A new book explores how Bhagavad Gita can help CEOs achieve successv

Hello and welcome to the print soft cover where we launch select non-fiction books I am Yamini Varma and today we explore Gita for the CEO by Chaitanya Charan, published by HarperCollins. This book brings the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita into a modern business context, offering insights on leadership, ethical decision making and navigating challenges with purpose and balance. So thank you so much for joining us.
I’m delighted to be here with you Yamini on the Softcore podcast. So this Gita for the CEO, that’s the book I have written. I have been a monk for around 30 years with studying the Bhagavad Gita and sharing its wisdom across the world.
So in this particular book, I have taken the Gita, which is historically a conversation between two people who are themselves leaders in their own right, Krishna and Arjuna, and I have presented its core message as a conversation between two contemporary corporate leaders, one who knows the Gita and one who wants to know the Gita. And it’s been illustrated through some simple sketches and diagrams, which I call as concept graphics to illustrate the concepts. And I have drawn 10 principles from the Gita, which can help anyone to develop their leadership potential.
So how to be a visionary, how to be stay cool amid life’s stressful situations, how to be sensitive and effective in our speech, how to have a positive vision of work and life, how to never lose heart amid discouraging situations, like that 10 principles are there. And each of these apply and help one to bring out more and more of the dominant leader that is there in each one of us. So your book is rooted in the Bhagavad Gita, which emphasise concepts like reincarnation and karma.
You think the Gita for the CEO would resonate with readers from other religious backgrounds? And how can its teaching be applied universally beyond Hindu philosophy? Yes, the Gita is today widely venerated as a book by people who belong to the Hindu tradition. At the same time, if you consider the Gita’s core message, from the context and the content, from the context, it is about decision making. Arjuna is a prince, he’s a leader of his army, and he has to take a major decision.
Should I fight or should I not fight? So right now, the world is afflicted by wars between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Hamas. And now whether a war should continue or not, it is eminently a leadership decision. And when Arjuna asks Krishna the question, he is not asking simply should I fight or should I not fight? He’s asking what is the right thing to do? The Sanskrit word for this is dharma.
Sometimes the word dharma is translated as religion nowadays. But in the context of the Gita, dharma has a very universal meaning. Dharma basically connotes the idea that we all belong to larger units.
And we need to harmoniously belong to the larger unit. So for example, if we are driving by road, then we are belonging to the road transport system. And the way we belong harmoniously is by following the rules.
So when Arjuna is asking, what is dharma? He’s asking what is the right thing for me to do? What is the right way for me to belong to the universe? What is the right basis for decision making? So in that sense, yes, the Gita definitely has a religious and a devotional dimension to it. But that is one part of the Gita and the Gita is very multifaceted. So I’m not focussing on that part.
I’m focussing on the part about decision making and how that wisdom can help people to develop leadership potential for themselves. And as far as the specific point about karma and reincarnation, I talk about it in two different ways. Karma is simply a system of cosmic accountability.
And essentially, sometimes accountability may be delayed. Normally what we say is accountable means if I do an action, I get a result. So if I make a mess of things, then I have to clean up the mess.
But sometimes what karma says is that action and results may not be immediately correlated. That when we do an action, the result comes not just from the present action, but also from some past actions we may have done. So in that sense, the present action plus past action leads to the result.
And this is not so unfamiliar to understand. Say if two people are playing a musical instrument, say somebody’s playing a drum and one person has practised the drum for a thousand hours and other is playing for the fourth time. Both of their present action might be the same.
They’re beating the drum. But the person who is playing for a thousand hours has played for a thousand hours and that person plays a drum, the audience will say more, more. And the person who is playing for the first time, the audience will say no more.
Right. So the Gita says that sometimes when we do our actions, we may not get results. And that happens in our corporate life also in our daily life.
Sometimes we do a project and the project does well, but somebody else takes the credit. So what happens is this pervasive sense of life being unfair can actually haunt and hunt us from inside. And that is something which the Gita’s wisdom of karma, which helps us understand that, yeah, sometimes I may not get the result that I want right now.
