Business to the Buddha

Tag: saint in suit

  • Businessman Buddha

    I was extrapolating to get into a mind. The mind of a person – who left everything and went to the Himalayas. What changed for him, how his mind responded to the alone-ness. What was going on in there – in the mind? Why he left the society and went to the hills? What conspired? How he changed there? Would he be the same changed person when – in case – he comes back to the society?

    Middle-Path

    Can one have the same mindset of a hermit of Himalaya, in the concrete jungles? Can one balance being a hermit in the concrete jungle? Is it true that people find peace of mind in Himalayas? What is different there and here in the worldly city?

    My recent experience of Art of living‘s Anand Utsav course has given me few more questions and dimensions. Last week I wrote about listening to the tik-tik of wall clock. My wife entered the room switched on the fan, I missed the tik-tik. This is what happens with us in our daily highly demanding and at times stressful professional life. We miss very many things in the noises of becoming someone, owning valuable things, money, designation etc.

    The long and short of all this is balancing the life with awareness and becoming a saint in a professional life. Do we really need to be a monk to be spiritual? Most of us are running to be someone or to achieve something. There is no problem in having ambition and goals; the point is ,it make one restless. Why to be restless and anxious? Is not it a possibility that a person can be centred and yet ambitious? Is not it a possibility of a person being spiritual, professional and successful? These questions have become easier for me to have a perspective after the Anand Utsav course. I would certainly repeat more courses of Art of living.

    Just-be

    One can follow the middle path of being an enlightened master without leaving everything. One can be an enlightened master without leaving family. I see future enlightened masters will be successful professionals. These future generation enlightened master would / may not even talk about high flying esoteric spirituality. They will do their work as any worldly person does. These masters will not leave everything for the Himalayas, they may not sell their Ferrari. I think that is what is the lesson of the Buddha – Middle path. I think that is why current generation enlightened master’s are bringing spirituality to masses and to the day to day life.

    As Osho said long back, many of the masters will be like the Zorba. Zorba the Buddha (Osho’s book) – “… Zobra is Love and Buddha is Awareness… when you are Zorba the Buddha, you have attained the greatest height that is possible in existence…”

    Image source of monk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/17/untangling-web-aleks-krotoski-religion

  • 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.

  • 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/

  • Profit to Purpose







    Since long when I started blogging on Business to the Buddha; I had this in mind – we are all connected (Interdependent co-arising in Buddhism). Therefore, if the whole world wants to look at development, it can only happen if all grow, not at the cost of ‘other’. I have written about 260+ blogs in last 5+ years, recently, I found a perfect way this concept was presented by Tanmay Vora. It’s perfectly said that a picture says a thousand words, Tanmay has proved it right here.

    I requested Tanmay to let me share the drawing on my blog, and he was kind enough to let me do this. You can read his thoughts on Mindset shift here.

    Profit Purpose Saint in SuitThis is the idea of my thoughts on being Saint in Suit. We all need to grow as professionals and as individuals. We have to be saints in business and personal life both this will be profit with purpose.

    To read more of Tanmay’s thoughts go to – http://qaspire.com/

  • Saint in Suit







    It was Feb or March of 2011. We were just completing our MBA and as would be the case with any other B-school companies were visiting campus for recruitment. A big company was scheduled to visit one day. One of my friends – Jaydutt – was among the most likely candidates to be selected. However, he did not even attend the presentation of the company. Everyone was curious, why?

    I – besides others – was shocked it! I went to his room and asked him, why did not you attend the presentation itself forget the recruitment process?

    He said – “I know the company well, and I have firsthand experienced working there. Pravin, as confident you were, other friends too were confident and I was under pressure to make a decision, it was a enormous confusion I was also not able to make a choice. So, yesterday night when I was about to go to bed, I asked myself this question – ‘if I join them, would I be happy getting up every day in the morning and going to office? Would I enjoy working there? I would invest at least 8 hours per day there, which is 33% of my daily life or close to 50% of my hours awake in a day, am I really keen to go there?’ My conscience told me NO! I decided to skip the company.”

    MeditationThis small conversation with Jaydutt made me think – those points were such that even after full 5 years I still remember the discussion. I recalled that small discussion with Jaydutt when I planned another of my journey from Business to the Buddha to Saint in Suit. I realized whenever I say Business to the Buddha, there seems to be a gap between Business and the Buddha. There seems to be a movement from one place to the other. It requires separate effort or action.

    When I met Fateh uncle recently, I realized that it is not going from one place to the other. It is “being” that. He is a successful businessman and a spiritual person. The title Saint in Suit actually came in my mind when we met once and he was wearing a suit! Now or in future we’ll have to be professionals with the spiritual connect. We need to be saints in the form of professionals. That awareness will either sprout or if does not, we need it to be developed. Though, unfortunately currently I don’t have time to commit to this and keep writing regularly there besides keeping my pace here too.

    Saint in Suit concept is spirituality and business are together. In this concept the plan is to write about how business works (or should work) on spiritual practices, how it can work on spiritual practices, sharing any model related spirituality and business, sharing or defining model related to spirituality and business in any business function e.g. Board level to line executive from marketing to HR to suppliers etc.

    I’m hoping to bring like minded people on this platform to start writing about being saint in suits. your contributions are welcome there create your login.

    Image source – http://www.bravefury.com/six-reasons-men-should-do-yoga/