Gyaan hi Shakti Hai - Knowledge is Power

Knowledge is power is the most famous and true proverb said by the famous personality named, Francis Bacon. Knowledge helps to differentiate between human beings and animals. Man has mind and ability to use the power of knowledge accordingly, that’s why man is called as the most powerful and intelligent creature on the earth by the nature. Knowledge helps in improving the personality of man; it creates self confidence and brings lots of patience to do most difficult tasks in the life. We can say godmother to the knowledge because it gives ways to all the discoveries, inventions, and explorations.

So we here will discover, invent and explore the Shakti of Gyaan (Power of Knowledge). We will also learn the 3 steps to get Gyaan.

Earn and Learn - (By Reading books and Google)

We have two words ‘Earn’ and Learn’. How many of us go to college to just get gyaan (Knowledge)? and How many of us want money? Earning is such a powerful emotion on our heart, every thing we do practically is to earn. More than earning name, fame and character we are probably after earning a lot of money and how we earn that money is again another question. There a saying in hindi ‘na baap bada na maiyan sabse bada rupaiya’ – (not even dad is bigger nor mama, money is bigger than evrything).

Earning is not bad, earning is a need for different purposes. But in the course of pursuing money we have forgotten to learn in our life. Its is so funny, we are going through life and not growing through life. Life is meant for growing through and not going through. Going through is earning and growing through is learning. If you what to know how reach you are, ask yourself –  what you have, that money cannot buy? The only difference between learn and earn is the letter ‘L’. What is that ‘L’ – listen carefully to those people who have knowledge, experience, wisdom and maturity. So, our slogan is Earn and Learn.

Lakshmi and Saraswati - (By Devdutt Pattanaik)

We have grown up being told Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) and Saraswati (goddess of knowledge) always fight and avoid staying in the same place. This is based on the observation that rich businessmen tend to be uneducated (both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college dropouts, we are repeatedly told) and educated people tend to be poor (the eternally groaning and abused middle class). This is also based on the assumption that Saraswati is the goddess of education, learning and training. This understanding of Saraswati is rather pedestrian, and lacks insight.

The word Saraswati stems from the Sanskrit root ‘saras’ which means that which is fluid and can be either contained in a lake (sarovar) and made to flow as in a river (sarita). It refers to imagination, the one faculty that separates man from beasts. Yes, one can argue, dolphins do imagine, as do apes but nothing in the human scale.

Human imagination is what enables humans to envisage future problems, hence innovate, invent, and most critically pass on learning from one generation to another, a trait not seen in any other animal. Every human generation thrives by taking advantage of knowledge gained in the past. So there is continuous skill and knowledge upgradation in the human species which accounts for human civilization. One generation discovered how to control fire, another discovered how to control plants hence invented agriculture, another discovered the wheel, another discovered electricity, another the microchip and these have changed how we live. We may have the same genetic structure as our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago, but we live very different lifestyles, all thanks to imagination. If there was no imagination, we would never have a hypothesis and hence would never reach a thesis.

Inherited wealth and lottery are the only cases where Lakshmi comes without Saraswati. A rich uncle dies and leaves behind a fortune for us. This is luck. We win in a casino. That is luck. We can call it the result of some past life karma or the grace of God.

But in all other cases, we need Saraswati to get Lakshmi. Saraswati is all kinds of knowledge and skills. The better knowledge you have, the better skills you have, the more likelihood of you generating wealth. So the farmer grows food because he knows how to farm. A craftsman creates valuable products because he has knowledge of a craft.

Saraswati is needed not just to generate wealth but also to retain wealth. So unless the farmer and the craftsmen have business acumen, they lose their generated wealth. They need to have knowledge of marketing and sales. They need to develop financial skills or have the knowledge of partnering with people with financial skills. A trader needs Saraswati, a banker needs Saraswati, even a housewife needs Saraswati – the knowledge and skill to distribute her money to satisfy all household needs and wants, both short term and long term.

We narrow Saraswati to knowledge received in schools. But until the British came to India we did not have schools in the modern sense of the term. We functioned using the apprentice model. The potter passed on Saraswati of pottery to his sons, the mother passed on Saraswati of cooking to her daughters. The better the Saraswati, the more successful the potter and the housewife.

Saraswati thus has many forms – knowledge and skills that we can pass on through schooling and apprenticeship is the most prominent of them. But the one form of Saraswati that cannot be passed on is wisdom. Wisdom cannot be inherited or bequeathed. It has to be generated through reflection or tapasya.

Absence of wisdom is evident when Lakshmi comes, and we don’t value Saraswati as much. We feel we have magically generated wealth and it will stay with us magically. Someone who is truly a student of Saraswati will know that fortunes are never permanent and we have to work towards preparing for future crises. A famous software company was so busy harvesting wealth from the market focussing on compliance that it did not bother to create a talent pipeline and so naturally faced a leadership crises when market conditions changed. A case of assuming there is a limit to Saraswati.

