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I’d Rather Be

The topic is esoteric for me. If I can just “BE” I would just want to “be”. Unfortunately until my mind runs round I would keep on BEcoming rather than just being someone/somebody.

I am a wanderer, not physically as much but yes the mind does not stay at one place. You can check – I have found relationship between spirituality and business. I have written how technical methodology (TRIZ) can be associated with business. These are signs of my hyper active (rather wanderlust) mind. Can I just “be” – if yes I would just “BE”.

A final thought – how about BEing the Buddha? The Buddha of this age?

This topic was suggested by Shackman, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The eight other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too.

Image source – http://pixabay.com/en/just-be-being-i-am-existence-597091/

June 12, 2015
Left Vs Right economics

[Tweet “The problem with economic analysis is – it is always dependent on me Vs you or internal vs external. Would we be able to see a view where the analysis is done on a single monolith?”]

I was reading an article which states that leading economists are now tilting towards left centric economic practices. Just to give you a perspective – There was a time when governments tried to reduced its control on many fronts such as reduced taxes, regulations and privatization et al. This resulted in perceived Free-Market and growth. At times I wonder growth for what? And growth towards where?

[Tweet “At times I wonder growth for what? And growth towards where?”]

Flashback to 2005-2008 – When these activities went berserk we saw financial crisis one after the other, we can blame that some were more created than “systemic risk” as the “experts” call it. Recession of last decade was an example of the same. Until things were going great everyone was saying it works, suddenly something went wrong and everything crumbled. Alan Greenspan who was at the center of last decades recession stated this – “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.” He further said – “I really didn’t get it until very late”.

Fast forward to 2012 onwards – we are seeing economists are talking about left centric economic practices.

The problem with economic analysis is – it is always dependent on me Vs you or internal vs external. Would we be able to see a view where the analysis is done on a single monolith?

If we do the same mistake (of leaning too much towards the left) which was done in 80’s (leaning too much towards the right) when more laissez-faire capitalism was proposed, these activities of leaning far right to far left will end up being into a pendulum kind of moment. We would see more recession or other social challenges.

My opinion of Economics is – learning about the sentiments, action and effects of individuals (micro-economics) and groups (macro-economics) to create theories. These theories will replicate how the world is likely to behave. In proposing some theories we state – “everything being equal”, “rest of the things being constant” etc. However as we move on the irrationality of human / group activities take place. These irrationalities will always be there when economic theories of complete left or complete right are applied. The irrationalities will be more troublesome (as the case we saw in last few decades) if one sided approach of economics are utilized. The irrationalities can be reduced (managed) by approaching the economics in more centralist way – The middle path.

Should there be a way to reduce the causes of irrationality?

What I wrote earlier here [blog – cause…]- The macro problems I wrote above, can be solved when we start solving micro problems, it is collective wisdom which would play a major role when we are individually wise.

Image source – http://carolynbaana.com/2012/05/01/defining-balance/ searched via http://duckduckgo.com

June 9, 2015
Dreaming big

I was just turning a teen, back in 1993. I was studying in class 8 in a Govt school [Govt School Number 9]. This school was (still is) run in a temple – Anandeshwar – at the heart of a town Dhar in MP. A new student had enrolled in our class – Ramesh. We did not know much about him. One day one of my friends and classmate – Varun – told me more about Ramesh.

Varun said – “You know what, Ramesh is an orphan, he lives in Pipalkheda orphanage”.

I knew that Pipalkheda village, the orphanage was about 8 KM from our school that too on a state highway. Those days riding a cycle on those roads was not an entertaining affair because roads were only two-lane without divider and not as good as a highway we see now a day.

Varun continued – “Ramesh could continue after class 7 because he scored the maximum among the kids in his orphanage, he scored 56%. The orphanage does not have a lot of funds to fund education of every kid when education becomes expensive.”

