Leadership lesson from Hanuman Youth

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So I’ll be using the tablet to write and draw certain things and so I’d like to start by asking you since all of you are young and thoughtful and are potential leaders what do you think are the key characteristics of a leader? I’ll talk about leadership principles based on the Bhagavad Gita or specifically based on the Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita combined together but when you talk about a leader what comes to your mind? Would anyone like to share anything? Yeah please. So okay so you could say from the leader’s perspective the leader needs to be exemplary like a role model. Okay that’s excellent.
Thank you. Yeah please. Yeah I think you have included a lot of ability, a lot of things.
So one is a unifier. So unifying itself requires some level of empathy to understand others and then people need understanding but understanding alone doesn’t bring empathy. There has to be some vision.
Okay what are all we trying to do? It is that around that vision people become united. So yeah unifier. Thank you.
Anything else? Leaders should be motivational and inspirational so that they can help their team achieve their vision or goal of the plan. Okay so exemplary is in terms of their own behaviour but inspirational is also in terms of getting others fired up, inspiring others also to get stirring people to action. That is the essential attribute of leadership.
Yes true. Anything else? Honesty. Yes.
Honesty would be where there is a certain level of transparency in how the communication happens and how one of the things which breed mistrust and suspicion is lack of honesty. Honesty has many different aspects. Especially it could be transparency.
Yeah. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you. These are all quite important points. Okay so Risk taker.
Yes a leader has to literally leading means often we are going into uncharted territories. If we are going to uncharted territories we cannot just stick to the way things were done in the past. There is something done in the past and we can learn from there.
But everyone has to be ready to take risks. Thank you. So in the Ramayana which is what I will focus on and if you consider the Ramayana it is a very rich book.
I am using the word rich in the sense that there are many intriguing and inspiring characters. Sometimes if you have a movie the movie may become a hit. But sometimes it is sustained by the star power of one actor.
One hero or one heroine. And that person is like a one man or one woman show. Everybody else is simply the support cast.
But the really good movies are those where there are multiple characters and each character when they are there their screen presence is magnetic. It is absorbing. So then it becomes very rich.
So similarly in the Ramayana while Ram is the main character the word Ramayana literally means journey of Ram. So while Ram is himself the main character he is not the sole character. So he is not like the show stealer.
Stealing is often used in a positive sense. He is not a show stopper or a show stealer. There are multiple characters that are there.
So we will focus on one particular character today. He is also a very well known character. It is the character of Hanuman.
And I will focus on one particular theme that is about leadership. All of you talked about quite a few important attributes of leadership. I will talk about the theme of influence without position.
What does this mean? That leaders can sometimes be appointed. That means they get to a position of leadership. So somebody may be in a group and somebody in a class they become the class representative, the class leader.
In any particular project there will be a project leader. There is somebody appointed as a leader. And there are leaders who are emergent.
That means nobody appoints them but they become organic leaders just by their qualities. So in the Ramayan when Sita is abducted then Ram forms an alliance with Sugriva and they have to take up the task of finding Sita. So Sugriva sends his most trusted people to the southern direction to find Sita because Sita has been seen to be taken in the southern direction by Ravana.
Now in the material world when we function there will always be practical concerns what the dirty word for that is often real politic. That there are practical concerns which always come into the picture. That leaders don’t really come automatically.
It’s not always that the best person will become the leader. Now America is considered to be meritocracy. That was the basic premise of America.
Now Canada has a more different ethos but the western world prides itself on meritocracy but still there are always other factors which come in. There could be racial discrimination, there could be gender discrimination, there could be ethnic discrimination, there could be religious discrimination or if there are no discriminations of that kind, there could just be individual issues people have with each other. So in the group that goes south so they are the group that goes south there Sugriv has two people, Hanuman and Jambavan.
These people have been with him through thick and thin. When he was exiled and fleeing from Wali, they were there with him and they are in the group but then the leader that is appointed is Angad. Now why? Angad is a prince.
He is born in loyalty. Royalty rather. Now he is born in royalty but his loyalty is to some extent suspect because he was the son of the previous king Wali who had been killed and whether Angad’s devotion to Sugriv was still there or not that is open to question.
But Sugriv wanted to win Angad over, show him that I trust you, I want you to be a part of the group. So they made him the leader. So sometimes it happens that somebody maybe made a leader due to factors other than competence.
Angad was heroic but he was also impulsive. He was inexperienced. He was very young and he was also here disturbed and not visibly disturbed.
