Opportunity in Adversity

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Welcome to our discussion on Leadership Sutras based on the Bhagavad Gita. We’re discussing today opportunity and adversity. Now, leaders often face the brunt of problems and adversities because they are the individuals in charge.
And if they get overwhelmed by the adversities, then that negativity will seep down to everyone. And more than that, if they get dejected and take wrong decisions, that is going to affect so many people. So, it’s vital for leaders to be able to recover from reversals and shocks.
Now, when things go wrong, it’s natural. It’s a natural human response to be irritated, disturbed, even disappointed. But it’s also that we as humans have intelligence by which we can counter such negative emotions.
And it is this human intelligence that the Bhagavad Gita energises, empowers. And by that one can overcome the negativity and not just overcome the negativity, but one can also see the positivity latent in the negativity, see the opportunity within the adversity. And actually, the best example, a striking example for seeing the opportunity and adversity is the speaker of the Gita, Krishna himself.
And this is demonstrated in the setting of the Gita itself. So, Krishna is like the unofficial in charge of the Pandava army. And his main man is Arjuna, who is going to execute.
He is the primary warrior on their side. Now, right at the start of the war, Arjuna gets emotionally overwhelmed by the prospect of a fratricidal war in which he will have to kill his relatives, his elders, his spiritual master, his military master, military mentor, his grandfather. And he says, I can’t fight it, Krishna.
Now for Krishna, this is a crisis. His top managers cop it out. And now what does Krishna do in such a situation? He sees the opportunity in the adversity.
What is the opportunity? An opportunity for educating, for elevating Arjuna and through Arjuna, all of humanity. So, in fact, many teachers use experiential learning methods to make their knowledge transmission more effective. Now, Krishna uses the ultimate method of experiential learning when he utilises a real-life situation to teach a lesson.
And he uses not just a real-life situation, but one of the most intense of real-life situations, a battle. Actually, to convey anything in a battle, to teach anything effectively outside a classroom itself is a challenge. To teach anything in a battle is even greater of a challenge in a battlefield.
With the battle about to start, the atmosphere there is likely to be frenzied. You know, the warriors are all eager to fight. So, at such a time when passion is running high, what does Krishna do? His tone is reasoned.
His tone, his demeanour is composed, his speech is reasoned. And by his presence and presentation, Krishna lifts Arjuna far above the battlefield. And the teacher and student both get absorbed in the deepest wisdom that humanity has ever heard.
And actually, Krishna’s improvised learning setting is even more challenging than what it might seem at first glance because the outer battlefield is actually the less distracting of the two battles that Krishna has to transcend because the battle has not yet started. So, the distraction of that is not so much. But actually, inside Arjuna’s mind, inside Arjuna’s consciousness, the battle has already started.
The battle between emotion and reason has already begun in full flow. And actually, emotion has caught reason in a stranglehold. And because of that, Arjuna is just not able to think clearly.
And he tries to reason his way ahead, but emotion overwhelms reason. And in despair, he turns to Krishna and says, help. So, actually, Krishna helps Arjuna rise above this inner battle too.
By his calm statement, calm composure and clear statements and profound statements of wisdom, the teacher and student scale heights of wisdom that the world has rarely seen before or after. And at the end of the conversation, Arjuna returns back to the battlefield. He is intellectually enlivened, he is spiritually strengthened, he is emotionally enlivened.
Intellectually, the path has become clear for him. Illumination, where there was darkness and confusion, now there is clear light, intellectually illumined. And then he is spiritually strengthened.
The fighting spirit which had become weakened, it had become sapped. Now, by the understanding of the truths of life which are given in the Gita, his spirit of fighting becomes strengthened and he is emotionally enlivened. Whereas he was rejected, whereas the power of emotions was working against him, now the power of emotions starts working for him.
And he becomes ready, enthusiastic. And this is what happens at the end of the Gita, where he is depicted as Itraparthodhanurdara. He has lifted up his bow and is ready to fight.
He can enlighten all of us too. He can enlighten all of us because he has given his wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita. And not only has he given his wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita, he is ready to teach us constantly through his presence within us.
He is present within our heart also. The Gita itself mentions that actually an aspect of God is present within us. Ishvara sarva-bhutana videshe arjuna tishthati.
That God is present in the heart of all living beings. And brahman sarva-bhutani yantra rudhani mayaya. Guiding the wanderings of all living beings he is.
So now, if we turn towards the wisdom of the Gita, then we can also, life will become, the world will become like an experiential learning arena for us. And from the most unlikeliest of settings, Krishna will illumine us with the deepest of lessons. And our life will become, learning from life will become an enlivening and lived reality of life for us.
Now, learn from life. This is what many teachers will tell us. Now it’s a valuable saying.
