Events Centers: INSTITUTE OF INDIC WISDOM (IIW)

Multiple vectors are simultaneously affecting our global society including COVID19, climate change, etc. Leaders and organizations are being challenged to simultaneously confront the inherent chaos and transform the unprecedented hurdles into opportunities and solutions that will create systemic change. Leaders are looking to redesign and reimagine their work, and strategic plans, and most importantly, to recalibrate their purpose and impact.

“If the whole world is a home, India has always been the prayer room for reflection and inner transformation.”

Several inspirational leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela as well as business leaders like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, and many others have shared their appreciation of the wisdom that has helped them in their personal and professional endeavors.

It is time to showcase the application of the wisdom of Yoga, Pranayama, and meditation and how it helps to enhance our health and mental well-being as well as other direct applications to improving business critical values like the culture and mindset of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, decision making, safety, and foresight.

More about his work: www.mandarapte.net/about

Awareness, Leadership and Flourishing

Lessons from Indian and Western Approaches to Consciousness and Self

In this talk, Dr. Shilpa Pandit will attempt to draw some key lessons on awareness, flourishing and leadership from the Indian, especially, the adhyatmic approaches to consciousness. On the way, She will bring in the inevitable comparisons and learning from the Euro-American Philosophy and contemporary neuroscience.

Positive psychology includes concepts, theories and methods of intervention about positive traits, experiences and relations in life. It focuses on realizing the positive human potential. Yoga is also a field which aims at realizing the deepest human potential. Unlike Positive psychology which is primarily focused on emotions and thoughts Yoga based practices also include interventions at the physical and pranic levels of self. Insights of Yoga are relevant not only for the individual self but also relevant for the collective forms of life like family, society and governance. In this session Prof Ashish will elaborate the Yogic perspective of Positive psychology at the levels of individual and collective forms of life based on the empirical and conceptual research work of his team carried out in IIT Bombay.

Vedic Leadership (VL) emerges from a highly developed self-awareness of leaders who transcend surface reality and connect with unbounded consciousness, the broad essential wholeness of the world. The most important Vedic principles for leadership relate to the nature of the Self and of Action – i.e. who we are and what we do. The key Vedic concepts – of moral duty (dharma), and dispassionate action (karma) articulate a simple Vedic leadership formula as follows: Authentic leaders are self-realized people who do their work dispassionately according to their moral duty. VL potentially leads to a sustainably growing organization that engages the wholeness of being, and fullness of knowledge, for mistake-free action on everyone’s part. In such an organization, everyone performs their specific assigned role to the best of their natural ability and talent, while keeping the greater good of the whole organization in mind. Our V-theory of transcendence enables multiple techniques for leaders to increase their self-awareness. A case study of a multinational business organization in the IT industry shows how operating from the Vedic ideal of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (Maha Upanishad VI.71-73) or ‘whole world as one family’, this business experienced rapid and sustainable growth for over a decade. There are implications for leadership and transformation in organizations as well as for society for addressing complex challenges.

Despite considerable attention, new research and insights, Leadership is an area of great concern for both business organisations, and public institutions. This is evident from the leadership crises situations emanating from time to time. Leadership crises throw two generic challenges to an organisation. At the institutional level, it threatens to tear the moral fabric of the organisation and bring down the morale of the employees. At an individual level it introduces enormous stress, burnout and deprived meaning at the workplace. The search for the right framework for leadership continues. This talk addresses this issue by taking fresh perspectives from Bhagavad Gita.

Using the ideas from Bhagavad Gita, this talk will introduce the notion of “Inspirational Leadership”. The talk will begin by enumerating some of the recent approaches to Leadership and create an opportunity to explore new areas in Leadership. With the ideas from Gita, the talk will focus on the traits of an inspirational leader. An inspirational Leader will be able to see himself/herself much beyond the pushes and pulls of day to day and reporting period tensions and challenges and anchor deeply in “one-self”. This will enable the person to handle life situation originating in both the professional and personal dimensions and focus on leading the team with clarity.

High stress levels across the globe has made personal harmony and peace a survival issue for the global community. Prof Dharm Bhawuk will be sharing unique insights on personal harmony based on a model that he has distilled from the Bhagavad Gita.

Key distinctions between western and Indian psychology will be examined in the backdrop of their differing approaches to desires. Further, the role of desires in destabilizing personal harmony and the Five Force Model of Destabilization of Self will be discussed.

Professor Bhawuk will also present the process Model of Personal Disharmony and the solution offered by the Bhagavad Gita in overcoming it. He will briefly dwell upon key Indic/Yogic practices that nurture and sustain personal harmony.