He was disturbed because his father had been killed recently and it was a big burden of leadership on him. So the journey in the search of Sita, there are two distinct phases of Hanuman’s activities. In the Ramayan there is a section called Sundarkand and in Hanuman’s activities there are some activities which he does as a team and some activities which are solo.
So his journey to and exploits in Lanka they are his solo feats. They are what he does all alone and they are often the substance of much of the depictions around Hanuman that are there. Especially about his adventures.
But here when he goes as a team, this is the time when they search till the southern coast of India. They search far and wide and they are not able to find. Finally they come to know that Sita is across the coast.
So this is the time when he becomes organic or a natural leader. He is not appointed as the leader but he emerges as the leader. Now here by the way I am assuming most of you know the basic storyline of the Ramayana.
If there is not familiarity I could go into a bit of the storyline. I won’t assume that you know entirely but if all of this is just becoming too alien to you, please let me know. I’ll go detail a little bit more into the stories.
Raseeswaroop, do I need to go more? Okay, thank you. Now let’s see see actually it was here that there is the metamorphosis of Hanuman. Metamorphosis in the sense that this is where he is reminded of his abilities.
Due to a curse he has forgotten his abilities and when he is reminded of his abilities, his extraordinary abilities, then he just leaps across to the ocean and performs extraordinary adventures. So it’s interesting when this is the time when he comes into his own in many ways but even before this happens, it is that Hanuman rises in stature and he rises in stature without position and without any special ability. Sometimes when we see somebody who is a leader we may think this person has such a smart, this person is so smart, this person looks good, this person has was born in a wealthy family.
Often when we look at people who are leaders, we look at what are the things that have made them successful and sometimes whenever there is a leader there is jealousy among others. Now, but jealousy is usually for what they have achieved. It could be for what they have or what they have achieved.
What they have means their starting point. Starting point is somebody has this talent, somebody has this talent. What they have achieved is their position, where they have come.
But very few people are jealous of what they have gone through to achieve what they have achieved. So jealousy, if we understood what people have to go through. Even if somebody is born with some special abilities, yes they have a good starting point.
But that ability itself is not destiny. Ability can be a launching pad for destiny. So we are often jealous of people’s abilities or we may be jealous of their accomplishments.
But neither of those are in our control. Actually what is in our control is the process that they go through. So let’s look at that Hanuman, he was a person, he was one member of the team, he was a respected member of the team.
He was a senior member of the team. But actually if you see there are various various in every group there are hierarchies. There could be a hierarchy based on seniority.
There could be if there is a sports team. If there is a dancing team, there is any kind of team that is there. Okay this person is senior and they get some respect.
There could be a hierarchy based on lineage. Nowadays lineage may not be considered very important in the sense of which family you are born in. But even now it is there if somebody say if we are in university and somebody is say the university chancellor’s kid or the dean’s kid then there is that factor is always considered.
So in this team by seniority Jambavan was the senior most. By lineage Angad was the from the highest lineage. And by position also appointed position Angad was the leader.
So in one sense Hanuman was nowhere the leader. And yet he emerged. So I will talk about two main incidents in which Hanuman’s leadership skills come about.
When they start off in the search for Sita Sugreev has told them come back within one month. And warriors although they are called vanaras but among vanaras also these are warrior vanaras. These are warriors.
So warriors have a particular way of communicating with each other. And Sugreev has said anybody who does not come back within one month will be executed. Now did he mean that literally? Not necessarily.
But the point is that you cannot tarry. You cannot be lazy. So the vanaras were searching and searching nearly coming to the one month deadline.
And they were not finding Sita. And they were becoming desperate. What are we to do? And in the meanwhile while they were searching they came to an area which was utterly deserted.
It was not exactly deserted in the sense that there was no growth. But it was deserted in the sense that while there was some wilderness there didn’t seem to be any water over there. So they were just searching desperately for some water.
And they just couldn’t find. And finally they saw they were going up and down mountains and they were going here. They saw from a mountain there was some kind of cave some hollow passage and from there a bird was coming out and that bird had water in its wings.
Water was dripping out of its wings as it was flying out. Hey there is water inside. They peered into the cave.
They saw that this looks extremely dark and dangerous and forbidding. So Angad said let’s go inside. Now Angad was a prince he was valiant as I said earlier but he was inexperienced.
So Hanuman gently came up to Angad and he said generally if somebody is in leadership position it is important that their position not be usurped. At the same time it is also important that the mission not be compromised that the team not be unnecessarily endangered. So Hanuman gently suggested to Angad that let all of us form a chain and every monkey hold on to the next monkey.