But sometimes it may also happen that I get more than what I deserve. Sometimes we join a team which is doing a project and we join the final stage of the project and then the project becomes spectacularly successful and we are a part of the winning team. So what karma helps us to understand is yes, life is unfair, but in the big picture, life is fairly unfair.
Sometimes we get less than what we deserve. Sometimes we get more than what we deserve. So in fact, the Gita, this particular teaching of the Gita resonated very much with me from my childhood.
When I was one, when I was one, I got polio. So I was given a vaccine for polio, but which was defective. And instead of preventing it, it gave me polio.
So I couldn’t walk normally. But my first memory of this is, I was about two and a half or three, and some distant relative had come to our home. And she was confirming my mother saying, oh, it’s so sad that your son got polio.
And I remember my mother’s voice, very calm, clear, confident. She said, whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually. So I don’t know why she said that.
And she passed away soon after, so I couldn’t get to ask her. But somehow, it stayed with me. And I couldn’t play outdoor games like other kids could play.
But when I started reading, I could read fast, I could grasp quickly, I could articulate clearly, I could remember rapidly. So I realised that yeah, life is unfair in some way in the sense that I could say I didn’t deserve to get this physical ability. But life is also more than fair in some way, in the sense that I didn’t deserve to get this intellectual ability.
So the point is, the principle of karma can help us get rid of that sense of unfairness. And that sense of unfairness can lead to a lot of resentment, a lot of wasted energy. So one of the principles I talk about for leadership is that everyone needs to choose their battles.
So and especially leaders have to be very careful about which battles they want to fight, and which battles they want to let go. So the principle of karma helps us to recognise that some battles, even if they are unfair, even if it’s not right, let’s leave it. Let’s focus on what we can change.
That’s a long answer to a short question. A very important question. It works though.
While I was going through Gita for the CEO, I realised that the book presents a unique conversation style approach. So what made you choose this format in particular? Well, I have three reasons. First is that the Gita itself is a conversation.
And sometimes the philosophical aspect of the Gita obscures the fact that it is a conversation. And even when the conversation is there, because it’s at a different time, in a different context, what the question is, what the answer is may not be very clear. But the fact that it is a conversation and the conversational format has been used traditionally in India for sharing wisdom.
The Upanishads themselves are conversations. Many of the Puranas are conversations. So I felt that traditional format could work very well.
I would just be continuing with that. Then the second reason I found is that often I give talks, but after the talks, when there are question answers, that’s when the audience connects very well. And that’s when what issues they have in their heart get answered.
So I felt question answers are always much more interesting, because there’s something very clear and concrete. Sometimes you have to read a long chapter at the end of it, you’ll get something. But if the question answer, this is a question, get the answer over here.
So I felt that in succinct ways, the points could be conveyed. And the third reason I felt was that I have a very logical, rational way of presenting. That’s what attracted me to spirituality.
But there is a mystical, mystical side of spirituality. But that’s not my primary focus. So that that logical rational side is best conveyed through question answers.
So that’s my approach. That’s the tradition is what is the Bhagavad Gita is a book. And that’s what I found most effective.
And also because it conveys the rational logical side much more easily. Noted. So also you talk about the difference between living in fear and living with fear.
So could you, if you’re comfortable, you could share a personal moment when you had to apply this principle in your life? Yeah, certainly. With concept wise, what it means is that if we consider our consciousness to be like a circle, then in that consciousness, there could be many things. So right now, say, you’re looking at me, I’m looking at you.
So you’re present in my consciousness. And I’m present in your consciousness. But at the same time, we’re in the background aware, we are sitting in a particular place, we’re doing this podcast.
So there’s something just prominent in our consciousness, and something just not at all prominent. So to live in fear means fear becomes the defining, overwhelming reality in our consciousness. To live with fear means that, okay, there is this danger, and I have to deal with it.
It’s one component in the consciousness. It’s not the most important component. Hmm.
So for me, when I was in 2018, I was in Chicago, I had gone there for a city tour. And that time at the airport, somebody had come to pick me up, a friend had come. And I had given him my carry on bag.
