
There is scant space for silence today. We saturate ourselves in sound. We have largely grown uneasy with the domain of the imagination and the inner life, the silence of our own minds--a place that the poet e.e. cummings described as "the turning edge of life."
Yet Vijay Eswaran, chief executive of the Qi Group, a Hong Kong conglomerate, believes that time spent there makes him a better businessman. He has written a management book, In the Sphere of Silence, in praise of the power of an hour of quiet introspection every day to sharpen the mind.
Eswaran, whose 9-year-old, $700 million (sales) company has interests ranging from e-commerce to ecotourism and interactive marketing, is a Malaysian who grew up in a meditative Hindu tradition that reflected his family's Indian origins. He learned mouna vratham, a ritual of silence, at his grandfather's knee.
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