We all, if we think about our own lives, think about the lives of those around us, think about the broader world at large, then by contemplating it, we can learn valuable lessons which will enable us to navigate life’s journey better. Now, yet, and leaders especially need to do this all the more, learning from life, because leaders, as the name suggests, are expected to lead others. So now they need to have knowledge.
And knowledge like life is not static, it is dynamic. So, the knowledge that leaders need to have needs to be updated regularly. Updated doesn’t mean that they have the latest technologies and they are aware of the latest technologies and latest techniques.
Yes, that is okay, but they also need to be able to learn from life, learn as life unfolds, learn the lessons that life is teaching and thereby make appropriate course corrections if one is going wrong or tap the opportunities that are coming out through the unfolding of life itself. So, learning from life is so important. Yet, not everyone seems to be able to learn from life.
In fact, for most people, life seems to be just a disorderly, random or even chaotic sequence of events. And okay, this happened, that happened, that went wrong, that happened. People just feel so burdened by what is happening and often they can’t even cope with the events that are happening.
Leave alone, learn something from them. So, whereas some people can learn from life, others seem to find it very difficult to learn anything from life. And this raises the question, is it that, is it that some people are more able and some people are less able? But when we talk about the ability to learn from life, is it just a mental conception? That means, is there actually something to learn from life or is it that life is inherently chaotic and some people are in and of themselves, are capable of extracting some lessons from the chaos of life.
Actually, life is not chaotic. As we discussed, the Bhagavad Gita explains to us that God is in control in this world. Now, he is Ishwara, 18.16 Bhagavad Gita says he is the controller and he is guiding the wanderings of all living beings.
So, he orchestrates events externally for our spiritual evolution and internally as a Supersoul, he guides us towards that evolution by the wisdom that he gives us. And in this way, he helps us to grow. So, actually the whole universe is like a university and God himself is the teacher in this university.
He is, it’s like some teachers may not be available and the students need to learn or remember some lessons. But Krishna, God in his manifestation is Krishna. We will discuss about the relationship between God and Krishna later.
How the one same God who is known by different names in different traditions is known in the Bhagavad Gita by the name Krishna. So, now God is present in our heart and he is ready to guide us from within. So, he is like a committed, compassionate teacher who wants us to learn.
So, learning from life is actually the purpose of life itself. The universe is a university and we are meant to learn and grow. Grow in wisdom, grow in love.
Every moment is an opportunity for such learning. And Bhagavad Gita helps us to see the world not as an arena of chaos but an arena for learning. Now, let’s, if you understand this concept that, okay, we are meant to learn from life, then let’s see how we can apply this principle of learning from life to the Bhagavad Gita setting itself.
We saw earlier how Krishna used the unexpected weakness that overwhelmed Arjuna as an opportunity to instruct him and to instruct all of humanity through him. But we look at the setting of the Gita itself and see what we can learn from it. Now, there is no other scripture in the world which has so dramatic a setting as is the Gita, that is a battlefield.
And now the battlefield setting is not just dramatic, but for many it is also disturbing. Because people often get the question that, is this war, is this a book that recommends war, that exhorts people to violence in the name of religion too? So, this can make us uncomfortable. So, now, to address this, we have to remember that the battlefield is the setting of the Gita.
It is not the substance of the Gita. Now, the substance is actually a very deep, timeless wisdom. And actually among the millions of people who for millennia have got inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita, practically no one has, very few if at all any have used the Bhagavad Gita as a call for violence.
Many of the greatest commentators of the Gita, none of them has talked about violence as a central message. So, if we do study the Vanita carefully, looking at its content beyond its setting, then we will find that it is neither a book of violence nor a book of silence. It is a book of transcendence.
And that message of transcendence, transcendence means to rise above, to rise to a higher level of awareness and from that heightened awareness to respond to life and to go through life. This transcendental message, this message of transcendence of the Bhagavad Gita is given to us in a dramatic setting of a battlefield. And if that setting can be misunderstood, it is possible that people may think that the Bhagavad Gita is a book of war.
So, why is this setting used? Actually, this is also for the opportunity to learn, learn from life. So, this setting serves many purposes. Let’s look at three primary one of them.
First of them is the practicality of spirituality. Many people think that spiritual wisdom is all impractical. You know, it’s all about the other world and I don’t have time for this.
I am busy. I have so many issues to deal with, so many problems to tackle. How can I spend time for that right now? I don’t have time.
So, now, yes, we all have our hard press for time and we all have many urgent situations, but what can be a more urgent situation than a battle? Now, by demonstrating that even in a battlefield, a leader like Arjuna actually took time out to get himself guided by the wisdom of the Gita. And that taking time out benefited him. So, this is a dramatic demonstration of the universality of the wisdom of the Gita.
