Pause!

I am off for a fortnight long training at the Ashram, consequently blogging which has been very slow so far, will actually come to a halt and will resume mid September. Meanwhile, all you dear readers, meditate, smile and spread the joy!

Meditate for success says CNN

The crowd of Harvard Business School alums who gathered at their reunion to hear networking expert Keith Ferrazzi speak earlier this summer might have expected to pick up strategies on how to work a room, remember people’s names, or identify mentors. But tactical skills, it turns out, aren’t what turned Ferrazzi into a bestselling author or sought-after speaker.

Instead Ferrazzi let his fellow alums in on a little secret. The key to connecting, he told the group, is “not being an a**hole.” And the most effective path he’s found?Exercise and prayer work too, he said, but meditation has been so effective that he now spends ten days every year at a silent meditation retreat. In other words, the man whose latest book is “Never Eat Alone” credits much of his success to alone time. Continue reading

Unanswerable Questions

Kent asks a very powerful question:

“Who would you be if you had no roles in life? Would you still be yourself?

I stumbled upon Kent’ blog a few months back and since then have been a regular reader of Kent. Head over to his blog and enrich yourself.

My previous posts related to questions are here, here and here.

All of us are one

The autumn 2007 issue of The Blue Mountain Journal is now online.

Being with people who are different is not only unavoidable; it is necessary if we want to grow. Without the company of those who differ from us, we grow rigid and narrow-minded. Those who associate only with people their own age, for example, lose a great deal: the young have much to learn from the old, and older people from the young. Similarly, if you are a blue-collar worker, it is good to know an intellectual
or two; it will cure you of any awe you might have of higher education. Even the difference between an egghead and a hardhat is only one percent. Their feelings, their responses to life’s perennial problems, are very much the same.

Most of us can treat others with espect under certain circumstances – at the right time, with the right people, n a certain place. When those circumstances are absent, we usually move away. We avoid someone, change jobs, lave home, move to southern California. Yet when we respond according to ow the other person behaves, changing whenever she changes, and she is behaving in this same way, how can we expect anything but insecurity on both sides? There is nothing solid to build on. Instead, we can learn to respond always to the Self within – focusing not on the other person’s ups and downs, likes and dislikes, but always on what is changeless in each of us. Then others grow to trust us. They know they can count on us – and that makes us more secure too. We can try to remember this always: the same Self that makes us worthy of respect and love is present equally in everyone around us. When we base our relationships on this unity, showing unwavering respect and unconditional love to all, we give them – and ourselves – a sure basis on which to stand. Everyone responds to this. It is one of the surest ways I know of to take our latent divinity a reality in daily life.

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Guru Poornima!

Kabir sang so very aptly:

Guru Govind dono khade, Kiske lago Paye?

Balihari Guru Aapne, Govind Diyo Bathaye!

Translation:

Guru and God stand side by side,

Whose feet should I touch?

O Guru! I offer myself

At thy feet since you showed me the path to God!

July 29th was Guru Poornima - The full moon day dedicated to the master - all the masters that walked this earth! As I have written several times, my life has changed so much for the better since my first encounter with Guruji way back in 2000! This Guru Poornima was different, with Guruji being out of Bangalore, I felt an acute sense of longing. There are bits and pieces of what Guruji spoke on that day floating around, but am yet to get hold of a coherent piece. So, If you were in the presence of the Master that day, please do share what he spoke.

Back….with book reviews

I am back after a hiatus. Have been meaning to post for some time now, but guess it had to wait till now. Last few days have all been about catching up with reading. So here we go:

After having heard Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik speak, it was only a matter of time that I went ahead and purchased his books. Archana too recommended his books strongly so I had no choice and I wasn’t disappointed. Myth=Mithya is a brilliant composition on Hindu Mythology. So if you have difficulty explaining why Hindus have 330 million gods, why Rama despite abandoning Sita remains the model king, how and why the Krishna of Vrindavana differs from Krishna of Dwarka, look no further than this book. Written in a very engaging and rational way, Devdutt does not thrust his viewpoints on the readers, rather lets the stories and their explanation unfold in a very easy manner.

The other book that I recently concluded reading was “The Case of the Bonsai Manager: Lessons from Nature on Growing.” by R. Gopalakrishnan. Reviewing the book, Telegraph writes:

The title, The Case of the Bonsai Manager, at first blush, suggests a Perry Mason whodunit. The author quickly clarifies that it is, in fact, about how not to become like a stunted bonsai and grow to your full potential as a manager. But, on final analysis, it is a book about leadership, and a powerful one at that.

R. Gopalakrishnan deploys a wondrous array of examples and analogies not just from nature but also from science, business, mythology, culture, society, history, economics, politics, religion (the list is really quite impressive) and his personal experiences of forty years in the transformation of two of India’s greatest corporations— Hindustan Lever Limited and the Tata Group.

For example, in just one of the sixteen chapters, he begins with the Australian ecosystem then goes on to Dubai’s economy, the primitive societies of Shoshone in North America and the Kung San in the African Kalahari, Joseph Stiglitz and “resource-cursed” economies, Singapore’s approach to risk relative to the US, crowd management at the Kumbh Mela, a family visit to Disneyland, the introduction of TV into Bhutan, and Philippine professor Caesar Saloma’s experiments with panicky mice, with lessons from Samuel Johnson, C.K. Prahalad, Gandhi and John F. Kennedy sprinkled across for good measure! While the book is obviously much more than these examples, their abundance and sheer diversity not only show the amazing depth and breadth of the author’s experience and thinking, but also whet the reader’s appetite and make The Case of the Bonsai Manager a page-turner.

and the last book that I finished reading was The Secret. You will either like it or you will trash it as a piece of humbug! Either way do read it before deciding. Wikipedia has a long page of discussion on it.