Ethics at Home, at Work and in the Art of Living

I too have been thinking a lot lately about human values and what constitutes personal integrity in this changing world of ours...as a businessman I'm assaulted daily by stories in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere about corporations and individuals who committed fraud and betrayed the trust of their clients and investors. Washington too is full of stories of politicians who have embezzled and taken bribes. Even spiritual and religious leaders have taken a beating for not upholding the values they teach, most recently in the Catholic Church, but increasingly all over the world. As the media reaches more deeply into everyone's lives and communication becomes faster and less controlled, especially on the web, we are treated almost daily to stories of fraud, scandal and misbehavior at even the highest levels of society.
I meet regularly with a group of like minded businessmen and consultants and these topics come up again and again...In my career as an investment manager I've had to ask myself over and over again, "Are my actions consistent with the values I express to my clients? Am I walking my talk in terms of putting my clients' interests first, communicating honestly and acting with integrity?"

For the past twenty two years I've also had to ask those same questions in the context of the work I've done with the Art of Living Foundation and it's founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
I met Sri Sri in 1988, took a course from him, and almost immediately began to volunteer for his organization. I was a founding board member of the Art of Living Foundation when it was created in the U.S., served on its board for 18 years and was its President for eight years.

Early on, we had very little money to work with, often only enough to put on the next course. I remember once when we had just enough money to fly Sri Sri to a course in San Francisco. One of our students appeared with a long face that morning and announced that he was about to be evicted because he couldn't pay the rent... it turns out that the money that he needed was almost exactly the amount that we had for the plane ticket... Sri Sri told me to give our student the course money to pay his rent... I protested, worried about how we were going to pay the plane ticket, but I did what he asked... Later that day someone donated a sum out of the blue which allowed the plane ticket to be bought...

Lesson One for Me: Stick to your values and mission and have faith that your work will be supported. I have seen that same perspective on money played out again and again in the foundation over these past two decades. We've never had an overabundance of money and yet we've always had what we've needed to do our work. Money is seen as a necessary tool to advance the work of the foundation, to support our humanitarian projects, but never as an end in itself.

As the Foundation grew and its work began to spread all over the world, the same questions would come up about money; how best to use the resources to affect as many as possible and how to invest them in a way that reflected our values as a spiritual and humanitarian organization. We always tried to be as conservative as possible in our financial management...volunteers who needed stipends or expenses were given what they absolutely needed but no one including our founder was given anything like a real world salary. I remember the first time I entered Sri Sri's cottage (kutir) on the grounds of the Art of Living International enter in Bangalore. I was shocked... it looked more like a well appointed college dorm room in the U.S.than the home of a founder of a worldwide organization. It was comfortable certainly but not lavish by any means. Over the years as the Foundation has grown and the flow of its resources has increased, I have seen the breadth of the work expand (more schools and more programs in more countries), but I have never seen that commitment to the values of simplicity and service fade from view.

Recently I've read some articles and blogs asking questions about Sri Sri's personal wealth or that of his family. I had to laugh when I was reading them. Sri Sri's family lives in the same middle class Indian home that they have lived in for over forty years and that home and their way of livinghas not changed much in the twenty some years I've been visiting them. The last time I rode in Sri Sri's car in Bangalore, it was a Toyota van. Clearly the foundation has more material resources at its disposal now than it did in earlier years, but those resources are being allocated to its work, and not into the pockets of its members or founders. We now run over 100 schools in India alone and we serve over 10,000 meals a day to volunteers and students in Bangalore! That service costs money!

J. O.

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