East vs west -- the myths that mystify | Devdutt Pattanaik

794,077 views ・ 2009-11-19

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00:17
To understand the business of mythology
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and what a Chief Belief Officer is supposed to do,
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you have to hear a story
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of Ganesha,
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the elephant-headed god
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who is the scribe of storytellers,
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and his brother,
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the athletic warlord of the gods,
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Kartikeya.
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The two brothers one day decided to go on a race,
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three times around the world.
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Kartikeya leapt on his peacock
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and flew around the continents
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and the mountains and the oceans.
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He went around once,
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he went around twice,
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he went around thrice.
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But his brother, Ganesha,
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simply walked around his parents
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once, twice, thrice,
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and said, "I won."
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"How come?" said Kartikeya.
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And Ganesha said,
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"You went around 'the world.'
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I went around 'my world.'"
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What matters more?
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If you understand the difference between 'the world' and 'my world,'
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you understand the difference between logos and mythos.
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'The world' is objective,
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logical, universal, factual,
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scientific.
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'My world' is subjective.
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It's emotional. It's personal.
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It's perceptions, thoughts, feelings, dreams.
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It is the belief system that we carry.
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It's the myth that we live in.
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'The world' tells us how the world functions,
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how the sun rises,
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how we are born.
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'My world' tells us why the sun rises,
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why we were born.
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Every culture is trying to understand itself:
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"Why do we exist?"
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And every culture comes up with its own understanding of life,
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its own customized version of mythology.
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Culture is a reaction to nature,
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and this understanding of our ancestors
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is transmitted generation from generation
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in the form of stories, symbols and rituals,
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which are always indifferent to rationality.
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And so, when you study it, you realize
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that different people of the world
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have a different understanding of the world.
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Different people see things differently --
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different viewpoints.
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There is my world and there is your world,
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and my world is always better than your world,
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because my world, you see, is rational
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and yours is superstition.
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Yours is faith.
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Yours is illogical.
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This is the root of the clash of civilizations.
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It took place, once, in 326 B.C.
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on the banks of a river called the Indus,
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now in Pakistan.
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This river lends itself to India's name.
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India. Indus.
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Alexander, a young Macedonian,
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met there what he called a "gymnosophist,"
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which means "the naked, wise man."
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We don't know who he was.
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Perhaps he was a Jain monk,
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like Bahubali over here,
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the Gomateshwara Bahubali
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whose image is not far from Mysore.
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Or perhaps he was just a yogi
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who was sitting on a rock, staring at the sky
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and the sun and the moon.
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Alexander asked, "What are you doing?"
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and the gymnosophist answered,
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"I'm experiencing nothingness."
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Then the gymnosophist asked,
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"What are you doing?"
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and Alexander said, "I am conquering the world."
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And they both laughed.
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Each one thought that the other was a fool.
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The gymnosophist said, "Why is he conquering the world?
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It's pointless."
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And Alexander thought,
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"Why is he sitting around, doing nothing?
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What a waste of a life."
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To understand this difference in viewpoints,
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we have to understand
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the subjective truth of Alexander --
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his myth, and the mythology that constructed it.
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Alexander's mother, his parents, his teacher Aristotle
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told him the story of Homer's "Iliad."
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They told him of a great hero called Achilles,
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who, when he participated in battle, victory was assured,
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but when he withdrew from the battle,
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defeat was inevitable.
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"Achilles was a man who could shape history,
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a man of destiny,
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and this is what you should be, Alexander."
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That's what he heard.
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"What should you not be?
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You should not be Sisyphus,
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who rolls a rock up a mountain all day
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only to find the boulder rolled down at night.
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Don't live a life which is monotonous,
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mediocre, meaningless.
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Be spectacular! --
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like the Greek heroes,
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like Jason, who went across the sea
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with the Argonauts and fetched the Golden Fleece.
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Be spectacular like Theseus,
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who entered the labyrinth and killed the bull-headed Minotaur.
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When you play in a race, win! --
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because when you win, the exhilaration of victory
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is the closest you will come to the ambrosia of the gods."
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Because, you see, the Greeks believed
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you live only once,
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and when you die, you have to cross the River Styx.
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And if you have lived an extraordinary life,
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you will be welcomed to Elysium,
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or what the French call "Champs-Élysées" --
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(Laughter) --
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the heaven of the heroes.
