Let me begin with a story from the Tales of Vikramaditya. The story is about Urvashi.
What does Urvashi have to do with performance excellence and the flow, you might ask. Isn’t she an apsara, a heavenly dancer, or more correctly, a heavenly courtesan? Isn’t her job, according to mythology, titillating male hearts and tempting ascetics with her charms?
The tales of Dattatreya that India has been telling and retelling for ages teach us that wisdom could be found anywhere. One could learn wisdom from a fish, from a crane, from a leaping tiger or from the stillness of a mountain. One could learn lessons from a heavenly courtesan, or her poorest cousin, a street prostitute too. In fact, Indian culture teaches us several invaluable lessons through the tales of prostitutes.
In one of the stories told about her in the Tales of Vikramaditya, Urvashi teaches us the highest lesson in performance excellence.
The story tells us that once there was rivalry between the best two celestial dancers Urvashi and Rambha about who was the better dancer of the two. Now the apsaras are both renowned for their unsurpassed beauty and for their dancing skill. Naturally the gods could not decide who the better dancer of the two was. It is also possible that none of them wanted to take a definite stand on this. If you declared one the superior, you would displease the other. And you do not want to displease either Urvashi or Rambha. Finding no other way, they decided to leave the matter for arbitration by an outsider, by a human being.
Greek mythology tells us the story of the Judgment of Paris, in which Paris was called upon to judge who is the most beautiful of all the goddesses. What had happened was that all the gods and goddesses were invited for the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, leaving out Eris, the goddess of discord. Nuptials is not a celebration to which you want to invite the goddess of discord, but Eris did not like that she was left out and wanted her revenge. What she did was to write the words “For the fairest” on a golden apple and throw it among the guests at the party. Three goddesses claimed the apple: Juno, the queen goddess of Olympus, Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, and Venus, the goddess of beauty. Jupiter was called upon to decide but he did not want to take a decision in the matter – he knew what would happen if he chose whichever one of them. Eventually it was decided that the handsome young shepherd Paris would make the decision. The goddesses immediately approached Paris and tried to bribe him. Juno promised him power and riches if he chose her; Minerva promised him wisdom and fame; and Venus, the most beautiful woman on earth as his wife. Paris declared Venus the most beautiful of the three. The other two goddesses instantly became his enemies. But Venus was pleased and took him to Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman on earth, and Helen’s elopement with Paris, who was already the wife of King Menelaus, led to the legendary Trojan War.
It is characteristic of Greek mythology that practically every time a god or goddess interferes in human affairs or a human being interferes in the affairs of gods and goddesses, it results in tragedy. But in Indian mythology, most of these interferences are benign in their result, though there are exceptions.
Well, coming back to Urvashi and Rambha, the man whom the gods decided to put on the seat of judgment was none other than King Vikramaditya, the king-emperor, legends about whom fill volumes of Indian folklore, the most famous of which are what are popularly known as the Vikram Vetal Stories.
Vikram was then ruling from Ujjayini [modern Ujjain in central India], his splendorous capital that rivalled Amaravati, the capital of Indra, the lord of the gods. Invited by Indra, Vikramaditya reached Amaravati and was received with great honour. He was invited to watch the performances of Urvashi and Rambha for a few days and also to participate in the other entertainments of Amaravati. Some two weeks passed this way and then one day Indra asked him the question to answer which he had been brought to the capital of the celestials.
Vikramaditya was very reluctant to do the job he was asked to do, though he felt greatly honoured; but who is he, a mere mortal, to judge the celestials, he asked. When pressed, he remained lost in thought for a while and then, after planning out a strategy in his mind, agreed ro. The following day was set for him to make the decision.
Just before the competition began, Vikramaditya asked for two floral garlands to be brought to him. Unknown to everyone, Vikram hid a scorpion inside each garland. As the dancers were about to begin, Vikramaditya gave each of them a garland, which they were requested to wear during the dance.
The dance began and both Urvashi and Rambha were at their very best. The audience of gods, goddesses and celestial sages watched spellbound as their performance ascended to greater perfection every moment. Both Urvashi and Rambha always danced breathtakingly, but today the whole audience felt no one could ever dance to greater perfection
And then it happened. Surprising everybody, Rambha made her first mistake. A slight imperfection, an almost imperceptible fault. And then another, and then yet another. Something amazing was happening before the eyes of the gods, goddesses and sages. Instead of giving the best performance of her life, Rambha was giving the worst ever. No one had ever seen Rambha making so many errors in a dance. It was unbelievable. Everyone knew she was a supreme mistress of dance and now she was dancing like an amateur!
The dance came to an end. No one had any doubt about who the winner was. Vikramaditya’s words merely confirmed the conviction in everybody’s heart. Urvashi was officially declared the supreme dancer of the heavens. Rambha fled the scene in shame.
Now the gods and goddesses turned as one person to Vikramaditya. What had he done? How was the miracle achieved? Why had Rambha failed on that day? Why had she made so many obvious mistakes? Why had she danced like a novice?
Vikram explained the test he had designed. The garlands he gave the dancers had a scorpion hidden inside each. So long as the dancers danced to perfection, their rhythms would be so smooth that the scorpions would be unaware of their movements, their steps and movements would lull them into a kind of contented sleep. That is how Indian dances are designed - the movements induce a kind of light trance. But the moment the steps and movements became less than perfect, this trance would be disturbed. The movements would lose have their mellifluousness and become jarring and irregular. This might not be obvious to the audience because the dancers are so supremely talented, but within the garlands the scorpions would become disturbed because they physically feel the jarred movements. Awakened from the trance, they would sting the wearer. And that is what had happened with Rambha.
But how had Rambha’s movements become less than perfect in the first place?
As a dance progresses, the best of dancers transcend themselves and then it is no more they dancing, but dance happening through them. Dance has the ability to take the dancer beyond herself, beyond her limited self, and it is when this happens that dance achieves its highest quality. It is no more a dancer dancing then, but dance flowing out of the dancer on its own. It then becomes pure dance, without a dancer being present. Action then becomes inaction because there is no actor behind the action. Karma becomes akarma because there is no karta behind it. The result is unsurpassed excellence.
When the dancer ceases to be and the dance goes on, then it becomes pure dance. Supreme dance, truly divine dance. Then it is the divine essence in us that is dancing and not the ego.
This had not happened in the case of Rambha. As the dance progressed, a thought came to her mind – “How beautifully I am dancing!” And that thought created a gap between her and the dance. She was no more one with the dance, but there was a distance between the two, a distance created by her self-consciousness, by the presence of her ego. The moment that thought came to her head, the moment the ego appeared, her dance became less than perfect, her movement lost their perfection, and the resulting jarred movements awakened the scorpion and it stung her.
A single thought in the mind, and Rambha loses the contest.
Urvashi kept dancing in self-forgetfulness. Urvashi kept dancing and became one with her dance. For her it was no more she dancing, but dance happening through her. There was just the dance, she had disappeared.
What had happened to her was self-transcendence. Self-transcendence which is essential for the highest perfection in dance, in any action.
It was not Urvashi who had defeated Rambha in the dance. Her own ego had defeated Rambha.
0o0
Our best moments, in personal life as well as in professional life, come to us in moments when our ‘self’ [ego] does not exist, is transcended. Modern psychology calls this ‘the flow state’. This is the state of all creativity, problem-solving, and performance excellence.
In all our outstanding performances, whether it is in singing, in painting, in writing, in making a presentation or a speech, in team work, in playing an individual game or a team game, or in making love, there comes a moment when the self as we know it does not exist. Those moments in the bathroom when we get beautiful creative insights – those are moments of self-forgetfulness/self-transcendence. In fact, all creativity, all inventions require this self-transcendence as its basis.
This is how George Leonard in his The Ultimate Athlete describes those moments:
“Michael Spino, a ranking long-distance runner, was training one rainy day along dirt and asphalt roads, and was being paced by a friend in a car. He planned to run six miles at top speed. After the first mile, he realized something extraordinary was happening; he had run the mile in four and a half minutes with no sense of pain or exertion whatever. He ran on, carried by a huge momentum. It was as if the wet roads, the oncoming cars, the honking horns did not exist. Gradually, his body lost all weight and resistance. He began to feel like a skeleton. He became the wind itself. Daydreams and fantasies disappeared. All that remained to remind him of his own existence was “a feeling of guilt for being able to do this.”
“When the run ended, Spino was unable to talk, for he had lost a clear sense of who he was. It was impossible for him to decide if he were Mike Spino or “the one who had been running.” He sat down at the side of the road and wept. He had run the entire six miles on wet and muddy roads at a four-and-a-half-minute pace, close to the national record, and now he could not decide who he was.”
Mike Spino did not understand it, but what had happened to him was an experience of self-transcendence.
Commenting on Spino’s experience, George Leonard says: “Distance running is indeed a powerful instrument for altering human consciousness. Like many of the meditative disciplines, it requires a willingness to bear pain, a propensity for self-denial. The rhythmic, repetitive movements of the body and the steady flow of visual stimuli are well constituted to induce visions and reveal mysteries…”
Sports, with its constant need to bring out the best in oneself and to ‘outperform oneself’, is one of the easiest ways of achieving self-transcendence.
Here is more from Leonard, wherein he tries to describe the state of self-transcendence, without finding proper vocabulary to explain that state about which the west knows very little.
“Sometimes the highest accomplishments in sports seem to place the performer in a dreamlike state. Enrico Rastelli, who dazzled all of Europe with his juggling, displayed a childlike ease while accomplishing the most spectacular feats. Standing on his hands with a rubber ring spinning around one leg, he could make a ball climb from the crown of his head up his back to the sole of the other foot. He set a world record by juggling twelve balls in the air simultaneously. Rastelli said he felt he was not working but dreaming.
“Other championship performers have described their moments of high performance and unusual perception as being totally different from dreaming. British golfer Tony Jacklin, winner of both the U.S. Open and the British Open, admits to having experienced a state of altered consciousness some ten times in his golfing career:
““It’s not like playing golf in a dream or anything like that. Quite the opposite. When I’m in this state everything is pure, vividly clear. I’m in a cocoon of concentration. And if I can put myself into that cocoon, I’m invincible.”
“Jacklin, quoted in the London Sunday Times, went on to speak of the difficulty of describing his experiences. “They sound stupid. For a start, it is very difficult to explain these feelings to someone who has not experienced them. . . When I’m in this state, this cocoon of concentration, I’m living fully in the present, not moving out of it. I’m absolutely engaged, involved in what I’m doing at that particular moment. That’s the important thing.
Daniel Goleman has been fascinated with peak performance and the state of flow and self-transcendence. Here is what Goleman has to say about self-transcendence and peak performance in his celebrated book Emotional Intelligence:
“A composer describes those moments when his work is at its best: “You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I’ve experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And it just flows out by itself.”
”His description is remarkably similar to those of hundreds of diverse men and women – rock climbers, chess champions, surgeons, basketball players, engineers, managers, even filing clerks – when they tell of a time they outdid themselves in some favoured activity. The state they describe is called “flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the University of Chicago psychologist who has collected such accounts of peak performance during two decades of research. Athletes know this state of grace as “the zone,” where excellence becomes effortless, crowd and competitors disappear into a blissful, steady absorption in the moment. Diane Roffe-Steinortter, who captured a gold medal in skiing at the 1994 Winter Olympics, said after she finished her turn at ski racing that she remembered nothing about it but being immersed in relaxation. “I felt like a waterfall.”