I am sure you know, education does not mean only school fee. Education included uniform, books, notebooks and for Ramesh a bicycle for commuting 8 KM. School fee for our school was about 5/- (INR 5) per annum. Yes that is it; I had a receipt of my class 5 – year 1990 – with me for long time wherein the fee paid was 1/- (INR1). Perhaps that orphanage could not afford all those things for every kid and therefore the decision to continue education of only one after 7^th might have been taken.

Though Ramesh could have studied in other School [Govt School Number 10] saving his one way travel of 2 KM daily, he decided to join Anandeshwar. Pipalkheda had no school after 7^th.

Ramesh’s story moved me. I still remember a lot of the incident because that time I decided to adopt an orphan when I grow up. The dream also grew when I grew up, the idea shaped into adopting an orphan (specially a girl child). In later stage that dream grew into starting an orphanage with a school in it. I questioned orphans do not have a family, how can they have a family like growing up? When I came in Mumbai I saw old age homes. For a town guy this was something strange. The dream further evolved into having an orphanage, school and old age home. The elders who can teach can become teachers and others can become family for the orphans. This dream is just a dream currently.

It remained my dream because I never wanted to take money from anyone (investor, philanthroper) for realizing it. I said to myself – It is “my dream”, and I have to work towards realizing it. The dream evolved on the lines of how to make the cause a self-sustained cause. This evolved into adding plans of having a community hall with the orphanage, school and the front of the place facing main road as commercially rented shops et al. This can help generate some funds for the dream to become self-sufficient, even if only partially. The ideas have been evolving. There was a time and occasionally comes a time when I start running behind money, so much that I can do what I dreamt (and evolved that dream) as a teenager.

Mine is an arrange marriage. I met about 24 girls for finding an alliance. Well we can make an Indian version of “How I met your Mother” on that [It was massive 9 season series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. But that is not the point right now. When I met girls these girls and discussions became somewhat serious, I shared this dream with couple of them. Perhaps few rejected me because of that. Well, my wife knew this dream before our decision of marriage, in fact she also was planning to adopt a child in coming time J

I am still growing and learning. One of the lessons from the two decade old dream is – remove “I” and “My” from it. Would it hurt me if someone else (who has funds) executes it? I would be happy that someone did it or doing it. If someone executes and I come to know, I can help share my skills for the same, right?

Note – Names changed (obvious reasons – Varun didn’t understand what I am writing. Generally it seems difficult for people to think the other person is thinking on what lines. I’ve no contact with Ramesh. Varun told me Ramesh’s whereabouts, which I didn’t disclose here.)

Image source – http://clipartzebraz.com/files/1/24044_dream-clip-art.html

May 30, 2015
Right And Wrong

Recently, one of my friends Piyush ‘Jayant’ Arora published his poetry’s book. The title of the book is Rang Leela.

When I received his email stating from these places I can buy the book –

Publisher Website || Amazon.in || Bookadda.com || Sapna Books

I told him that I rarely read poetry out of my educational requirements. The title seems interesting I would like to read it. I got a copy this week. So, I started reading it from cover.

This was the first time I was reading a poet whom I can imagine as an individual. When I read Dharamvir Bharati (Andha yug) or Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (Kurukshetra), I always felt poets are super humans from a different world. Piyush is like me – he has done his engineering and an MBA. So I can think of a a human [not a super human writing].

The first thing I read in his book was back page cover.

[Hindi] ना खुशियों की बहार … आ गामो का दरिया है…
ज़िंदगी और कुछ नही… बस अपना अपना नज़रिया है…

[Translation] Life is all about our perspective and we all see it with our own lens. Our experiences and interactions fill in the color of the canvas of our lives.

When I was reading the good small poems I wrote to him about referring to some in my blogs. He readily agreed.

This week’s LBC (Loose Bloggers Consortium) title perfectly matches with Piyush’s perspective.

