January-June 2014 – Volume 5 – Issue 2 ISSN 2230 - 7524 3D... IBA JoUrnal of Management & leaderShIp Theme: Spiritual Pragmatism and Spiritual Pragmatics: New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Contemporary Challenges of Transformations Guest Editor Ananta Kumar Giri Madras Institute of Development Studies INDUS BUSINESS ACADEMY • Bengaluru • GREATER nOIDa 3D... IBA Journal of Management & Leadership Publisher IBA Publications IBA Campus Lakshmipura, Thataguni Post Kanakpura Main Road Bengaluru 560 062 Printed at Sadguru Screens Subscription IBA Journal of Management & Leadership is published twice a year. Annual subscription: Rs.400/- © Copyright with IBA. No part of the publication may be reproduced in any form without prior permission from the editor of the journal. However, the views expressed in the papers are those of the authors and not of the Editorial Board or Publisher. EDITORIAL BOARD Editor Pravir Malik President, Aurosoorya, San Francisco, USA Subhash Sharma Director, Indus Business Academy, Bengaluru R.K. Gupta Professor, Management Development Institute, Associate Editor Gurgoan Divya Kirti Gupta R.D. Pathak Associate Professor, Professor, School of Management and Indus Business Academy, Greater Noida Public Administration, University of South Pacific, SUVA, FIJI Island Members R.S. Deshpande Ananta Giri Director, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Professor, Madras Institute of Bengaluru Development Studies, Chennai R. Sampath Arvind Singhal Director, Quanta Consulting Inc., Los Angeles, USA Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Endowed Professor and Director, Sam Donaldson Centre for Sangeetha Menon Communication Studies, Department of Communication, Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Texas @El Paso, El Paso, USA Bengaluru Atanu Ghosh Siddharth Shastri Professor, Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Dean, Women’s Institute for Studies in IIT, Bombay and Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Development Oriented Management (WISDOM), Management, Ahmedabad Banasthali University, Banasthali Brajaraj Mohanty Sorab Sadri Professor, Xavier Institute of Management, Director, School of Management Studies Bhubaneswar at Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology, Himachal Pradesh Gopal Mahapatra Director, Organization & Talent Development, L.P. Pateriya Oracle India Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru Professor, Head and Dean, Department of Management Studies, K.B. Akhilesh School of Studies in Management and Commerce, Professor, Department of Management Studies, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (A Central University) Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh Vol:5 n Issue:2 n January-June 2014 1 Editor’s Note The tradition of pragmatism—the most influential stream in American thought—is in need of an explicit mode of cultural criticism that refines and revises Emerson’s concerns with power, provocation and personality in light of Dewey’s stress on historical consciousness and Du Bois’ focus on the plight of the wretched of the earth. This political mode of cultural criticism must recapture Emerson’s sense of vision—yet rechanneled it through Dewey’s conception of creative democracy and Du Bois’s social structural analysis of the limits of the capitalist democracy. Furthermore, this new kind of cultural criticism—we can call it prophetic pragmatism—must confront candidly the tragic sense found in Hook and Trilling, the religious version of the Jamesian strenuous mood in Niebuhr and the tortuous grappling with the vocation of the intellectual in Mills. Prophetic pragmatism, with its roots in American heritage and its hope for the wretched of the earth, constitutes the best chance of promoting an Amersonian culture of creative democracy by means of critical intelligence and social action. - Cornell West, “On Prophetic Pragmatism,” p.150 Being Being Being Being Becoming Being walking Walking Being Being Meditating Meditative Becoming Being with Life Not only Being unto Death Being with Death Being with Death and Life Becoming with Life and Death Being and Becoming With Body and Spirit When Body is Broken Sadhana for regeneration A new tantra of reconstitution When Spirit fails to appear Being and Becoming Being and co-Beings Walking and Working Together Bottom up For a new Spiritual dynamics A New pragmatics of Self, Cultural and Spiritual Regeneration A poem by the author 2 3D... IBA Journal of Management & Leadership Pragmatism and pragmatics are related concerns and modes of thinking and practice which have had an important influence in various fields of engagement ever since the seminal work of C.S. Pierce and John Dewey. This special issue of 3D explores some of these issues. It particularly explores spiritual