Swami Viditatmananda Saraswati Gita Discourse

This is my understanding from the summary and relevance to managerial effectiveness :)

Our own body, mind and knowledge will not come to help us if we do not manage ourselves effectively. Things like emotional attachment and ego will hinder us from achieving our objectives. Hence a man who cannot manage self cannot mange others. Self management should be the first objective one should achieve before thinking about managerial effectiveness. This state of emotional maturity and self-control can come if we can understand some of the concepts which are stated in the Gita.

There are things which are right to do in a situation. And there are things which we like to do in a particular situation. The things which are right to do in a particular situation are universal and are common to everyone. We do things which we like to do because of our emotional attachment. This shields the dharma and the real objective situation before us.

Objective view is the real view one see without any perspective distortions produced by the influence of ones own likes and experiences in his life. The judgments and decisions one takes with this objective view and mind following the universal rules of dharma are the right decisions. Most often there is a gap between this right and what we feel is right. Although these actions bring short-term happiness, in long term we hurt ourselves.

Many a times we have multiple roles to play in life. Some roles have a high degree of psychological influence on our emotions than others. There is often a confusion during our decision making in some roles when there a “transference in psychology” or superimpositions. Having an objective mind can call these miseries.

At the time of conflict between what we like to do and what is right to do it is always good to take the help of a person with a neutral view and judgment. One should be humble enough to seek the truth at the time of trouble. Even in our regular life and at work there are many situations where, knowingly or unknowingly our ego shields us. For example we sometimes do not do some work which we are supposed to do, if we feel that it is inferior and will hurt our ego. Being humble will avoid these problems.

As human beings we all have emotions. Gita doesn’t say that one has to be without emotions. Its about having the right positive emotions. Love when distorted can become anger and jealousy which have a negative impact on ones effectiveness. The ability to mange emotions depends on the degree of emotional maturity and this will determine managerial effectiveness.

We all have desires and objectives to reach. Most often there is a gap between what we want to be and what we are. And this gives us uncomforted. We find that, how much effort we put, we are unable to reach the destination. We can reach the objectives only if we have a direction. Most often our efforts lack a direction and our energies get dissipated. The lack of direction prevents us from taking wrong decisions which impact our efficiency and remains as an obstacle towards the final objective.

In many situations our objectives are material. We do not recognize that such material objectives can give lasting happiness. Still we associate success with things like becoming wealthy, getting a post etc. Happiness is a state of mind. It is associated with your level of emotional maturity.

As human beings we are programmed to become better and better every day. Hence by becoming better, in that process we create a lot of material value too. Most of us fail to understand that you do not have the capacity to consumer all. A consuming state of mind will never get satisfied. This dissatisfaction will impact you happiness. When you are a contributor your mind will be satisfied with whatever you have. People derive happiness by making other people happy. And, only a happy man keeps people around him happy. Hence material success and inner success can co-exist. But happiness cannot be achieved only though material success.

Thoughts of Swami Vivekananda on Human Excellence.

1. Why does Swami Vivekananda consider building up our character as an essential element to Human Excellence?
Every individual is unique and the character is his identity. Building up character is through the process of education. Education is not only the process of acquiring knowledge, but also how efficient you are in putting the knowledge to action for handling men and nature around him. This education combines with strength of self conviction and the depth of thought enables a person reach character excellence. The character energy that comes out of this human development through education, especially the tremendous amount of faith in one-self enables him to overcome any difficulty or obstacle that comes in his way to reach his objective. Only those people with a high degree of character excellence can nourish this world. Hence the character-energy / excellence is an essential element for human excellence.

2. What is the learning from the west on managing self?
According to Peter Drucker each person has inherent strengths and weaknesses. One cannot identify the strengths of self and identification of areas of self strength can be only though feedback analysis. A person’s performance/ efficiency can be improved only in his areas of strengths and trying to improve the weakness will only lead to mediocrity. The above points are quite against the principles of the east. The west agrees with the concept of self-conviction when they state that “only internal success leads to external success”.

3. What does Upanishad talks about efficiency?
According to Upanishad, anything done with vidya, sraddha and upanisad can alone become supremely efficient. To be efficient you need to equip yourself with the knowledge or know-how first. Once you equip yourself with the knowledge, efficiency can only come if you have a strong faith in yourself and the personal conviction to do it. It is a totality of positive attitudes that you develop towards achieving your objective. Upanishad considers that you are completely equipped to achieve the efficiency only you do think deeply and meditate on the subjects required to achieve the concerned objective. When all these three powers are combines you get a superlative degree of efficiency which he terms as human excellence.

4. What is the learning from the east on managing self?
Knowledge is the manifestation of what is already innate in man. The east believes that any of the competency or skill can be learnt and the superlative degree of efficiency can be achieved by equipping oneself with knowledge, having self-conviction to achieve it and by thinking deeply thinking and meditating on the competency concerned.

5. What constitute human excellence?
There lies an infinite man behind the finite and an immortal man behind the mortal man which are not within sensory cognition. Improving ones efficiency to a superlative degree with vidya, sraddha and upanisad exposes the infinite and immortal man within who has the energy to achieve any objective which nourishes and heals the world. This constitutes human excellence.