Lets take a look at what this whole ‘contemplation’ is all about. Ultimately the contemplation  is about NOW. This moment in time. Right here and now. Unfortunately most of us do not live in NOW. We are lost in the vagaries of yester years or we swing forward to our vision or day dreams of years to come. Either way, they are totally illusionary.  To be lost in the past or to be what might be the future is in essence, mental masturbation.

Hence,  just like the act, it produces no productive result. Its only self satiating.  Let’s take a look at yesterday, the past so to speak. The past does not exist. It is only there when you step into it. And u can only step into it from now. It’s only from this moment in time that it exists. There is no past. And your past can be dramatically different from someone else’s past. If u had an argument with someone yesterday,  your version and his version will be dramatically different. So whose past is the past?

So what is past? The past is viewed from this present. It is our tint on it. Our lenses that define it. Again the past is ruled by the present. And what about the future?  The future does not exist. It only exists in your mind at this moment. It only exists in the present. Your vision of the future can be dramatically different from the person sitting next to you. The past exists in the present and the future exists in the present. And therefore the point of contemplation as defined in the Sphere of Silence, is about controlling Now. Because when you control Now, you control all your past and you control all your future. Now is the only thing that exists.

Everything that we feel sense, taste, hear or see is processed by the mind. The world as we see it, only exists in our mind. And it is the same mind that can change the perception of how it is filtered. And how we choose to react. Its not about what happens to you in this life that counts. Because everyone goes through valleys and mountains in their lives and you are all going to go through that. To be lost in euphoria for any length of time just because you are successful is equally as redundant or as damaging as being depressed or despondent or even self destructive because you are going to be hitting on the valleys in your life. The trick is to recognize that it’s not about the incidents themselves or the environment that you live in but rather how you react to it.

 

Choosing how we react, being able to control, communicate and consolidate that reaction is the single most fundamental element of success in managing one’s life. Now how much can one do that? Its easy to talk about that but challenging to put into practice.

 

 

Silence does not mean the end of speaking. It is not the end of anything. It is the beginning. A great man once said, it’s not so much the words you speak. But the silence in between them that give the fire to your message. Gives the passion to your message.  Silence is best because it allows you control.  Staying in silence for a day if one can manage it is an exercise that will test your will tremendously but leave u with a will to communicate and converse  with conviction.  The will to convince is a tremendous tool We see it all the time. Someone walks up to an individual and tries to convey to him, spends an hour unable to get through. Then someone else walks up to him, and in ten minutes manages to turn the person around. So is it the words, the logic or the language?

 

Or maybe its none of the above. Maybe it is the pause of the conviction that he is able to carry in the same words that his predecessor has used and failed. That force of conviction comes from within. An energy that is invisible, indecipherable, but incisive, impactful, without leaving a tangible mark on both the speaker and the listener. Sitting in the audience when great ones have spoken is something people carry for a lifetime. It leaves an impact not just in the eardrums but in the mid. It changes the way you choose to live your life in an instant.  Hearing Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Mother Tersa, JFK or  Mandela, all of them have left an indelible mark on our history and will continue to leave their mark for eons to come. Their words continue to echo and reverberate in far distant lands from whence it was spoken and there is no accounting for that resonance. For  that power. For that majesty.

The common threads holding Asia are its values and work ethic, making it very attractive for the West to do business here. Businessman Vijay Eswaran analyses why we must capitalize on these strengths.

The world is today service oriented and the service industry is going to shape the face of the planet. The Asian ethos is best suited for it because of its disciplined work ethic.

 

‘Service’ is most fundamentally an Eastern or Asian concept than it ever has been Western. The concept of ‘service’ is something that is ingrained in our culture and traditions. It is the heritage of the Asian continent.

 

The reason that Asia is best suited for the service industry is because we are a people oriented culture. Asian culture and ethos is more people-driven than comparative cultures in the West, which tend to be more individualistic. Team work, communal efforts, working with others, and deriving benefit from it, is intrinsic to the Asian culture.

 

The changes in the service industries, from call centres to outsourcing, which today has created the multimillion dollar BPO industry, with decentralisation as the key word, Asia will evolve into a service hub and that will be the new theme of the new millennium.

 

The Asian work ethos has always evolved in a different way from the other continents, even while sharing similar agrarian backgrounds with Africa and South America. It has, still, retained an essential difference. The European and North American continents have undergone gradual, but significant changes over the last 5 centuries.

