Business to the Buddha

Tag: spirituality

  • I was robbed… learnt something







    IMG_20141204_194356I was very happy. Just before I was planning to leave for my wedding ceremony, I had received a congratulatory message from my friend, philosopher, guide and deity – all in one person. Whenever I had communicated with my personal god – all in one – I have always felt blissed.

    I reached home after office at about 7:30 PM on 4th Dec. I was shocked when I saw there is no lock at the door. I live alone and there was no reason for door to be unlocked. With shock, surprise and a question in my mind – “who could have done this?” I went inside. I saw my stuff was scattered all over the places. In utter shock, dismay and puzzle I took some pics (bag), informed my landlord and told him that I am going to police station to lodge a complaint.

    I had never thought that someone would break into my apartment. I am just a nobody in the crowd of millionaires/billionaires in Mumbai. I was thinking do I have any valuables that someone should break in my apartment? Except consumables everything is owned by my landlord. I think thieves do not know that I am a guy next door.

    This incident helped me learn a very important lesson. I had been robbed and an unknown amount of things have been robbed and some thousand rupees physical damage was done. However, beyond these material possessions there are some things that none can steal from a person. One I had owned the day my apartment was broken by robbers. Deep down somewhere in my heart I was happy/elated/blissful, I had just had a communication with that special person. That blissful experience could not be robbed from me. I wondered in all ados around the world, somethings cannot be stolen – one should strive for that possession not the material ones. Who knows these material possessions can be taken anytime without your knowledge.

    I had another parting thought when I wrote this blog – why should one STRIVE for even this possession. Mirdad says in The Book of Mirdad –

    Less Possession Less Possessed.

    Wish I can live upto it sooner rather than later.

  • Karma







    The Endless Knot

    Associating Karma with financial success seems completely falsified way of using the doctrine of Causality.

    I was reading an article and it referred to financial success of people as the results of their Karma. Specially when we speak of “Karma” the context is effect of past life on the current one. Additionally, Karma of current life influencing the future life.

    The conceptual explanation of financial success of people to their Karma made me question the concept of Karma itself. Does Financial success mean everything and is the END in itself?

    I believe – Not necessarily.

    I have seen kids playing with mud, plastic bottles & almost without cloths very happy and kids with LEGO toys at home crying for something else. Just let the kids be little old and see adults or old aged people – they start grumbling about money! But we forget we leave empty handed. Karma in my opinion should be construed as – something that will help us progress. Progress spiritually – if finances help in spiritual progress – be it. But otherwise putting the whole concept of Karma around Financial success is not agreeable.

    Specially, when west misunderstands the concepts and tries to prove every point of their belief using concepts such as Karma – I remember Ashtavakra. I remember reading that Ashtavakara in his Geeta denied the concept of Karma.

  • Spirituality & Business







    It was winter of 2012, Sujoy was getting married. I traveled to Pune to attend his wedding function. There I met one of my very old College mate – Anurag Tambe.

    Anurag is smart guy, thoughtful and practical. We discussed many things, including my faSteve_Jobsvorite topic – purpose of what we do? This topic eventually boils down to spirituality. Anurag told me about Steve Jobs and what his experience was about India and spirituality. His visit to India made him go back to the US and keep doing his work as good as he could. [Anurag’s reference to the book on Steve Jobs]

    Here is an interesting story from Father Antony De Mellow, book – Prayer of the Frog Volume 1 and Prayer of the Frog Volume 2 on similar concept.

    —

    A cobbler met a Rabbi and said. “Tell me what to do about my morning prayer. My custo­mers are poor men who have only one pair of shoes. I pick up their prayer of frogshoes late in the evening and work on them most of the night; at dawn there is still work to be done if the men are to have their shoes ready before they go to work. Now my ques­tion is: What should I do about my morning prayer?”

    “What have you been doing till now?” the Rabbi asked.