So each monkey will touch and hold on to the next monkey and that way if anybody slips and falls whatever is there inside we will not slip and fall. Angad nodded and accordingly did that. So generally speaking it is important that whoever is in charge that person be respected.
So basically whenever there is a mission there is some purpose that is there we don’t want to disturb the ego of anyone. At the same time we don’t want to jeopardise the mission. Jeopardise people, jeopardise the purpose that we are doing.
So this balance actually requires discreteness. So whenever we give some suggestion when to give it in a way that we seek credit for the suggestion and when to give it in a way that there is no need, I don’t need the credit. You just need the work to be done.
So that intelligence is required for that. So then they all went inside and they went a long long way dark they just couldn’t see anything but Hanuman was at the lead near Angad and said let’s keep going. That bird must have come from somewhere and finally they came to an effulgent place over there.
It was almost like a replica of some heavenly abode. They saw beautiful lush greenery they saw jewels which were casting a shining blaze across the entire cave. They saw stacks of delicious fruits on the trees as well as piled in plates and they saw comfortable beds and they saw streams of clear flowing water nothing had looked as delicious to them as that water looked and some of the monkeys were just about to spring forward and take the water and the food Hanuman said wait let’s see what is going on over here and they looked around and they saw in one inconspicuous corner one woman was seated and she was wearing ascetic clothes and she looked effulgent.
Hanuman went forward to her and Hanuman bowed down to her and he said can I know who are you and who what is this place we are the servants of Ram we are the servants of Sugri we are coming in the service of Ram to search for Sita she smiled with a serene expression on her face as she opened her eyes she says I know who you are all this food is arranged for you over here I am Swayamprabha and she told a whole story of the origin of the place you can have as much as you want now while they were eating some of the monkeys started saying it’s already one month has been passed part of them was feeling a little guilty we are enjoying all this feast like food and we haven’t found Sita some of the monkeys started saying maybe let’s stay here only if we go back and we tell Sugri if we couldn’t find Sita it will be a disgrace for us we will be late and we will be punished let’s stay here only so now Angad was a bit overwhelmed so Hanuman without putting Angad he said you know Ram is fair and so is Sugri we are in a mission they have entrusted us to a mission we need to fulfil that mission and we need not fear any retribution let us leave now and then he turned around and Swayamprabha smiled he said that in order to protect this abode there is a there is a condition created that any beings capable of destroying this abode if they come in they will never be able to leave from here now as soon as Angad heard this he became angry he says tell us how to go out of here otherwise there is a vow to speak some threat Hanuman just put a discreet tap on his shoulder calm down and Hanuman said you know our mission you know how important it is please guide us and Swayamprabha smiled yes he says no one can go out of here but I can take you out of here and within a moment he said all of you close your eyes and within a moment he not only took them out of the cave but he said this was a huge mountain and I will take you on the other side of the mountain so that you won’t have to scale the mountain and go across it you will be closer to the southern sea from where you can find Sita and when they opened their eyes after a few moments and Swayamprabha told them to open they saw there was a bright light ahead they were somewhere near the ocean they could hear the rumbling of the ocean in the distance so actually here basically Hanuman is demonstrating when we are on a particular path when we are pursuing purpose there are distractions one distraction is pleasure or rather the promise of pleasure and the other distraction is the fear of pain and both of these can divert us so Hanuman these are basically the dualities of the binaries of material existence the promise of pleasure is oh this cave is so comfortable let’s just stay here fear of pain is if we go out we will be punished let’s stay here, if you don’t let us out we will have to fight Hanuman said don’t overreact, stay calm he stayed calm so in general because this pleasure and pain will come in our lives life itself will take us up and down this is life life will lead to dualities and for some people when this happens their emotions go way up and way down they go, they become elated when there is some kind of success and they become dejected or even devastated when there is failure a characteristic of a leader is a leader stays steady there will be actually some effect of the ups and downs but overall there is steadiness and it is the steadiness that enables a person to not get diverted so there will be emotional people in the team but if the leader itself is emotional then the team will just be buffeted here and there so Hanuman exhibits this steadiness now after that when they come out and they still are no closer to finding Sita they know they are closer physically but where is she they keep searching, searching and they are not able to find and Angad is still a little suspicious he says if we go back what will happen to us he says that we will be disgraced but where do we search for Sita, we have searched everywhere now they have come to the ocean now they didn’t know that Lanka was across the ocean for them the ocean was just a vast unknown and was there anything beyond it they didn’t know so they not actually come to the coast of the ocean but they could hear the rumbling of the ocean they said where do we search for Sita so at that time Angad said that let us rather than being disgraced let us end our lives here he said let us fast to death so there is a long tradition of