“That experience is a glorious one: the hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture. Because flow feels so good, it is intrinsically rewarding. It is a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they are doing, paying undivided attention to the tasks, their awareness merged with their actions. Indeed, it interrupts flow to reflect too much on what is happening – the very thought “I’m doing this wonderfully” can break the feeling of flow. Attention becomes so focused that people are aware only of the narrow range of perception related to the immediate task, losing track of time and space.”
Concluding this discussion of the flow state, Goleman says: “Flow is a state of self-forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry: instead of being lost in nervous preoccupation, people in flow are so absorbed in the task at hand they lose all self-consciousness. And although people perform at their peak while in flow, they are unconcerned with how they are doing, with thoughts of success or failure – the sheer pleasure of the act itself is what motivates them.”
0o0
In the story of Urvashi and Rambha, while Urvashi had lost all self-consciousness, even the consciousness that she was dancing wonderfully, Rambha failed to reach that state. The thought came to her that she was dancing wonderfully. She became self-conscious.
It is also possible that Rambha was preoccupied with the result of the competition. Maybe, while part of her mind was on the dance, another part was preoccupied with winning, with the result.
When you are divided within yourself, it becomes impossible to self-transcend. Only a person who is undivided and whole at that moment can achieve self-transcendence. The fragmented individual is barred from entering the state of self-transcendence.
It is for this reason that the Bhagavad Gita says: karmanyeva’dhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana; ma karmaphalahetur bhooh...” “Your power is only over your actions and not over their results. Do not be preoccupied with the results of your actions while you perform actions.” When we become preoccupied with the results, part of the mind is tied up with that preoccupation and we are not able to give ourselves entirely to the action at hand. This makes our mind fragmented and prevents us from achieving self-transcendence.
There is no action through which we cannot attain self-transcendence, no action which cannot be performed in the self-transcended state, provided we are able to give ourselves entirely to the action.
George Leonard, Daniel Goleman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speak of achieve self-transcendence through running, painting, writing, singing and numerous other activities. Another person who has studied the phenomenon in depth is Dr Charalempos Mainemelis of London Business School, who has studied the flow and self-transcendence as well as time transcendence in the context of work in industry and business. According to the psychologists who study the flow state, flow could be achieved even in such a routine, monotonous job as that of a filing clerk in an office.
Amaru Shataka is an ancient Indian classic in Sanskrit. One traditional belief says it was written by Adi Shankara, the great mystic-philosopher, though there are many who refuse to accept this. The book is a collection of one hundred erotic verses [many more have been added since and the current extant text has around one hundred and fifty verses], one of which contains a beautiful description of a couple achieving self-transcendence through the act of lovemaking.
0o0
One of the greatest psychological understandings of Indian thought is that no actor can be perfect, only actions can be perfect and actions become perfect only when the actor ceases to be, ceases to exist.
So long as the actor is present in the action, the action is less than perfect.
Throughout the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks of the need to eliminate the actor from the action, the performer from the performance, the doer from what is done. One should be an akarta – non-doer – while performing karma, says Krishna. Be just an instrument for the actions to happen through, and never be the doer of actions, he repeatedly tells Arjuna and through Arjuna, all of us. The secret of action, according to Krishna, is to be like his flute. The flute is empty and because it is empty, Krishna’s music can flow through it.
In Kahlil Gibran’s Jesus: the Son of Man, the author says:
“Jesus the Nazarene was born and reared like ourselves; His mother and father were like our parents, and He was a man.
“But the Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning, the Spirit who would have us live our fuller life, came unto Jesus and was with Him.
“And the Spirit was the versed hand of the Lord, and Jesus was the harp.
“The Spirit was the psalm, and Jesus was the turn thereof.
“And Jesus, the Man of Nazareth, was the host and the mouthpiece of the Christ, who walked with us in the sun and who called us His friends.”
The last verse of the Bhagavad Gita makes this beautiful promise to us: yatra yogeshwarah krishnah, yatra partho dhanurdharah, tatra shreer vijayo bhootir dhruva neetir matir mama. “Where there is Krishna, the master of yoga, and where there is Arjuna with his bow in hand, there shall goodness, wealth, prosperity, victory, glory and firm justice be.
Arjuna should be present with his bow in hand. But the arrows should fly as directed by Krishna. Arjuna should be there, ready for action, but he should cease to be the actor, the doer, and allow actions to take place through him, and then there shall be goodness, wealth, prosperity, victory, glory and firm justice.
“Nimittamatram bhava savyasachin” – “O Arjuna, be you no more than an instrument [in the hands of the High].”
It is only egoless action that can touch the heights of perfection and it is only egoless action that can engender goodness, wealth, prosperity, victory, glory and firm justice.
Because the ego is poison. Because the ego contaminates everything, corrupts everything.
One of the ways to transcend the ego is to give ourselves entirely to the action, to lose ourselves in what we are doing.
When we give ourselves entirely over to the action, when we lose ourselves in the action, the actor disappears and actions achieve the highest possible quality.
That is true excellence in action – as declared by the Gita verse yogah karmasu kaushalam.
In the context of leadership, a leader climbs to the highest quality when he lets things happen through him without letting his ego interfere.
This is a secret known to musicians and dancers and singers all over the world. This is a secret known to writers and poets and sportsmen all over the world.
Eliminate the actor to achieve excellence in action.
0o0
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Leadership Tales: The Monkey King
Ancient Indian leadership ethos say that living for his people is what makes one a great leader. Living for them, and if necessary, being ready to die for them.
Once upon a time there lived a large troop of monkeys in a forest. The leader of the troop was Mahakapi, a large monkey, strong and wise, and under his leadership the monkeys lived in great prosperity and security. The leader was well known for his love for his monkeys and care for them. He constantly thought of their welfare and how to safeguard them from dangers that might be waiting for them unawares.
The troop of monkeys had made a huge tree next to a towering mountain cliff their home. Beneath the tree that looked like another mighty mountain flowed a brook that that sang as it rushed downstream and, beyond the mountain and the forest, became a quiet river of crystal water.
As spring came, blossoms appeared on the mighty tree and soon the blossoms turned into young fruits. The whole forest was filled with the fragrance of the blossoms and as the monkeys breathed in the air scented with the perfume of fresh blossoms, it intoxicated them.
Soon the fruits were edible and the monkeys began to pluck them and eat them with relish. They were delicious even when they were green and how delicious they would be when they turned ripe! “What a wonderful feast this would make to my troop then,” thought Mahakapi, watching the monkeys eating the fruits.
He was sitting quietly and watching the monkeys enjoying themselves on a huge branch of the tree that hung over the river. They were jumping from one small branch to another, swinging from twigs, and doing all kind of things that monkeys loved to do. Some were leaping down into the river, some swimming back to climb back to the tree. Monkeys chased monkeys everywhere, shrieking in wild glee. Life was pleasant. Everything was wonderful.
And then a sudden thought flashed through the mind of the leader monkey. In a flash Mahakapi saw a terrifying picture. In the picture, hundreds of his monkeys were lying dead, bathed in blood. Dead bodies were floating in their dozens down the river. Terrorized monkeys were running everywhere, screaming in agony.
The future! The fruits on the branch overhanging the river were going to be the death of his troop! No, he couldn’t allow that.
There was deep concern in Mahakapi’s mind, but he was not one to show his worries to his followers. He knew any sign of the slightest fear in him would send rings of alarm through the whole troop and they would go crazy with terror. There is nothing that a troop of terror-stricken monkeys wouldn’t do. Monkeys are wild by nature and always it was only a thin line that separated them from insanity. Aggression was in their very nature. And in terror every monkey became concerned with only one thing: self-preservation. And once that urge took over, they could do anything, including tear one another apart.
In any case the danger was not immediate.
The leader asked his monkeys to eat up all the fruits on the overhanging branch. “Eat as many of them as you can. But make sure not one fruit falls into the brook. And destroy every remaining one, taking care again that none falls into the brook. A single fruit left on that branch could be our death. A single fruit falling into the stream could spell our death.”
The monkeys could make no sense of what he was saying. Destroy all these delicious fruits! And what would happen if a fruit fell into the river? How could it be their death?
But they trusted their leader. He had proved himself wiser than all of them put together. They knew he could see into the future, whereas they missed even what was happening before their eyes. And his love for them and commitment to their welfare were beyond questioning.
The monkeys ate from the branch as many of the fruits as they could. The remaining ones were destroyed as ordered by Mahakapi, taking care none fell into the brook.
Unknown to them, though, a single fruit escaped the destruction. It was hidden inside a nest of ants and the monkeys missed it. When it was tiny, ants had made a nest around it and protected by the nest, the fruit had grown inside it.
And then what the leader feared happened. Exactly as he had feared it would happen.
Over time, the fruit ripened and one day when a light wind blew it fell into the river.
0o0
Beyond the jungle began the outskirts of a city through the heart of which flowed the river. The little brook under the mighty tree in the jungle had become a river by the time it left the mountains and the jungles and reached the plains that made the city. The city was the capital of the kingdom that included the mountains and the forest and vast areas beyond them. The palace of the king was close to the river.
The king and the queens were bathing and sporting in the river when the fruit came floating down. Such was the fragrance of the fruit that it intoxicated the queens instantly. The queens left their sports and there was a race towards the fruit. One of them caught the fruit. She presented it to the king, who took it to the palace with him when their sports and bath were over and they went back.
The fruit was cut and the whole palace was filled with its mouthwatering scent. The king and the queens enjoyed the fruit and they felt the royal meals they had every day was no match to it. They had eaten nothing that tasted so good, nor smelt anything so wonderful. Where could the fruit have come from?
The king decided to go and find out. He was fond of adventures and this would be a new adventure. Such a divine fruit grew in his kingdom and he had no idea of it! No, that had to be rectified. He would locate the tree and when he found it, he was going to declare this fruit a national treasure. Such a wonderful fruit deserved to be a national treasure.
The king took a team of soldiers with him and began the exploration. Crossing the city bounds he entered the jungle and travelled for many days across the thick jungle inhabited by all kinds of wild animals. As he faced the challenges of the jungle and encountered its threats, the king felt he was growing younger. Perhaps the fruit was an omen – an omen of something wonderful going to happen to him. The king felt charged now. Lions, tigers, bears, wolves, nothing scared him anymore. Nor did the sharp thorns and thick vines of the impenetrable forest trouble him.
The river kept growing smaller and eventually became a brook as they began approaching the mountain.
The king smelt the tree long before he came to it. The whole area for miles was filled with the intoxication that was the fragrance of its fruits.
As the king came near, sounds of wild celebrations filled him and his team of soldiers.
And then they saw the tree. A huge tree, as tall as the mountain, its leaves dark green, dominating everything in the surroundings, excepting the mountain. In size and majesty it seemed to vie with the mountain. And the wonderful fruits hung everywhere on the tree – hundreds and hundreds of delicious fruits.
The noise came from the monkeys! There seemed to be a hundred of them on the tree. Maybe, several hundreds! They were swinging from the branches with their tails, chasing one antoher, shrieking and attacking one another in mock fury, only to retreat at the last moment.
Beneath the tree were fruits fallen from the tree. Ripe, golden fruits. Many of them whole and complete, others half eaten by the monkeys.