In fortune we don’t trust home grown knowledge and believe knowledge exists only in formal schools and colleges, a common problem seen in small and medium sized family businesses across India who are sending their children to Europe and America to earn business degrees and find that the children either do not want to return home, or look down upon their family business (not fortune) as full of terrible practices. They reject family brick and mortar businesses and seek opportunities in the safe international world of the internet.

There is a folk adage: in good times Lakshmi walks towards us and Saraswati moves away from us while in bad times Saraswati walks towards us and Lakshmi moves away from us. The trick is to focus on Saraswati at both times. In boom times, she teaches us how to ensure sustainable growth. In bust time, she teaches us how to reverse our situation and make our way from misfortune towards fortune. Lakshmi or no Lakshmi, we always need Saraswati if we wish to survive or thrive.

Gyaan and Vi-Gyaan - (By Devdutt Pattanaik)

Krishna reveals the Gita to Arjuna on the brink of battle at Kuru-kshetra. Sanjaya, blessed with telepathic sight, overhears this and transmits it to Dhritarashtra, the blind king of Hastinapur, father of the Kauravas, uncle of the Pandavas, who sits far from the battlefield in a comfortable palace. This structure, with two speakers and three receivers, is aimed to draw attention to the complexity of any communication, the wide gap between knowledge given (gyaan) and knowledge taken (vi-gyaan).

Krishna and Sanjaya speak the same words, however, only Krishna is the source of the knowledge, while Sanjaya is merely a transmitter. Krishna knows what he is talking about. Sanjaya does not.

Arjuna, Sanjaya and Dhritarashtra hear the same verses, but they process it differently. Arjuna is seeking this knowledge; he believes that Krishna will solve his problem so is fully attentive, processing what he is hearing. Sanjaya is merely doing his duty passing on what he hears; he does not need to understand what Krishna is saying. And Dhritarashtra is impatient, uninterested in what Krishna is saying, eager only to know the fate of his sons. If anything, he fears what Krishna says for Krishna is on the enemy side.

When you are communicating: are you Krishna, who knows what he is talking about? Are you Sanjaya, the transmitter, merely the messenger? If people see you as Sanjaya, will they connect with you the same way that they would if they saw you as Krishna? In modern management, everyone is expected to behave like Sanjaya – transmit what the management says. And then we wonder why no one respects Sanjaya.

Are the people around you Arjuna or Sanjaya or Dhristarashtra? Are they interested as in case of Arjuna? Are they merely memorizing like Sanjaya? Are they disinterested, even suspicious, as in case of Dhritarashtra? We want front line people to be Arjunas, we want middle level people to be Sanjaya, but more often than not they turn out to be Dhritarashtra who is constantly wondering what the game behind those fancy words is.

THREE STEPS TO GYAAN - (By Karan Khatri-Self)

Three Steps to Knowledge are: 1. Ready 2. Set and 3. Go

Ready

Now you have to get your self ready. Here we are talking about getting ready mentally to achieve our goal – Gyaan. But you may ask how mentally? The answer is simple – Meditation.

Meditation is a practice that gives balance physically, emotionally and mentally. So, let us read a story.

There was a student who had come to learn the Indian mythology and management from a monk. The monk and the student were having coffee and the student was discussing how he is facing difficulties in his studies.

The monk listened patiently and then began to pure mre coffee into his cup. He poured the coffee into the students cup until it began to overflow and run all over the floor. The student saw what was happening and shouted, “Stop, stop! The cup is full; you can’t get anymore in.”

The monk stopped pouring and said: “You are like this cup; you are full of different thoughts and ideas. You are confused of which is the right way. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can’t put anything in. Before I can teach you, you’ll have to empty your cup.”

To learn we need to empty our useless thoughts form our mind and that can be possible only through meditation. Any gyaan you want to earn can only be filled up when the cup is empty.  There are many different techniques to do meditation that you will find it on the internet. So, go and google out the different ways to meditate and meditate with the technique you are comfortable with to empty your useless thoughts so that you can fill it with the gyaan you want to earn.

Set

Weather you need gyaan for your exam purpose or for practical experience or for your personal life, the first thing you need to do is setting it up. To set your self we will learn Nine Things successful people do.

1. Get Specific. When you set youself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. “Lose 5 kgs” is better goal than “Lose some weight”.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goal. decide when and when you will take each action you want to take, in advance.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Honestly and regularly monitor your progress.
4. Be a realistic optimist. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
6. Have a willingness to commit to long term goals and persist in the face of difficulty.
7. Built your willpower muscle. To built willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do.
8. Don’t tempt fate.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’d do.

Go

When you are ready and set,  just go and run and reach your goal to Gyaan and Shakti – (Knowledge and Power).

Karan Khatri also blogs at www.cakagyaan.wordpress.com