suicide in across the world’s traditions but the activity of ending one’s life suicide can be done in Satvaguna it can be done in Rajoguna it can be done in Tamoguna so when one ends one’s life most of the times what people do today it is out of frustration now of course suicide is complex and I don’t want to go into specifics but there is a sattvic way of ending one’s life that is called prayavrata prayavrata basically means that the person just decides I don’t want to live anymore and they fast to death so generally when people try to end their lives the point they often what happens is they feel that living is more painful than ending one’s life they think of course that when I end my life it will be my existence will end and I will be free from pain so basically here suicide is a way of escaping pain most of the time but in prayavrata it is accepting pain not escaping pain because fasting voluntary till death is not an easy thing to do fasting from food itself is called fasting from food and water continuously but the point is that there are great sages who embrace this way of ending their life and their purpose is that I don’t see any purpose in living right now and I would rather transition to the next phase of my existence and if this particular body is not helping me in pursuing my spiritual purpose then what is the point of maintaining the body so anyways so the vanaras they sit down atleast Angad sits down in prayavrata and the group splits into two at that time now some of the vanaras they start supporting Angad and they say yes we will also sit in prayavrata Hanuman is trying to persuade them again he tries to say that Sugriv is fair Ram is surely fair now let’s keep finding Sita and if we can’t then we will go back and tell them oh no no where will we find Sita and how do you expect them to be fair Ram and Sugriv they combine to kill Vali how do you expect them to be fair to us Angad is the primary person speaking this so here Hanuman is trying right in front of his eyes he has taken on the role of a leader he has emerged as a leader but right in front of his eyes the team is splitting into two and this is often a problem because while we want harmony in any team now harmony is not homogeneity we cannot express people to everybody to accept the same ideas all of them different people will have different opinions so Hanuman was trying and his trying is not working then he started praying he was always remembering the lord Kapivarasantat Samsnitarama Tatkativighna Dhamsakarama Kapivarasantata he was always remembering the lord and that lord would remove obstacles on his path so when it happened that he just couldn’t find a way ahead so he was praying and praying and then suddenly help came but help came in a way that didn’t seem at all helpful it seems horrifying as the monkeys were talking these monkeys themselves were not small creatures they were quite large and suddenly they felt as if a huge shadow had come as the sun set, as the clouds come and they looked and they saw on a cliff nearby there was a huge bird and that bird was waddling towards them and that bird said oh today I will have a feast and this bird said that and as all these monkeys fall and die I will devour their corpses and Angad started speaking that oh it is unfortunate it’s one thing to know that we are going to die he had accepted that I am going to die it’s quite another thing to think that one’s body will be ripped apart and devoured by some creature so I started out in the service of Ram but I guess I too will have to meet the fate of Jatayu who could not succeed in the service and was killed now when he spoke those words the creature froze what did you say what did you say about Jatayu Angad looked up do you know Jatayu he said yes he is my younger brother we have been lost for a long time I am Sampathi and then he told the story of what had happened Sampathi tears started coming from his eyes he says that he went into a long story over there and I won’t go into that story at this point but the point he said is that you know Jatayu died for the cause of Ram and you are working for the same cause he said my wings have been burned I can’t help you but I can indeed still help you he said you are searching for Sita my body has become frail and wounded but my vision is still sharp I have seen Ram and take Sita in the southern direction and I can see right now across the ocean in Lanka Sita is still there on hearing this all the monkeys became jubilant so here it’s not so much Hanuman’s leadership directly there is Hanuman’s as a leader it was his prayers prayers means what that when or once we do all that we can God does what we can’t leadership is not just about I am doing great things or I inspiring others to do great things both are important parts of being a leader but leadership is knowing that ultimately we are serving the supreme leader so we are human leaders and there is ultimately a divine leader so this was what might call a serendipity a coincidence they met Sampathi and Sampathi told them about what had happened but coincidences are just God’s ways of remaining anonymous so while Angad had lost hope Hanuman did not lose hope so this is hope this is faith this is devotion if we keep doing what we can then God will do what we can’t so Hanuman did not know that Sampathi would come initially Sampathi came Hanuman could have reacted let me attack Sampathi let me protect Angad let me run away from here they have decided to die they will die I don’t want to die over here he did not react impulsively and that’s how he was eventually able to all of them were able to survive and then they came to the coast of Lanka where he was reminded of his great powers and with those powers he was able to go into Lanka and do extraordinary things so I’ll summarise what I discussed today let me talk about leadership as a topic from the Ramayana so I talked about broadly three main points first is that leadership it is it is not just a position that a person gets either by being appointed or by necessarily it is it can also be something which is emergent it is by one’s character and behaviour and for all of us we may or may not have positions of