All on a sudden, a fury filled the king. Such wonderful fruits and monkeys were eating them. Not only eating them, spoiling them too. A national treasure – that is what the fruits were, and the monkeys seemed to have no regard for them. They were treating them like any other fruit.
“Shoot the monkeys down!” ordered the angry king. “Shoot them all down, every one of them!”
Arrows fled everywhere. The king’s soldiers were good. Their arrows never missed. Monkeys started falling down dead everywhere. Many on land, many in the river.
The vision Mahakapi had seen was unfolding before his eyes with terrifying reality. So suddenly that even he did not get time to save his monkeys.
Mahakapi looked around. Soldiers had surrounded the tree and there was no escape.
He had failed his people!
His entire troop was going to be wiped out!
It took a moment for him to make up his mind. A plan took shape in his mind. Then he leapt from the tall branch on which he was sitting. Leapt as no other monkey could leap.
And landed on a bunch of bamboos far away, beyond the clearing around the mighty tree.
There was no escape for the monkeys through the ground. Soldiers stood everywhere, shooting down every monkey in sight. But if they could reach the bamboo bush there was a chance that they might escape to the mountain beyond. The bamboo bush was beyond their reach, true, none of them could leap as far as that, but . . . if only . . .
With all his might, Mahakapi started swaying the bamboo on which he had landed. It was the tallest bamboo in the bush, taller than all others, and stood closest to the tree.
He wanted to make this bamboo a bridge between the fruit tree and the bamboo bush. But no! It was not long enough to reach the tree!
Mahakapi climbed to the tip of the bamboo, as far as he could climb, and began swaying the bamboo wildly. The soldiers noticed what was happening and puzzled, stopped shooting. The king too stood watching it all.
As the bamboo came near the tree, Mahakapi held on to it with his feet as tightly as he could and stretched out his arms. There! He had caught hold of a small branch of three. He shrieked his instructions to the other monkeys and they understood. The whole horde of them ran in his direction from wherever they were on the tree. A bridge had been formed. Part by the bamboo and part by Mahakapi’s body. Monkeys rushed across his body onto the bamboo and away.
Scores of monkeys! Hundreds of monkeys! All in breathless desperation to escape death.
And the bamboo was pulling him away from the tree as it tried to straighten up again.
Mahakapi felt his body being pulled apart. All his ligaments were breaking. And there was blood everywhere, caused by the sharp toenails of the monkeys as they ran across his body frantically.
The soldiers took aim at Mahakapi. Shoot him down and the escape route will be closed. That would be the death of the monkeys.
“Stop!” shouted the king. “Don’t shoot!”
The soldiers lowered their bows and loosened their grip on the bowstrings.
The king stood watching the miracle unfolding before him. He had never seen such a sight. The leader monkey was sacrificing his life to save his people! He held on tightly to the bamboo with his feet and to the fruit tree with his hands, while blood oozed from every part of his body. What a wonderful sight!
Sudden tears welled up in the eyes of the king. He too was a leader of his people. But would he have done what the monkey king was doing?
The king ordered the soldiers to hold a net under the king monkey. Then he ordered his men to cut down with arrows both the branch of the tree which Mahakapi was holding on to and the bamboo. “Cut down both in the same instant,” he ordered.
Mahakapi fell into the net unconscious.
When he came to, he was surrounded by the king and his solders. Other monkeys were watching them from the safety of the bamboos. The solders had applied balms to his broken body and slowly life was returning to him.
0o0
When Mahakapi recovered somewhat, the king asked him, “Why did you do it? Why did you risk your own life to save the other monkeys?”
“I am their leader,” answered Mahakapi. “Putreshu iva eteshu avabaddha-haardah.” “I am bound to them in my heart as though they are my own sons.”
“But it is the duty of the ministers and others to serve the king, and not the other way round. He is the master, not they. Isn’t that so?”
Adhipaartham amaatyaadi, na tadartham maheepatih.
Mahakapi’s answer to this is an important lesson to every leader at all times. He said: “That is what the science of politics ordinarily says. But that is not my way. I cannot do that.”
“As for me,” says Mahakapi, “even death in serving my people is a pleasure. They have served me all their life, and now when I serve them, I am doing no more than paying a debt back to them and becoming free of that debt [poorvopakaara-anrnataa].
“Yugyam balam jaanapadaan amaatyaan
Pauraan anaathaan shramanaan dvijaateen
Sarvaan sukhena prayateta yoktum
Hitaanukoolena piteva raajaa.”
“It is the duty of a king to work constantly to make his horses, army, citizens, ministers, common subjects, orphans, bhikshus, brahmanas, and all others happy as a father tries to make his children happy.”
0o0
This has been the Indian leadership ideal throughout time. The king looks upon his subjects as a father looks upon his children. The leader looks after his people as a father looks after his children. And does everything he can to protect them, to make their lives meaningful and happy. And, if it calls for that, sacrifices himself in the call of his duty.
Another role model Indian culture sets up before the leader is that of a pregnant woman. Just as she lives day and night for the baby in her womb, forgetting all her self-interests, so should a leader look after the interests of his people forgetting his own self-interests, says the Mahabharata, speaking of the leadership ideal.
Yatha hi garbhinee hitvaa svam priyam manaso’nugam
Garbhasya hitam aadhatte tathaa rajnaapyasamshayam
Vartitavyam kurushreshtha sadaa dharmaanuvartinaa
Svam priyam tu parityajya yat lokahitam bhavet.
It is for this reason that Chanakya says in the Arthashastra: “To a king, the religious vow is his readiness to action; satisfactory discharge of duties is his performance of sacrifice; equal attention to all is the offer of fees. In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good.”
Performance of his duty to his people is the highest religion of a leader. He does not need any other religious practice.
The Indian word for duty and religion are one: dharma.
0o0
Note: This story is a retelling of the Mahakapi Jataka, one of the hundreds of Jataka tales, all dealing with the previous lifetimes of the Buddha, in each of which he sacrifices himself for others. It is these sacrifices lifetime after lifetime that eventually gives him birth as Gautama Siddhartha who becomes the Buddha. The Sanskrit quotations are from the text of Bodhisattva-Avadhana-Mala of Aryasura. My translations/free renderings into English.
Once upon a time there lived a large troop of monkeys in a forest. The leader of the troop was Mahakapi, a large monkey, strong and wise, and under his leadership the monkeys lived in great prosperity and security. The leader was well known for his love for his monkeys and care for them. He constantly thought of their welfare and how to safeguard them from dangers that might be waiting for them unawares.
The troop of monkeys had made a huge tree next to a towering mountain cliff their home. Beneath the tree that looked like another mighty mountain flowed a brook that that sang as it rushed downstream and, beyond the mountain and the forest, became a quiet river of crystal water.
As spring came, blossoms appeared on the mighty tree and soon the blossoms turned into young fruits. The whole forest was filled with the fragrance of the blossoms and as the monkeys breathed in the air scented with the perfume of fresh blossoms, it intoxicated them.
Soon the fruits were edible and the monkeys began to pluck them and eat them with relish. They were delicious even when they were green and how delicious they would be when they turned ripe! “What a wonderful feast this would make to my troop then,” thought Mahakapi, watching the monkeys eating the fruits.
He was sitting quietly and watching the monkeys enjoying themselves on a huge branch of the tree that hung over the river. They were jumping from one small branch to another, swinging from twigs, and doing all kind of things that monkeys loved to do. Some were leaping down into the river, some swimming back to climb back to the tree. Monkeys chased monkeys everywhere, shrieking in wild glee. Life was pleasant. Everything was wonderful.
And then a sudden thought flashed through the mind of the leader monkey. In a flash Mahakapi saw a terrifying picture. In the picture, hundreds of his monkeys were lying dead, bathed in blood. Dead bodies were floating in their dozens down the river. Terrorized monkeys were running everywhere, screaming in agony.
The future! The fruits on the branch overhanging the river were going to be the death of his troop! No, he couldn’t allow that.
There was deep concern in Mahakapi’s mind, but he was not one to show his worries to his followers. He knew any sign of the slightest fear in him would send rings of alarm through the whole troop and they would go crazy with terror. There is nothing that a troop of terror-stricken monkeys wouldn’t do. Monkeys are wild by nature and always it was only a thin line that separated them from insanity. Aggression was in their very nature. And in terror every monkey became concerned with only one thing: self-preservation. And once that urge took over, they could do anything, including tear one another apart.
In any case the danger was not immediate.
The leader asked his monkeys to eat up all the fruits on the overhanging branch. “Eat as many of them as you can. But make sure not one fruit falls into the brook. And destroy every remaining one, taking care again that none falls into the brook. A single fruit left on that branch could be our death. A single fruit falling into the stream could spell our death.”
The monkeys could make no sense of what he was saying. Destroy all these delicious fruits! And what would happen if a fruit fell into the river? How could it be their death?
But they trusted their leader. He had proved himself wiser than all of them put together. They knew he could see into the future, whereas they missed even what was happening before their eyes. And his love for them and commitment to their welfare were beyond questioning.
The monkeys ate from the branch as many of the fruits as they could. The remaining ones were destroyed as ordered by Mahakapi, taking care none fell into the brook.
Unknown to them, though, a single fruit escaped the destruction. It was hidden inside a nest of ants and the monkeys missed it. When it was tiny, ants had made a nest around it and protected by the nest, the fruit had grown inside it.
And then what the leader feared happened. Exactly as he had feared it would happen.
Over time, the fruit ripened and one day when a light wind blew it fell into the river.
0o0
Beyond the jungle began the outskirts of a city through the heart of which flowed the river. The little brook under the mighty tree in the jungle had become a river by the time it left the mountains and the jungles and reached the plains that made the city. The city was the capital of the kingdom that included the mountains and the forest and vast areas beyond them. The palace of the king was close to the river.
The king and the queens were bathing and sporting in the river when the fruit came floating down. Such was the fragrance of the fruit that it intoxicated the queens instantly. The queens left their sports and there was a race towards the fruit. One of them caught the fruit. She presented it to the king, who took it to the palace with him when their sports and bath were over and they went back.
The fruit was cut and the whole palace was filled with its mouthwatering scent. The king and the queens enjoyed the fruit and they felt the royal meals they had every day was no match to it. They had eaten nothing that tasted so good, nor smelt anything so wonderful. Where could the fruit have come from?
The king decided to go and find out. He was fond of adventures and this would be a new adventure. Such a divine fruit grew in his kingdom and he had no idea of it! No, that had to be rectified. He would locate the tree and when he found it, he was going to declare this fruit a national treasure. Such a wonderful fruit deserved to be a national treasure.
The king took a team of soldiers with him and began the exploration. Crossing the city bounds he entered the jungle and travelled for many days across the thick jungle inhabited by all kinds of wild animals. As he faced the challenges of the jungle and encountered its threats, the king felt he was growing younger. Perhaps the fruit was an omen – an omen of something wonderful going to happen to him. The king felt charged now. Lions, tigers, bears, wolves, nothing scared him anymore. Nor did the sharp thorns and thick vines of the impenetrable forest trouble him.
The river kept growing smaller and eventually became a brook as they began approaching the mountain.
The king smelt the tree long before he came to it. The whole area for miles was filled with the intoxication that was the fragrance of its fruits.
As the king came near, sounds of wild celebrations filled him and his team of soldiers.
And then they saw the tree. A huge tree, as tall as the mountain, its leaves dark green, dominating everything in the surroundings, excepting the mountain. In size and majesty it seemed to vie with the mountain. And the wonderful fruits hung everywhere on the tree – hundreds and hundreds of delicious fruits.
