Advaita Vedanta

Advaita Vedanta is the classic thought process of nondual philosophy. 

In Sanskrit 'Brahma Satyam, jagat mithya, jiva brahmaiva na para'. 

In simpler language, the core teaching is 'The Absolute (Brahman) is the only reality, the world (jagat) is an appearance (of that nondual Absolute) and the sentient being (jiva) is none other than the nondual Absolute'.  

Adi Shankaracharya was the proponent of this Philosophy.

                                                

There are two steps to Advaita—first,  'neti, neti'  which means  'not this, not this' leading to the realization of our spiritual nature.                                                                                                                                                                                     

                               

                       

Secondly, we need to see that this spiritual natural state of ours is nondual. Clarity about both steps is necessary to realize nonduality (Advaita).

                                    

Disclaimer: No intent to infringe any copyrights on publicly available resources.

Vairāgya (वैराग्य)

 

Vairagya is such a beautiful concept...!!  Unfortunately our society views it negatively.

Its because 99% people don't understand the true meaning of Vairagya.

Vairagya doesn't necessarily mean going to Himlayas. We can practice vairagya in normal life as well.

Vairagya Comes from Vivek (Differentiating between the right and the wrong) and then becomes strong through Abhyas (Constant practice of detachment from worldly objects and desires)

VIVEK = >    VAIRAGYA     <= ABHYAS

A proper definition given by Maharishi Patanjali in the Yogashastra:

"दृष्टानुश्रविकविषयवितृष्णस्य वशीकारसंज्ञा वैराग्यम् ।" 

i.e. Vairagya means the absence of desire for seen & unseen objects. When one's mind no longer desires for worldly objects, it naturally inclines towards contemplation of the supreme reality. 

King Bhartruhari's  (भर्तृहरि) "Vairagya Shatakam"  वैराग्य शतकम is a good book to read for those who are interested in the subject.

King Bhartṛuhari says in his Vairāgya-śhatakam :

उत्खातं निधिशङ्कया क्षितितलं ध्माता गिरेर्धातवो

निस्तीर्णः सरितां पतिर्नृपतयो यत्नेन सन्तोषिताः।

मन्त्राराधनतत्परेण मनसा नीताः श्मशाने निशाः

प्राप्तः काणवराटकोऽपि न मया तृष्णेऽधुना मुञ्च माम्॥

I dug up the earth looking for treasures, smelted rocks in search of precious metals, crossed the ocean, propitiated kings with great effort, spent several nights in the cemetery trying to master incantations—none of this fetched me even a single broken cowry. I beg you, Desire, leave me alone now!  

Very important - Vairagya must come through Vivek. That is the only real vairagya. Otherwise if vairagya comes from some miseries which happened to you, then such vairagya is only temporary.

Two Kinds of Vairagya

Vairagya (non-attachment) can be of two kinds-

(1) Karana Vairagya (Vairagya on account of some miseries) and

(2) Vivek Purvak Vairagya (Vairagya on account of discrimination between real and unreal).

The mind of a man who has got the former type of Vairagya is simply waiting for a chance to get back the things that were given up. As soon as the first opportunity offers itself, the man gets the downfall and goes back to his former state. But the other man who has given up the objects on account of Viveka, on account of illusory nature of objects, will have spiritual advancement. He will not have a downfall.

Stages of Vairagya - 

(1) Yatmana  -  efforts to guide the mind away from sensual pleasures

(2) Vyatireka -  Awareness of your level of Vairagya towards certain objects

(3) Ekendriya- Passiveness of your senses with attachment or aversion of mind to an object 

(4) Vasikar - Highest stage of Vairagya. NO more desires and leads to self realization 

Minimalism Vs Desires

Satisfaction from materialistic desires is inversely proportional to the desire itself.

Human Desires give continuously diminishing returns. More the desires, lesser the satisfaction out of it.

So what's the solution..?

Vairagya as described in the ancient Vedic traditions is the only way to lasting peace and bliss.

A smaller version of Vairagya is known as "Minimalism" in many parts of the world.