    “Sometimes I rush through the prayer quickly and get back to my work—but then I feet bad about it At other times I let the hour of prayer go by Then too I feel a sense of loss and every now and then, as f raise my hammer from the shoes, I can almost hear my heart sigh. “What an unlucky man I am that I am not able to make my morning prayer.”

    Said the Rabbi. “If I were God I would value that more than the prayer.”

    —

    Steve Jobs, I think, did what the Rabbi suggests in the story.

  • At the master’s door







    prayer of frogI have been reading one or the other story of Father Anthony De Mello’s books – The Prayer Of The Frog Vol. I and Prayer of The Frog Vol. II. The books have interesting stories, many a times half page. One of the story I read was on a seeker going to a master’s abode. I’m tweaking this story (I would want to claim the copyrights!), here it is –

    At the master’s door

    A spiritual seeker was almost at the door of one of the masters. Sensing the abode as the best place to find his prey, a devil made his permanent residence there. When the devil saw the seeker enter the house of the Master, devil determined to do everything in his power to turn him back from his quest for Truth.

    The devil tried giving this seeker all the possible temptations. His list of temptations included every possible means – women, wealth, fame, power and prestige even wisdom (perhaps false sense of it). However, our protagonist was too committed a seeker. He fought all these baits and stood his ground.

    The devil was almost lost, he was about to let go of the seeker. Suddenly, an idea cropped up in the mind of the devil. He tried it. The devil said – I shall give you all spiritual knowledge you seek, come with me!

    This time our protagonist could not resist his temptation – he followed the devil.

    —

    Now if you understood the story and the BOLD copyright part (of mine above), you may laugh at it! You may learn few lessons – including me claiming ownership of the story. However, I know “You only lose what you cling to“.

    Even the desire to be spiritual is a temptation!

     

    Related

    Miracles of life

    When the Buddha dies, the schools are born

    Ideas Vs reality

    The dog and the fox

    Incentive to cheat

    Ideas Vs reality
    When the Buddha dies, the schools are born
    Miracles of life – are we sleeping?
    Miracles of life – are we sleeping?

  • 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.

  • Big data – lesson on spirituality







    I was talking to my MD – Dr Vivek Damle. I said, Big data is “relevant information provider” for real time. One cannot rely on old data generated by a person, say in 2010, for marketing strategy (I am writing this blog in 4th Quarter of 2013). The discussion went on a very strange yet lovely tangent, Dr Damle said – “… so big data would take us on the road of spirituality, is it? I mean to say – like suggesting us to live in the present!”

    I was impressed with this thought. So here comes the lesson learnt from spirituality and applied to the Big Data and vice versa.

    Big-dataBig data is all about volume, variety and velocity… so data generate say 2 yrs back is likely to be irrelevant for today’s marketing campaign. In coming days or say months – all analytics would move to the real time e.g. at the moment of truth. Spirituality teaches us this very simple lesson (difficult to apply in real life though) – “live in the present moment”. As Master Oogway says in The Kung Fu Panda – Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is a Mystery, but Today Is a Gift. That Is Why It Is Called the Present.

    I was thinking – is technology forcing us today to spiritual concepts? Or unknowingly are we moving towards concepts of spirituality through technology?

    Big data can help identify a persons choices and predict his or her future course of action… but what in case of older data? That data would have lesser significance. Take an example in India, Narendra Modi (PM candidate in India from Opposition Party – BJP) for someone was communal few years back now is a hope, why? because perceptions changed. Vice versa for Dr Man Mohan Singh (PM of India). Old data less relevance. If I talk about my owns example of last month – I was searching for rental apartment, not now. The data I created while searching for a rental apartment last month is irrelevant now. The marketing campaigns will be more real time e.g. the present not based on “Historical” data.

    Earlier in my professional engagement as a marketing analytics consultant, we made a predictive model. The client executed the recommendation more than 8 months later. result – failed. no one wanted to take the blame. That’s what is the case is in a fast moving world.

    Live in the present.

    For Business people – try to be more real-time data based decision makers.