The noise came from the monkeys! There seemed to be a hundred of them on the tree. Maybe, several hundreds! They were swinging from the branches with their tails, chasing one antoher, shrieking and attacking one another in mock fury, only to retreat at the last moment.
Beneath the tree were fruits fallen from the tree. Ripe, golden fruits. Many of them whole and complete, others half eaten by the monkeys.
All on a sudden, a fury filled the king. Such wonderful fruits and monkeys were eating them. Not only eating them, spoiling them too. A national treasure – that is what the fruits were, and the monkeys seemed to have no regard for them. They were treating them like any other fruit.
“Shoot the monkeys down!” ordered the angry king. “Shoot them all down, every one of them!”
Arrows fled everywhere. The king’s soldiers were good. Their arrows never missed. Monkeys started falling down dead everywhere. Many on land, many in the river.
The vision Mahakapi had seen was unfolding before his eyes with terrifying reality. So suddenly that even he did not get time to save his monkeys.
Mahakapi looked around. Soldiers had surrounded the tree and there was no escape.
He had failed his people!
His entire troop was going to be wiped out!
It took a moment for him to make up his mind. A plan took shape in his mind. Then he leapt from the tall branch on which he was sitting. Leapt as no other monkey could leap.
And landed on a bunch of bamboos far away, beyond the clearing around the mighty tree.
There was no escape for the monkeys through the ground. Soldiers stood everywhere, shooting down every monkey in sight. But if they could reach the bamboo bush there was a chance that they might escape to the mountain beyond. The bamboo bush was beyond their reach, true, none of them could leap as far as that, but . . . if only . . .
With all his might, Mahakapi started swaying the bamboo on which he had landed. It was the tallest bamboo in the bush, taller than all others, and stood closest to the tree.
He wanted to make this bamboo a bridge between the fruit tree and the bamboo bush. But no! It was not long enough to reach the tree!
Mahakapi climbed to the tip of the bamboo, as far as he could climb, and began swaying the bamboo wildly. The soldiers noticed what was happening and puzzled, stopped shooting. The king too stood watching it all.
As the bamboo came near the tree, Mahakapi held on to it with his feet as tightly as he could and stretched out his arms. There! He had caught hold of a small branch of three. He shrieked his instructions to the other monkeys and they understood. The whole horde of them ran in his direction from wherever they were on the tree. A bridge had been formed. Part by the bamboo and part by Mahakapi’s body. Monkeys rushed across his body onto the bamboo and away.
Scores of monkeys! Hundreds of monkeys! All in breathless desperation to escape death.
And the bamboo was pulling him away from the tree as it tried to straighten up again.
Mahakapi felt his body being pulled apart. All his ligaments were breaking. And there was blood everywhere, caused by the sharp toenails of the monkeys as they ran across his body frantically.
The soldiers took aim at Mahakapi. Shoot him down and the escape route will be closed. That would be the death of the monkeys.
“Stop!” shouted the king. “Don’t shoot!”
The soldiers lowered their bows and loosened their grip on the bowstrings.
The king stood watching the miracle unfolding before him. He had never seen such a sight. The leader monkey was sacrificing his life to save his people! He held on tightly to the bamboo with his feet and to the fruit tree with his hands, while blood oozed from every part of his body. What a wonderful sight!
Sudden tears welled up in the eyes of the king. He too was a leader of his people. But would he have done what the monkey king was doing?
The king ordered the soldiers to hold a net under the king monkey. Then he ordered his men to cut down with arrows both the branch of the tree which Mahakapi was holding on to and the bamboo. “Cut down both in the same instant,” he ordered.
Mahakapi fell into the net unconscious.
When he came to, he was surrounded by the king and his solders. Other monkeys were watching them from the safety of the bamboos. The solders had applied balms to his broken body and slowly life was returning to him.
0o0
When Mahakapi recovered somewhat, the king asked him, “Why did you do it? Why did you risk your own life to save the other monkeys?”
“I am their leader,” answered Mahakapi. “Putreshu iva eteshu avabaddha-haardah.” “I am bound to them in my heart as though they are my own sons.”
“But it is the duty of the ministers and others to serve the king, and not the other way round. He is the master, not they. Isn’t that so?”
Adhipaartham amaatyaadi, na tadartham maheepatih.
Mahakapi’s answer to this is an important lesson to every leader at all times. He said: “That is what the science of politics ordinarily says. But that is not my way. I cannot do that.”
“As for me,” says Mahakapi, “even death in serving my people is a pleasure. They have served me all their life, and now when I serve them, I am doing no more than paying a debt back to them and becoming free of that debt [poorvopakaara-anrnataa].
“Yugyam balam jaanapadaan amaatyaan
Pauraan anaathaan shramanaan dvijaateen
Sarvaan sukhena prayateta yoktum
Hitaanukoolena piteva raajaa.”
“It is the duty of a king to work constantly to make his horses, army, citizens, ministers, common subjects, orphans, bhikshus, brahmanas, and all others happy as a father tries to make his children happy.”
0o0
This has been the Indian leadership ideal throughout time. The king looks upon his subjects as a father looks upon his children. The leader looks after his people as a father looks after his children. And does everything he can to protect them, to make their lives meaningful and happy. And, if it calls for that, sacrifices himself in the call of his duty.
Another role model Indian culture sets up before the leader is that of a pregnant woman. Just as she lives day and night for the baby in her womb, forgetting all her self-interests, so should a leader look after the interests of his people forgetting his own self-interests, says the Mahabharata, speaking of the leadership ideal.
Yatha hi garbhinee hitvaa svam priyam manaso’nugam
Garbhasya hitam aadhatte tathaa rajnaapyasamshayam
Vartitavyam kurushreshtha sadaa dharmaanuvartinaa
Svam priyam tu parityajya yat lokahitam bhavet.
It is for this reason that Chanakya says in the Arthashastra: “To a king, the religious vow is his readiness to action; satisfactory discharge of duties is his performance of sacrifice; equal attention to all is the offer of fees. In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good.”
Performance of his duty to his people is the highest religion of a leader. He does not need any other religious practice.
The Indian word for duty and religion are one: dharma.
0o0
Note: This story is a retelling of the Mahakapi Jataka, one of the hundreds of Jataka tales, all dealing with the previous lifetimes of the Buddha, in each of which he sacrifices himself for others. It is these sacrifices lifetime after lifetime that eventually gives him birth as Gautama Siddhartha who becomes the Buddha. The Sanskrit quotations are from the text of Bodhisattva-Avadhana-Mala of Aryasura. My translations/free renderings into English.
Devapi: Leadership, Power, Responsibility
The Brihad Devata tells us the story of Devapi. According to the story, Devapi was the elder son of emperor Rishishena. Shantanu, the Kuru-Bharata emperor of the Mahabharata fame and the father of Bhishma, was his younger brother. Devapi was brave, skilled, competent, learned, generous and filled with every imaginable quality desirable in a great leader of men. When Rishishena died, people wanted Devapi to become king. They loved him dearly and were sure he would make a great king. In fact, it appears that the people made him king – for the Brihad Devata tells us: rajyena chhandayamasuh prajaah svargam gate gurau , meaning, they crowned him king at the death of his father. The statement could, though, mean that they chose him for their king.
In ancient India, the traditional relation between even a hereditary king and his subjects was not that of an autocrat and his helpless victims. The people had a lot of say in the choice of the king. In the Ramayana we see Dasharatha calling for a meeting of all important citizens and seeking their approval for the appointment of Rama as the crown prince. The Mahabharata says: “The PEOPLE MAKE such a person their king who is liberal, who shares all objects of enjoyment with others, who is possessed of a mild disposition, who is of pure behaviour, and who will never abandon his subjects,” which suggests that the decision, at least in part, depended on the people. The Mahabharata also says that “That king who acts according to the counsels of a vicious and sinful minister becomes a destroyer of righteousness and deserves TO BE SLAIN BY HIS SUBJECTS WITH ALL HIS FAMILY.”
There is a possibility that later when Krishna was battling to establish dharma among the kings of India, he was trying the root out the autocratic tendencies that were spreading among the rulers like Kamsa, Jarasandha, Kalayavana and so on.
Though people chose him for their king, Devapi refused the position. He pointed out to them that he had a serious skin disease and for that reason he would not be able to show total commitment to his duties. He felt the kingdom should go to his younger brother Shantanu. He told his subjects: na rajyam aham arhami, nripatir vo’stu shantanuh – “I do not deserve the kingdom; let Shantanu be your king.”
When Devapi thus refused kingship and stuck to his refusal, the people made Shantanu their king.
Was Devapi unfit to be king according to the ancient Indian tradition? Is that the reason why he refused the crown? It appears no. His refusal to accept the position was really on ethical grounds and not because the tradition said so. It was a voluntary decision on his part to step down – perhaps he felt that because of his severe skin condition, he may not be able to devote as much time and energy to his job as it deserves. He saw kingship as a responsibility and not as a source of power or privilege. And, besides, Shantanu had every quality that would make for a great king.
The Brihad Devata story itself tells that he was not disqualified by the tradition. In fact, the story tells us that after Shantanu became king, for several years no rains came to the kingdom, though Shantanu was a virtuous ruler and ruled competently, spending all his energy for the good of his people. Kings and people alike in those days believed that if something wrong happened in a kingdom, it was the king who was responsible. If the king was virtuous, nothing could wrong – there would be no deceases in the kingdom, no untimely deaths, the harvests shall not fail, seasons would not err, there would be no crime and so on. Shantanu was sure he must have done something wrong, though he had no idea what it could be, in spite of all his reflection on the matter. He could not recall a single occasion when he had taken a wrong step, not even in words or thoughts. How could the rains have failed then? He consulted the wise men of the kingdom and they told him he had indeed committed a grave sin: he had sat on the throne while his elder brother was alive and in every way qualified.
Shantanu asked the wise man what he could do now to rectify things. And they told him he should give the kingdom back to his elder brother.
Shantanu had no problem with this. He was not greedy for power or position. The years he had ruled hadn’t gone to his head. Power hadn’t corrupted him. And to him too, as the noble kshatriya code he lived by taught him, leadership was not a privilege, leadership was not a power game, but a responsibility. A leader lived not for himself, but for his people.
Shantanu happily agreed to step down if that would be good for the kingdom and people. His only interest was the good of the people.
The Indian tradition considers that a man has five mothers: svamata, patnimata, bhratripatni, gurupatni, rajapatni – one’s own mother, one’s wife’s mother, one’s [elder] brother’s wife, one’s guru’s wife and the king’s wife. The king’s wife was considered a mother because the king was considered one’s father. And that precisely was the attitude of the king to his people – that of a father to his children. It is said about Rama, who in many ways set the highest standards for public leadership in India, that he invariably enquired “about the well-being of the citizens, as well as their children, wives, sacrifices, servants and students, as if they were his own relatives, as a father would about his own sons” every time he came back to Ayodhya after being away from there. “When people are in difficulty he becomes sorely distressed and he delights in all their celebrations as if he were their father,” says the Ramayana about him.
To Shantanu, his people were his children and their interest was his greatest interest.
Devapi had been living in the jungles near Hastinapura ever since he left the crown. He had been devoting all his time to meditation and other religious practices. Shantanu went to his elder brother, accompanied by his ministers and men of learning and wisdom who served the kingdom. The king placed his crown at the feet of his elder brother and begged him to take over.