#Vairagya   #Minimalism

- योगी अ..

Change in Blog Topics, its 2023 now...

This blog I had started in and around 2006-2007 writing about general life experiences. After couple of years I stopped writing it.

Time flew by..... Its already 2023 now..!

I am planning to write again now.

But the topics will ofcourse change to something which is more closer to my heart now.

Vedanta, Upanishads and Spirituality from a scientific and philosophical point of view.

My other blog which is more related to professional topics will keep running separately on my linkedin page.

But This one here, is a "Passion" blog!!

And my passions keep changing as I keep getting more grey hair and keep aging....

From Geopolitics to Economics to Philosophy to Sociology and now to Spirituality..... I like reading about almost everything under the sun and  scribbling down my interpretations. Most of them are not published. For every 1 article here or on my linkedin, I have probably 20 other articles written which I never publish.

Just a journey of consciousness through this lifetime....

Lean Banking....anyone?

Well, I am always amazed by these 1 room, roadside banks in France…. This is a branch (agency; as they call it) of LCL (Le credit lyonnais: if I got it right) bank just down the road from my place. Accepted that it’s in a residential area, but still how lean can it be? And despite that, you can do almost everything in the branch may it be International wire transfers or opening an IBAN.

To my amazement there are only 2 people working there and one of them is the branch manager. The other guy is a one stop shop for everything starting from exchanging Forex to learn signing a French chequebook (Yes, it’s different). If you drop in to take a look into the branch manager’s area, she will offer you some chocolates and some help if you want....!  Atleast the branches I visited till now   have a bowl on the employees table’s filled with candies & chocolates and you can help yourself while the guy is stamping your tc’s.  I had heard a lot about French bureaucracy, but atleast I haven't experienced any till now. 

Why (ab)use the word "Strategy"?

Offlate, has 'strategy' just become a synonym for 'important'? Why use the word everywhere? Is strategy a 'strategic' concept?

The last question from the above 3 is the best example to show the kind of abuse the word 'strategy' is going through. If there would have been an award for 'most abused word on the globe', it must go to this word. The top boss in the corner office uses it because he is planning to expand in 'strategic' locations such as China & India. At the same time, his assistant uses it because he is fetching coffee for him at a 'strategic' time and from the new coffee house which recently opened at a 'strategic' location near the old cafeteria!

Heck, why only in office-settings, but in other places as well where you don't expect this word to be used at all....! Last summer, during a visit to India, I noticed that people were discussing a hot topic in the small town :- A nearby Kiraana Store had gone bankrupt and the owner had fled away with lot of debt on him. I heard someone say " Arre yaar, uski koi aur 'strategy' hogi iske picche " (The owner might be having some hidden strategy (read: intention) for declaring himself bankrupt).

I was watching a cricket match before some days and at the end of the match the captain of the winning team was chatting with the TV commentator: " You see, we were playing with a different 'strategy' in this game. We decided to open the batting with a new pair and the 'strategy' clicked! You know, this is the 1st match in the series and winning the 1st match is always 'strategic' from psychological point of view, especially in a 'strategic' series such as this"

Too much (ab)use of the word "Strategy"??

Cross cultural observations

I was just reflecting on some of my experiences of working with people of different nationalities. In the past few years during my employment, I got a chance to work with various people from around the world. I must have worked closely with atleast 15 nationalities until now. And this has been a real eye opener to the kind of cross cultural team issues which might face an organization. Even in daily life, its just so exciting to see the reactions of people from different nationalities & cultures on the same issue..... You can be almost sure that in a case team of 6 people with 6 nationalities; you will get radically different reactions on the same issue being handled.

That's when we realise that 'Diversity' is not just a buzzword; you have to experience it to know its power. If you want to be a global organization, you need to have a diverse and global workforce: It's as simple as that!

Just compiling a brief summary of what I observed. Some of these observations are positive & some are negative. May be I am quite wrong in judging those people while saying some negative things about them. It is also true that what I observed may be a peculiar characteristic of that particular person and cant be applied to the whole culture of the nation. So this is not about generalization, it's just an observation....