And I kept it next to me. And I thought he picked it up, but he forgot to pick it up. And it had my laptop, it had my passport.
And being in a foreign country without a passport is overwhelming. And I had a very hectic tour, where I was in one place for only two or three days, all the flights were booked. And it was stolen.
So the whole laptop and the passport was stolen. So my first urge at that time was to panic. Anybody? Yeah, in one sense, it was understandable.
But then the thought came to me is that I have to, what is it? One of the ways I find dealing with emotions is if you try to control the emotions, it doesn’t work, don’t feel afraid. But the way I find it most effective is change the question that is going on in your mind. So one of the ways is that the fear is going on instead of the what if, what if I don’t find a passport, what if any passport can’t be issued? What if I have to cancel all my flights? What if, what if, can send us on a panic train of thoughts.
But instead of change that to what is, instead of what if, what is, what is the issue right now? What is in my control? So I had written articles about this, I talked about this. This is what I talk about based on 18.33 to 35 in the Bhagavad Gita. It talks about the frame of mind.
So somehow that came in my mind at that time. What is the problem? The problem is that I don’t have a passport. The problem is I’m not able to go to other programmes.
If I can’t go, maybe if I have to stay here, I could do my programme on Zoom. So what is the problem and what is it that I can do about it? Just the anxiety, the annoyance, the irritation that was overwhelming me, it just decreased. Unfortunately, Chicago also had an embassy over there.
It’s a big place. I could have lost the passport at a smaller place. Then we wrote to the embassy and we used some contacts that we had.
They are international movement. So then fortunately, just when I was going to the airport, I got a call from the embassy. After three days, I did all my talks in three days.
When I was going to the embassy, I got a call. When I go to the airport, I got a call and they said your passport is ready. So fortunately, I got a new passport in three days.
So I was very grateful to the embassy for doing it. But I also saw that the spiritual wisdom helped me to not get overwhelmed by the challenge over there. So we mentioned fear.
We also mentioned anxiety and annoyance. And these days, anxiety and stress is something that dominates modern workplaces. So what practical methods do you think we could talk about from Gita that can help leaders navigate their life more easily? Yes.
See, the Gita says there are three levels of our existence. There’s the physical level, there’s the mental level and there’s the spiritual level. So this is the body, mind and soul.
I like to compare this to a computer system where there’s the hardware, software and user. The body is like the hardware, the mind is like the software and the soul is the user. So primarily, fear attacks at the level of the mind.
So at the level of the mind, fear can be like, or it can be stress or it can be anger. Any turbulent emotion, it comes like a stormy wave and it can sweep us away. And at that time, what the Gita says is, we can try to manage our mind, but the way to manage our mind is not primarily by fighting against the emotions.
Yes. What is the best way to do it is when the strong emotion is sweeping us away, we need to get out of the mind. So it’s like if a stormy wave is coming on the surface, either we get air lifted above or we dive deep in.
So we go up or go down. So the idea is that if I consider this is the body, this is the mind and this is the soul. So I go up meaning I can either go down or go up.
The idea is if we start deep breathing, so what happens just by the act of focussing on our breathing, our thoughts shift from the mind and the fear in the mind to the body and focus on the breathing. So the idea is that, and this is an important concept that I can see this flashlight, see the soul is like a source of light and the beam of light coming from the source is our consciousness. And wherever this consciousness focusses, that is where, that is what gets highlighted in this.
So there’s the Atma, from the Atma comes the Chetana and whatever thought, whatever which are the Chetana focusses on, that starts becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. And if we don’t focus on something, it doesn’t become bigger. It’s like our mind.
So you could say this is the soul, this is the consciousness and the mind is like a screen in front of us. In the mind, there are many windows that are open and one of them we it zooms out. So now if I focus my consciousness on the window that is causing fear, this will go wrong, this will go wrong and it’s causing stress.
So at that window we zoom out and the stress will become very large. So the key is don’t click on that window. So don’t click on that window.
Abhyasa and Vairagya. Vairagya is detachment means the window that is wanting to pop up, hey come on, this is terrible, this is terrible, we detach. That’s just a pop-up, it’s just a thought inside me, will stay there for some time, it will go.