dimensions and horizons of pragmatism and pragmatics which have not received adequate attention in the discourses of pragmatism and practice so far. In his opening essay, “Pragmatism and Spirituality: New Horizons of Theory and Practice and the Calling of Planetary Conversations,” Ananta Kumar Giri outlines some of the issues in exploring the spiritual dimension of pragmatism. He also explores some of challenges of cross-cultural conversations what he calls planetary conversations in understanding the work of pragmatism in different cultures and traditions. Giri’s essay which also opens the Part One of the issue is followed by the essay of Piet Strydom, “Cross-Currents of Pragmatism and Pragmatics: A Sociological Perspective on Practices and Forms,” in which Strydom presents us different meanings and interlinked genealogies of pragmatism as well as pragmatics. For Strydom, the metaproblematic of pragmatism and pragmatics lies in “moving beyond the limitations of empiricism or positivism in order to deal with what is implied by the relation between pragma (action or praxis) and form or, in contemporary social-theoretical language, between practices and sociocultural forms.” Strydom tells us that for Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the founders of American pragmatism, “this meant that pragmatism and the pragmatic maxim are about contributing to the development of what he called ‘concrete reasonableness’.” Strydom presents us a glimpse of movements of thinking in pragmatism and pragmatics in contemporary social thought inviting us to the works of Lauent Thevenot, Luc Boltanski and others. Spiritual pragmatism deals not only with socio-cultural forms as they exist in the present system but challenges us to realize death and destruction that uncritical following of existing structures and forms bring about in our lives. This is the spirit of critique and call for creativity in the subsequent essay of Marcus Bussey, “Towards Spiritual Pragmatics: Reflections from the Graveyards of Culture.” In his essay, Bussey draws our attention to “the wasteland of the present which is so rich yet constrained by an anorexic world system where the physical poverty of the majority equates to the spiritual poverty of the minority.” The work of spiritual pragmatism begins with this acknowledgment of many graveyards in which we live which then calls for more creative relational transformations across borders including transformation of our bounded egos. As Bussey writes, “The relational consciousness that would engage this world is enacted via a spiritual pragmatism; it is in the cultivation of the relationship with another that we experience selfhood but not as radical brittle self but as co-nurtured be-homed self. This is the root of resilient identity and the place from which a spiritual pragmatics can emerge.” Bussey further tells us that “the pragmatics here demands of us that we work the relative context as a horizontal field of being-conscious-of-relationship while holding on to the depth work that spirituality requires of us.” It calls for more poetry in our lives and attentive love and listening. Bussey urges us to go beyond dualisms of many kinds such as material and spiritual that bedevils our contemporary systems of thinking and practice and in his subsequent essay, “Mystical Pragmatics,” Paul Hague also challenges us to realize this. For Hague, “Mystical Pragmatics is an oxymoron, unifying the spiritual quest with the everyday task of running our business affairs, the two extremes of human endeavour.” Mystical pragmatics calls for a new spiritual renaissance which helps us realize that we are all infinite as we emerge from the Infinite and are continuous sparks of the Infinite. In concrete terms it calls for more sharing and creation of an economy of sharing and more creative sharing communities. Vol:5 n Issue:2 n January-June 2014 3 The future God is one of sharing and togetherness and this is what mystical pragmatics challenges us to realize.1 As Hague writes: “All we can do is visualize a global sangha, for as Thich Nhat Hanh has said, the next Buddha—as Maitreya, the ‘Loving one’—may be a community practising mindful living rather than an individual. Sanskrit maitreya means ‘friendly, benevolent’, from the same PIE base as community, from Latin commūnis ‘shared, common, public’, originally in sense ‘sharing burdens’, from cum ‘together with’ and mūnus ‘office, duty; gift, present’, frommūnare ‘to give, present’.” Mystical pragmatics, as an aspect of spiritual pragmatism, calls for transformation of our modes of life and practice. This is the spirit of essays in Part Two, “Pragmatism and Spirituality: Consciousness, Freedom and Solidarity.” It begins with the essay by Subash Sharma, “A Quantum Bridge Between Science and Spirituality: Towards a New Geometry