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But these are not the stories that the gymnosophist heard.
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He heard a very different story.
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He heard of a man called Bharat,
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after whom India is called Bhārata.
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Bharat also conquered the world.
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And then he went to the top-most peak
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of the greatest mountain of the center of the world
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called Meru.
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And he wanted to hoist his flag to say,
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"I was here first."
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But when he reached the mountain peak,
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he found the peak covered with countless flags
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of world-conquerors before him,
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each one claiming "'I was here first' ...
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that's what I thought until I came here."
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And suddenly, in this canvas of infinity,
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Bharat felt insignificant.
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This was the mythology of the gymnosophist.
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You see, he had heroes, like Ram -- Raghupati Ram
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and Krishna, Govinda Hari.
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But they were not two characters on two different adventures.
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They were two lifetimes of the same hero.
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When the Ramayana ends the Mahabharata begins.
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When Ram dies, Krishna is born.
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When Krishna dies, eventually he will be back as Ram.
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You see, the Indians also had a river
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that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead.
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But you don't cross it once.
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You go to and fro endlessly.
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It was called the Vaitarani.
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You go again and again and again.
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Because, you see,
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nothing lasts forever in India, not even death.
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And so, you have these grand rituals
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where great images of mother goddesses are built
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and worshiped for 10 days ...
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And what do you do at the end of 10 days?
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You dunk it in the river.
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Because it has to end.
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And next year, she will come back.
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What goes around always comes around,
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and this rule applies not just to man,
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but also the gods.
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You see, the gods
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have to come back again and again and again
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as Ram, as Krishna.
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Not only do they live infinite lives,
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but the same life is lived infinite times
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till you get to the point of it all.
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"Groundhog Day."
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(Laughter)
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Two different mythologies.
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Which is right?
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Two different mythologies, two different ways of looking at the world.
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One linear, one cyclical.
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One believes this is the one and only life.
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The other believes this is one of many lives.
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And so, the denominator of Alexander's life was one.
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So, the value of his life was the sum total
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of his achievements.
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The denominator of the gymnosophist's life was infinity.
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So, no matter what he did,
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it was always zero.
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And I believe it is this mythological paradigm
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that inspired Indian mathematicians
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to discover the number zero.
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Who knows?
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And that brings us to the mythology of business.
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If Alexander's belief influenced his behavior,
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if the gymnosophist's belief influences his behavior,
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then it was bound to influence the business they were in.
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You see, what is business
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but the result of how the market behaves
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and how the organization behaves?
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And if you look at cultures around the world,
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all you have to do is understand the mythology
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and you will see how they behave and how they do business.
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Take a look.
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If you live only once, in one-life cultures around the world,
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you will see an obsession with binary logic,
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absolute truth, standardization,
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absoluteness, linear patterns in design.
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But if you look at cultures which have cyclical
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and based on infinite lives, you will see a comfort with fuzzy logic,
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with opinion,
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with contextual thinking,
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with everything is relative, sort of --
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(Laughter)
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mostly.
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(Laughter)
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You look at art. Look at the ballerina,
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how linear she is in her performance.
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And then look at the Indian classical dancer,
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the Kuchipudi dancer, the Bharatanatyam dancer,
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curvaceous.
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(Laughter)
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And then look at business.
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Standard business model:
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vision, mission, values, processes.
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Sounds very much like the journey through
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the wilderness to the promised land,
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with the commandments held by the leader.
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And if you comply, you will go to heaven.
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But in India there is no "the" promised land.
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There are many promised lands,
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depending on your station in society,
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depending on your stage of life.
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You see, businesses are not run as institutions,
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by the idiosyncrasies of individuals.
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It's always about taste.
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It's always about my taste.
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You see, Indian music, for example,
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does not have the concept of harmony.
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There is no orchestra conductor.
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There is one performer standing there, and everybody follows.
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And you can never replicate that performance twice.
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It is not about documentation and contract.
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It's about conversation and faith.
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It's not about compliance. It's about setting,
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getting the job done, by bending or breaking the rules --
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just look at your Indian people around here,
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you'll see them smile; they know what it is.
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(Laughter)
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And then look at people who have done business in India,
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you'll see the exasperation on their faces.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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You see, this is what India is today. The ground reality
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is based on a cyclical world view.
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So, it's rapidly changing, highly diverse,
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chaotic, ambiguous, unpredictable.