• 
  
  Germans: Very friendly people. They are analytic, extremely organized & structured (in thinking, behavior & working style). Will be eager to start the conversation. They are quite straight-forward without showing unnecessary diplomacy. Overall nice human beings.
• 
  
  Italians: Very easy going and nice people. They can crack jokes in situations when you don't expect to even think of one. Italians are famous for their calm & relaxed attitude and I won't disagree with that either. Another peculiar thing I found is that these people feel they belong more to their respective city than to their country. "Italy" is a concept which probably isn't as important for them compared to Rome or Venice or Tuscany and so on. May be just my personal observation.


• British: Mentally tough people and generally they still love India. A typical British (as the French will tell you) "eats his chicken with sugar...". No comment there- I am a vegetarian....haha...


• Chinese: Believe it or not, the Hindi-chini bhai bhai stuff really seems true. We do feel a kind of synergy with chinese people though there is no similarity at all. May be being 'Asian' seems to unite the feelings.
• French: How can I not talk about my hosts... French people(& Europeans in general) are pretty much relaxed about life. They are a lot subtle when it comes to attitudes. I am trying to limit this blog-post only to cultural and behavioural aspects and hence wont divert into other things. A separate blog-post on France in general is due short anyway.
  
• Georgians: They are quite ambitious and practical in their approach. 

• Irish: I had previously heard lots of jokes about good-old Irish people, but I found them really friendly. Careful listeners and good thinkers. Nice to have in any team.

• 
  
  
  Americans: Easy going people. Though an average American doesnt know that there exists a world outside the states but the ones I came across here were a lot better.



• 
  
  
  Azerbaijani: This is a small country in Middle east Asia border and I just came across one person from there. Friendly and analytical.

• 
  
  
  Swiss: As this community consists mostly of Germans & French, so they carry the same European characteristics.




• Mexicans: They not only look like Indians, but also quite similar in characteristics. Long live BRICM ...! And most importantly, their 'tortillas' are a life saver for roti-craving Indian tastebuds :-)

• Brazilian: Lazy is the most apt word I can think of about the brief interaction I had with a Brazilian. Cant tell much.

• Romanians: You can listen in peace when Romanians do all the talking..... Offcourse this couldnt be true for all Romanians but my experience is that they are compulsive talkers. And dont bother to ask any Romanian about which undergraduate school do they come from. Because you are sure to get the same answer :- "Academia de Studii Economice Bucureşti" It sounds very strange, but probably whole of Romania completes their high-school and bachelors studies in this one university....




• Japanese: Peaceful, hardworking, sincere, friendly. But I have come across only one and she too is not a pure Japanese but a French-Japanese. So Cant tell much.

• Dutch : Easy going and so much like Germans. I found them friendly and well organized. Also they are brimming with new and innovative ideas.

• Scandinavians (Swedish & Finnish):- I don't know why, but the scandinavian people ooze entrepreneurship (or may be I came across only those scandinavians who were entrepreneurs). Cool customers overall, but a bit selfish sometimes.

• Indians: I am not saying this just because I am an Indian, but believe me, we are one of the best species around. (and this is others opinion, not mine. And it is a general opinion about Indians and does not apply to anyone in particular). Highly Intelligent, excellent listeners, good team players & numerate, we are like the dream people to have in any team. But I really wonder why this attitude mostly comes through only when we are outside our country ? What happens to our attitudes when we are in our country? Why we try to run a rat race there?

(Later addition:- Although the above opinion about Indians is true in a better setting, but when you come across a local guy on a street in a western country, he/she still has in mind many stereotypes about India.....for ex:- many such people still associate India ONLY with Taj Mahal, Bollywood, spirituality, spicy food, elephants, cows, BPO's or more recently, a 'Slumdog Millionnaire' ... Do these things really do justice to representing one sixth of the world's population?

