Engagement with the mind, body and soul

" I want to get your body and know I'll get your mind, but can I dig deeper than that? Can I go to that part of you which even you don't know? Maybe your sub-conscious or unconscious mind. Can I appeal to that, to those deeper sensibilities, or your spiritual being? Can I tickle that part of you and, if I can, do I have any competition in the world?"

             
 - Mr Bajaj, Director, Le Sutra: the Indian Art Hotel in Mumbai 

KNOWLEDGE, POWER, WEALTH

Rajinder Singh Ji

Taking undue pride in knowledge could be disastrous. We begin to think we know all and that we are doer and creator; we also tend to cause hurt to others. We think we’re always right and expect everyone else to think so too.

Most times, arguments in homes and offices are based on pride of knowledge. Just think of the huge amount of time we waste in arguments – life going down the drain, as it were.

Pride of knowledge also keeps us from realising God. We are born into a faith. We could have just as easily been born into another religion, isn’t it? Then why become so dogmatic? There is one God. Few people take the time and effort to make a comparative study of religions. If they did, they would find that there are certain truths common to all religions. But instead, each believes his religion is the only way.

In every age, enlightened souls come to show humanity that there is one God, and that we are all His children. They point out that each religion is basically the same and that each shows the same path to God.

When we are overcome with pride in our knowledge, we are not prepared to listen to anyone. We forget the true purpose of faith and pay more attention to rites and rituals.

Even when we go to an enlightened person who can show us the way to find God, pride of knowledge may stand in the way of our progression. We judge everything by the touchstone of our intellect. We alter everything according to what we like and dislike. We take only the portion that fits our preconceived ideas. We may practise teachings only partially and so get only partial results.

Pride of power, too, deters us from our inner journey. Pride of power means we try to control others. We want to determine lives and fates of those around us. At home, we try to run the lives of our family members. At work it’s the same story. We try to force our views and ideas on others. Many a dictator has cruelly and ruthlessly persecuted thousands of people only because he had the power to do so. We may think we are all-powerful, but we must remember it is God who is really all-powerful. If we wish to receive His compassion and mercy, we must be compassionate and merciful to others.

Finally, we have pride of wealth. We never think of wealth as a gift from God. When we lose it we blame God, but when we gain it do we ever thank God? And when we have it do we ever think of sharing it with those less fortunate than us?

We should be grateful for money and its comforts but should not forget the needy. We need to treat everyone equally, whether or not they have riches.

Baba Sawan Singh said that when we meditate, if we block the door by standing in it, God cannot enter. But if we step aside and wait, He will come. He will fill us with his love, light and music. The more we empty ourselves of our ego, the more God’s grace can enter us. This is the secret of humility.

Excerpt from Inner and Outer Peace through Meditation.
Courtesy: TOI 

EMPOWERING PRISONERS

There's no bar to learning

Suresh P. Iyengar

Tech-savvy: Jail inmates are trained in basic computer operations under the ‘Vedanta Umeed' programme.

A prisoner working on a computer may be a strange sight, but for nearly 12,000 inmates of 14 jails across the country, this is a dream come true.

Having spent a major part of their liveswith guns and goons, they are now more than eager to turn over a new leaf.

Vedanta Foundation, part of mining and metals major Vedanta Group, has trained these inmates in basic computer operations, for four hours a day over four months, through its ‘Vedanta Umeed' programme.

The success of the training programme could be gauged from the fact that a Haridwar-based company, NRS Softtech, has awarded a data-entry contract worth Rs 2.5 lakh last month, and has promised to come back with a similar contract in July. The earnings from the job are shared by the participating inmates and handed over to their family members.

The Foundation now plans to include another seven jails in Orissa and three in Rajasthan under the initiative , to benefit 1,000 jail inmates.

The training programme has given new hope for the jail inmates.

“Earlier, I always had tension and negative thoughts in my mind, but now, I spend one hour to learn computer. I feel positive because of this one hour. I have some hope in my life. When I will complete my term, I will definitely start my life in a new way,” said Jaswant Rampal (name changed), a prisoner lodged in Asia's largest jail, Tihar, in a letter addressed to the Vedanta Foundation.

“I will definitely give computer education to my children. I understand it's important,” he wrote.

Mr Ravi Kishan, Chief Executive Officer, Vedanta Foundation, said, “We initially tried to get some BPO jobs for inmates but had to drop the plan as telephone access was not allowed inside the jail.”

Finding jobs

Though not binding, the onus has now shifted to the Foundation to find suitable data entry work for the trained prisoners, just to keep their hopes alive, he said.

The prison programme was first launched in Tihar and expanded to include jails in Delhi, Dehradun, Amravati, Vadodara, Ajmer, Bhopal and Haridwar and the Model and Women Jail in Lucknow.

