Reviewing the Positive and Negative Press About Sri Sri

Great posts everyone – thanks for sharing your inspiring stories. To be fair, it’s not very surprising to see posts coming from a group of long-time Art of Living members sharing the common theme of Sri Sri’s positive values and character. On the other side of the coin, as MF points out in his post, not everything you find about Sri Sri on the web has a positive tone. This is unfortunate, but also not surprising.

Everyone has a different perspective on the things they observe around them. The well known Rorschach inkblot test, where psychologists analyze and interpret a person’s response to random images, hints that we all have a different point of view, a different reaction to what we see and hear. You can present the same set of facts to several people and be surprised (or not surprised) to hear the variety of conclusions!

I remember clearly as a young college graduate being extremely excited to land a job working for the Hewlett Packard Company (HP). I grew up hearing stories about this amazing company. My mother worked there before I was born. The parents of many friends worked there. At the time I was hired, HP had a reputation for being the best place to work in the United States, if not the world. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were legends in the tech industry. Well, I can tell you, I was sold! I was going to work in heaven and I was going to be paid for it! My admiration for the company and its founders remains today, but after getting to know some of my co-workers over a few months, I realized not everyone shared that opinion! People, depending of course on their own perspective and hot buttons, took issue with many different aspects of management, benefits, product decisions, etc. I learned that this is a normal, everyday part of running a large organization. Some of the criticism was valid and was acknowledged and acted on. Some was based on ego and emotion and was treated appropriately. Some was just plain wrong.

One of the things we learn in the Art of Living course is that the mind tends to hang onto the negative and that we tend to doubt in the positive. I’ve seen this over and over in my personal life, my career and the organizations I’ve been involved with. When someone can arrange the facts of a situation into a negative picture, for some reason it has more ‘Pop’ then when the same facts are arranged in a positive picture. Pollyanna, the dear character that always found the silver lining, usually ends up taking a back seat to the pessimists and conspiracy theorists. Go figure, but it seems to be a fact of life.

Unfortunately, for those in positions of responsibility, or that live in the public eye, or both, there are more facts floating around to arrange into pictures. Add to that our tendency to start treating the pictures we create as new facts. And don’t forget to include that we all have some real flaws to throw into the mix as well. The result is that it’s really difficult to find anyone (people or organizations) without critics. None of this means, of course, that any given point of view is right or wrong, true or false. That you should decide for yourself, with direct experience rather than anecdote or inference.

We’re an organization made up of human beings, with real flaws and real challenges. Sri Sri, to his credit, acknowledges this and adjusts the organization and our approaches when needed. And he expects us to do the same at our level of contribution. He solicits feedback and is always looking for ways to improve the delivery of our courses and events. Despite our best intentions, there are times when things don’t go as well as planned. It’s unfortunate, but we do our best to learn and move on.

I’ll come back to one of the main points of the previous posts: Sri Sri’s is a life lived for others. There are just too many facts that point in that direction; too many people whose lives have been uplifted. If your life has not yet been touched by this amazing human being, or the work the Art of living is doing, don’t let a few voices steer you away.
-Jim

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar - A Life of Service

After reading various blogs discussing the values of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the Art of Living Foundation, I was looking for a forum to share my personal experiences of being involved with the Foundation. As one of the founding members of the organization, I have worked closely with Sri Sri for more then 22 years. Having spent countless hours in his presence, I have seen him in many diverse situations that have shown me again and again that his is a total commitment to a mission of eliminating human suffering on this planet. Besides sleeping just a few hours a day and taking meals, all of his time is spent in teaching, serving and uplifting others. He doesn’t seem to have any personal agenda or a separate personal life.

Yet in spite of Sri Sri’s dedication, he has received criticism from a few individuals who want to portray him as a fraud.

As the current president of his organization in the US for the last 5 years, I see where every dollar goes. The finances of all of his organizations reflect this emphasis on service. Because all of our organizations are registered 501c3 non-profits, all of the foundation’s 990 financial information is available to the general public to view on the Guidestar website after taxes are filed each year.