Devapi’s decision to abandon the crown was not a rash decision, taken in a moment of sentimentality. He truly believed that because of his disease he will not be able to do full justice to the job and the kingdom and the people deserved a king who will devote all his time and energy to their welfare. And that is what Devapi told Shantanu, the ministers and the brahmanas. He told them: na rajyam arhami, tvagroga-upahatah - “I am not fit to sit on the throne, because of this terrible skin disease that is killing me.”
Shantanu could not agree with his elder brother. “The very elements want you to be king,” he told Devapi. “They cry out for you. The earth and the skies cry out for you.
That is why the rains do not come. All your subjects cry out to you too. You have no choice but to listen to them.”
According to the Indian tradition, the greatest leader is one whom the very elements cry out for, whom Earth itself seeks as her ruler. The Ramayana tells us that Rama was such a leader. Dasharatha had suggested to his people that they should now have Rama as the crown prince. When the people agreed delightedly, he asked them why they wanted Rama as the crown prince. One of the several reasons given by them was that “the Earth desired him as her Lord.”
Devapi had no doubts he had taken the right decision. And yet the rains had failed. The people for whose sake he had given up the crown was now suffering. He closed his eyes and meditated upon the matter. And then he said, “The solution is that a yajna be performed to please the elements.”
Devapi does the Vedic sacrifice and everything ends wonderfully for all.
Perhaps the gods are appeased by the knowledge that Shantanu has no power hunger and it is not because of hunger for power that he sat on the throne on which his elder brother should sit.
0o0
It is a beautiful story that illustrates ancient Indian ethos in leadership. India said repeatedly and categorically: leadership is not a privilege, it is a responsibility. A responsibility that requires total commitment. In much later days, in the fourth century BC, Chanakya would say that the king need not perform any other religious ritual than performing his duty to his people with total commitment. That was his yajna, and that was enough.
Devapi gives up position because he will not be able to perform the duties involved with total commitment. But two generations later, we have Dhritarashtra whose story tells us what happens when leaders take power as a privilege rather than as a responsibility. He too had a disability, but in his case it was not his decision to give up power. Perhaps he did not have the magnanimity to do it. Instead he had to be told by others that he was not fit to sit on the throne, because he was blind and a blind king cannot fulfil his duties to his people effectively. There is no reason to believe that Dhritarashtra was happy about this. And the moment he gets an opportunity later, he takes over power. He not only takes over power, but he wants it to go to his son after him, even though he is not fit to rule on ethical grounds. The whole tragedy of the Mahabharata happens because he refuses to part with power and hand it over to someone who can do full justice to it.
Interestingly, in a too late attempt to persuade his son Duryodhana to part with power evilly acquired, Dhritarashtra himself tells him the story of Devapi. And the story he tells is very different from the story the Brihad Devata tells us. In his version of the story, found in the Mahabharata, what happens to Devapi is what happened to him. Like him, Devapi too was deprived of power by others.
Here is Dhritarashtra’s version of the story, in Ganguli’s translation. In this story, the father of Shantanu and Devapi is Pratipa, which could have been another name for Rishishena.
“Even the eldest son may be passed over and deprived of the kingdom, and younger sons may, in consequence of their respectful behaviour to the aged, obtain the kingdom. So also, conversant with every virtue there was my father’s grandfather, king Pratipa, who was celebrated over the three worlds. Unto him, were born three sons, Of them, Devapi was the eldest, Bahlika the next and Santanu of great intelligence, who was my grandfather, was the youngest. Devapi, endued with great energy, was virtuous, truthful in speech, and ever engaged in waiting upon his father.
“But that best of kings had a skin-disease. Popular with both the citizens and the subjects of the provinces, respected by the good, and dearly loved by the young and the old, Devapi was liberal, firmly adhering to truth, engaged in the good of all creatures, and obedient to the instructions of his father as also of the Brahmanas. He was dearly loved by his brother Bahlika as also the high-souled Shantanu. Great, indeed, was the brotherly love that prevailed between him and his high-souled brothers.
“In course of time, the old and best of kings, Pratipa, caused all preparations to be made according to the scriptures for the installation of Devapi (on the throne). Indeed, the lord Pratipa caused every auspicious preparation. The installation of Devapi, however, was forbidden by the Brahmanas and all aged persons amongst the citizens and the inhabitants of the provinces. Hearing that the installation of his son was forbidden, the voice of the old king became choked with tears and he began to grieve for his son.
“Thus, though Devapi was liberal, virtuous, devoted to truth, and loved by the subjects, yet in consequence of his skin-disease, he was excluded from his inheritance. The gods do not approve of a king that is defective of a limb. Thinking of this, those bulls among Brahmanas forbade king Pratipa to install his eldest son. Devapi then, who was defective of one limb, beholding the king (his father) prevented (from installing him on the throne) and filled with sorrow on his account, retired into the woods. As regards Bahlika, abandoning his (paternal) kingdom he dwelt with his maternal uncle. Abandoning his father and brother, he obtained the highly wealthy kingdom of his maternal grandfather. With Bahlika’s permission, Shantanu of worldwide fame, on the death of his father (Pratipa), became king of Kuru Kingdom.”
0o0
One of the highest examples in leadership comes to us from the Ramayana. Bharata, though the kingdom was his according to a promise given by Dasharatha to his maternal grandfather at the time of Dasharatha’s marriage to Bharata’s mother Kaikeyi, refuses to accept it even when it is forced upon him by his mother, considering Rama the rightful and more competent ruler. Eventually he agrees to look after the kingdom on Rama’s behalf until he returns from forest after fourteen years. And Bharata, without enjoying any of the privileges that comes with power, rules the kingdom for fourteen years. It is said that Rama on his return found the kingdom nine times richer than when he had left it. Bharata was not an incompetent ruler by any standards!
The Indian perception of leadership as a responsibility rather than a privilege is an invaluable insight that the world filled with power greed desperately needs today. Corruption begins the moment a leader considers leadership as a privilege, and corruption ends when leaders treat leadership as a sacred responsibility. This lesson has great relevance in today’s political world. It has equal relevance in today’s business and industry too, where greed for power is unfortunately universal, causing great damage to the organizations as well as to the society and the nation at large.
0o0
In ancient India, the traditional relation between even a hereditary king and his subjects was not that of an autocrat and his helpless victims. The people had a lot of say in the choice of the king. In the Ramayana we see Dasharatha calling for a meeting of all important citizens and seeking their approval for the appointment of Rama as the crown prince. The Mahabharata says: “The PEOPLE MAKE such a person their king who is liberal, who shares all objects of enjoyment with others, who is possessed of a mild disposition, who is of pure behaviour, and who will never abandon his subjects,” which suggests that the decision, at least in part, depended on the people. The Mahabharata also says that “That king who acts according to the counsels of a vicious and sinful minister becomes a destroyer of righteousness and deserves TO BE SLAIN BY HIS SUBJECTS WITH ALL HIS FAMILY.”
There is a possibility that later when Krishna was battling to establish dharma among the kings of India, he was trying the root out the autocratic tendencies that were spreading among the rulers like Kamsa, Jarasandha, Kalayavana and so on.
Though people chose him for their king, Devapi refused the position. He pointed out to them that he had a serious skin disease and for that reason he would not be able to show total commitment to his duties. He felt the kingdom should go to his younger brother Shantanu. He told his subjects: na rajyam aham arhami, nripatir vo’stu shantanuh – “I do not deserve the kingdom; let Shantanu be your king.”
When Devapi thus refused kingship and stuck to his refusal, the people made Shantanu their king.
Was Devapi unfit to be king according to the ancient Indian tradition? Is that the reason why he refused the crown? It appears no. His refusal to accept the position was really on ethical grounds and not because the tradition said so. It was a voluntary decision on his part to step down – perhaps he felt that because of his severe skin condition, he may not be able to devote as much time and energy to his job as it deserves. He saw kingship as a responsibility and not as a source of power or privilege. And, besides, Shantanu had every quality that would make for a great king.
The Brihad Devata story itself tells that he was not disqualified by the tradition. In fact, the story tells us that after Shantanu became king, for several years no rains came to the kingdom, though Shantanu was a virtuous ruler and ruled competently, spending all his energy for the good of his people. Kings and people alike in those days believed that if something wrong happened in a kingdom, it was the king who was responsible. If the king was virtuous, nothing could wrong – there would be no deceases in the kingdom, no untimely deaths, the harvests shall not fail, seasons would not err, there would be no crime and so on. Shantanu was sure he must have done something wrong, though he had no idea what it could be, in spite of all his reflection on the matter. He could not recall a single occasion when he had taken a wrong step, not even in words or thoughts. How could the rains have failed then? He consulted the wise men of the kingdom and they told him he had indeed committed a grave sin: he had sat on the throne while his elder brother was alive and in every way qualified.
Shantanu asked the wise man what he could do now to rectify things. And they told him he should give the kingdom back to his elder brother.
Shantanu had no problem with this. He was not greedy for power or position. The years he had ruled hadn’t gone to his head. Power hadn’t corrupted him. And to him too, as the noble kshatriya code he lived by taught him, leadership was not a privilege, leadership was not a power game, but a responsibility. A leader lived not for himself, but for his people.
Shantanu happily agreed to step down if that would be good for the kingdom and people. His only interest was the good of the people.
The Indian tradition considers that a man has five mothers: svamata, patnimata, bhratripatni, gurupatni, rajapatni – one’s own mother, one’s wife’s mother, one’s [elder] brother’s wife, one’s guru’s wife and the king’s wife. The king’s wife was considered a mother because the king was considered one’s father. And that precisely was the attitude of the king to his people – that of a father to his children. It is said about Rama, who in many ways set the highest standards for public leadership in India, that he invariably enquired “about the well-being of the citizens, as well as their children, wives, sacrifices, servants and students, as if they were his own relatives, as a father would about his own sons” every time he came back to Ayodhya after being away from there. “When people are in difficulty he becomes sorely distressed and he delights in all their celebrations as if he were their father,” says the Ramayana about him.
To Shantanu, his people were his children and their interest was his greatest interest.
Devapi had been living in the jungles near Hastinapura ever since he left the crown. He had been devoting all his time to meditation and other religious practices. Shantanu went to his elder brother, accompanied by his ministers and men of learning and wisdom who served the kingdom. The king placed his crown at the feet of his elder brother and begged him to take over.
Devapi’s decision to abandon the crown was not a rash decision, taken in a moment of sentimentality. He truly believed that because of his disease he will not be able to do full justice to the job and the kingdom and the people deserved a king who will devote all his time and energy to their welfare. And that is what Devapi told Shantanu, the ministers and the brahmanas. He told them: na rajyam arhami, tvagroga-upahatah - “I am not fit to sit on the throne, because of this terrible skin disease that is killing me.”
Shantanu could not agree with his elder brother. “The very elements want you to be king,” he told Devapi. “They cry out for you. The earth and the skies cry out for you.
That is why the rains do not come. All your subjects cry out to you too. You have no choice but to listen to them.”
According to the Indian tradition, the greatest leader is one whom the very elements cry out for, whom Earth itself seeks as her ruler. The Ramayana tells us that Rama was such a leader. Dasharatha had suggested to his people that they should now have Rama as the crown prince. When the people agreed delightedly, he asked them why they wanted Rama as the crown prince. One of the several reasons given by them was that “the Earth desired him as her Lord.”
