Management 108

The Upanishads Have A Lot To Teach Today’s Executives When Outcomes Are Unpredictable, Relationships Complex, And Change Is The Name Of The Game.
 

- Sanjoy Mukherjee

THE IMMENSE DIVERSITY and complexity of the 5,000-year-old Indian tradition and culture make it almost impossible to identify one single and unilateral Indian philosophy. Moreover, the concepts developed in the different schools of Indian philosophical systems and the paths outlined thereof often appear conflicting and contending with one another. Here, I have chosen a few relevant sources of classical Indian literature which may be useful to modern management worldwide, struggling at a time of turbulence, uncertainty and crisis. The texts chosen here are primarily some of the Upanishads, a treasure house of precious wisdom transmitted in the form of conversations between the teacher/master and the learner/ disciple.

MESSAGE FROM AN ANCIENT INDIAN ALLEGORY

 The Upanishads, 108 in number, as recorded and available to us even today, extol the glory of the perennial flow of human consciousness and its all-pervading nature and scope. Our consciousness has the infinite capacity to traverse the entire cosmic space and time eternal. However, more often than not, it finds limited expression in our engagement with the affairs of our mundane existence.

Even in the micro domain of our life-world, while the consciousness is more directly involved in the endless flurry of our activities, it also has the inherent capacity to withdraw into a reflective mode and become an observer of our own triumphs and tragedies. Suffice it to say, both the “witnessing consciousness” and the “involved consciousness” are but two different expressions of the pure and unqualified Self-Consciousness that constitutes the essence of the “I”, the core of our being.

The seer of the