There is nothing right and nothing wrong. These are all our perspectives. Piyush’s poetry’s are also on the same. Another Poem I am referring here from his same book –

[Hindi] अगर सत्य से हमेश असत्य है हारा…
और सब कुछ होता सिर्फ़ गोरा या काला..
तो क्या अब तक बह रही होती यह धारा?
यह तुम्हारी हमारी विचारधारा.

[English – my words] If truth has always been triumphant over false… and everything is completely black and white… had there been a flow of different perspectives?

Everything is our mind game, a perspective. There is nothing right and wrong. Everything is just “IS”

This topic was suggested by Maria, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The seven other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Ramana Uncleji, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too!

May 22, 2015
Left and right

What I could infer from “Left and right” (as the topic was) or say left, right and center is “all over the places, not organized”.

If someone is in complete disarry e.g. left and right, what that person needs is meditation. Watch this video on Meditation by Osho. What this video suggests – I would say in one word – is “Awareness”.

If one’s mind is also going left and right, one must be aware of the disarray, confusion. “I am aware that I am confused.” Sounds funny. However, I think with the deep clarity and awareness of the confusion and acceptance of that confusion one may get some solution.

This topic was suggested by gaelikaa, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The eight other bloggers who write regula”rly are, in alphabetical order, Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too! – See more at: http://business2buddha.com/#sthash.VWAxQjus.dpuf

May 15, 2015
You Can’t Do That!

When I read this title – “you can’t do that!” – for the LBC (Loose Bloggers Consortium) I asked myself “what is ‘that’?”

The title gave me a sort of shock, why would someone ask the other to not do something? It is a different case that when we tell a child not to do something, well we say this with some reason. Or let us grow the logic of not letting someone do something – someone who is not aware of the environment can be “advised” not to do something. This logic can be explained in the business as – a new joinee told about keeping away from the wipers / foxes of the office. How they should manage the office and department politics.

I have heard a story. A master told his one of the disciple – “Do not eat outside food.” He meant that you are doing meditation practice, you should restrict yourself to the Satvik food of the Ashram. Specially for this disciple the reason was that he was progressing well. As the fate had been – Adam ate the apple! This disciple was tempted to eat some Moong bhajia [an Indian delicacy]. He ate it. Next day the disciple could not meditate properly. The master realized it but kept quiet. In the evening disciple confessed – Master I am not able to meditate properly. Master asked – did you eat something outside? Disciple confessed yes ate moong bhajia. After a brief silence the Master said – “The person who was making that bhajia was not paid for last few weeks, and he was cursing his fate and the owner of the shop. The person was worried for his family and daily expenses.”

When I was a kid my father used to tell us that the food is also affected by the feelings of the maker. I remember Indian philosophy saying “what you eat you become”. [Tweet “It’s True: You Are What You Eat www.inc.com/magazine/201307/adam-bluestein/the-best-foods-for-leaders-to-eathtml.html”] Read Inc article It’s True: You Are What You Eat.

Me being me – I ask occasionally, the Buddha used to beg. How about that? But as instructed – You Can’t Do That!

This topic was suggested by Shackman, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The eight other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too!

May 9, 2015
Waves of peace

Last week I wrote (The fish will fly in next birth) about a research done at Stanford University on Buddhism. This research was on impact of Buddhist concepts on individuals irrespective of their belief system. Though, I tried being little “story teller” type in writing which might have gone awry – some people did not understand what the whole blog is all about. The story and its title got precedent over the point of view of research. Here is another incident I want to share regarding the same. First a brief on the research –

Some researchers did a research on the impact of Buddhists words on individuals irrespective of the religious background these participating individuals have. Participants included – Western Christians, Westerners who practiced Buddhism and Taiwanese with a Buddhist/Taoist. According to that research, if people are exposed to Buddhists concepts people reacts to things positively more often.

Why this research seems plausible to me has another story besides the story of Fish. My wife has not been very spiritual person. After our marriage in Dec, she had opted for leave. In this leave period she read about 1/3rd of the book Old Path White Clouds.