Devapi had no doubts he had taken the right decision. And yet the rains had failed. The people for whose sake he had given up the crown was now suffering. He closed his eyes and meditated upon the matter. And then he said, “The solution is that a yajna be performed to please the elements.”
Devapi does the Vedic sacrifice and everything ends wonderfully for all.
Perhaps the gods are appeased by the knowledge that Shantanu has no power hunger and it is not because of hunger for power that he sat on the throne on which his elder brother should sit.
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It is a beautiful story that illustrates ancient Indian ethos in leadership. India said repeatedly and categorically: leadership is not a privilege, it is a responsibility. A responsibility that requires total commitment. In much later days, in the fourth century BC, Chanakya would say that the king need not perform any other religious ritual than performing his duty to his people with total commitment. That was his yajna, and that was enough.
Devapi gives up position because he will not be able to perform the duties involved with total commitment. But two generations later, we have Dhritarashtra whose story tells us what happens when leaders take power as a privilege rather than as a responsibility. He too had a disability, but in his case it was not his decision to give up power. Perhaps he did not have the magnanimity to do it. Instead he had to be told by others that he was not fit to sit on the throne, because he was blind and a blind king cannot fulfil his duties to his people effectively. There is no reason to believe that Dhritarashtra was happy about this. And the moment he gets an opportunity later, he takes over power. He not only takes over power, but he wants it to go to his son after him, even though he is not fit to rule on ethical grounds. The whole tragedy of the Mahabharata happens because he refuses to part with power and hand it over to someone who can do full justice to it.
Interestingly, in a too late attempt to persuade his son Duryodhana to part with power evilly acquired, Dhritarashtra himself tells him the story of Devapi. And the story he tells is very different from the story the Brihad Devata tells us. In his version of the story, found in the Mahabharata, what happens to Devapi is what happened to him. Like him, Devapi too was deprived of power by others.
Here is Dhritarashtra’s version of the story, in Ganguli’s translation. In this story, the father of Shantanu and Devapi is Pratipa, which could have been another name for Rishishena.
“Even the eldest son may be passed over and deprived of the kingdom, and younger sons may, in consequence of their respectful behaviour to the aged, obtain the kingdom. So also, conversant with every virtue there was my father’s grandfather, king Pratipa, who was celebrated over the three worlds. Unto him, were born three sons, Of them, Devapi was the eldest, Bahlika the next and Santanu of great intelligence, who was my grandfather, was the youngest. Devapi, endued with great energy, was virtuous, truthful in speech, and ever engaged in waiting upon his father.
“But that best of kings had a skin-disease. Popular with both the citizens and the subjects of the provinces, respected by the good, and dearly loved by the young and the old, Devapi was liberal, firmly adhering to truth, engaged in the good of all creatures, and obedient to the instructions of his father as also of the Brahmanas. He was dearly loved by his brother Bahlika as also the high-souled Shantanu. Great, indeed, was the brotherly love that prevailed between him and his high-souled brothers.
“In course of time, the old and best of kings, Pratipa, caused all preparations to be made according to the scriptures for the installation of Devapi (on the throne). Indeed, the lord Pratipa caused every auspicious preparation. The installation of Devapi, however, was forbidden by the Brahmanas and all aged persons amongst the citizens and the inhabitants of the provinces. Hearing that the installation of his son was forbidden, the voice of the old king became choked with tears and he began to grieve for his son.
“Thus, though Devapi was liberal, virtuous, devoted to truth, and loved by the subjects, yet in consequence of his skin-disease, he was excluded from his inheritance. The gods do not approve of a king that is defective of a limb. Thinking of this, those bulls among Brahmanas forbade king Pratipa to install his eldest son. Devapi then, who was defective of one limb, beholding the king (his father) prevented (from installing him on the throne) and filled with sorrow on his account, retired into the woods. As regards Bahlika, abandoning his (paternal) kingdom he dwelt with his maternal uncle. Abandoning his father and brother, he obtained the highly wealthy kingdom of his maternal grandfather. With Bahlika’s permission, Shantanu of worldwide fame, on the death of his father (Pratipa), became king of Kuru Kingdom.”
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One of the highest examples in leadership comes to us from the Ramayana. Bharata, though the kingdom was his according to a promise given by Dasharatha to his maternal grandfather at the time of Dasharatha’s marriage to Bharata’s mother Kaikeyi, refuses to accept it even when it is forced upon him by his mother, considering Rama the rightful and more competent ruler. Eventually he agrees to look after the kingdom on Rama’s behalf until he returns from forest after fourteen years. And Bharata, without enjoying any of the privileges that comes with power, rules the kingdom for fourteen years. It is said that Rama on his return found the kingdom nine times richer than when he had left it. Bharata was not an incompetent ruler by any standards!
The Indian perception of leadership as a responsibility rather than a privilege is an invaluable insight that the world filled with power greed desperately needs today. Corruption begins the moment a leader considers leadership as a privilege, and corruption ends when leaders treat leadership as a sacred responsibility. This lesson has great relevance in today’s political world. It has equal relevance in today’s business and industry too, where greed for power is unfortunately universal, causing great damage to the organizations as well as to the society and the nation at large.
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Monday, April 26, 2010
Vedic Management: Shreyas and Preyas
Vedic management recommends the path of shreyas as against the path of preyas to individuals and organizations. The path of shreyas always wins even when it appears to lose, say the Vedas; and the path of preyas is a loser’s path, they say, even when it appears to be winning. Vedic wisdom tells us that management based on the path of preyas will eventually lead to disaster whereas management based on shreyas will lead to lasting good.
Let’s take a look at what shreyas and preyas mean.
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This is a story told by Kanika, Dhritarashtra’s minister in the Mahabharata, by way of advising the Kuru king on administrative policy. After narrating the story, Kanika sums it up saying: “If kings always act in this way, they can be happy.” According to Kanika then, the story teaches us the way to achieve not only organizational and personal goals, but also happiness. Let’s now listen to Kanika’s story, which he calls the story of ‘a wise jackal fully acquainted with the science of polity.’
Once upon a time there lived five friends in a jungle: a jackal, a tiger, a wolf, a mongoose and a mouse. One day they saw a mighty deer in the prime of his youth – he was the leader of the herd, powerfully built, fleet of foot and majestic in every way. The friends were tempted and the tiger, the fastest and mightiest of the friends, made many attempts to kill it but he failed every time as the stag was always on the alert and it ran swifter than him.
Eventually the friends sat in counsel over the matter. It was the jackal who came up with the idea. They will wait for the deer to sleep and when he sleeps, the mouse will stealthily crawl to him and bite his leg. Once wounded, the deer will no more be able to run as fast as he does and then the tiger can hunt it down easily and they can all feast upon it.
And that’s exactly how they went about it. Soon the just killed deer was lying before them, its young meat making their mouths water. However, before they began their feast, the jackal, the wisest of them all, said, “Friends, we have done that. Now go, perform your ablutions and come back. In the meantime, I shall guard the kill.”
Everyone knows a bath is important before a meal. Especially when it is a special feast.
The tiger was the first to come back. When he reached where the deer he had killed lay, he saw the jackal sitting beside it lost in deep meditation. “What’s wrong, friend?” asked the tiger. “You look so sad.”
“Well,” said the jackal, “it’s what the mouse just said. He was saying “Fie on the strength of the king of the beasts! I have killed this deer and the mighty king of the jungle shall gratify his hunger today by the might of my arm!’”
When the tiger heard this, he became so indignant he turned around and walked away in disgust. He was not going to touch the meat if that’s how the mouse felt. He vowed never to eat meat in future unless he himself had made the kill.
The mouse was the next to come. And the jackal told him, “Listen dear friend, to what the mongoose has said. He said, ‘The carcass of this deer is poison since the tiger has touched it with his claws. I will not eat of it. On the other hand, if you, O jackal, will permit it, I’ll kill the mouse and feast on him.'” The mouse heard this and bolted into the nearest bush, running for his life.
Now came the wolf and the jackal told him, “O my dear wolf! The king of the beasts is angry with you. Evil is sure to fall on you. He is expected here with his wife any moment. Do as you please.” The wolf fled from the spot as fast as he could.
It was then that the last of the friends, the mongoose, came. The jackal looked sternly at him and said, “Look mongoose. With the might of my arms I have driven away all the others. If you want to have the meat, fight me first.” The mouse decided not to fight the jackal that had driven away the tiger, the wolf and the mouse with his might and slunk away.
And the jackal had the entire deer to himself.
Kanika concludes the story: “If kings always act as the jackal did, they can be happy.”
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It is the Kathopanishad, belonging to the Yajur Veda, that tells us of shreyas and preyas. Speaking of the two, the Upanishad says: “Shreyas is one thing and preyas, another... Of these two, the one who chooses shreyas comes to good and the one chooses preyas misses his goal. Both shreyas and preyas appear before man and wise men distinguish between the two. The intelligent ones choose shreyas over preyas and fools choose preyas hoping to attain and retain things.”
Preyas here is immediate good and shreyas, lasting good. Preyas is the transient and shreyas, the enduring. Preyas is short term satisfaction and shreyas, long term good.
Fools choose preyas and intelligent ones, shreyas, says the Upanishad.
Now let’s take a look at the jackal in the story whom Kanika, the narrator, calls a wise animal, fully acquainted with the science of polity. Is the jackal really wise?
Taken superficially, the jackal indeed appears wise. He gets his friends to kill the deer and gets the whole deer for himself through his polity. The jackal appears admirable and his path promises success and happiness. As Kanika puts it, “If kings always act like the jackal, they can be happy.”
However, when we look at the story a little more deeply, we find the jackal is not all that wise or intelligent. True he gets the whole deer for himself, but does he need it? Except satisfying his vanity, his ego, his greed, does it serve any purpose? Can he, for instance, eat the whole deer, which in all probability is larger than him? Can he preserve it for the next day in the jungle? Wouldn’t the meat start rotting soon and become inedible by the next day? Can he share it with his friends, if not preserve it? But he has no other friends – it is from the friends he had that he has snatched it away.
Remember all five of the animals were friends living together in the same forest. What if the other animals talked among themselves? What happens when they learn that they have betrayed by the jackal to satisfy his greed? Made them look like idiots? What happens when they learn that he has played them against one another?
Even as it is, the team, which was their strength, has been destroyed. So long as the wolf believes the tiger is out to get him, he is not going to go anywhere near the tiger. And the mouse will always be suspicious of the mongoose from now. And the mongoose will never help the jackal in another hunt because he believes he will then have to fight the jackal for his share of the meat.
The jackal by himself is not capable of killing another deer like this.
By creating suspicion against one another in the minds of his friends, the jackal has not only destroyed the team but has also sowed seeds of mistrust and darkness in the hearts of every one of them.
All this so that he can have the whole deer to himself, though he can neither eat it all, nor preserve it for future, nor share it with others.
This precisely is preyas – immediate satisfaction as against long term good.
The jackal’s action is stupidity itself. As a team they could have killed hundreds of deer but now all he has is that single deer.
This is what the Upanishad means when it says fools choose the path of preyas.
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The entire Mahabharata, from which we get the story of this deer-slayers, could be seen an epic essay on preyas vs. shreyas.
Of the two Bharata cousins, Duryodhana consistently chooses preyas and Yudhishthira always goes for shreyas.