And then have somewhere else to focus on. So breathing is, just focussing on our breathing is a way we can get out of the mind and go down to the level of the body. Just start taking deep breaths or we can articulate, okay what is it, what are the sounds I’m hearing, what is it that I’m touching, where is my, I’m sitting on a chair, which parts of my body are touching the chair.
Just become aware of physical reality. That’s one way. The other way is shift from the mental level to the spiritual level.
That is where praying and mantra chanting, meditating can help. In my tradition we chant Hare Krishna mantra. So the idea is, this is, if we can just get our thoughts out of our mind, we’ll find that that control of negative emotions will decrease substantially.
That’s how we can, once we have become calm, then we can return and refocus and see, okay what can I do about it. So at that time when the wave is becoming very large and the more we pay attention, the wave becomes bigger. And so first we have to shift our attention.
Then we can be concerned without feeling threatened or disturbed. Yeah, this issue is there, let me deal with it. Right.
So you also, while talking about this, you also mentioned that we need to be aware about physical surroundings and the sounds that we hear. In the book you’ve mentioned that, you know, sound when designed intentionally can stimulate inner awareness. And in what ways do you think sound influences a person’s mental state? And what are your thoughts about sound therapies that we have in these modern days? Yes, definitely.
See, it’s very helpful. Now when we talk about sound, broadly there are two kinds of sounds. The sound is, there is sound which we focus on the meaning of the sound.
Like right now when we’re talking, we’re focussing on the meaning. And there could be music. Now music can also have some meaning, but in music we focus so much on the meaning, but we focus on the experience.
And so the idea is that sound is a very powerful way to direct our consciousness. So we cannot very easily control the sights around us. You know, that things around us, we can’t change very much.
Of course, it’s our home, our workspace, we can create a little bit of change. But we are travelling, we are driving, we are in a particular set of physical surroundings. But we can’t function with closed eyes.
But we can have an earphone, we can change the sound around us. We can also produce sound with our own mouth. So then sound can work at three or four different levels.
One is where we have something like affirmations, where something which we know intuitively to be true, but we tend to forget it. So if we repeat that, that brings us to a certain level of calmness. So there was this movie, Three Idiots, in which they had all is well.
That’s affirmation. Now affirmations work best when they are pointing to universal truths. If I am five feet and if I make an affirmation, I’m seven feet tall.
That’s not going to work. So affirmation, one level of reality, one way sound can be tapped. And in many ways, in the Gita tradition, there is the recitation of the verses of the Gita.
And this recitation itself is for some people, they may meditate on the meaning of the sound. And that’s what we call absorption. For some people, even without meditating on the sound, we just focus and take in the experience.
It’s a very melodic, mellifluous, divine experience. So that is another way we can have sounds. Then there are kirtans.
So kirtans and bhajans. Then there’s individual mantra chanting, there’s japa, which we do. Now beyond that, in today what we have sound therapy, that focusses less on cognitive sounds and non-cognitive sounds.
Cognitive means sound makes some sense to us. So I feel it’s definitely helpful. So it has to be done by someone who is expert enough.
And if that person actually understands us and understands our creation, the whole theory of prana and how money is affected by money affects prana, that’s in the yoga circle. But overall, sound is a very under tapped resource for calming our mind and elevating our consciousness. Sir, we have always heard that Gita speaks about dharma.
And in corporate, it’s a very complex scenario where there might be situations where your corporate duty might clash with your personal morality. And what should one do in that scenario? Like what to prioritise your moral duties or your corporate duties? Yeah, in many ways, that was Arjuna’s question at the start of the Gita also. Arjuna had to fight a war.
And if he considered his professional duty as a warrior, he has to fight. So his Kshatriya dharma was that he should fight. But he also had a Kula dharma.
He belonged to a particular family, a particular dynasty, and members of that dynasty were on the opposite side. So if he considers his Kula dharma, he cannot fight because they are members of his own extended family. So it’s like somebody is in the police, and that person is called to quell some riots.