When I used to comeback from office I started noticing that she is very calm and used to get into silence. Yes literally that was the case, it was obvious, no extra efforts required to notice it.

Initially when I was worried about what went wrong she said nothing, and that bothered me even more. I asked her to go out for walk, meet people in our building, go to nearby Gurudwara and go to market just to get mingled. She was new to Mumbai so her being silent worried me further, whether she is nostalgic or not happy [both cases seemed improbable because of her demeanor]. Yet that worried me.

Her silence had depth, I observed for a couple of days then I asked her what is the reason, and she showed me the book – she said I get into kind of meditation when I read this book page by page. I have become so calm and at peace!

I first read Old path white cloud in 2007, since then it has become a treasure for me. I have donated this book to a couple of people. I am not a Buddhist, and in fact I somehow try to avoid getting attached to any -ISM (religion).

The Stanford research has – time and again – proved to me [without that research itself, any reference of priming or social psychology] that there is something in the teachings of the Buddha that brings positive changes to an individual.

Related blog –

Old path white clouds

Why this title? [of the blog Business to the Buddha]

Eating for the sake of eating?

May 2, 2015
Styles of Tribute
I was having some orange juice in a restaurant with a friend of mine. Suddenly his phone rang; he could not avoid that call. It was his wife on the other side. How can you ignore call from your boss? He picked up the phone and the voice on the other side was somewhat panicky. There is breaking news on Television that there was an earthquake in Nepal, I tried calling but the lines at our native place are jammed / busy.

My friend reassured his wife. Don’t worry, I shall call, you cannot do anything sitting here and worrying. Whatever happened will happen. His reassurance was firm, I was surprised. The tremors were felt in Delhi and Kolkata as well. We finished our discussion, he went to his next engagement and I towards home. I called my sister, brother and my in-laws. Thankfully everyone was safe. However, this event touched me; two kinds of thoughts were running through my mind.
1. My friends response and
2. Feeling the insignificance of human being.
His response perfectly fits in the Reaction and response story. My friend must have felt for his family (in the UP border of Nepal), however he was completely measure. Perhaps he knew nothing is going to happen to his family or he has accepted that the earthquake has done its job. Now I have to decide how should I work on its aftermath?

The feeling of insignificance is nothing new to me. I have written about the same earlier in my blogs Ego, Size of the Universe! and Ek Omkar Satnam. This time the feeling included another aspect, the terrorists and their stupidity.

When the earth/universe wants to teach us our significance or if it wants to cut us to size only one natural calamity is enough. If that is not enough, there are stupid people killing each other in the name of their “mind game” called religion. Though at a later stage I heard, read and saw some pictures of tweets where religious preachers were preaching their religion rather. Surprised, yet when religion becomes bigger than humanity these sighting should not be startling.

May the souls rest in peace. Wish Tributes are not met with nonsensical statements as few shown in the images here.

A homage should be paid to the minds of those who write such comments at a time of grief of others.

PS – There should be lessons on compassion for such people.
April 27, 2015
Predictive Texting

To err is human and to typo in predictive texting is smart phones! 🙂

This is my first effort to share my blog on LBC (Loose Bloggers Consortium). This topic was suggested by Padmum, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The eight other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order – Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Rummuser, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too!

I was aware about LBC, thought of joining the group earlier too. However, I write only once a week on my blog. It is a big responsibility to write and on regular basis is a very tough job with the kind of engagement I have. Honestly it has been difficult to keep up with my regular blogs of Business and the Buddha.

I was impressed with the title – “Predictive Texting”. Reasons are a plenty.

1. First reason is, I have been doing this mistake often. Here is one – Writing “Vegetable” instead of “Venerable” to Ramana uncleji is one. In my Whatsapp, I have written most often – *<WORD> TYPO <CORRECTED WORD>. One can do an analysis on the same and infer that one of the most frequent word from me is “TYPO” or a typo – a misspelling.

