麻豆社

Whatever a great person does, others follow but it's not easy being a leader as you will never be able to please everyone. Perhaps a greater person is one who is able to take on board the opinions of those who oppose them even if they find that the opposition is in the minority. The wisdom to do the right thing may not feel comfortable because our egos can affect our judgement and also the advice may come from the person you least expect.

This and other knotty matters are dealt with by the saintly warrior Bhishmadeva. His empowered advice about leadership in particular, was spoken during the same war that the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita was spoken. Bhishmadeva was an unusually great personality, and he had been given the power to decide when he would die and leave his body. No one could actually kill him. It is said that he was shot during the battle, and was lying on a bed of arrows during his final days on the battlefield, giving his enlightened discourse while in this condition. Perhaps impending death helped to focus his consciousness on the essence.

Bhishmadeva advised that good leadership included going beyond the obvious external voices of physical, emotional, psychological and intuitive understanding and listening out for the voice of God. He encouraged leaders to harness sacred power by looking out for it even at the most unlikely time and from the most unlikely person. Interestingly, although Vedic scriptures encourage people to see their leaders as a medium for divinity they also encourage that leaders see their people as the voice of divinity and see themselves as their servants.

This leads me to wonder if we鈥檙e doing enough to help our leaders see this in us. Sometimes our own attitudes towards our leaders aren鈥檛 helpful. On the one hand an autocratic leadership style may cause us to be silenced. On the other hand democracy when misunderstood can create a culture where we can make fun of or even criticise our leaders, neither of which facilitate a leader to be able to receive opposition in a healthy way. It is difficult to be receptive when we are being blocked by either a silent audience or a hostile one.

I think that rising above and looking beyond mass agreement and seeking out the voice of reason in any situation is helped by understanding that there may be other more unseen divine forces at play and these can come through anyone.

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