An Amrita paper was accepted for presentation at the International Conference on Spiritual Paradigm for Surmounting Global Management Crisis.
The conference will be convened by the School of Management Sciences, Varanasi in collaboration with California State University, San Bernardino, USA during February 24-26, 2012.
Dr. Sanjay Banerji and Dr. Rajiv Prasad from the Amrita School of Business at Coimbatore co-authored the Amrita paper.
“We strongly believe that Chancellor Amma’s teachings and her prayer for humanity truly hold the key to surmounting the global crisis today,” explained the co-authors.
Referring to the failures of large corporations, the stagnation of developed economies, the payments crises in many European nations, they added, “Greed is the root cause of the global management crisis. The modern education system that fails to inculcate values in students is to blame.”
“In our paper titled Role of Teachers in Value-Based Higher Education, we examine the teaching-learning process from the Indian spiritual perspective to find solutions for the current crisis.”
“We discuss the teacher-student relationship in an institutional setting using our case study of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.”
“We report on methodologies adopted and results achieved so far in our institution. Essentially, we focus on efforts to still the mind through meditation, the morning prayer, the harmonious teacher-student relationship in Amrita, the conscious effort at cultural education and our Self-Awareness and Personality Growth course.”
At Amrita, all students receive mandatory training in the Integrated Amrita Meditation Technique. Teachers and students join for prayer before the start of classes. Formal cultural education classes and informal activities seek to inculcate lofty human values such as service to the motherland, mankind and nature; and cultivate qualities such as love, trust, tolerance and humility.
“The practices followed in Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham are inspired by the exalted values of the rich Indian spiritual tradition. At the Amrita School of Business, we have had quite a few cases where students have been able to change themselves by getting rid of old, bad habits.”
“We firmly believe that spiritual leaders and their teachings play an important role in today’s world. Our Chancellor Amma has a desire that everyone in the world should be able to sleep without fear, at least for one night. Everyone should be able to eat to his fill, at least for one day. There should be at least one day when hospitals see no one admitted due to violence. By doing selfless service for at least one day, everyone should help the poor and needy.”
“The ultimate solution may be found in the two words, love and serve.”
January 12, 2012
School of Business, Coimbatore