leadership but we all can so this was like Hanuman he emerged as a leader without being appointed and we discussed two of his characters steadiness first we discussed before that how he gave a suggestion to Angad let’s go in a straight line without any imposition or without disruption he did not disrupt the ego of Angad but the steadiness was life will throw ups and downs at us but a leader needs to be steady not going up and down too much so that is how he managed in the cave both there were temptations and there there were threats there were fears both of them he dealt with it gracefully staying steady and purposeful and then there is faithfulness if we do all that we can then even in front of our eyes things seem to be falling apart our plans they are not working but faithfulness means we know that there is a higher plan and that higher plan is still working so we need to be open and receptive to that by which we can find for ourselves the ways in which we can move forward even through situations where everything seems to be bad and seems to be becoming worse thank you very much are there any questions or comments I have a question when we talk about emerging leaders how do we how do we deal with because I have had such incidents at my workplace where I was right you know putting it to a direction to the right direction and just manoeuvring but every time I was caught up with my colleagues or the leaders as to some sort of insecurity so how do we give our opinion, give our share without getting caught up in the negativity or the fear of oh if I do that I would be somebody or you know I think you know this is something which yeah I think this is something which we all have to learn from experience because some places our suggestions will be valued some places they will not be valued they will be seen as threats so we don’t have to see our present situation as our permanent situation some places we give our suggestions they are valued and respected then we give more and we become more and more integral part of the core group we become a part of the leadership team or whatever other places we may just have to bide our time our suggestions are not valued we just learn from our experience sometimes we may not be able to share whatever our thoughts are we have to basically be responsive to the situation see one is being responsible that’s one aspect of being a leader but the other is also being responsive that means I have to respond properly according to the situation so if we find that our suggestions are being perceived as threats then that could mean that maybe this particular group is not headed in the right direction now do we have the power to make any change in that if we have we do that otherwise we let things take its natural course and then later on when the consequences become clear then people may become more open for leadership basically we have to decide that we have to choose our battles if we feel that this is such an important thing that I have to give the suggestion otherwise it’s going to lead to disaster then even if people are going to feel insecure we can try to communicate in a polite way, respectful way maybe not communicate in public, communicate in private so that that person doesn’t feel threatened publicly each person is different sometimes when you give a suggestion in private people may just say they are not there and neglect it sometimes if you give a suggestion in public at least they have to acknowledge it and evaluate it because others are also hearing it and they have to give some feedback so this is something which has to be done according to time, place, circumstance basically in general in this kind of situation three things we need to consider you know how much I am invested in this how important is this for me how receptive is the environment for me and how competent am I in this it’s like when you are doing gardening we look at three things that how fertile is the soil how good is the seed that I have and how much time am I ready to spend in gardening this so in the 15th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about five factors of action in the five factors of action two of them are fixed Daiva is fixed the soul as an individual is fixed destiny is fixed but the remaining three are variable so the remaining three are these so basically how important is this for me how competent am I at this and how receptive is the environment and based on that we take a decision thank you any last question if they are taking in the right direction how are they a bad leader hmm that’s a good question see again it depends on in different places what is the purpose that’s important if we consider in let’s consider two situations where the purpose will vary if we consider office and we consider family they are both places where we function now in office the projects are actually more important in the relationships relations are important we don’t go to office to form relationships we go to office to get work done that doesn’t mean we neglect relationships but in general in office the projects are more important than relationships in family relationships are more important than projects that doesn’t mean projects are not important say if you want to stay at one place somebody or someone in the family wants to stay in another place, and what do we do at that time? So basically, we have to be clear, what is more important in that particular setting? Is it that these people are the people I’m likely to work with for the next several years, or maybe for the rest of my life? Then maybe, I don’t want to burn bridges with them. But is it that I’m here to learn a particular thing, to grow and contribute in this particular area? And then some people will come and go along, some people will not go along. So good leadership will vary depending on the context in which a person is actually functioning.
So one cannot be negligent of either completely, but what has to be prioritised when will vary according to time, place, circumstance. So thank you very much for your thoughtful questions. Hare Krishna, Shri Hanuman Ji ki Jai, Shrila Prabhupada ki Jai, Gaur Bhakta Vinda ki Jai, Dai Gaur Premanandai.