Sri Sri has a very Gandhiesque approach to running his foundation. He is more concerned about the future growth and expansion of the organization rather than in any personal gain. He refuses to take any of the honorariums he receives for his personal use and insists that all donations that have been given to him are to be used to support the numerous social service projects he has inspired in India and abroad. In fact, if his staff did not look after his personal needs, I’m sure Sri Sri would still be living in his original hut-like room at his ashram in Bangalore. His life is an open book. When he is not flying across the globe meeting political, religious and business leaders, sharing wisdom and collaborating on ways to improve the quality of life on the planet, he is either sharing knowledge, answering the plethora of emails he receives form Art of Living members and volunteers from 154 countries or spending personal time attending to all the individuals who come to meet him and receive his guidance.

At all hours of the day and night there is a sea of people waiting outside his room eager for a few moments to meet with him. And inside his room or hotel suite there are numerous volunteers assisting him in whatever way they can. Besides the few hours he sleeps or meditates, Sri Sri doesn’t have any alone time. I’ve often played the roll of being his secretary and spent more then 16 hours a day with him. There are so many interruptions, that getting work done is always a challenge. Getting a few moments alone with him is very rare. There is a constant revolving door to his room with someone entering and grabbing his attention at almost every moment.

Many times I’ve questioned Sri Sri’s motives for adhering to a daily schedule that is so grueling and physically demanding. No matter how many demands and challenges he faces, Sri Sri remains exuberant, posed and attentive to all who came to meet him. He is clearly there for one purpose, to ignite a spark of self-awareness and compassion that can help people lead a more fulfilling and productive life.

MF

Living Our Values

Being an avid news hound, I’m quite aware of the number of stories in the media these days that center on issues of wealth, greed, power, addictions and self-centeredness. Politicians, clergy, and business leaders all over the world – no one seems to be immune. And what we hear about in the news is just the tip of the iceberg. Who has not been affected by this in one way or another? Having been involved in businesses in various management and contributor roles over the last 28+ years, I’ve found many of the same issues, well out of the media spotlight, but alive and flourishing. Not as big a story, but affecting the lives and careers of many.

I’m beginning a dialog here on these topics to share my related thoughts and experiences from my business, personal and spiritual life. I hope they inspire reflection and responses on your part – whoever might be reading this – so that we all might benefit.

I thought I would begin by writing about the founder of the Art of Living Foundation, as he is very much on my mind right now. Our Colorado state chapter (of the foundation) just finished hosting two public events in Denver and Boulder. Being in the presence of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar reminds me of the importance of leaders ‘walking their talk’. Watching him interact with the public, the media, with government and business leaders, with Art of Living members and with those that could best be described as followers or students, is a lesson in understanding service and humility. I’ll note here that I'm teacher of the foundation’s programs, so I can’t claim to be unbiased. It was 1 A.M. of the morning that Sri Sri was scheduled to depart Denver. After a day full of meetings and public talks which had stretched until midnight, he was packing for an early flight the next morning and was ready for bed. Outside in the hall a young boy waited with his mother to give Sri Sri a gift, and when he was told that Sri Sri was no longer seeing people he persisted and began to cry... When I informed Sri Sri what all the noise in the hall was about, he welcomed the boy into his room, received the gift and sent him on his way with a hug. A simple expression of selflessness but one which I have seen repeated again and again in my twenty years with Sri Sri. This was not a public event. There was no media and few people in the hall that night, but that one gesture symbolized the reason that I'm still volunteering for this foundation several decades after I began this work. Someone famous once said "character is made up of those things that we do when no one is watching..."

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s is a life visibly lived for others. Whether speaking with a child or a head of state, Sri Sri is constantly giving knowledge, encouragement and love in a natural way. He embodies the qualities that I aspire to in my life. The purpose of this post is not to extol the qualities of Sri Sri as there are more appropriate forums for that, but rather to suggest that his life and work is a model that we ourselves and our leaders can look to for living fundamental human values in our personal lives, businesses and organizations.

We don’t all need to be spiritually uplifting public figures, but isn’t it worth modeling our personal lives, and the way we conduct businesses and governments affairs after someone whom we look up to? Someone who lives the values and qualities we aspire to? For me that person is Sri Sri. For you it may be someone else. With so much being driven in the world today by the need for wealth, power, success and status, wouldn’t we all be a bit better off if we came back to the core values of compassion, honesty and integrity?

-Jim