Vision and Core Values
Here is the statement of vision and core values approved by Kripalu’s Board of Trustees in May 2005.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—William Butler Yeats
vision
As trustees of the Kripalu Institution, we find ourselves with a unique opportunity to make a lasting and important contribution to our world. It’s obvious to us all that the rate of societal change and unpredictability are on the rise, and that existing institutions are unable to provide a center that can hold when things seem like they are falling apart. In times of such insecurity, the mass of humanity cleaves to certainties and fundamental absolutes as a way of keeping touch with themselves and each other, often losing sight of actions that can truly resolve conflicts and uplift society. Polarization increases and connection and healing decrease.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
—Albert Einstein
Most institutions aimed at doing good work are focused on solving symptomatic problems such as saving the environment, feeding the poor, and bringing justice where injustice prevails. Just as medicine’s focus on presenting symptoms misses the root cause of disease, few institutions are focused on the root cause of society’s problems; the consciousness with which we live our lives. The fragmentation we see around us is a reflection of the inner disconnects that live within each of us. While there is no doubt that traditional medicine, along with educational and charitable institutions, are pillars of a healthy society, the trustees of Kripalu have a unique opportunity to help remedy the root cause of society’s ills. Kripalu has as its heritage and core competency the oldest and most comprehensive system of personal integration known to man: The art and science of yoga.
The challenge for us as trustees is to take this legacy as a foundation and use it to build not just a new institution, but an entirely new kind of institution: one that aims at solving problems, as Einstein points out, with a new consciousness. For example, how do we help awaken the best of the human spirit: the ability to love, to connect, to integrate, to heal, and to bring forth new life in all dimensions of human activity? How do we foster a center that can hold during tumultuous times? How do we actually make a difference in people’s consciousness? And once touched, how do we inspire them to actively make a difference in the world?
Meta: from the Greek meaning “beyond, more comprehensive, more highly developed.”
Kripalu has spent the last thirty years creating a foundation for a new kind of institution, the meta-university: A meta-university takes the existing concept of the academic university and moves it beyond to another more comprehensive, more highly developed aim: raising the consciousness of those involved with it. The original aim of universities could be characterized as a place where you go to find your place in the universe. Over time this aim has been diminished to the point where universities are a place where you go to find your place in the job market. Our aim is to go farther, be bolder, and make a fundamental difference in the way humans live.
Thriving: to grow vigorous or flourish, to prosper, to progress toward a goal despite or because of circumstances.
The Kripalu meta-university’s aim will be helping the world community experience the aim of yoga: a state of integration, vitality, wholeness and fulfillment. We will steer our collective efforts by what produces thriving in individuals, the family, the community, society, the planet—all at the same time—and also by the opportunities, threats, and management realities we face day by day. We will devote our energy to fostering this change of consciousness for those people and populations that become interested in such an opportunity by offering developmental programming to the young, the mature, the aging, the healthy, and the sick. We will promulgate ancient wisdom and traditional practices, as well as modern approaches and new scientific inquiry.
core principles
The spiritual path I teach is not a sectarian creed or point of view. It is the performance of skillful actions that lead one to the direct realization of truth. Truth cannot belong to any one race, sect or nation. It does not recognize such narrow distinctions and makes itself available to the whole world. True, aspirants are of different natures and resort to various doctrines and practices to progress along the path. But one who completes the process of yoga sees that the systematic practice of various disciplines leads to the same place. In the end, all yogas lead to one great yoga.
—Swami Kripalu
Institutions are guarantors of values and often assume a sectarian and dogmatic stance that undermines their intention to create greater harmony within society. This can be seen most clearly in organized religions that espouse the highest values of unity and togetherness but act to divide the world into hostile factions.
Currently there is no non-sectarian yoga institution whose stated purpose is the promotion of all approaches that make us more alive, powerful, and fulfilled as humans. We understand yoga to be inherently non-sectarian in that it recognizes any philosophy or practices that reliably produce vitality, power, and fulfillment for self and other. Rather than being guided by belief or dogma, yoga is scientific and empirical, validating each approach based on its actual results.