While the answer to that question is a vehement 'no', unfortunately, Indians have to deal with such stereotypes of India, be it in their professional lives or social settings, while interacting with atleast a section of 'westerners' if not more......You have to be always ready with a voice-tape recorded on your tongue to tell them that one cannot really 'know' an Indian by the above stereotypes or by watching bollywood movies.....!

• ??

From Strategy to Operations:- The curious case of Benjamin Button....

The title sounds strange enough, but when you are subjected to a long movie, you ought to think of strange things. 3 hours gone but an important analogy made: Between Benjamin Button & the process of creating operational plans from strategic plans in order to execute your strategy! The film shows Brad Pitt being born as an old man and living his life growing younger. He relates events which for him had already happened. Now imagine you, as an organization, are standing at the end of a long time line - you have already achieved your strategy. Imagine, how did you do it? What actions did you take? What resources did you secure and how you deployed them? Which products/markets/segments did you serve? How did you secure finance? What was the reaction of the market & shareholders? And many such questions depending on the industry. Ask these questions in a stepwise fashion starting from the end. What was the last significant thing you had to do just before reaching the goal. Put that on your timeline. And just before that, what did you have to do? And just before that? And so on, moving closer and closer in time, right up until the present. Working backwards from the realization of the goal, you have developed a timeline, complete with milestones & contingency planning- working from your collected knowledge and scenario creation, but not necessarily from your conscious mind. The Method can be a way to generate set of tactical actions to realize your business strategy. (Sounds too easy in the writing, but offcourse in real life, there will be lots of other things involved. Especially in case of corporate strategy, if an operational planning exercise is being done, then there will be lots of scenarios & games being played between country/functional BU 's and the corporate office.)

For a reality check, think it through forwards. If you add the necessary resources, skills, and knowledge, take each action in turn, and reach each milestone, is that likely to produce the results you intend to produce? (Biblio and credit-  Mr. Paul Lemberg) Does that mean that Strategists need to be prophets? Offcourse not:- No one can predict the future. But an organization can start from the place where it wants to be and systematically work backwards to the place where it is. Afterall, that's one of the things a strategist does: Bringing structured thinking in the top tier of an organization.

History Repeats... and how..!!

Consider the Following (A random article which I read somewhere) :- 

" Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

Who said the above?

I am sure each one of you must have come across similar lines at one point or other.

Those of you who have grown-up children may have said the same things to them. Our grandparents may have similar opinion about today's generation. But have you ever wondered when this statement was first recorded?

Any guesses on the year?

No, it's not today... and not even 20 years back. You have to go back very far away in history to trace it. It is 2,400 years ago that the great philosopher Socrates (469 BC-399 BC) made this statement. 

Amazed, perplexed, bemused, shocked?

I'm sure you are.

But that's the way it is. Human nature and emotions remain the same irrespective of the era one is in.

History Repeats... and how..!!

Absolutely Amazing!

Watched 'Swades' once more today.... What a movie..... what sensibilities... sheer heart-warmer!

.... 'Yeh taara woh taara' , 'Yeh jo des hai tera....' These songs in particular are masterpieces. It's so touching.....

Love it...!

Strategic Planning

McKinesy on Strategic Planning:

1° Creating prepared minds

2° Enabling creative accidents

- Bottom up strategy experimentation

- Top down strategic initiatives

Private Equity LBO's Vs. Venture capitalists : Fundamentals

• Private equity firms will focus on turnarounds by buying distressed debt, file for protection from creditors under insolvency law, and lead a restructuring. Venture capitalists will historically invest in seed stage fundamentally strong businesses.
• PE's will change the existing management and hire either a consulting firm or their own team to act as top management in the interim. On the other hand, VC's obviously believe in the entrepreneurs whom they funded and hence they dont alter with the operating management but they generally sit on the boards of such firms.
• For the PE, an exit will generally mean appointing a permanent top management and either sell it completely or partially to achieve a target of anywhere from 15 to 80 percent returns. For the VC, an exit generally means taking the firm to a successful IPO and venture out with similar returns.

Oh..what a gruelling time...

