"Do your duty " - Bhagavat Gita

Drawing inspiration from Government Society and Business class by Anthuvan sir

Bhagavat Gita teaches us to do our duty. Lord Krishna advices Arjuna to do his duty without expecting results. Hinduisim attaches a lot of imporatnce to Karma or Duty.

The sloka from Bhagavat Gita

"Karmanye Vadhi Karasthe Maa Phaleshu Kadachana,

Maa Karmaphal Hetur Bhurma, Te Sanghastva Akarmani"

Expecting results creates unwanted bondage and disturbances in mind. Thinking about the fruits of our hard work restricts our actions and we may not always put our best to attain the results. It does not mean you need not do your duty to escape from these bondages. But the foremost thing is to put our best effort possible to do our duties. Results, fruits of our hard work would follow. Leave the rest to God. We should not hold ourselves the reason for the results we attain. We should only concentrate on our duty at our hand.

" Work as if everything depends on you, Pray as if everything depended on God"

Another point to be happy in life is to never expect gratitude from others whether it is your children, siblings, friends or life partner. If you are loving them or doing some favour only in expectation of something in return at a later point of time i.e. expecting gratitude, then it is not love, it is selfishness. Your action turns into a business transaction. Act selfless. Love and care for others expecting nothing in return. Just like the karma, expecting gratitude fills our mind with thoughts about the return we get on our investment. We feel despair when we are not getting gratitude and love in return from others. I know it is foolish to tell to act without expecting anything in return in the 21st century where every action is governed by "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". This phrase is in use from early periods though in this generation, I feel this is gaining importance along with a similar phrase "Nothing comes for free". Even in relationships this has become an attitude. We do something so that our friend or partner does the same to us. And the opposite also happens. If he/she can do something bad against me, then why cant I do something similar against her/him? So in this scenario, my earlier point gains importance. Do your actions without expecting gratitude. "Love your partner expecting nothing in return". I remember many of my friends moving heads in disagreement about this point and commenting its foolishness to do that. Just like I told before, that is the present generation. It happens because the world we see around presents before us such a bad impression about the people. I am not one to judge that statement. But, as a Catholic, I believe God will reward you at some point in your life or eternal life for all your actions you do without expecting anything in return from the world. As Bible says " Leave the judgement to God" .

To summarise

Do your duty, Leave the rest to God

Never expect gratitude from others

TED - Ideas worth spreading

It was a new word and world for me when I first heard a TED talk during my Infosys training period. Iy was of Shashi Tharoor on soft power. At that point, I had no idea what it was and how good the world of TED was. But during the last HR conclave at LIBA, I was again attracted to few other TED talks. Thereafter I spend time in listening to few TED talks daily. It has really been interesting listening to the profound knowledge of various TED speakers from around the world. What I have seen is just tip of the ice berg.

A word about TED : TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."

Source : Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)

Shashi Tharoor in his TED talk emphasizes on why nations should focus on soft power - The power that attracts other nationalities to a country. It is not only economic power and military strength that leads to the growth of the country. But it is the power of a country in terms of its political, social, economic, cultural, linguistic and all other specialities and varieties that is going to make a country powerful in the years to come and India is in the right path towards that. He asserts the diversity of India in all aspects of society. What I liked most is the sentence where he describes the last Parliament election : " .... the last election gave the world extraordinary phenomenon of an election won by a woman political leader of Italian origin and Roman Catholic faith, Sonia Gandhi, who then made way for a Sikh Manmohan Singh, to be sworn in as Prime Minister by a Muslim President Abdul Kalam in a country 81% Hindu" .. .It describes the real India...

There are thousands of TED talks like this... So just like u facebook or tweet, find time to TED also... :)

Click here to listen to Shashi Tharoor on TED

"Atithi Devo Bhava" and Business

This verse is from the Taittiriya Upanishad which literally means Guest is God. In business guest translates  into customer. So in business customer is God or customer is King. It should be borne in the minds of every businessman. It is the customer who gives us earning. 

Mahatma Gandhi says 

"A customer is the most important visitor in our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so" 

Bear these words in mind in every business you get into. Customer is the KING. He is always RIGHT. 

Lets kick start ......

And thus began the second term of my MBA  life here at LIBA. If I had not been here, I would have been there in Infosys celebrating my second anniversary with my fellow Infoscions. Yes, its before two years on this very same day that I began my first employment.

And so I chose today for giving birth to my blog, a blog which is taking its shape drawing inspiration from few guest lectures that happened in college a few weeks before. I don’t know how I am going to maintain it and what I am going to write in this. Let me see how I can contribute. Since I dislike taking notes in the class, let this serve as a notebook for my future reference

We are having quite a few subjects this term, seven to be exact with three credits each covering a wide range of topics. Today we had three hours

From the information tips of Economics Class

Even now The world is ruled by three Jews

1.      Jesus Christ – More than half of the world population are Christians

2.      Karl Max – The other majority are of the followers of the Marxian theories

3.      Albert Einstein – The world of science is still ruled by his principles and inventions