 

The gradual migration that happened after the industrial revolution basically developed this mindset of mechanisation, very essential to the industrial revolution of North America and Europe. The craftsmanship that evolved from a purely agrarian platform into designing, tooling and manufacturing, redesigned a whole new breed of people that eventually began to permeate every strata of society.

 

The farmer, who was the main core of the agrarian culture, was relegated to the bottom of the heap. The process of industrialisation diluted certain agrarian social strengths. This process resulted in individualization. Craftsmanship became more and more apprentice- oriented, and instead of a whole family farming together, you now had two strangers doing it, and the thought process moving towards specialization. 

 

In Asia, however, the farmer and the peasants who worked the farmlands, had to make the migration at a far greater speed. An entire generation, a lost generation if you like, was formed towards the mid-19^th through the end of the 20^th Century, throughout different parts of Asia. This ‘lost generation’ saw the leap forward, which however cosmetic, it may have been on the surface, was still not enough to change mindsets of the people. It resulted in them having the mentality of an agrarian farmer, but with the working environment of a manufacturing-driven society.

 

It was a mindset which allowed people to treat their work as they would till the soil. The mundane monotony of mechanization did not frustrate them, neither did it deter them. They went to work with a gusto.

 

When mechanization resulted in mass production, such as in the case of the automobile industry revolutionized by Henry Ford in USA, the impact on Asia was stunning. It enabled the Japanese to make a leap forward because they were able to perfect their craftsmanship and reduce the cost of manufacturing even lower. What you had in the 1960s and the 1970s was a Toyota car produced at one quarter the cost of an American comparative make, but at equal if not better quality. What the Japanese lost in terms of not having the equal or more technical superiority, they made up for, in terms of greater versatility and improvement, adapting the car for the mass. This basic cloning of the latest technology from the West gave Japan impetus in its industrial movement that was incomparable.

 

What we had then was a feudal society with feudal practices and mindsets that evolved into full-blown mechanical, industrialized society. This advantage gave us a work ethic, a work culture that was discipline-driven.

 

This analysis is not to show Asian society as being feudal. The reference to the feudal origins is to prove that it is because of the intrinsic discipline, respecting one’s work as one would respect the land that one tilled, brought about this obedience and self-discipline, which enabled a better work force in Asia. A competent work force which was dedicated and could work long hours. This has brought Japan, Korea, Taiwan, eventually Hong Kong, and today China and India to where they are in the global economy.

 

The Asian work ethos has been about putting together shoulders and surviving as a unit. It is best seen in the hill slopes of Java, and in the Philippines where farmers have fought the odds, cut crevices in the hills, creating terraced farming to grow rice. They overcome them challenges and triumphed over them.

 

What do people come to Asia for? Although beaches are similar everywhere whether in Miami or in the Maldives or Malaysia, the spirit of service is certainly not. The service that one receives in Bali and Thailand, most of Vietnam, Laos, and the rest of the Pacific Rim, is legendary. The concept of service, the ability of the Asian work ethos to embrace and not look upon it condescendingly, is the strength that we can draw upon. This is something that is universal from Japan, all the way across towards India.

 

This is why the lure of Bali, Phuket, Koh Samui, Malaysia, Singapore, the Maldives, is stronger, as opposed to more exotic destinations such as Hawaii, Grand Canyon, Vienna, Venice and the like.

 

Another strong factor binding Asia together is the spiritual connection. Asia is the religious hub of the world. Every major religion known to mankind comes from Asia, from Palestine to India. What strength does that convey? The religions that came from Asia traversed the entire globe, and are now in every corner of the world. If that is not a demonstration of our ability to network with each other, what is? This ability is going to be our strength in the new millennium.

 

Asian countries have many commonalities. The thriving sea routes and overland silk routes have bound us together historically, so much so that there are no real cultural conflicts in Asia, of the kind that are there in the European continent. The commonality is in language, food, in music and the religions. Although we don’t look alike, unlike one half of the African continent, or the South American people and the Indians, Chinese, Malay, and Asiatic races are different, the commonality comes from our approach towards relationships that have been there since the time of the Chinese and the Indian sea farers.

 

Whether or not legal trade agreements ever come into place, whether or not ASEAN works or doesn’t, whether a body like the European Union is ever formed in Asia, we are already there, in a sense. It does not need any government impetus to bring Indians to Malaysia or Malaysians to India, or Singaporeans to China and Chinese to Singapore. If the restrictions were taken off, the flow would be that much faster. The only issues preventing Asia from working together arise from political and social economic differences, which have created artificial barriers. If not, I believe, we would very subtly, silently, but surely, merge to one. And that strength is generally what one does not see from the outside.