The kingdom of the Bharatas actually belongs to Yudhishthira. On completion of his studies, Yudhishthira was made crown prince initially as the successor of his father Pandu who was king before him. But Duryodhana gets rid of him through treachery and occupies the throne. Eventually as Yudhishthira becomes strong again, as a compromise solution, the kingdom is partitioned, Duryodhana getting the prosperous part of the kingdom with its original capital and Yudhishthira, a wilderness. But so good is Yudhishthira as a king that he succeeds in transforming that wilderness into a powerful, rich kingdom in a few years and then Duryodhana once again snatches it away from him through treachery in a game of dice. As per the conditions of the dice game, Yudhishthira and his brothers, along with their common wife Draupadi, is forced to live in jungles for twelve years, following which they had to live a year a life in disguise, during which if they were found, they would have to repeat the cycle. Even though they complete the thirteen years successfully, Duryodhana refuses to give their kingdom back to them and war becomes inevitable. And in the war, Duryodhana not only loses all of his kingdom, but also all his brothers and near and dear ones, and eventually loses his own life.
Duryodhana throughout follows the path of preyas. It does give him immediate satisfaction, but eventually he is the loser. Had he followed the path of shreyas even at a later stage, he could have remained king all his life and at his death, his successors could have become kings. Choosing preyas destroyed all these possibilities. Besides, he led the land of India to unspeakable loss. Such was the devastation caused by the war, it took ages for it to resurrect again.
It is interesting that Kanika tells the story of the jackal in answer to a question by Dhritarashtra about how to destroy foes. Here it is friends who are destroyed, and not foes – the Pandavas were not really Duryodhana’s foes but cousins, and under different circumstances could have become his best friends, especially Yudhishthira. Perhaps there is a lesson there – greed erases the distinction between friends and foes.
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The current world situation that we are experiencing, forcing us to think seriously of survival plans as we recently did at Copenhagen Summit, is a result of our consistently choosing preyas over shreyas. If our natural resources are fast coming to an end, not to be created again for millions of years to come, it is because we have chosen preyas over shreyas. If we are polluting our air, polluting our water, creating the greenhouse effect and causing world temperatures to rise and making glaciers all over the world to melt, it is because we have chosen preyas over shreyas.
Vedic literature gives us three consumption models: the angaraka [angarika], the malakara and the madhukari models.
The angaraka model is based on the profession of the coalseller. He goes to the jungle, cuts down trees, burns them down to make coal and sells this in the market. To him each tree is worth only the coal it can provide. The oxygen the tree provides, the shade and shelter it provides, the flowers and fruits it gives season after season, and its capacity to reproduce practically an endless number of young tress – none of these amount to anything to him. He reduces the tree to coal and sells it. In his hands, an entire forest is soon reduced to coal, never to bloom again, never to give oxygen to the world, never to have flowers and fruits, never to grow and reproduce.
This is the world’s model for consumption today and this is how we have been consuming the earth’s resources since the industrial revolution. And if this pattern of consumption continues, time is not far when the earth will become a totally inhospitable planet, as there are strong possibilities that it may any day become.
Malakaropamo rajan bhava ma’ngarikopamah, says the Mahabharata, asking us not to behave like the angaraka and suggesting to us a different model for consumption – that of the malakara, the garland maker. The garland maker goes from plant to plant and plucks flowers from them but he does not destroy the plant. And since he does not destroy the plant, there will be more flowers tomorrow. He never depletes his resources, unlike the angaraka.
What the Mahabharata is suggesting to us here is the sustainable of model of consumption. Taking from the world in such a way that we do not exhaust it in our greed and blindness. The Mahabharata is talking here about not making the forests of the world disappear. The Mahabharata is talking about not making plant, animal and bird species not disappear from the world.
I saw recently a programme on, I believe, the Discovery channel. In some part of Africa birds eat paddy crops cultivated by local farmers. These birds live in large groups in trees around farmlands. What the local farmers do in order to protect their crops is set fire to all the jungles around simultaneously, using explosives. A single explosion and the resultant fire frequently kill as many as three million birds at one go.
Because of the sustained use of chemical sprays on farmlands, honeybees are disappearing from many parts of the world, including India. What we are doing is suicidal. Apart from other facts, such as the honeybees’ right to live in this world and so on, even for farming honeybees are essential – they are the main pollinators for many crops. Honeybees are among the farmer’s best friends and yet what the chemicals he sprays does is kill them en masse.
Following the malakara approach to consumption of the earth’s resources would mean avoiding such blind brutalities committed against nature.
The Mahabharata does not stop at giving us the example of the malakara as a wise model of consumption. It goes further and asks us to follow a model still superior in our consumption practices – the madhukari vritti. The madhukari is the same honeybee that we are destroying all over the world. The Mahabharata holds them up as an ideal for the best way we should live in harmony with nature.
Madhukari vritti is the way of the honeybees. The honeybee goes from flower to flower and what it takes from each flower is a tiny bit of honey. In return, the honey makes the survival of the plant or tree itself possible. What it takes is so little, and what it gives back is so much. This is the ideal form of consumption according to our ancient ethos.
India has always lived, until very recent times, by the madhukari vritti – the honeybee way. Ours kings were always asked to take as little from their subjects as possible and give them as much as possible and the vast majority of kings – unlike today’s politicians – strove to live up to that example. Our monks – the rishis, the sannyasis and the bhikshus – lived by that example. What they took from the society was a meal a day from the society – some of them, like the legendary philosopher-sage Kanada, refused to do even that and lived on what they could pick up grain by grain from the floor after crops have been harvested. And what they returned to the world was the highest gifts possible – knowledge, guidance and care. In the gurukulas of ours, great masters to whom students came from all over the world lived in unbelievable simplicity and gave the world everything they can. Chanakya, the first empire builder of India and the chief minister of Chandragupta Maurya, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, continued to live in a simple hut even as the most powerful chief minister in India at that time, refusing to take anything more than the bare minimum from the king-emperor he had made. And once he saw that the empire and the emperor were established, he refused to take event that and went back to his original profession of teaching. Chanakya’s management thoughts, by the way, have guided India for around two thousand three hundred years. His monumental Arthashastra, the book of statecraft, is unsurpassed even by today’s works on the subject.
And this is the vision we have consciously tried to live up to until recent times, though that style is fast disappearing.
The father of a friend of mine, a senior IAS officer, refused to take medical reimbursement from the government, though as a senior IAS officer he had a right to do this for his own and his family’s medical treatments. He believed that it is unethical to claim such reimbursement – diseases were the result of our wrong styles of living and we have no right to claim from others, including the government, expenses incurred on account of them.
The Indian ideal has from the time of the Vedic sages been the madhukari vritti. If we cannot follow the madhukari vritti, we should follow at least the malakara vritti and never the angaraka vritti. We owe this to the world, to ourselves and to our future generations.
I remember a recent television commercial in which two boys are talking. One boy says when he grows up he would like to be a wild life photographer. The other boy laughs at this and says there would be no animals then. Then the first boy thinks a little and says in that case he would like to be a forest officer – and his friend reminds him there will be no trees left by then. At that time the first boy hears the sound of a car and says in that case he would be a fast car racer – and his friend laughs at him again, saying there will be no petrol left by the time they grow up.
If we do not want this to happen, then we have to follow the wisdom of our ancients and follow the madhukari vritti or at least the malakara vritti.
Vedic management is management that leads to shreyas – both madhukari vritti and malakara vritti lead to shreyas. Our current management practices lead to preyas – immediate satisfaction, followed by lasting disaster.
Vedic management would take corporate social and environmental responsibilities far more seriously than we do now. To a vast majority of industries and businesses today, CSR and CER are no more than things that fetch them good grades, things they have no option but to do.
Here is something one of my students from XAVIER INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH, BOMBAY wrote in response to an assignment I had given them in a course I taught there in INDIAN ETHOS IN MANAGEMENT earlier this year.
“Very few corporations are working to protect the environment. It is against their interest to take initiatives to reduce consumption and most corporations oppose laws designed to protect the environment because they hurt their business. Corporations have caused environmental destruction globally for many years and the scale of the problem is increasing. The industries are seen to contribute to emissions of green house gases, noise pollution and release of toxic waste into the water bodies. Untreated water from the manufacturing units released into the water bodies have also endangered the marine life species. Corporations do not have a deliberate intent to harm the environment. Greed and laziness are behind their destructiveness. For example the Bhopal gas tradegy that occurred because of the Union Carbide’s negligence to follow the safety standards of the industry came to take the lives of so many innocent people living in the nearby vicinity.
“Few companies like the Tata and Godrej have come to take measures to save the environment. The Tata ethos places a special emphasis on environmental and ecological issues. And thus is engaged in harmonizing environmental factors by reducing the negative impact of its commercial activities and initiating drives encouraging environment-friendly practices. Its efforts to preserve and regenerate the environment can be seen in an array of projects and programmes it has undertaken in and around its facilities and operations. Similarly CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre has been set up as the “Centre of Excellence” for the organization in terms of energy efficiency, “green buildings”, renewable energy, water, environment and recycling and climate change activities in India. Organizations when drawing the resources from the environment should also make concerted effort to preserve and protect the environment.”
Following the path of shreyas will make sure that our future generations will find the earth a place on which they can live – and live a life of happiness and contentment. And if we continue to follow the path of preyas as we have been doing since the industrial revolution, they will be forced to seek sustenance in a world that has been turned into an inhospitable desert.
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Friday, April 23, 2010
Vedic Management: An Introduction
Let me begin with something far from the world of the Vedas: with a movie that I saw recently at an international film festival.
Andres Leon’s More Than Anything in the World [Más Que a Nada en el Mundo] is a powerful film from Mexico that won the Best First Film awards both at the Guadalajara and the Montreal Film Festivals. Directed by Andres Leon Becker, it is the harrowing tale of a divorced young mother and her seven-year-old daughter living in a suffocating tiny apartment in the urban jungle that is Mexico City. Such is the apartment that once you enter it, you are completely cut off from the outside world. There are no trees to be seen from the windows, no sky, no streets, nothing. The only thing you can see is the backsides of other apartments on your left, right and across that you feel are so near you will be able to touch if you stretch out your hand – mostly drain pipes, tiny ventilators and some windows, all curtained off to keep the outside world away. No breeze ever comes in, and not more than a tiny bit of dim light if you keep the windows open.
The young mother is lonely. She has no social life, no significant relationships to satisfy her emotional and physical needs. Her only relationship is with her daughter who is totally dependent on her for everything. To support themselves, the mother has to work and her work keeps her so busy she is invariably late everyday to take the child to school and to bring her back. In touching scenes the film shows us the watchman of the school refusing to admit the child, on the orders of the principal, because she has already been late so many times in the past. In another scene we see the child, a shadowy figure, sitting all alone on the floor of the school veranda very late in the evening, darkness all around her, with not a human being anywhere in sight – she is waiting for her mother to come and pick her up.
It is not that the mother does not care. She does care for her – she loves her “More than Anything in the World.” But she is so harrowed by her work she has no time for anything else – not even for her daughter.
In her loneliness, the mother starts allowing men to visit her at home and when the men are there, the girl has to remain in her small room so that they get privacy.
And the little girl – Alicia – is scared. She is scared to be alone, she is scared to be separated from her mother, and the only way she can stand her fears is to keep her mother in sight, if not hold on to her. She walks into the room in which her mother is with her lovers, and relationship after relationship breaks down, making her mother take out her anger on her daughter in frustration.