The day I landed in Paris was a very hectic one. I had a morning 6 o' clock flight from Mumbai and I hadnt slept almost the whole night before. Infact the situation was not too different from the time of the GMAT....... The exam preparation, exam, the app' ing, the calls, interviews, conversions, scholarships, edu loans, packing, forced shopping, resigning from TCS..... The process was already taking a toll on me.

After finalising the packing until 3 AM, I still had an hour before I had to leave. I decided to use it productively by sleeping. I was also counting on the time during the journey to fullfill my quota of sleep. But I could barely sleep and the clock moved on. It was 04:30 already. In between cursing myself for careless-ness & checking the luggage for the last time, I hurried towards the airport.

It was a boring flight with people asking for an exchange of seat citing the reason of their kids. The sight of a lady with 2/3 kids looking furiously for a potential hunt to exchange her seat warned me of the trouble brewing up....two 7 year olds with their giant mother entered with a wretched smile on their face and a searching look in the eyes. I am not sure whether its written on my face that I will oblige, but her eyes rested on me and with a winning shine of having found the hunt, the family approached me. I dont know how but these creatures dont bother about their seats while boarding and once inside, then their search starts.....And I find myself meekly obliging to see the kids and their mothers seating happily together....Long live everybody!

Thanks to my exchanged cranky middle seat, I was not able to catch up my sleep. When I reached CDG airport , it had totalled 32 hours since I had last slept. I was tired as hell but still I had to go to Grenoble which was a further half hour connecting flight (to Lyon & further). I was hoping to have a nice sleep after reaching Grenoble soon. But some more testing times were served for me... Just after my arrival at CDG, there was a bomb hoax at the airport and all subsequent flights were frozen for the time being. I decided to catch a train and after 3 more hours I finally reached my hotel in Grenoble.

There it was.... A cozy bed and a blanket....What more can a tired soul ask for.... needless to say, I threw my luggage and slept with peace......

Aspirations of the herd....

Few years ago and until last year, it was the time of software engineers. Every Ram, Shyam and Ghanshyam in the neighourhood wanted to be a software engineer because of the attraction of high bucks and trips abroad. These Ghanshyams didn’t know where their own mind or strength lies. They just felt happy to follow the aspirations of the herd. They spoke excitedly about latest trends in open source, neural networks and artificial intelligence. The wave was so intense in the period of 1998 that software engineers were seen as demigods. This phenomenon lasted quite long until 2005/06.

Then the herd collectively changed its mind and thought that oh, actually finance is also a good profession, isn’t it? Now the same Ghanshyam in the neighbourhood started talking about balance sheets, hedge funds & private equity. He still didn’t know where his own mind or strength lies. He was again following the herd. It became muted after the GFC. Then it was the turn of Medicine as profession (which was nothing new by the way. it was there in early 1990's as well and will repeat again in future).

The same story had happened with Ghanshyam's uncle in good old days when the herd was unanimous that either Government or administrative profession is infact a nice profession. Being Ghanshyam's  uncle, he was not much of a thinker and he didn’t know where his own mind or strength lies. He was just following the herd. The same story is poised to happen with Ghanshyam's  daughter, and will probably happen with her son & grandson.

The names here are used just randomly, but the fact remains. No wonder that our nation doesn’t produce enough sportsmen, right? Because everyone believes in following the aspirations of the herd. The attitudes seek fast money & fame and go with the profession of the era. So first you have a less supply & higher demands but the demand curve takes a ‘U’ turn in a relatively shorter time because of the Shyams and Ghnashyams. Isn’t this attitude a potential threat to the nation? May be I am wrong, but I believe that the real long term problem for the nation lies not in burgeoning population, BUT it lies in the attitude of the nation to follow the herd.

Let aside a sportsman, try to think whether the Shyam in your own neighborhood will ever aspire to be a professional violin maker, for example ? Or to be a behavioral economist ? Or to be painter, an author, a clay animator?

The answer is ‘Never…’ .He/she will follow the attitude of the herd. The nation will loose one more sportsman or pianist. The story will go on…