Perhaps the two most important things in my life are my business and my spirituality.
After realizing that my business and my spirituality are kind of the same thing recently, with my spirituality being the primary thing that supports my business, and my business being the main expression of spirit through me, I’ve become very interested in finding ways to better understand how the two are entwined. With this in mind I got around to reading a classic on spirituality and business, recommended to me by a teacher years ago when I thought business was bad, and written long before this kind of thing got trendy.
Michael Roach (below left) went from being a Tibetan monk to the director of a large diamond business in New York. He made many millions of dollars using Buddhist principles which he outlays in the book “The Diamond Cutter – The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life.” He stresses the importance of mental imprints in creating your future – essentially a down to earth way of explaining karma and Buddhist ethics. The book is both poetically metaphorical and eminently practical, drawing from both his real life experience and ancient texts.
I’m upsetting a lot of my liberal friends at the moment by claiming that greed may yet turn out to be good – though what I’m imagining will look very different form Michael Douglas in Wall Street and be more about generosity…
Once we’ve all been through the grinder of the latest downturn (all things change, we get old, sick and die – Dharma 101) a reformed, integral, multiple bottom-line capitalism may do what 10,000 chanting hippies never could, and get us out of this global mess -environmentally, economically, socially, mentally and spiritually.
Do I believe what Geshe Mike says…maybe. Do I experience it? Yes and it’s the future. Recommended, as is anything by leading-edge mindful business guru Fred Kofman.
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So What: You reap what you sow
Business So What: Give to get
