KATHMANDU, JULY 13
Meditation in the workplace is a popular trend nowadays.
It is so because the management in corporate cultures is beginning to understand what meditation really means.
Meditation was thought to be a factor of hindrance in the competitive market where workers are treated as profit-generating robots (although they do not say it to you explicitly).
Human resource in the 21st century is quite a complicated matter because seven billion people have seven billion different worlds (the world of their minds).
Even in a moderately-sized company, each employee has his or her own construct of how the world should be, how the company should be run, how the management should be and how to go about office affairs (along with a host of associated workplace activities).
Each mind (and there are all kinds) is a world in itself. When the mind is the master and not the servant, life becomes – well you are living it (meditate!) Buddha made mind a servant.
He was born in Nepal. But the issue is not where the Buddha was born; rather how did the Buddha make his mind a good servant? What was Buddha's contribution all about? Meditation is another name for awareness. Whatever an aware person does, he does it right. Are we aware people? Are we eating right (Samyak Bhojan)? Are we sleeping right (Samyak Nidra)? Are our relationships balanced (Samyak Sambandh)? Do we have balanced speech (Samyak Vaani)? To sum up, do we have a holistic approach to life and work? Meditation in the workplace is all about bringing awareness, balance and consciousness to the work we do – not just during office time but throughout our lives.
Meditation means no medication.
Not just physically but also mentally, spiritually, materially and ethereally. We are missing the spiritual aspects in our life and more concentrated on the material. Meditation brings balance. A person with meditative awareness is not involved in politics, unethical profit-mongering, tense office grapevines and or other derogatory conduct.
Therefore, meditation needs to permeate the workplace so that it can be turned into a place that the employees would want to come to. A second home where there is work but with playfulness and fun; no seriousness but responsiveness; no forced assignment but self-taken responsibility, no disciplinary actions but selfaware individuals; no tough talks but conscious conversations, no managers (because they age a man) but mentors, and the list goes on.
Remember, Buddha was born in Nepal, and we are Nepalis.
Now show me your 'citizenship'.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 14 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