The Foundation, which has allocated around Rs 1.50 crore a year for social empowerment programmes, has spent Rs 30 lakh on the ‘Umeed' initiative.

Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line

Attitude Vs Comfort Zone

Since the great majority of us already know what attitude is, let us talk about comfort zone:

Comfort zone is the mental place surrounded by borders in our mind where we feel secure. Even though this comfort area and its boundaries are just a state of mind that has nothing to do with reality, it plays a huge role in the progress of our development. Since the comfort zone is limited, there is snot much benefit for you inside your comfort zone, but what you already are and have.

Nothing new will happen until you open yourself and leave your comfort zone.

As long as you still are having the same beliefs, you cannot grow and you cannot expect new things in your life. When you change your beliefs you will change your thoughts, feelings and actions and then, and only then you can expand and grow in all aspects of your life.

Even though your background may be affecting your present situation, what really matters is not where you you were born, your skin colour, race, age, gender, religion, government, or even the poor environment in which you have been living for so many years but what really matters and makes a big difference in your life is your attitude to understand your comfort zone, how you limit yourself within it, who you are, why you behave the way you do it and mainly where you are going.

Sadly many people don’t go anywhere because they stay within their comfort zone. They accept defeat after defeat before even trying or knowing how capable or valuable they really are. These circumstances are not the cause of our actual situation but the conformism and the poverty of our thoughts and therefore, the weakness of our broken spirit..Leave your past behind; constantly transcend your comfort zone. Your past within this comfort zone is nothing but a wasted load that you don’t need to carry at all.

Take constant action as many times as it is required and never ever quit. As Napoleon Hill said, “a quitter never wins and a winner never quits. Defeat is never a failure; no circumstance ever is failure until it is accepted by the individual as a failure”. Whatever you are thinking ,you are feeling and therefore, what you feel is the way you are acting and this action is what will determine how far you will go and how your future will be. Cheer up your essence; don’t let the background of your comfort zone or any other external circumstance defeat your spirit

Nothing is impossible for an optimist attitude; everything is possible when we start blindly trusting ourselves, when we have a burning desire to succeed and a blind determination to make our dreams come true; everything is possible when we don’t take NO for an answer.

Don’t be afraid of change, life itself is change. Change is growth and regardless of how painful it may be, change is needed. Change will take you to a place full of new things, blessings and satisfaction, everything is for better. Just focus and only live in the present with passion, focus on the things you want and which will make you happy. Just believe in yourself, be open minded and open to change.

"BE SIMPLE, FLEXIBLE AND RECEPTIVE."

Jai Prakash Pandey
Director
Rural Self Employment
Training Institute, UMARIA

Faceless Banking can be intimidating..

Customers sorely miss the human touch..

C V ARAVIND

Speaking at a recent function in Hyderabad, the Reserve Bank of India Governor, Dr D. Subbarao, has sounded a warning to bankers highlighting the need to ensure that technology does not become a barrier between customers and bankers. ‘‘Faceless banking can be intimidating…'' said the Governor, adding that technology cannot substitute brick and mortar branches.

The advent of technology has changed the face of banking in the country today and most banks have gone the whole hog in adopting it in a big way. Beginning with automatic ledger posting machines, they have now graduated to such advanced processes such as Automated Teller Machines, Internet and Mobile Banking and Core Banking Solutions or CBS. CBS means that you are no longer a customer of the branch but of the bank.

Today, if you have an internet banking account you can transact most of your banking business in the confines of your office or home and the online service is efficient, swift and also makes for a high degree of accuracy.

Unfriendly interface

Yet, as the RBI Governor has said, technology remains an unfriendly interface and many customers, especially those belonging to the earlier generation and the lower strata of society, have begun to sorely miss the human touch that was an integral part of banking till the machines took over. Of course there is no denying that the advantages of technology far outweigh the disadvantages and this is precisely why banks, irrespective of their size or economic status of their clientele, have shown a keen interest in jumping on to the technology bandwagon, though it does not come cheap. Things have also come to such a pass that there are a few foreign banks which levy charges on clients.

Access to technology

Technology taken to the countryside has been a boon to the rural folk who are being trained to use biometric cards. Yet how far does the rural customer understand the intricacies and the nuances of technology? Given a choice, a vast majority of these customers would prefer an interface with the bank personnel rather than transacting with a blank screen, which is mechanical and lifeless.

The Governor's concern that technology might either bypass the poor or prove to be a hindrance to those who have just opened bank accounts is not unfounded.

Banks, therefore, have an obligation to instruct their frontline staff to tune up their customer service levels, as it is an open secret that machines, however speedy, efficient or accurate they may be, can never replace the human element that will always remain intrinsic to banking, at least in our country.

