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Vipassana changes the spirit of
business
By Raja M
MUMBAI -
After a 10-day Vipassana retreat southeast of Dallas,
Texas, Thomas L Freese, vice president of Freese &
Nichols, changed his approach to business management.
Motivated by an ancient Indian self-observation
technique called Vipassana, he began to think about
blending such values as compassion and ethics with
bottom lines and profits in his daily work.
Are
formerly hard-headed Western businessmen falling for yet
another handful of magic dust flung from the hands of
the gurus of ancient India? Freese was relieved. He
says: "Vipassana leads to clearer thinking and clear
thinking is good for business."
A lengthening
list of US, European and Asian corporate executives
agree. Senior staff of companies including Microsoft,
Citibank, IBM, Merrill Lynch and Zee TV experience
Vipassana as a powerful human-resources tool. Special
Vipassana courses are being organized worldwide for
business executives and government administrators.
Freese was part of one such course this May in "Dhamma
Siri", near Dallas, one of six Vipassana centers in the
United States.
Vipassana means "to see things as
they really are" in the ancient Indian Pali language. A
practical, universal tool to purify the mind, some call
Vipassana a technology for inner peace. Others describe
it is a deep surgical operation of the mind. An
objective study of mind-matter interaction, Vipassana
has nothing to do with any religion, cult, dogma or
blind belief. Vipassana enhances the overall quality of
life, as I have discovered from practicing it for more
than 10 years.
Vipassana is taught in
residential courses - from the beginners' 10-day regimen
to 45-day and 60-day courses for advanced students.
Completing a course demands discipline, will power and
following such rules as not communicating with fellow
students and the outside world for the duration of the
course. The rule of silence until the penultimate day of
the course is to calm and quiet the chattering mind and
turn attention inward.
Happily, continuing a
millennium-old tradition, no fee is charged for
Vipassana courses, not even for board and lodging.
Expenses are met solely through voluntary donations and
services of previous students. Vegetarian buffets and
simple, comfortable accommodation are provided in
centers that are usually green, eco-friendly expanses.
The technique was practiced back in the mists of
time before being rediscovered by Gautama Buddha, who
practiced it to reach enlightenment. Vipassana then
disappeared again, and was lost to India 500 years after
his passing. But a chain of teachers in Burma preserved
the technique in its purity for 2,500 years.
This volition to share merit earned helps to
reduce the ego, the apparent "I" that the Vipassana
student experiences as merely a mass of constantly
changing mind-matter phenomena. Experiencing that
impermanent nature of reality within changes one's
outlook to life and fellow beings. Wisdom and compassion
rise to the surface.
Sylvia Clute, a former
attorney-general candidate in Virginia, described how
Vipassana helps her combat stress: "I am not attached to
the actions of others, so I don't create conflict by
responding negatively."
Besides realizing its
potential to reduce conflict and enhance teamwork,
corporate leaders experience how Vipassana increases
efficiency, patience and self-dependency and
progressively eliminates such negativities as anger,
jealousy, and depression.
Certainly, it takes
work. Changing habits is tough and takes time. Besides
an annual retreat, Vipassana students are required to
practice at home twice daily for an hour each. But those
benefiting realize the commitment as an investment
paying dividends for a lifetime. Veteran Indian
industrialist Arun Toshniwal says: "After practicing
Vipassana for over 25 years, I find that my capacity for
work and clarity of thinking [have] increased. I gain
time. Our staff attends Vipassana courses with paid
leave."
Toshniwal is also an authorized
Vipassana teacher, one among more than 600 trained
assistants appointed to conduct courses voluntarily on
behalf of Satya Narayan Goenka, 78, and his wife
Ilaichidevi Goenka, Vipassana's principal teachers.
"Goenkaji", as Mr Goenka is known outside India,
is a retired business tycoon from Myanmar who settled in
Mumbai with a large, happy joint family. "Having been in
the rat race of making money from a young age, I know
full well how much tension and misery a business person
goes through," he says. "Vipassana helps gain the mental
wealth without which the material wealth becomes
meaningless."
Goenkaji was authorized to teach
Vipassana in 1969 by his teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin,
independent Burma's first accountant general. "The time
clock of Vipassana has struck," U Ba Khin declared when
Goenkaji started teaching Vipassana in India, the land
of its origin. U Ba Khin conducted Vipassana courses in
his office premises to remove corruption in the Burmese
government.
U Ba Khin professed an ancient
prophecy that Vipassana would return to India and from
there spread throughout the world. Indeed, either with
or without the prophecy, Vipassana has spread rapidly
since 1969, mostly by word of mouth, in cultures as
diverse as Britain, Russia, Japan, Mongolia, Brazil,
Iran, Thailand, China and Scandinavia. In India, the
central government and some provincial governments offer
paid leave for their staffs to learn the discipline.
Courses are organized for prison inmates, students of
technological powerhouses, and scientists at the Bhaba
Atomic Research Center, a nerve center of India's
nuclear program. Leading business schools such as
Symbiosis send entire batches of management trainees for
Vipassana courses.
Goenkaji conducted the first
executive course in the United States in April 2002 in
Massachusetts as part of a grueling 24,000-kilometer
road odyssey across North America in which he conducted
courses and addressed the public, the media and the
United Nations as well as leading institutions such as
the Smithsonian Institution and Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
"The moment a defilement arises in
the mind, misery too instantly arises. When one starts
experiencing this reality within oneself through
Vipassana, a change automatically starts coming for the
better," Goenkaji says. He was a keynote speaker at the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January
2000.
Organizations such as Spirit in Business,
which invited Goenkaji to address a seminar during his
North American tour, wants to enhance management
principles. Founded in Amsterdam and with bases in the
US, Spirit in Business (SiB) forged an alliance of
companies such as American Express, Verizon and Forbes,
senior corporate leaders from Videophone, Goldman Sachs,
HP, universities such as Case Western Reserve's
Weatherhead School of Management and the Copenhagen
Business School, and thought leaders such as Peter
Senge, Daniel Goldman, David Cooperrider and the Dalai
Lama. Its aim is to "explore, promote and celebrate the
reconnection of ethics, values and spirit in business
leadership".
"Vipassana is an art of living
through continuous self-improvement," says Rahul Vaid, a
partner in Pacesetter Capital. "It has helped me
immensely in adverse conditions, in being tolerant to
others and taking positive action as opposed to blind
reaction."
Nancy Stevens, a leading investment
adviser and a former vice president of Wells Fargo, says
Vipassana helped calm her in the face of client anxiety
and market conditions. "The most important thing that I
took away from the course was surrendering to the
process and letting it unfold - contrary to my business
training of being in 'attack mode'."
Stevens'
realization highlights conventional business strategies
turning to pragmatic wisdom: the obvious need to develop
and harness the power of a balanced mind.
Raja M is an independent writer and
Vipassana practitioner based in Mumbai.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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