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And people are okay with it.
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And then globalization is taking place.
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The demands of modern institutional thinking is coming in.
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Which is rooted in one-life culture.
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And a clash is going to take place,
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like on the banks of the Indus.
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It is bound to happen.
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I have personally experienced it. I'm trained as a medical doctor.
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I did not want to study surgery. Don't ask me why.
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I love mythology too much.
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I wanted to learn mythology. But there is nowhere you can study.
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So, I had to teach it to myself.
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And mythology does not pay, well, until now.
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(Laughter)
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So, I had to take up a job. And I worked in the pharma industry.
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And I worked in the healthcare industry.
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And I worked as a marketing guy, and a sales guy,
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and a knowledge guy, and a content guy, and a training guy.
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I even was a business consultant, doing strategies and tactics.
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And I would see the exasperation
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between my American and European colleagues,
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when they were dealing with India.
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Example: Please tell us the process
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to invoice hospitals.
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Step A. Step B. Step C. Mostly.
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(Laughter)
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How do you parameterize "mostly"?
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How do you put it in a nice little software? You can't.
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I would give my viewpoints to people.
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But nobody was interested in listening to it,
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you see, until I met Kishore Biyani of the Future group.
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You see, he has established the largest retail chain, called Big Bazaar.
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And there are more than 200 formats,
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across 50 cities and towns of India.
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And he was dealing with diverse and dynamic markets.
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And he knew very intuitively,
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that best practices,
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developed in Japan and China and Europe and America
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will not work in India.
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He knew that institutional thinking doesn't work in India. Individual thinking does.
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He had an intuitive understanding of the mythic structure of India.
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So, he had asked me to be the Chief Belief Officer, and said,
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"All I want to do is align belief."
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Sounds so simple.
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But belief is not measurable.
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You can't measure it. You can't manage it.
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So, how do you construct belief?
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How do you enhance the sensitivity of people to Indian-ness.
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Even if you are Indian, it is not very explicit, it is not very obvious.
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So, I tried to work on the standard model of culture,
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which is, develop stories, symbols and rituals.
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And I will share one of the rituals with you.
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You see it is based on the Hindu ritual of Darshan.
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Hindus don't have the concept of commandments.
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So, there is nothing right or wrong in what you do in life.
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So, you're not really sure how you stand in front of God.
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So, when you go to the temple, all you seek is an audience with God.
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You want to see God.
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And you want God to see you, and hence the gods have very large eyes,
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large unblinking eyes,
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sometimes made of silver,
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so they look at you.
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Because you don't know whether you're right or wrong, and so all you seek
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is divine empathy.
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"Just know where I came from, why I did the Jugaad."
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(Laughter)
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"Why did I do the setting,
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why I don't care for the processes. Just understand me, please."
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And based on this, we created a ritual for leaders.
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After a leader completes his training and is about to take over the store,
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we blindfold him, we surround him with the stakeholders,
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the customer, his family, his team, his boss.
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You read out his KRA, his KPI, you give him the keys,
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and then you remove the blindfold.
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And invariably, you see a tear,
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because the penny has dropped.
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He realizes that to succeed,
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he does not have to be a "professional,"
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he does not have to cut out his emotions,
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he has to include all these people
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in his world to succeed, to make them happy,
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to make the boss happy, to make everyone happy.
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The customer is happy, because the customer is God.
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That sensitivity is what we need. Once this belief enters,
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behavior will happen, business will happen.
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And it has.
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So, then we come back to Alexander
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and to the gymnosophist.
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And everybody asks me, "Which is the better way, this way or that way?"
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And it's a very dangerous question,
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because it leads you to the path of fundamentalism and violence.
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So, I will not answer the question.
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What I will give you is an Indian answer,
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the Indian head-shake.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Depending on the context,
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depending on the outcome,
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choose your paradigm.
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You see, because both the paradigms are human constructions.
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They are cultural creations,
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not natural phenomena.
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And so the next time you meet someone, a stranger,
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one request:
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Understand that you live in the subjective truth,
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and so does he.
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Understand it.
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And when you understand it you will discover something spectacular.
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You will discover that within infinite myths
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lies the eternal truth.
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Who sees it all?
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Varuna has but a thousand eyes.
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Indra, a hundred.
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You and I, only two.
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Thank you. Namaste.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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