The author is a Bangalore-based freelance writer.

courtesy: thehindubusinessline.com 

Sudha Murthy and JRD

Sudha Murthy

It was probably the April of 1974.

Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies' hostel.

Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science. I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science.

I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors). It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

At the bottom was a small line: "Lady Candidates need not apply."

I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge.

I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful.

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco's management about the injustice the company was perpetrating.

I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco. I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company's chairman then).

I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote.

"The great Tatas have always been pioneers.

They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives.

They have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science.

Fortunately, I study there.

But I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender."

I posted the letter and forgot about it.

Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco's Pune facility at the company's expense.

Measuring what makes life worthwhile

Chip Conley

http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html



Transcript:

I'm going to talk about the simple truth in leadership in the 21st century. In the 21st century, we need to actually look at -- and what I'm actually going encourage you to consider today -- is to go back to our school days when we learned how to count. But I actually think it's time for us to think about what we count. Because what we actually count truly counts.

Let me start by telling you a little story. This is Van Quach. She came to this country in 1986 from Vietnam. She changed her name to Vivianbecause she wanted to fit in here in America. Her first job was at an inner-city motel in San Fransisco as a maid. I actually happened to buy that motel about three months after Vivian started working there. So Vivian and I have actually been working together for 23 years.

With the youthful idealism of a 26 year-old, in 1987,I started my company and I called it Joie de Vivre, a very impractical name, because I was actually looking to create joy of life. And this first hotel that I bought, motel, was a pay-by-the-hour, no-tell motelin the inner-city of San Fransisco. As I spent time with Vivian, I saw that she had sort of a joie de vivrein how she did her work. It made me question and curious: How could someone actually find joy in actually cleaning toilets for a living? So I spent time with Vivian, and I saw that she didn't find joy in cleaning toilets. Her job, her goal and her callingwas not to become the world's greatest toilet scrubber. What counts for Vivian was the emotional connection she created with her fellow employees and our guests. And what gave her inspiration and meaning was the fact that, actually, she was taking care of people who were far away from home. Because Vivian knew what it was like to be far away from home.

That very human lesson, more than 20 years ago,served me well during the last economic downturn we had. In the wake of the dotcom crash and 9/11,San Fransisco Bay Area hotels went through the largest percentage revenue drop in the history of American hotels. We were the largest operator of hotels in the Bay Area, so we were particularly vulnerable. But also back then, remember we stopped eating French fries in this country. Well, not exactly. Of course not. We actually started eating "freedom fries." And we actually started boycotting anything that was French. Well, my name of my company, Joie de Vivre. So I started getting these letters from places like Alabama and Orange County saying to me that they were going to boycott my company because they thought we were a French company. And I'd write them back, and I'd say, "What a minute. We're not French.We're an American company. We're based in San Fransisco." And I'd get a terse response, "Oh, that's worse."

(Laughter)

So one particular day when I was feeling a little depressed and not a lot of joie de vivre, I ended up in the local bookstore around the corner from our offices. And I initially ended up in the business section of the bookstore looking for a business solution. But given my befuddled state of mind, I ended up in the self-help section very quickly. And that's where I got reacquainted with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I took one psychology class in college, and I learned about this guy, Abraham Maslow, as many of us are familiar with his "hierarchy of needs." But as I sat there for four hours, the full afternoon, reading Maslow, I actually recognized something that is true of most leaders. And one of the simplest facts in business is something that we often neglect.And that is that we're all human. And each of us, no matter what our role is in business, actually has some hierarchy of needs in the workplace.

THE CITIZEN IMPACT : BARBIL BRANCH

The two-day citizenship programme held at Keonjhar centre was attended by all staff members on a rotation basis. It was indeed a pleasantly profound experience for all staff. Barbil is a medium sized branch and located in the heart of the mining belt of Orissa. With a number of reputed Private Mining Companies like Rungtas, Jindals, Sesa Goa, OMDC, MMTC, the branch has more than 18,000 SB accounts including salary accounts of the employees of these Corporates. Our Gold Card Holders increased to more than 2100 within a short span of 3 months.  

It was a classic branch with a handful of committed staff members contributing to the Branch developmental goals. However the citizen SBI programme changed all that. The unique experience sharing at the two-day programme energized the staff to contribute more. Their definition of routine duty was redefined. The film Duty versus Positive Contribution awakened all of us. We realised that there is something more we can do besides duty. This something more addressed the people we serve as real genuine human beings with caring hearts and capable of reciprocating our efforts to satisfy them. Each of our staff had a look. It was not a façade. It was a look conveying genuine concern and respect for the other person. May be it was the contribution commitment each of us made towards the end of the second day before leaving the venue. Something which many of us did not fee bold enough to share in public, but tacitly resolved to put it into practice as much as possible.  