And that person goes there and the person finds that the people who are rioting are from their own community. Should they shoot at those people or not? It’s a difficult question. So the first thing that the Gita says over here is that, that in life, sometimes there are no perfect solutions.
There are only trade-offs. And there are sometimes the we just have to make the least intolerable trade-off. So sarvarambhahi doshina dhume naagni divabhrata.
That every endeavour is covered by fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. So the idea is to avoid the ideal situation where we’ll find a completely satisfactory solution. That will not work.
So in general, it says that we need to weigh our choices. And the Gita offers like a spiritual compass for us. The more we study the Gita and internalise the wisdom, our own inner compass starts becoming clearer.
But broadly, it says we need to consider three factors. Intent, content and consequence. So what is it that I’m doing as a content? Why am I doing? That is the intent.
And what will be the result? That is the consequence. And based on that, we decide. So now, in certain situations, we may have to decide that, okay, sometimes for the larger good, I may decide that this particular battle, okay, I may not fight this battle.
But sometimes you may decide this particular battle is more important for me. And I’m not going to adjust or negotiate or compromise in this particular way. So broadly, the key principle is that with our intelligence, we need to understand what is how important for me.
So what is a big thing for me? And what is a small thing for me? So if somebody I say is working at a place where the work environment is not very good. Now, they could speak against it. But probably, but if the person in charge is, who is not likely to listen to them, but they will try to get back at them.
Then they may decide that at this stage in my career, this job is important for me. So I may have to live with this. But if in future I rise, I will take care that I won’t create such environment for my subordinates.
So at that particular time, we may decide this is a battle I don’t want to fight. But later on, if somebody else we have become substantially influential, we have an experience. So even if we use this job, we can always get some other job, then I want to find this.
So rather than focussing on the particular problem in terms of the dilemma, we need to focus on what is my purpose. And from that perspective, we can decide which battles to fight and which battles to not fight. Sir, Gita is very much still relevant in even in today’s time.
And but there are ancient scriptures that you know, it becomes very difficult to make it resonate with today’s audience. So were there any challenges for you to, you know, make ancient scriptures relatable for today’s audience? This is a challenge throughout history for every teacher of a tradition or a text. So, yes, today the world has changed, but 50 years ago, the world was different 100 years ago, the world was different 200 years ago, the world was different.
So but so I think this is a challenge every teacher has to face. But two things I found very helpful is that the Gita contains many, many points. And we need to see which of those points are relevant for the audience today.
So rather than focussing on the entire Gita, what I focus on is okay, which part of the Gita can add value to people’s lives right now, where they are. And when we focus on that, I find four or five aspects, the concept of the mind and mind management, the concept of being detached, and still being beautiful, based on understanding of past karma and present karma, the concept of identifying our own nature, and thereby understanding our purpose in life, that the Gita can offer very valuable guidance for that the concept of understanding that we are a part of higher reality, and that we have, that there is a purpose for our life, which is a part of a bigger purpose. So these are concepts which can resonate even today.
So now as far as specifics, there are some specific devotional aspects of the Gita. Those are for those who are interested in exploring that. So I won’t emphasise that particular context.
And beyond that, see the Gita was spoken at a particular time. So there in every sacred text, there is something which is descriptive of that time, and something which is prescriptive for other times also. So descriptive is how it was at that time.
Prescriptive is, this is how things are to be done. So I don’t focus on the descriptive part. Okay, this is how it was done at that time.
It’s the Gita’s emphasis is not on turning back the clock. It is on turning on the compass. Right.
It is not that we have to go back to thousands of years ago to the time when the Gita was spoken and live like that. It is that every one of us has a compass inside us, and the Gita equips us to turn on that compass. Understandable, sir.
Thank you. Any future projects you want to mention? Yes. So based on this Gita for the CEO, my hope is that we are writing further in both directions.
I’m working for Gita for students, Gita for parents, and similarly, Mahabharata for the CEO, Ramayana for the CEO. So both genres I plan to explore in the future. Sure.
Thank you so much for joining in, sir. It was a pleasure having you. And for our viewers, thanks for tuning in.
You can follow The Print for more such content. Thank you.