One of the reasons for Alicia’s fear is because she believes the man living in the apartment beind hers is a vampire in the guise of an old man and he is out to get her mother. She does not know much about Vampires, but her best friend in school – her only friend, another little girl her age – is an expert. Vampires drink blood from the necks of women, she tells Alicia, leaving a mark there. And then there are two possibilities – either you die or you become another vampire. The little friend confirms that the sounds Alicia has been hearing throughout the night are the sounds made by the vampire.
Alicia is terrified for her mother. She inspects her mother’s neck closely when she comes back after a session of lovemaking and sure enough, there is a bite mark on her neck. Little Alicia shivers in fright, but hides her fear in herself – she does not want her mother to discover it. And she gets a crucifix to get rid of the vampire – her little friend who gives it to her tells her the only way to kill a vampire is to place the crucifix on his chest. One night while her mother is asleep, the seven year old child climbs out of her window, walk on toilet pipes and narrow ledges and in a scene no one will be able to watch without holding his breath and will never be able to forget once he has seen it, reaches the window of the old man and climbs in.
Now she is alone with the vampire at night in his own house. But she wouldn’t allow her fears to overcome her. She has to save her mother from the clutches of the vampire. She crosses rooms, opening doors noiselessly, and eventually reaches the room in which the man is lying on his bed and succeeds in placing the crucifix on his chest.
Unknown to her, the man is already dead when she reaches his room. She imagines him to be asleep and waits for a while to see the effect of the crucifix. The man does not move. She has achieved her goal and she goes back to her home.
The man she is sure is a vampire is actually a lonely old man who once had a wife and a little daughter but who are no more with him. He had been diagnosed as being in an advanced stage of cancer around the time Alicia and her mother move into the new apartment and has been living a life of utter loneliness and suffering. The man has forgotten to smile. His only pleasure in life is the occasional peep he gets into little Alicia’s room from his window – and Alicia takes his attempts to stand at his window and look into her room as his attempts at stalking her mother.
More than Anything in the World is a powerful portrayal of modern man’s loneliness and the utter meaningless and joylessness that his life has become, shown from the standpoint of a young mother, a little child and an old man. And these three are not alone in being lonely and joyless and in losing all meaning in living – a vast majority of people living today in modern urban jungles are like that. And if our lives are not already like that, we are fast moving in that direction.
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It so happened that a few hours before I saw More than Anything in the World at the film festival, I had read about “the world of little kings’ in Lawrence G Boldt’s Zen and the Art of Making a Living and my mind linked the film and the book.
“About the time the Industrial Revolution was really getting into gear,” says Lawrence G Boldt, “political revolutions were everywhere replacing kings with parliaments, presidents and promises. The key promise was that the common man would one day soon be king. He would possess for his own the kingly prerogatives of power, leisure, and security – power over his station in life, the liberty of leisure, and the security of property....
“Every man would be king, enjoying the goods of life made possible through machines and mass production. There would soon arise whole nations of little kings, each at home in his castle; if not a palace, then perhaps a country estate; if not a country estate, then a home in the suburbs; in not a home in the suburbs, then perhaps a condo, an apartment, a mobile home – any kingdom, no matter how small. This is what we worked for. We laboured for a kingdom and the promise of the leisure to enjoy it.
“We aspired to the kingly life of leisure, a life of ease, a life to do with whatever we pleased, to be as irresponsible as we imagined the aristocracy to be.”
Leisure and opportunities to enjoy life were central to that world vision. I remember reading in Alwyn Toffler in the seventies, and later teaching about a future in which the main worry of governments would be that they wouldn’t know what to do with all the leisure people have.
And where we have ended up at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the world More than Anything in the World shows us. A world in which most men and women have to toil for fourteen to sixteen hours a day in their workplaces and then bring work home. A world in which there is no time for relationships. A world in which we do not know our next door neighbour. A world of broken families. A world of loneliness and meaninglessness, of isolation and closedness, of airlessness and suffocation. A world in which happiness is becoming a more distant dream every day.
This certainly is not the world of little kings.
The promises made by science and technology were not false. Science and technology can truly enrich our lives and make leisure possible beyond our dreams. The problem is not with technology, but with our attitude towards life, towards work and the world.
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The Vedas are products of a rich society, a very rich society indeed. And what is amazing is that there is no suffering portrayed in this oldest literature of the world. There is no loneliness there, there is no world weariness and there is no suicidal rejection of the world. Instead, what we find is an unbelievable eagerness with which everyone embraces life, the spirit of festivity and celebration that permeates everyone and everything. This might come as a surprise to many: the Vedas have no concept of a hell. They speak of heavens, but there is no hell!
And yet they did not have the possibilities created by modern science and technology. Imagine a world where we have the possibilities created by science and technology and have the same attitude towards life and work and the same harmony with the world in which we live!
We can be beautiful people living happy lives in the middle of beautiful things. We need not be ugly people living meaningless lives in the middle of beautiful things.
This is what Vedic Management would mean to us today.
India, together with China, controlled about sixty percent of the world’s economy until about the time of the European conquest of Asia [the first world, and not the third world; to me the first world is Asia, the part of the world that became civilized first; the second world is Europe and America is the third world.] We are speaking of economic domination for a few millennia, unlike the economic domination of the west which is only as old as the Industrial Revolution.
And the East did this without leading to the tragedy that modern life has become.
The tragedy of modern life is not only at the personal and social levels. It is as much a tragedy at the global level as it is at the personal and social levels. Today we are talking of the world we are living in facing extinction – the nuclear threat, global warming, the energy crunch, deforestation, and the million other problems that are threatening to wipe out human and other life as we know it from the face of the earth.
We are now seriously considering migrations to other planets as a survival strategy.
HBO recently aired a documentary called The Eleventh Hour at the prime time – and the documentary deserved the prime time. In the documentary, the world’s foremost experts in different fields talked about what we have done to our planet in the short period of the last two hundred years or so – our mineral resources are fast being depleted, our oil reserves are running out, our rivers and oceans are polluted, much of our drinking water is toxic, animal, bird, tree and plant species are disappearing from the face of the earth at an alarming rate never to reappear again, our forests are disappearing, the air we breathe is poisonous over much of the earth, the greenhouse effect is making the snows on our mountains and on the north pole melt, ocean levels are rising, islands all over the world are slowly sinking into the seas and tomorrow much of our continents will follow, temperatures are rising so high so fast that much of the world will soon become inhospitable for human beings and animals.
It is these disasters that we discussed in the recent Copenhagen Summit.
But the Vedas tell us that economic progress is possible without causing these disasters.
Vedic Management can help us achieve economic progress without bringing the world to the brink of extinction.
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W.W. Jacobs has written a powerful short story called The Monkey’s Paw which has haunted readers ever since it was published in 1902.
When the story opens, we are with the Whites in their home. Outside it is a dark and stormy night, but inside everything is calm and serene. Mr White and his son Herbert are playing chess and Mrs White is knitting by the fire.
Soon a family friend arrives on a visit: Sergeant Major Morris. Morris has just come back after spending years in India. Among the things he has brought back from India is a monkey’s paw. The paw, explains Morris, has the power to bring to fulfilment three wishes of three persons – it has been empowered by an Indian fakir. Morris has already had three wishes fulfilled and another man before him – his third wish was for death. Sergeant Major Morris tosses the paw into the fire, telling that the best thing to do with the paw is to keep as far away from it as possible. He wants it to be destroyed before it made more people suffer.
Mr. White jumps up and rescues the paw from the fire. He is fascinated by the paw and the story behind it. None of the warnings by Morris will make him give up the paw. Eventually the Sergent-Major explains how to make wishes on the paw.
After Morris leaves, the Whites make fun of the powers of the paw. They do not seriously believe such things are possible. Herbert suggests that his father should wish to become an emperor – that way he would be able to escape the nagging of his wife. Mrs White chases her son about in mock anger.
Herbert considers seriously what wish to make, though he still does not believe in the powers of the paw. Herbert playfully suggests that they should wish for two hundred pounds – that would pay off the money for their house. Mr White makes the wish.
The moment he makes a wish, Mr White gets a shock. He is sure the monkey’s paw moved in his hand.
Soon all three of them go to bed after putting out the fire.
The next morning they all joke about the monkey’s paw and its powers and then Herbert White leaves for his job. It was later that day that Mrs White notices a man hesitantly approaching their house. The man reluctantly reveals who he is. He has come from the factory where Herbert worked. There had been a fatal accident at the factory and Herbert has been killed. The factory sympathizes with the family. The company does not hold itself in anyway responsible for the accident, but as an act of kindness, they would give an amount of money as compensation.
Mr While is sure he knows how much the compensation would be. “How much?” he asks. And he is told, “Two hundred pounds.”
The amount they had wished on the monkey’s paw.
Days pass in the gloom of the horrid death. Mrs White is almost mad with grief. One day she asks her husband, “Where is the monkey’s paw?’
She wants Mr White to make another wish: their son should come back.
Mr White is horrified at the thought. He hasn’t told his wife that Herbert was caught in a machine in the factory and was mashed totally out of shape. He could be recognized only through his clothes.
Mrs White forces her husband to make a wish on the monkey’s paw that their son comes back. He makes the wish, and as he does so., suddenly the candle in the room goes out. There are strange noises in the house – perhaps a mouse, they think. Mr White strikes a match to light the candle and that too goes out. Before he can strike another, there is a knock at the front door.
Mr White begs his wife not to open the door and holds her back. She struggles to get free of him. "You're afraid of your own son," she accuses him, crying. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm coming."
There is another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench breaks free and runs from the room. Her husband follows her to the landing, and calls after her appealingly as she hurries downstairs. He hears the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt being drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman's voice, strained and panting. "The bolt," she cries loudly. "Come down. I can't reach it."
But her husband is on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberates through the house, and he hears the scraping of a chair as his wife puts it down in the passage against the door. He hears the creaking of the bolt as it comes slowly back. At the same moment he finds the monkey's paw, and frantically breathes his third and last wish.
The knocking ceases suddenly, although the echoes of it are still in the house. He hears the chair being drawn back and the door being opened. A cold wind rushes up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gives him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond.
The street lamp flickering opposite was shining on a quiet and deserted road.
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What has happened to humanity during the last hundred and fifty or two hundred years is exactly what happened to the Whites. Here was Science and Technology, which looked all powerful to grant any wish of his, and he made those wishes. And now we are facing the threat of extinction.
But there are ways of getting what we want without paying the price the White family had to pay for the fulfilment of their wishes in The Monkey’s Paw.
The Vedic Management way.
Vedic Management is about progress without paying the price modern man is paying for it. It is about work habits that do not alienate man from man and engender loneliness in life. It is about transforming work itself into a celebration, a process of growth and transcendence. It is about growing in harmony with nature rather than consuming and depleting it for achieving growth. It is about achieving economic prosperity and progress without exhausting our mineral resources and oil reserves, without polluting our rivers and oceans, without making our drinking water toxic, without making the air we breathe poisonous, without destroying our biodiversity, without causing the greenhouse effect that is making the snows on our mountains and on the north pole melt, without making ocean levels are rise, without making islands all over the world sink into the seas, without making global temperatures go up. It is about progress without destroying family and social life, without transforming the heaven that is the earth into hell.
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