While scientific, yoga also recognizes the profound role that individual differences play in life, and that anyone’s search for truth must be a highly personal inquiry. External results can only be assessed in the context of an individual’s life and may change as they grow and mature. Thus the path to self-mastery may look different from person to person and evolve over the various stages of a person’s life. It is only in the context of a non-sectarian approach that we can further a Kripalu approach to yoga, avoid the pitfalls of grandiosity and insularity, and produce the integration of self and society that we seek. History shows that narrow sects never make a significant inroad in society without broadening out to include the whole.
A whole person is someone who has both walked with God and wrestled with the devil.
—Carl Jung
One of the key insights of yoga is that consciousness cannot be changed without corresponding changes in the entire gestalt of who we are: body, mind, emotions and spirit. In yoga this developmental process is referred to as “embodiment”, i.e. change that is wholly integrated on all levels. Our meta-university aims at this whole-person development; mining both our divinity and our demons to fuel the alchemy of energetic growth and success in life.
As trustees we cannot bring this meta-university into reality without practicing its core values in our lives and especially in our dialogue with one another. As top leaders of the organization, our example sets the tone. Our relationships must be authentic and our dialogue rigorous so that our work together creates the same experience for us that we hope to offer our students, customers, and staff. This commitment is what makes our undertaking both radical and exciting. In yoga, it is a truism that the end goal must be present in the beginning, as the fruit is present in the seed.
Yoga’s three foundational descriptions can help inform not only our vision but also our practice. In the ancient texts, yoga is defined as
1. Skillfulness in action: the ability to act dynamically in ways that reliably produce more life force or thriving
2. Equilibrium: the capacity to sustain mental focus, confront unconscious habits, and tolerate the consequences of being ourselves
3. The cessation of the modifications of the mind, which allows us to see life as it is without fear, fantasy, or distortion.
Our bedrock principle—the idea upon which the meta-university can be built—is that we embody the discipline of yoga by acting skillfully, being our authentic selves, and confronting our biases and fears as we work together in pursuit of truth. All of these practices combine to generate more life for all concerned: trustees, patrons, staff, students, volunteers, vendors, the local community and the environment. Swami Kripalu called this Sanatana Dharma, the perennial wisdom. This is the noble experiment we are heirs to, and the great opportunity we have to make a difference with the lives we have been given.
mission
Don’t worry about what the world wants from you, worry about what makes you come more alive. Because what the world really needs are people who are more alive. Your real job is to increase the color and zest of your life.
—Lawrence Leshan
The primary goal of this meta-university is to promote yoga as a basis for a revitalized society. We do that by enabling people to experience and practice the integrated functioning of their whole being. When this happens, people access greater power, skillfulness, and leadership in their individual lives and thus society and all its members are enriched.
We must pay particular attention to developing core structures, personnel, work norms, and relationships that facilitate and produce thriving and integrated functioning now and into the future.
strategies
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
—Henry David Thoreau
The easiest empirical marker by which to steer our unfolding mission is to assess thriving in the lives we live and the lives we touch. We can steer our actions to produce thriving, but even if successful not all things will appear to thrive all the time. Sometimes in order to produce more vitality in a tree, the gardener prunes some of its branches as well as feeding its roots. As we bring the meta-university into being, our challenge will be to build on the strong foundations of our roots, while at the same time taking decisive and courageous action where change is called for and new opportunities present themselves.
There are three primary strategies for realizing the mission and vision:
* Strengthen the core
* Build the institution
* Make a difference in the world.
These strategies are, in one sense, sequential (or at least hierarchical). However they are more appropriately viewed as developmental or organic capacities. Organic development proceeds with sudden jumps and plateaus; we’re often surprised when a child suddenly develops new skills or shoots up seemingly overnight. Organizations grow in the same way. While the strategies as laid imply predictable direction and growth, the reality is that our journey will be filled with surprises and serendipity.
tactical implications
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.
