One of my new heroes, Vinoba Bhave, would often break into spontaneous “talks” upon requests from circles of his friends, disciples, fellow pilgrims.
In a retreat last year in December, at Ahmedabad, that I was volunteering for, we invited Jayesh Bhai, another of my heroes, to share a bit with our group of fifty folks. This time, we gave him a mic to speak. Rarely, I’ve seen Jayesh bhai get unsettled even in most challenging unexpected situations.
But when you see him behind a mic, you can clearly see, that this is not his favourite spot to be.
He pauses for a bit, gathers himself. And then opens with this story about Vinoba -
Vinoba would break into these spontaneous talks. And people would want to record it. Some impact folks would also appeal — if you record it, it can reach and benefit so many more people.
And Vinoba responds “You equipments can record my speech. But who can record my silence?” Period.
Today, it is very easy to emulate content (what we say, what we do or even what we think). But “who we are”, CAN NOT be emulated. That’s our real core competence which enriches our own life, and those of around us.
In the grammar of being human, we often focus on what we know or do (content) and how we know or do something (process). We often ignore, diminish, or outright dismiss who we are and why we do things (context).
Amazing lines, not mine. (Read here for the whole thing.)
Business Schools can teach you how to strategize like Vinoba. But to find a silence like Vinoba’s, that’s a different kind of education altogehter. That’s slow work. That’s deep work.
Another day, Vinoba ji was invited to lead a big conference of highly accomplished, important people. He reached the gate, and just turned back and left. What he saw on the gate - was that the slippers were to be left outside. And all the slippers of all the leaders were hastily scattered all over the place. He told his aide, that if we can’t dynamically manage to arrange our slippers in a coherent synergistic way, the odds that we will be able to do something bigger for the world together synergistically are quite unlikely. While we can feign the content on stage for a little while, it is in the ordinary moments of our lives, when and where there are no big rewards up for grabs, that the true quality of our silence (or the absence of it), of our being, is always getting revealed.
Eckhart Tolle has famously said “The outer work can never be great if the inner work is small; the outer work can never be small if the inner work is great.” In different words,
The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener. – Bill O'Brien, CEO of Hanover Insurance.
So a question I hope I don’t forget to ask myself (frequently): How am I improving the quality of my silence, my being? How am I arranging my slippers, how am I untangling my wires?
Thank you!
[In the retreat in Ahmedabad, we were sitting in a circle. When we came out, we noticed that someone had invisibly arranged this. :)]
P.S. A rare online recording of Jayesh Bhai. :) It’s a clip which I have seen my 25 year old cousins resonating with, my 5 year old newphew laughing ear-to-ear, and also shared with my parents. :)
P.P.S. A beautiful (but long) article by another friend on life of Vinoba Bhave - The Strangest Social Justice Theory This Planet Has Seen. If you want to dig more, I’d recommend his book MovedByLove, or Talks on The Gita.