VKP CONTENTS PAGE - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKA SECTION - 2NARAYANAN VAGHULFormer CEO, ICICIHe retired in 1996 as chairman of theIndustrial Credit and InvestmentCorporation of India (ICICI),During his 11-year tenure as CEO, ICICIcame to be transformed from a small size,long-term credit bank to a large diversifiedfinancial conglomerate. Besides, Vaghul isalso on the board of several companies andhis work takes him all over thecountry though he is now settledin Chennai, India. Since 1998 hehas been a visiting professor atNew York University, teaching aregular course “EmergingEconomies” to MBAstudents.Next to finance,spirituality is his forte. Vaghulwas one of the earliest people tointroduce spirituality at theworkplace. His spiritual journey,he says, went through differentstages. “I belong to a traditional,religious family of Chennai. In my earlyyears, I had deep abiding faith in God.During my twenties, my scientifictemperament questioned the concept of God.In the next two decades, I explored variousbeliefs, delving into the metaphysical and theconcept of spirituality. I sought knowledgefrom various religious texts and also metluminaries: Swami Chimayananda, DayanandSaraswati, Swami Parthasarthy. Graduallythe realization dawned on me that it is notpossible to find the solution merely byreading books. The truth lies within our ownselves, and we alone have to explore andreach it.”About 12 years ago, seekinganswers to some of his doubts led him toS.N. Goenka. He learnt Vipassana and eversince, he has been an ardentfollower.”Purifying the mind involves deconditioningit, which is difficult as it isalready conditioned in many ways and alsofull of impurities such as self-centeredness.Look at it this way, supposethere is this huge tree to be cutdown. You can either snip thebranches or go to the root level,which is more difficult. To gaincontrol of the mind, you haveto still it first and then slowlywork towards getting rid of theego that is the ‘I’consciousness.”At work, Vaghul’s spiritualvalues influenced the workculture in many ways. “I don’t favor forcinganyone to do anything, but I feel the bestway to teach anything is by example. I usedto often talk about Vipassana and encouragepeople to go for it. I believe in merely actingas a catalyst. Those days, we used to sendour middle-level executives to theVivekananda Yoga Kendra near Bangaloreto introduce them to spirituality. This has theimmediate effect of bringing about a levelof calmness and lowering blood pressure.These days there seems to be a trend towardsconducting stress management workshops inmany organisations, but more often than not,it is superficial.”(From the Web Site)SAMARTHA BHARATA 95