—Carlyle
strengthen the core
1. Develop enlivened leadership in both staff and board capable of producing extraordinary results in life.
2. Develop a sustainable business model.
3. Develop a board and staff culture that is inherently developmental. This implies fierce and unyielding dedication to authentic relationships and rigorous dialogue. Revamping the hiring and recruitment processes is a key dimension of this effort.
4. Develop a Kripalu approach to hatha yoga (traditional postures and breathing) that integrates its past, honors its future, and thrives in the marketplace.
5. Invest in and develop the KYTA network, YTT graduates, and overall professional training curriculum.
6. Re-design all information systems so that the right information is collected, disseminated, and acted upon.
7. Re-design the Kripalu volunteer program so the results produced match up with our bedrock principles, vision, and mission. Continuously invent new ways for master teachers of yoga to thrive in connection with the institution.
8. Create a future vision and master plan for the main building and property that reflects our bedrock principles, vision, and mission, and allows us to deal skillfully with the current short-term facility challenges.
build the institution
1. Develop a broader, deeper program of philanthropy to realize our vision of a new institution, a vision that cannot be met by operating income alone.
2. Develop a wellness center with a therapeutic component to promote the healing power of yoga and integrative medicine.
3. Create college-level immersion programs in service of developing the integrated leaders of tomorrow and ensuring that the wisdom of our elders is successfully passed on to the next generation.
4. Be continuously on the lookout for new ways for people outside the institution to do their work in the world in a virtuous cycle with the institution.
5. Aim our programmatic initiatives to increase national profile and enhance institutional prestige.
6. Fulfill the vision for the main facility outlined in the master plan.
7. Increase the secular profile and decrease the sectarian profile of the institution in order to create greater access to the institution for more people.
8. Develop a network of relationships with other institutions and individuals (universities, hospitals, political leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.) that can enhance the institutional profile in mainstream culture.
make a difference in the world
1. Develop programs, meetings, and symposia aimed at changing paradigms with large application in the worlds of yoga, medicine, mental health, the arts, and society at large.
2. Develop programs that reach underserved populations (e.g., the Teaching for Diversity program).
3. Aim our programming at long-term developmental engagements with people so that our impact is lasting and deep (e.g., develop a thousand-hour yoga teachers’ curriculum and a long-term advanced Ayurveda practitioner certificate).
4. Find ways to support our professional graduates so they thrive in the world.
5. Design our web relationships with our customers, our graduates, the yoga world, and society at large to leverage technology as a means of manifesting our mission in the world.
6. Create a product development and publishing effort that skillfully advances our bedrock principles and mission to a mass audience.
7. Carry out research activities that validate the effects of yoga and expand the applications of yoga to all of the aims of life.
Each of these tactical efforts also contains numerous sub-tactics that further break down into discreet departmental objectives and cross-departmental projects.
conclusion
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
—Mohandas K.Gandhi
Because we strive to demonstrate and transmit yoga, the future we are pursuing is not a goal but a process whose outcome remains, in a fundamental way, invisible. On one hand, we are very definitely steering by principles and vision and like any conventional organization we have clear and explicit tactical thinking about how to realize this shared vision. But, on the other hand, we are attempting to embody yoga and the discipline we employ is based on allowing life to interact with us to create new futures as yet hidden.
We are therefore more focused on getting the DNA of the organization right, than working to manifest a particular future. In other words who we are is more important than what we accomplish. The true measure of our success is not the size of our endowment, or the square footage of our buildings, but the effect we have on those who work with us, and ultimately our impact on society.
As trustees, the task before us is more complex and demanding than those faced by our peers at other institutions. The radical nature of this perspective makes a narrow conventional interaction around the institution’s future problematic. If we follow such a conventional model we will miss the central point: our endeavor is itself yoga. The only way for all parties to truly participate in the institution’s future is to embody the discipline of yoga together, authentically bringing all that God has given us— meaning our full authentic selves—into a rigorous, intentional, creative, intimate, and developmental effort to bring the gift of yoga to more people.
Most important, the only way to bring yoga to more people is to bring more yoga to ourselves.
To be a warrior is to learn how to be genuine in every moment of our life.
—Chogyam Trungpa
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