APJ Abdul Kalam : 'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure' IndiaKnowledge@Wharton: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure? Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal. By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control c...
Search for Life Between two end points called birth and death, is a span we call life. But in reality, this span forms only a small fraction of our life. The totality of life is hidden beyond the points we call birth and death. Due to ignorance we take this small portion of life before us to be the whole of life. But it is not so. This life is like an iceberg apparently floating on the surface of an ocean. A very small portion of this huge icy rock is visible to the eye. A far greater portion is concealed beneath the surface. From a distance it appears as if small piece of ice were floating on the surface; but a close and careful examination reveals that it is only a fraction of the whole. This small portion is the manifested and exposed portion. By far the greatest portion of the iceberg is hidden in the depths of the unknown. It is exactly the same with our life. Between birth and death there is only a very small known and manifested fraction of the totality of life. An infinitely la...
The way of the Buddha God laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable from God Himself It is an indispensable condition of His very perfection. Hence there is great confusion that the Buddha disbelieved in God and simply believed in the moral law. Because of this confusion about God Himself arose the confusion about the proper understanding of the great word Nirvana. Nirvana is undoubtedly not utter extinction. So far as I understand the central fact of the Buddha’s life, Nirvana is utter extinction of all that is base in us, all that is vicious in us, and all that is corrupt and corruptible in us. Nirvana is not like the black dead peace of the grave, but the living peace, the living happiness of a soul which is conscious of itself and conscious of having found its own abode in the heart of the Eternal... Gautama taught the world to treat even the lowest creatures as equal to himself. He held the life of even the crawling creatures of the earth to be as precious as his own. It ...
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