That no situation is such that we won’t benefit in that situation from learning from the Gita. In fact, what situation can be more urgent than a battle? And even if in that situation Arjuna can learn and be benefited, then we don’t need to ever take any situation as a rationalisation for putting the study of the Gita, learning from the Gita in the to do later category. We can learn now and we will benefit now itself by the wisdom of the Gita.
So, the battlefield setting firstly illustrates the eminent practicality of the Gita’s spiritual wisdom. Now, along with that, so now this actually applies even to leaders. Now, leaders often have to face crisis situations and the primary difference between leadership and management is management is doing things right.
Leadership is doing the right things and not just getting so caught up in doing things, but distancing oneself so that one sees the bigger picture and understands that one is actually doing the right thing and going in the right direction. Management means making sure that the team climbs up the ladder, but leadership means evaluating whether this is the right ladder that one should be climbing, that our team should be climbing. So, leadership actually requires a capacity to distance oneself from an urgent situation and to see the big picture and then make decisions.
And the Bhagavad Gita actually offers us wisdom by which we can take such big decisions. So, the Bhagavad Gita can elevate managers to become leaders. That is the practicality of its wisdom, not just practicality, the urgent necessity and relevance of the wisdom for leaders.
Now, along with that, the Bhagavad Gita’s battlefield setting also demonstrates the social responsibility of leaders. Social responsibility of not just leaders, but of leaders who are spiritually minded, of spiritualists. So, now, in one sense, definitely war is undesirable.
Bloodshed, violence, death, these are undesirable. Undesirable as it is, there are certain situations when it is unavoidable. So, what could be those settings? That is what one such emergency setting is depicted in the Bhagavad Gita.
That is when the war takes place. Now, sometimes spiritualists, one concern that many leaders have is that if I take to spiritual wisdom, maybe I just renounce the world or I’ll become indifferent to the world. And won’t that make me irresponsible socially? No, the Bhagavad Gita setting itself illustrates that spiritual responsibility and social responsibility not necessarily have to run contrary to each other.
In fact, one’s spiritual wisdom can reinforce one’s social responsibility. So, the message of the Gita is not that Arjuna renounced the world because he is spiritually interested. No, it is because he is spiritually interested, he has a responsibility to society and he has to do the responsibility.
So, at one level, the Bhagavad Gita’s message is individual. Any individual can, by practising the Gita’s message, elevate oneself to transcendence and attain lasting happiness thereby. But the Bhagavad Gita also recognises that for people in general to be benefited by it, wisdom, they also need a socio-cultural, socio-political supportive system for doing that.
And for leaders, for spiritualists who are in leadership positions, they cannot just be satisfied with their own spiritual elevation. It is their responsibility to set up systems and to preserve the systems for facilitating the spiritual growth of the citizens. And the Bhagavad Gita calls Arjuna to be such a dynamic responsible citizen, a dynamic responsible spiritual leader who does his responsibilities towards his citizens.
So, far from the stereotype of spirituality making people renounce the world, the Bhagavad Gita illustrates that spirituality makes people socially responsible. So, now, let’s look at how fighting the war was the socially responsible thing to do. Some people may say, oh, this God and God, why should a spiritual message talk about war? Should a spiritual message talk about being peaceful? Yes, pacifism is a noble ideal, but pacifism should not become a tool abused by the power hungry to perpetuate exploitation.
So, it can become suicidal and self-destructive, socially destructive situations. So, the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and the Parva before, Mahabharata has 18 divisions which are called as Parvas. Bhagavad Gita comes in the Bhishma Parva.
The Parva before that is called the Udyog Parva. And the Udyog Parva documents exhaustively the reason why the war became inevitable. In fact, right from the start of the Mahabharata, from the Adi Parva onwards, the first Parva, Adi Parva, Sabha Parva, Vana Parva, Virata Parva, all these document the many atrocities that the virtuous Pandavas faced at the hands of the vicious Kauravas.
And how the Pandavas, despite being victimised unfairly in so many ways, stuck to integrity, stuck to principles and tolerated it all. And then the Udyog Parva especially demonstrates how, after they were, their wife was dishonoured, after they were unfairly dispossessed of their kingdom from monarchs of the world, they were reduced to beggars by wicked cheaters and they accepted it also. And even after that, they actually lived their world of honour and they tried every possible means to avoid war.
They tried everything possible to arrive at amicable solution, but actually the Kauravas were not only adamant, but they were completely disdainful. They just derisively dismissed all the efforts for peace and it was the Kauravas who made the war inevitable. So, in such a situation where exploiters are ruling and they are in a position where they can exploit the citizens and exploit innocent people, then pacifism is actually undesirable.