    Image source – http://www.greenbookblog.org/2012/03/21/big-data-opportunity-or-threat-for-market-research/

  • Is religion another organized crime?







    Disclaimer – The below are observations, and the author feels that largely the problem is with the way religion and religious practices are followed or has become a fanatic theory.

    If ever you can win (or say find or please) God by following certain prescription of a book world would have been a different place – may be an utopia. Because hopefully the instructions would be as straightforward. Here the assumption is – algorithm would be as simple as what we used to write for making a cup of tea in our school’s programming class (about 20 years back).

    When I thought about the above, I had attack of Nairobi and Peshawar in my mind. In Nairobi people were ask what religion you follow rather than considering everyone as human. In Peshawar the attack happened in a Church (a place for prayers). One can not support terrorist attack in the name of religion; at least the few happening over last couple of years.

    Churches remind me of India where people are offered money to convert. No doubt, the churches have given opportunity to the underprivileged to go to school, have good healthcare service and some respect.

    If ever you can win (or say find or please) God by money, Forbes has recently released a list of 400 most richest people on earth. They could have find the God. Better is Govts can any day print more money to make everyone rich enough to find God.

    If ever you can win (or say find or please) God by your birth in a certain family there wont be a chance of others achieving the feat – enlightenment. As Indian political and – to fair extent – social structure developed.

    If ever you can win (or say find or please) God or be worthiest person to teach by selection process such as the way the Pope is selected democratically, politicians might have been the most successful people in the business of the God. Well, now a days religion has become more of a business and politics rather than a way to find God. And at best – a person can be democratically elected to represent people and not God.

    When I think of the other options, I feel spirituality or finding/pleasing/winning God cannot be either a democracy or privilege by birth or working in groups. Spirituality is more of an individual’s pursuit. Self-realization can largely be either hard work of individual or grace, I can not agree that killing, buying, voting or birth in certain family gives a person to be self realized. Is organized religion becoming like an organized crime? What are the other options?

    May be humanity, compassion and being at peace with yourself – because social harmony would start with individual’s peace of mind.

  • Sai kaka







    I met Sai Kaka about 4 1/2 years back. He is from Sangli, a city in Maharashtra.  I read a book on him (in Hindi) Pooja Ka diya and quickly had an opportunity to meet him. I was  impressed with his straightforward and practical approach. Take an example Sai Kaka says “Religion is an individual choice, in groups it is not a religion but a community and where there is community there can be communalism!” What we see in India or world over, maximum wars are fought over in the name of religion, right? More about Sai Kaka is on his website. The most important lesson he taught to me was this –

    Sai KakaSanskar yukt chaitanya jab (संस्कार युक्त चैतन्य जब)

    1. chintan karata hai to usko chitt kahate hai (1. चिंतन करता है तो उसको चित्त कहते है)

    2. manan karata hai to usko man kahate hai (2. मनन करता है तो उसको मन कहते है)

    3. nirnay karata hai to usko buddhi kahate hai (3. निर्णय करता है तो उसको बुद्धि कहते है)

    4. asmita ka bhan karata hai to usko aham kahate hai (4. अस्मिता का भान करता है तो उसको अहं कहते है)

    inme se sansakar nikal jaye to jo bachata hai vo shuddha chaitanya hai (इनमे से संस्कार निकल जाए तो जो बचता है वो शुद्ध चैतन्य है)

    This in English means –

    When a conscious filled with rituals (or say the lessons learnt about ‘way of living’)

    1. thinks we call it mind (imagination)
    2. contemplate we call it Mind [there is a difference between Chitt and man which I am not able to translate in English]
    3. makes a decision we call it intellect
    4. perceives pride we call it Ego

    Now when the rituals or ‘way of life’ learnt, get out of this conscious mind, what is left is the pure consciousness.

    It means “pure consciousness” is blurred by our different (Sanskara) learning about life. Therefore in some cases religion becomes a problem.

    Thanks to http://www.quillpad.in I could write in Hindi and http://hindi-english.org for translation help.