2. I have been doing text analytics so this field is of some interest for me. Predictive texting learns from an individual’s usage of words as well. I can save “Pravin”, “Uncleji” as right spellings and the program will learn. In fact, with more knowledge of my usage of words it may predict what is coming. The type of analytics I am doing is on Twitter feeds & text based identification of sentiments as a starter, instead of predicting text.

Coming to the point – How did predictive texting start? Do you remember Nokia mobile phones used to have T9 feature. This was a dictionary, T9 used to do auto suggest. When user used to type a digit (in those days digits used to have 3/4 alphabats associated) T9 used to offer suggestion. The same is extended to predictive texting of current edge.

Our machines have become smart to beat humans in Jeopardy quiz but still Predictive texting is error prone. Is also referred as “Cupertino effect” because in the initial year predictive text used to change cooperation to Cupertino :).

We should not be blaming machines completely for these errors, after all they are not humans and in whatever case they are also learning. Machine learning is a concept where computers learn from past. Recently published news suggest what Google is trying in – Machine Learning. One thing they are doing and continue to do is – suggestions based on the user behavior. Just imagine how interesting it would be to have machines helping us in whatever endeavors

Be patient something worthwhile is in the offering. Please Cupertino (cooperate) – as vegetable (venerable) uncleji did.

April 25, 2015
The fish will fly in next birth

The phone rang for unusual number of times today. My sister or her daughter is generally not that late to pick up a call.

When I heard my sister on the other side, I said – “Hi! didi, what are you doing? Where is Chinu?” Her response took me aback. She said – “Chinu and her dad is going to burry our fish, there were two both died today.” Chinu is my niece, who is ~5+ years currently.

I saw surprised, “when did you bring fish? Last time also the same happened.”

My sister responded – “Yes, we bought these two about a month back. Last time also the fish could not survive more than a month. Chinu was so attached to these fish that when these died she was very upset and felt very low.”

My sister continued – “when I could not handle here sorrow face, I told her, Chinu, both the fish were bored of swimming they both wanted to fly. Now they would become birds.”

My sister reads Jatak tales to her these days. Chinu was satisfied that both the fish are on their way to accomplish what they want to do. When her father called, she informed him also (this time with relatively more happily) – “daddy, both of them will fly now, they wanted to become birds.”

Chinu was at peace, she went to bury the fish as she did last time also. However, this time she was content. She did everything possible to have the fish and provide them with special fish food and good quality aquarium, but these could not survive.

Chinu was not upset. When I heard what my sister just said, I remembered an interesting scientific research published recently. This research was done at Stanford University. It falls under Social Psychology using priming as an approach. These things sound very complicated, let me elaborate these points –

According to psychologists social psychology is usage of scientific methods “to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other objects.”

Priming is a phenomenon about exposing people to certain words or images that then subconsciously influence their thinking or behavior.

According to that research, if people are exposed to Buddhists concepts (experiment group included Western Christians, Western Buddhists and East Asian Buddhist individuals) people reacts to things positively more often.

QUOTE Huffington Post

Across all groups, people who were exposed to words like “Buddha,” “Dharma” and “awakening” in a word puzzle showed fewer negative associations with African and Muslim people than those who were exposed to Christian or nonreligious words.

Participants who were primed with Buddhist words also scored higher on a test measuring prosocial behaviors. These effects were particularly pronounced among people who scored higher on tests measuring open-mindedness.

UNQUOTE

Though, I myself have questions on the way research was done, what is the impact on before priming vs after priming etc yet when I relate this research to my niece I believe this must have some correlation.

I think that is why Kanakia ‘Sevens’ – a residential project – is advertised like this. Also I have been seeing a lot of photos/status etc of the Buddha at various places as “fashion” perhaps having subtle – unknown – meaning.

Image source – Kanakia Sevens

Aquarium Image source – Flickr

April 20, 2015