Leadership to me, is an entity which makes the need of a person being in a position of leadership and “leading” superfluous. He creates a world where each and every person is a leader in their own right. This is attained by first being a Self Leader. A self leader is one who has attained a sense of “completeness”. He is in sync with his “self”. He does not travel a beaten path, he creates his own.
In our first class on Self Leadership during the Induction week, we learned about the six layers of one’s self and how we can bring out the best out of our self by focusing on them. We concentrated on the how this all relates to the pillars of SOIL. The most important of which according to me are “Ethics” and “Compassion”. Ethics in our world is the most loosely used word. In essence there is nothing called “ethics”, it is just a vague idea that we carry. “Ethics” is not just about being right or wrong, they are the actions that we carry out. They are the products of an elevated state of mind when we are confident and have the power and courage to carry out what is necessary, just and morally balanced. Another aspect of self leadership is “compassion”. Compassion according to me is the ability of sensing the world around us and being able to feel the way is “works”. Compassion is the way one reacts when it feels the pain that plagues the Earth.
In our second session with Mr, Anil Sachdev after a gap of around 3 months, we took up this subject again. A day before the session, I was not sure about what would have happen during the session. Incidentally, I was reading this novel which I had heard a lot about. It is called “Siddhartha” by the German author Herman Hesse. Siddhartha is the story of an Indian boy named such who is in pursuit of the meaning of life and his reason for being. He is born to a Brahmin family and has grown reading the Upanishads and Vedas. However, he does not feel that is where the answer to life’s questions can be found. He is adamant about leaving his family behind and after much disagreement with his father leaves his house to follow the life of a “Samana” with his dear friend and companion Govinda. Samanas do not have anything to do with the world, live in the woods and thwart worldly pleasures and fast for days without end to experience the pain. They believe that is the only way one can attain “Nirvana”. Both friends lead the life of a “Samana” for several years. Siddhartha who has begun to get restless, not still being able to find the answers he desired, starts questioning the “Samana way”. He eventually hears about a monk “Gautama” (Gautam Buddha) who everyone refers to as the “Enlightened One”. He persuades Govinda to tag along with him in his search to find Gautama. They do find him eventually. While Govinda finally seems to have found his answers from Gautama, Siddhartha while appreciating that Gautama is truly enlightened feels that staying as a student of Gautama will not get him his answers. He wanders off and reaches a village where he finds “Kamala”, who teaches him the art of love and “Kamaswamy” who teaches him how to operate a business. He stays in this village for a long time and one day realizes he has strayed far off from his goal. Hastily he leaves the village and while trolling on deserted roads comes across a river, a boat and a ferryman. He takes shelter with this ferryman. The ferryman teaches him how to converse with the river. Siddhartha sees his reflection in the flowing river and asks the river for help. He finds a lot of answers from the river. He eventually finds that all the answer of life is present in life itself. Being a Samana and experiencing only the pain is not how you learn about life, but he also learnt about dealing with pain from them. Neither do you find it in the Vedas, but you do learn valuable words of wisdom from it. Although he believes that Gautama and his preaching as very “interesting”, he finally learns that he has found answers in life itself. He understands how life always comes around. He learns that when he discovers he has a child, borne out of Kamala and she dies leaving the child with him. However, the child never accepts him as his and dad and flees the shelter of his father, just like he did during his youth. He learns that the answers of life can be found from experience. That there is meaning in every human being and there is pleasure in all work. The novel in itself is vividly written with a sense of raw emotion and directness rarely displayed by any author.
So when I attended the class on Self Leadership that day, it clearly explained a lot that I read about in the book. The idea of Self Leadership is finding one’s self by being aware of one’s surroundings and showing unconditional love towards all living beings in this world, people, trees and animals alike. In these sessions we learned how we can discard our inner fears, apprehensions and assumptions which serve as hindrances towards finding the “self”. We also learned about the exercise of “walking on fire” which is the process of eliminating the pain by not paying importance to it. We also learnt about Immunity X-ray which entails that the immunity system is ever changing and we are all developing our mental strength no matter which stage of life we are at.
One might ask what use or purpose these lessons serve. The answer is that these are words which if imbibed with our “way of life” can shatter the mask of selfishness and corrupted sense of achievement and enable us to truly pursue the happiness and satisfaction we all deserve by empowering our “self”.
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