7000 cr (70 Billion INR) to banks. His airline is defunct and he recently fled; banks has declared him willful defaulter a couple of months back.

    So in recent times, India has seen extremes of both the sides – failure of overly capitalistic system where crores of rupees are usurped by organizations without remorse and there are overly leftist those who want to overthrow the establishment itself. We have seen an example of USSR failing and we have seen repeated recession / bankruptcy. These examples teach us same the lessons again and again. There is a middle path that we need to follow, No left or no right. There has to be a balance.

    The solution? Once again it is the eight-fold path –

    1. Perfect Vision,
    2. Perfected Emotion,
    3. Right speech,
    4. Right action,
    5. Right livelihood,
    6. Right effort,
    7. Right mindfulness, and
    8. Right meditation

    All of these have to come from within, outside perspective will contaminate these. Meditation is a one single solution, it may provide each one of us from Kanhaiya to Mallya ‘tranquility’ that will help reduce the fascination to revolt or predilection to cheat. Because if we start following this eight-fold paths we would realize – ‘we all are connected’, ‘we all are interdependent‘ and if we want Azadi, this azadi would be from whom? If we want to cheat the banks, it is in turn cheating with someone who is a family of ours.

  • Paris attacks – Solution please!







    PeaceHow would the Buddha look at the scenario of Paris attack? Or any other terrorist attack? I was wondering with the same sadness and anger as any other person. I twitted also regarding the Paris attack. However, there came an afterthought, what would the Buddha do? How would the Buddha react to such incidents? Well, I cannot think as the Buddha may think. So I started thinking on the basic lessons of the Buddha. There are four noble truths –

    1. There is suffering,
    2. There is a cause of suffering,
    3. There is an end to suffering, and
    4. Sufferings can end if one follows eight fold path

    Everyone agrees, there is a problem of terrorism (suffering). What I think is – The Buddha will approach the problem of terrorism by analyzing it – what is the cause of this suffering. No doubt if there is suffering we can safely assuming there could be an end to it. In this case I believe the Buddha would try to analyze the problem and suggest a solution (as he suggested eight fold path).

    So, I tried searching for possible reasons for Syria issue (I am not touching the terrorist activities of Taliban and Pakistan sponsored terrorist activities for this blog). There were various impacts I tried analyzing such as – why ISIS came into existence? A first level answer to it was Iraq war. Is it really an issue of 2003 Iraq war? Then I read this – You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia so I started questioning on the very purpose of existence of ISIS? I started creating analogy of creation of Taliban (by USA) to fight former USSR and ISIS as one sub-section of Saudi Arabia. I may be completely wrong in the analogy however who gains if the ideology of ISIS gains more ground worldwide? Is it a problem of religious supremacy or political and power struggle? Perhaps it is both – I could not conclude on that with fair bit of confidence. I left the question aside for some time.

    The other side I heard of Syria crisis is power struggle of Shia and Sunni faith of Islam which is contesting of supremacy. Sunni Muslims of Saudi Vs Shia Muslims of Iran are fueling the fight in a third country Syria. So, it is getting more garbled within the religion itself.

    I moved to analyze the other thing – what is the impact of refugees fleeing to Europe? Does Europe need to show that much mercy to the fighting clans? Is Europe responsible for the mess and therefore it is moral responsibility of Europe to provide shelter to the refugees? Or it is economical requirement of Europe to have working hands for its economy? If these 500,000+ refugees are coming to Europe would it impact the religious balance of Europe? I think the growth rate of European Muslim population is already alarming. So, what is the impact? If the impact of this is intolerance and terrorist attack by fanatics, Europe may close the doors to refugees who knows?

    Many refugees are coming to save their lives and other for improved standard of living. The – currently unknown – leaders sitting in their offices / mansions are letting people die (whether a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Sikh or a Muslim) to have a last laugh. All these are “craving” in the opinion of the Buddha. Method for working on these craving can be same (eight fold path) however for each type of craving the approach may differ.

    The question is – would the leaders, refugees and the terrorists follow the path of the Buddha?

    1. Perfect Vision,
    2. Perfected Emotion,
    3. Right speech,
    4. Right action,
    5. Right livelihood,
    6. Right effort,
    7. Right mindfulness, and
    8. Right meditation

    If the answer is even a 1% “NO”, this is what an after thought could be –

    Related Terrorist meets The Buddha.

  • I will only show you the path…







    (A correction, in the title ‘I’ stands for ‘the teachers’ and ‘you’ stands for me or ‘the students’.)

    I have had privilege of meeting Prof Mankad recently, it is always a pleasant experience meeting him. I realized he always has something very meaningful to share and his opinion are always very well thought off, I have a lot to learn from him. While talking to him I realized that many good teachers have given a message – ‘I will only show you the path; YOU have to walk through the road.’ When the Buddha told the story ‘Finger is not the moon’ the message was –

    1. Do not stick to the finger e.g. me, because this (finger) is only a way to show you the path
    2. Get directions and pave your path. It was a message for Ananda – app dipo bhava (in Pali language) Meaning ‘Be a light unto yourself’ when you are done with identification of path
    3. Walk through the path

    Prof. Mankad taught us Macroeconomics, gave us an Financial Times in the exam to write about any current affair why? To make us start reading FT. Prof Moradian made a statement in a class ‘I will only show you the path, you have to walk through it’ (which is the title of the blog). Prof. Lopez gave us inputs on life beyond books and ‘learn to see’, e.g. did you go to Vivocity (a mall in Singapore)? Did you see this or that? What can you infer from that? Prof Ram Kumar gave us assignments wherein we had to go to market and see the performances of brands on ground. Prof Sohan Shah, gave us sleepless nights (believe me we all enjoyed the grind) while giving us assignments on marketing communication, I am pretty sure that each student of the class (perhaps some non marketing students too Ankit Jain and Rahul Krishnan) can independently workout a plan on integrated marketing communication. They have showed us the path, its our responsibility to walk through the road.

    *What I understand is the Buddha was not in favor of a religion; even it happened in case of many more spiritual masters. Why? Because as time passes the directions become rituals, systems you see! When rituals become the ONLY path to be followed it creates conflicts in individuals mind and actions. Therefore the best thing is – to learn the lessons critically and walk through the road towards the goal keeping lessons in mind rather than the literal content of the message.

    I thought to write about four noble truths and eight fold path, then I asked myself, does it make sense to connect everything of Buddhism to Business or literal Buddhism to Business? Is not it important to concentrate on messages and see whether it fits in the business context?

    * Apologies, if I hurt someone’s belief, though I didn’t intend to do anything like that.