Trespass is something which is fundamental to the art of communication. You need to have it to speak to someone else.  If it is not there, you will not make any impact. It has to be obtained, and if you have it today, it does not mean you have it tomorrow.  It is a process. It is something you have to work upon to obtain and maintain. It has to be constantly maintained.

Without trespass you have no communication, you have only a lecture.

Communication implies understanding and there should be something reciprocal in the process. Communication is beyond information being transferred from one person to another. It is knowledge, and at the highest level, it is wisdom. In order for that to happen, it cannot be a process of somebody hammering something through your skull.

It is a process of you seeking and  someone else guiding. Ultimately wisdom is not something from without, it is from within. You can only seek it from within, but the person has to be without to guide you.

In the learning process, who are the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’?  Academicians do not acquire wisdom unfortunately. All that they have become is a walking library. Being a professor doesn’t make you any smarter. How many professors of finance are millionaires? Being academic unfortunately only teaches one to hoard. It gets in the way of acquiring more knowledge.

Because, you are then like the monkey with its hand in that jar of peanuts. It can’t release its hands. It can’t acquire anymore peanuts. The fact that it is trapped by the peanuts shows that it is blind. But when other monkeys come close to the peanuts, it becomes aggressive. It wants to protect the jar. It is afraid that they want the peanuts inside. How foolish is that? The same peanuts have enslaved the monkey, the monkey is enslaved because of that jar. It is triumphant and is holding up that jar as a sign of victory and is protecting it aggressively. That is greed. Greed for knowledge is not a thirst for knowledge. Greedy people acquire not because they are hungry. They acquire for the sake of acquisition.

You have to recognize that the only way to reach that person is to establish trespass and without establishing trespass you cannot communicate.

Trespass is something that has to be constantly maintained. It is a garden which requires pruning. If you overlook it once or twice, you have overgrown the garden. It then becomes a jungle.

Without clear pathways, there is no communication. Without trespass, there is no communication. Mandatory trespass is not something that automatically leads to voluntary trespass. In the guru-shishya (teacher-student)equivalent, the shishya not only gives the trespass, he maintains it. The onus is on him, not the guru.

It is because you live in the foolish illusion that you will live a hundred years, that you will not give your trust for trespass. If you think you will die tomorrow, who will you give your trust to?

 

It is the most dangerous form of lethargy. It is worse than cancer and ultimately the most destructive energy on the planet. Cancer only kills your body. Cancer of the mind is comfort zone.

A man who is content obviously is someone who can have no children, no relations, no one who looks up to him, no one who depends on him, no one he looks up to.

What about an ascetic?

Is an ascetic content? Not only is he still seeking, he is walking on the edge.

People run to the caves to escape the world. That is escapism, not ascetism. There are people who say, I have failed miserably in life, as a father, son, businessman, in every possible way. Now let me don on yellow robes and at least somebody will feed me three meals a day.  Let me hide in a cave, and not be disturbed by the world. That is escapism.

Buddha was a true ascetic. When he was Siddartha, he was a king, he had riches beyond the dreams of a common man. He had everything anyone could have hoped for—wife, children, all the glories, and he walked away. That is an ascetic. Buddha left his comfort zone. A true ascetic leaves his comfort zone. A true ascetic walks away from the cross beams on the building under construction. That is where you find an ordinary person clinging in fear to the closest person or pillar her can find, looking down at the height and trembling and not willing to leave that comfort zone even if his life depended upon it. But an ascetic walks on those six inches wide beams.

There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience, even though such obedience may cause many a bitter tear and a separation from all that you have held as dear as life itself. But this obedience is the law of our being. We all have a little voice inside us that guides us. It tells us bitter truths that are hard to accept. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do.

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Could we but evoke the oneness in stillness, we would be able to carry it within us in whatever went on in the world without. As a deep and awakened awareness from within, when acknowledged as ever present, much would be changed, and liberated indeed would we be.”

All men and women are born, live, suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things and what we do to make them come about. We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die, nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

A man's dreams are an index to his greatness. Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal. Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself.

Go forward and make your dreams come true.

You have understood nothing of leadership if you don’t understand the term “Be the change you want to see in others”(Mahatma Gandhi) To manipulate others is like trying to control the wind and the waves. Managing yourself is to adjust your own sails. So if you wish to use the wind, change your sails (change yourself).

Amongst the greatest warriors in the world were the Samurai, the Gurkha, the Tuaregs, the Beduin, the Commanche, the Mongols, the Spartans....to name but a few. An earmark of these class of warriors were the ceaseless infighting that kept them at the top of the game in times of peace. So it always took great leadership to bring them together in times of war. But when they came together they were invincible. Empires have been built and lost on their backs. Great leadership has never been about great systems or great organising abilities, it has always been about bringing together improbable allies and implacable forces into one's force.

For Networkers : Leaders are made, not signed up…

For Corporate Management : Leaders are made, and not hired…

For Parents : Leaders are made, and not inherited…

Leadership is not a talent, nor a skill, nor is it genetic. It’s a mindset.

Vijay Eswaran