As the British diplomat Edmund Burke said that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good people to stay silent. So, the Bhagavad Gita does not recommend such a naive pacifism. It does recommend that violence be the last resort, not the first resort, never the first resort.
But it recognises that one has to be assertive and assertive action sometimes requires violence. So, the Bhagavad Gita does not shy away from this whenever it’s required. And of course, most leaders would have to face such extreme situations.
It is unlikely that they will have to command an army and that too command an army against one’s relatives. But really the unlikeliness of the Gita’s situation also depicts the universality of the wisdom, of its wisdom. Why? Because even in that situation, actually a person was guided by the spiritual wisdom, then why not in normal situation? Now, leaders may be in a situation in their own organisation where they may become sentimental.
Arjuna had become sentimental and sentimentality was misleading him from the right path. So, now leaders may also be vulnerable to sentimentality through nepotism, favouritism and other such forms of partiality. If someone who is in their inner circle is exploitative, is power hungry, is corrupt, then they cannot sentimentally tolerate that.
Now, if sentimentally allowing that to go on would mean often innocent people being plundered and sometimes the principal, the upstanding may be victimised, scapegoated by that. So, leaders have to subordinate sentimentality to responsibility. And as Arjuna does that, leaders can take that lesson from the setting of the Gita to not let their responsibility be clouded by their sentimentality.
And beyond that, the Bhagavad Gita can also have, setting can also be taken metaphorically. Now, of course, some people take the metaphorical setting as the primary, metaphorical interpretation as the only interpretation of the Gita. They are uncomfortable with the Gita’s endorsement of war and therefore they say that actually the war never happened and all that is just a metaphor.
Now, such a reduction of the Bhagavad Gita setting to a metaphor unders the pragmatism of the Gita’s wisdom. The point is that the war, there is such an extreme situation and even in such a situation, the Gita’s message benefited people. So, that indicates the universality of its wisdom and by reducing the Gita setting to a metaphor, then the practicality of Gita’s wisdom is lost.
The universality, the eminent pragmatism gets lost. So, now, yes, the Bhagavad Gita is depicting an unfortunate but historical situation where a war took place. But in addition, so the metaphorical interpretation is in addition, not in replacement to the historical setting.
So, the metaphoric expression can supplement but not supplant, not substitute the historical expression. Now, at this level of metaphor, the Bhagavad Gita represents, Gita’s battlefield setting represents the battlefield in our own consciousness. When leaders, especially, all of us have a positive side and a negative side within us and sometimes the negative side seems to overcome the positive side.
Especially for leaders, they may have a lofty vision about how they can make an impact, how they can make things better. How can they make positive changes in the system structures around them, in the organisation, in the society at large. But then, often that lofty vision can be checked and choked by petty negativity.
Now, they may find that there can be various negative forces that can come from within and without. From within, there may be, they may themselves have inertia, paranoia, scepticism. Inertia means there is a tendency to oppose change, not take up initiative and do things.
Paranoia means one feels very afraid, fearful, oh, everybody will be against me and I’ll be targeted. Scepticism means that, oh, things will never work. One is cynical about, not sceptical, actually cynical about the possibility of things ever improving.
All these are negative forces that can actually surround and slay the positive inspiration that leaders have. And just as the ungodly Kauravas far outnumbered the godly Pandavas, similarly, this negativity can often, negative thoughts and negative desires can often outnumber the positive thoughts and vision within us. So, the Bhagavad Gita, in such a situation, offers a morale-boosting message that if we, just as when the Pandavas aligned with the will of God, they emerged successful even against overwhelmingly negative odds.
Similarly, if we align our positivity with God’s will, then we too will be triumphant, no matter how adverse the circumstances around us. So, as the material field setting shows how the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom is practical, it is responsible and it is dynamic, dynamic in terms of the inner dynamics of spirituality. So, now, actually speaking, the leaders are, as I said, when adversities come, it’s not just a problem that is there, it is often the perception of the problem within the leader and within those around the leader that can make the problem much bigger or smaller.
And that can also blind the leaders to the opportunity that might be there. So, there can be negativity coming from other people and negativity can come from within also, as negative self-talk, negative mental chatter, and this can actually sap one’s energy. So, at such times, one needs a source of positivity.
So, that source of positivity is the Bhagavad Gita. Its wisdom can elevate the individual above the immediate situation. Its timeless insights can show us that when there is the darkness of confusion and dejection clouding around us, as had happened to Arjuna, the wisdom can act like a sun which dissipates the darkness and shows the way ahead.
So, leaders can, by familiarising themselves with the wisdom of the Gita, by internalising that wisdom, can become adept at countering negativity and finding adversity in opportunity. So, how this can happen, we will discuss in our future sessions. Thank you.