Why is the corporate world turning towards conscious entrepreneurship?

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So what is driving the movement towards conscious capitalism or conscious entrepreneurship? I think there are three main factors.
First is that there is a recognition that stress is taking a huge toll in the workplace. Okay, just a minute. Is it clearer now? Yeah, there is a there is an increasing recognition that stress is taking a huge toll in the workplace.
And dealing with stress is not just a matter of doing some exercises or doing some, yes, some change in lifestyle is important to deal with stress. But stress is also a result of one’s attitude. So as our as we look for more holistic solutions towards stress and people have become more open to spirituality.
Now Martin Luther King he said around 50 years ago that we have guided missiles and misguided men. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. So our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
That’s what Martin Luther King said and that is that spiritual vacuum is being increasingly felt. Firstly because of the stress and pressure that comes in today’s lifestyle. And secondly also because there is not the level of fulfillment that people expected to find on making it big in life.
So when people do people, even corporate leaders, they tolerate stress. They go through all the trouble and then they make it big in life. But then what is the next after that? But they say that the problem with winning the rat race is that you still remain a rat.
So there is a search for something higher. And that higher aspect of life that is talked about in the Indian wisdom literature, in the Bhagavad Gita and the other spiritual books of India. And one of the central concepts in the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching is the elevation of consciousness.
That the Bhagavad Gita is a very has a dramatic setting. It was spoken in the middle of a war. And normally most people would think war is war is a action, war is a activity which requires immediate action.
One does not have any time for any higher consideration. But even in a situation like war, there is a person can lose one’s nerve and a person can break down and at that time it is one’s conception of life. It’s one’s motivation for action.
It’s one’s consciousness that will determine what one should do. So, the Bhagavad Gita is not a book of violence or of silence. It is a book of transcendence.
So, neither violence nor silence but transcendence. Transcendence means that Bhagavad Gita asks us to do our work with a higher purpose in life. So, in the 18th chapter 46th verse, the Bhagavad Gita says, Svakarmanatam abhyarcha siddhim vindati manava.
Svakarmanatam abhyarcha. By your work, worship him. Thus you will attain perfection.
So, now this verse is often translated as work is worship. But that is not exactly the teaching of the Gita. You know, if you say work is worship is a good ethical principle to inspire people to work carefully, to get people to recognize the dignity of all labor.
But work is worship is itself not a philosophical or a spiritual principle. It’s an ethical principle. If we say work is itself a worship, then we come across the question that okay, a thief may say robbing is my work.
Is that worship? A beggar may say that I am begging. That is my work. So, what the Bhagavad Gita teaches is by your work worship the transcendental reality.
Worship that absolute truth. That means do your work not in a mood of acquisition but in the mood of contribution. So, not just what I get.
Certainly we want something from our work. But what we can contribute, what we can give when we work with that disposition, then that brings a far greater level of satisfaction. And so, the first factor is the concern about stress.
And the second is about the lack of fulfillment even after achievement. You know, in our Vedic circle there is two words used. There is abhyudaya and there is nishreyas.
Abhyudaya means short term achievement or achievement basically. That’s external. And nishreyas is fulfillment.
That is internal. So, now there are many people who have become big achievers but achievement itself does not bring fulfillment. So, there is a spiritual dimension to life and when one works according to something which brings higher value, higher purpose to one’s living, then that is what inspires people to find satisfaction in a deep sense of life.
So, that is also second factor that is moving people towards a higher consciousness even while working. The third factor I would say is more practical in terms of there is increasing recognition in the corporate world that the indiscriminate exploitation of nature is not sustainable. That working simply at the level of self-aggrandizement that is ecologically disastrous.
And there has to be so there was of course the green awareness which has been there for several years but overall the awareness of the need to contribute is increasingly becoming mainstream awareness. So, that also creates an ethos of contribution, of returning to society. So, in the Vedic context, the Bhagavad Gita talks about about Raja Rishi.
Raja Rishi is actually a ruler who is a seer. This is a compound word. This comes in the fourth chapter, second verse of the Gita.
So, Raja is the ruler, the Rishi is the seer. So, the Bhagavad Gita talks about the best leaders of society are those who are a combination of these two. They are inner seers and they are outer rulers.
We are not talking here necessarily about political rulers but in general anyone who is a leader of society, if they are a combination of this, then they can actually contribute optimally to society. If somebody is only a seer but that person doesn’t have any practical influence or any practical initiative to do things in the world, their wisdom cannot benefit the world. On the other hand, if somebody is a ruler but that person does not have a proper vision, a holistic understanding of things, then their power often ends up causing more harm than good, not just for others but sometimes even for them, themselves.
Actually, addressing this theme of higher consciousness in the corporate world, I have written a book called Leadership Sutras from Bhagavad Gita. Much of what I am talking now is talked about in that book also. These are three main factors in my understanding.
The necessity of dealing with stress, the search for a higher fulfillment and the heightened eco-awareness or heightened, not just eco-heightened, awareness of the imminent costs of indiscriminate capitalism. Of indiscriminate capitalism or indiscriminate exploitation of nature, exploitation of resources, natural resources as well as human resources.