The five of us, Ajit, Alok, Amar, Anil and yours truly, decided on stepping up our efforts towards marketing. We started to address the salaried group of the private sector companies.  We started out by distributing leaflets and explaining the features of our Technology products. We were able to convert leads into business convincingly. Our efforts resulted in the addition of nearly 75 Systematic Investment Plans for Mutual Funds, delivery of more than 250 Internet Banking Kits to customers and provision of Mobile Banking facility to more than 50 customers. People of these companies having come from far off places were surprised to note that all these tech products were also available in a remote place like Barbil.

The other staff members were not to be left behind. They too contributed by addressing customers needs and taking care to satisfy them to the best extent possible. They started to bring all their known customers for these products. As a result the entire atmosphere of our branch changed for the better. All of us are now enjoying our work more. Thanks and Kudos to Citizen SBI. A unique initiative of our Bank.

To name a few Customers who felt the differences: Mr. Bidyadhar Palei, MD, Sushanta Minerals P Ltd. (SB Plus); Mr. Pradyumna Ku. Hota ,Internet Banking, Mr. Dabara Munda, SBI LIFE. 

ROHITASWA MOHANTA
CRE (PB)
BARBIL

Serving Humanity

The impact of the Citizen SBI programme is instant and long lasting. It changes the perceptions and attitudes of the individual in a defined positive directions of serving the humanity. 


Earlier, I  used to think that by working  hard, I am serving the organization for which I get my salary. But now I have come to know that I am also serving the humanity and consciously or unconsciously, making the perceptible changes in the life of other people. 


This awareness has filled in me joy and enthusiasm at new level. 

By Rajeev Kumar, Manager (HR), RBO, Jamshedpur. (Mob-9234298425)

A PARISIAN MODEL'S VIEW

ANJALI MENDES

To learn something new everyday is a gift. You realise this only if your mind is open to the world and to life. It could be as simple as learning a new word and its meaning; something that enriches your life in even a small way, for every little bit of learning helps you become just that wee bit wiser.

You might like to think you're smart and wise – but the truth is, it is only with the little experiences in life that you realise that life is a gift; it has something new to offer every single day. Suddenly, you could discover a new flower, tree or painting; you try to understand what it is – all this adds to one's mental and physical enrichment because the physical is beholding something beautiful and your mind is trying to assimilate what it means.

There are some who remain totally unaffected by what they see or hear. You have to open not just your eyes but your mind, too, for that is what will help widen your perspective, making you a better person. Looking at life as an inexhaustible source of discovery has not only helped me relate to other human beings; it has made me more sensitive to all other forms of life and, indeed, to life itself. Those who never change their mind think they know it all. Unfortunately, the world is full of people who are blase.

I am writing this from Udaipur; i'm in Rajasthan after 25 years. (I set up home in Paris in 1971 and have lived there since.) Earlier, my mind was not open enough to receive the beauty, to get the full import of our heritage. Once i retired from fulltime work, the first thing i decided to do was to see Rajasthan again.

As a house model for Pierre Cardin, way back in the 1970s, and later, as the business representative of the House of Cardin, i learnt that discipline and punctuality, and respect for people were crucial to advancement, both in terms of career and self-development. I began to realise i had, not only the body, i had brains as well. You get that special aura by being in tune with both body and mind. As i evolved, i realised that twinning of mind and body was not only a spiritually elevating experience; it was turning out to be beneficial for everyday living as well.

I'm a Catholic, but i have a Ganesha idol sitting in my little crypt. Along with Christian thought, i have also absorbed a lot of Hindu thought and culture. I feel happy about this eclectic mix, that i can retain my roots while being open to other systems of knowledge and belief. I feel fulfilled. One side of me would criticise the other side; I found i had a built-in system of checks and balances. I've been through great pain and sorrow in my personal life — I've touched rock bottom. Yet, like a phoenix, i rose from the cold ashes instead of turning cantankerous and bitter. And for this, i give thanks to the exposure and experiences I've had both in India and France — in the course of my career and travels, meeting people, exchanging ideas — that have helped me to absorb and learn, to share and spread happiness, transcending geography, culture and relationships.

India's first international fashion model, Anjali Mendes, 64, passed away on June 17 at Provence, France. This article was first published in TOI's ‘Citizen to Cosmozen' column on January 31, 2005.

Courtesy TOI / 21.06.2010

A new born citizen

Dear All

Want to share a very special moment in my life with all of you.Pl see the attachment.
With warm regards

Meenal Onkar
@Detroit, Michigan State,USA