Thanks The Ruminant and Matt

Hi Lurker

Thanks for an interesting question. You are definitely an evolved soul to be asking such questions at a young age. Good on yah mate.

I cant speak for anyone else but for myself here. See if my thoughts resonate with you. I am not a Buddhist nor do I follow all of its teachings. I understand and respect the values of this religion but they don’t define me at work or outside.

I have worked in both big and small organisations at various levels and now I work for myself with a small but flourishing team. We do follow the modern day business rules but with a twist. Everything that you talk about is correct in a sense. The focus in most big or small enterprises is outwards towards money building or expansion. However, if you look around there are many organisations, which are using spiritual values to provide a very good service and are also making loads of money.

Money is a sweet and necessary outcome of having a good business.

There are 2 ways to look at the modern business values. I will share my view.

1. Be competitive – not with the outside world but with yourself. When you are trying to better yourself each day, you wont need to compete with others as you realise that we all have something unique to offer. No one is going to be good at everything and no one is going to offer you nothing.

2. Offer something others don’t – absolutely. This is called product differentiation. If you are always trying to better yourself, you will be able to produce a product, which is a unique concept for your company. For example, a better service, a better computer system, better communication system. You bring your own midas touch.

3. Turn a profit / reinvest – in business you have to. Without money, you cant fulfil survival needs of individuals or nations. Who will pay for your education, clothes, medicals, etc ? I am not sure why so many people try to make money the evil master. It is not the money, which causes issues in our lives. Money only accentuates our qualities. If you are a dick head and if you get more money, you will become a bigger dick head. If you are a generous person with human values, more money will bring that out even more. Do you get the drift ?

4. Fight for your job – this is a personal value, which often becomes enmeshed with the organisational values. Depending on what sort of leader you have and what values a company follows, you will have to fight for a job (favouritism, politics etc) or you can work your way through different positions in a fair and equitable way.

Many good people fail to progress in their careers due to their own personal values and because they are not able to go past the politics, which exists (and will continue as long as there are 2 humans in a room). This is a very deep concept and you need to speak to a few people about it.

5. Aim to grow in the company – Absolutely. We have not been put on this Earth to be satisfied with just food, shelter and sex. If we were, we would be similar to our 4 legged friends or other legged animal friends. A person who is constantly evolving and expanding is a person who will be adaptable to any situation. This planet is all about change. Look around for proof.

You can change in two ways – you can either grow upwards or you can shrink (or become stagnant). When we are growing, we are in sync with the nature and its natural flow. The question arises – how do you grow professionally with spiritual values ? By working on self rather than others. A person who is able to focus on themselves and the tasks at hand 100 %, has to have maximum creativity. It cannot be any other way. If you are maximally creative, what will you produce ? Absolute gems.

6. Be better than the competition – Yes. Be better than YOU from yesterday. Each day, you should ask a question – Am I better than yesterday ? If your answer is yes, no one can stop your success and money flow. If you say no on a regular basis, you know your answer.

7. Failures and sometimes you have to fail thousands of times – Again, it all depends on your mind-set. Some people fail one time and it breaks their confidence and they feel worthless. Nothing happens of these people unfortunately.

Someone who takes the positive out of a failure succeeds in both personal and professional life. Why ? Because this person is constantly trying to find ways to be better than yesterday. Some very successful people have failed 1000s of times to produce a gem of a product, which has revolutionised the world and brought people like us together to be able to talk like this. Can you imagine, if they had given up, would we be flying today or talking to each other or would our babies have survived past their first year ?

8. I think a lot of confusion arises for new-beeies like yourself in the professional world as you do not have the relevant experience to understand the meaning of acceptance, letting go, striving to have no desires, forgiveness, love, understanding, mindfulness in a true sense. You may be taking the meaning of these words literally. A person who is working on self rather than others is following the values above in every way but is also progressing in life to greater heights. Look at Dalai Lama. Look at Pope. Look at Tolle. Look at Oprah. Look at Obama. Look at some of the CEOs of major companies in the world today.

9. You ARE INDEED awesome right now. You need to come to this realisation to progress spiritually, personally or professionally in life. You indeed do not lack anything. Now is indeed all that we have. Again, you may be confusing the interpretation of these sentences.

To say one thing (or read something in scriptures) and to feel something in the core of our hearts are 2 different things. By telling you that you are awesome as you are, you do not lack anything and live in the now – are you able to do that and live your life that way ? Can the other 6 billion people do it ? NO. Why not ? Because we have a MIND. A very logical mind and Logic has no end. This is where the interpretation differs for us and all the confusion arises.

To reach that state of knowingness, you need to go through the normal steps of evolving. This requires – be better, work smarter, improve, create your destiny, become in control of your mind etc.

To reach that state whereby your mind looses its logic is the day when you will be able to live in a true Dalai Lama style – the sweet spot, the balanced state.

Until then, stop getting confused with all the questions and get back to reality of self 🙂 There is an excellent book by the name: Your soul at work by Nicholas Weiler and Stephen Schoonover if you need more answers.

Hope this helps,

Jasmine

Lurker,

There is some good advice, and some not so good advice on Buddhism posted in the responses here.

I want to tell you that the best thing to do is follow your life path.

No one pretends to be something they are not who follows the Buddhist path.

Your journey is about constant polishing and refining of the soul in a positive light.

Honestly, the corporate world is very cut throat because there are many people in it who have lost a sense of direction and humanity.

They lose balance and are overly focused on ego rather than positive products or services that impact society in positive life changing ways.

Being Buddhist is not about having the attitude of a 1960’s hippie and practicing meditation under trees all day long.

Please find a Buddhist sect that you are comfortable with and also look for a mentor who will help guide you.

“Honestly, the corporate world is very cut throat because there are many people in it who have lost a sense of direction and humanity.

They lose balance and are overly focused on ego rather than positive products or services that impact society in positive life changing ways.”

This is something I’ve often wondered about. There are people in this world who have billions in their bank accounts, just lying there. I can’t quite grasp what would make someone want to hoard money like that. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to. I’m saying that I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. All I can think of is some kind of twist in the basic security, and a subsequent obsession with having more money. If I had that much money, there are so many things I would want to invest in and see what comes out of it.

The business practices mentioned seem to be mostly spawning from fear, which is why one should ask, are they actually that good? I am sure that there are a lot of practices that are like that for an actual reason, which might not be apparent right away, but I’m also sure that there are a lot of things that people do just because it has always been done that way.

So I guess another advice that could be given is that if you want to be different from others, don’t be guided by fear 🙂

There are already so many new kind of possibilities to make a living or start a business, that I’m not sure if the practices mentioned are that modern day anymore, or are already going out of style. You don’t even have to go to a bank to get a loan to start a business. You could get crowdsourcing for your idea. You don’t have to rely on traditional media to get people to notice you and invest a ton of money in marketing. I’m not saying that it’s super easy to get noticed using new media with no budget, but it is possible to be noticed if you make an effort. Point is, you don’t have to go along with the establishment if you want to achieve something in the business world.

Also, being genuine seems to catch people’s attention. We are so used to the marketing jargon, that if anyone comes across as genuine, we pay attention. People want real experiences, which is why it’s ironic that we drown ourselves in plastic crap and meaningless entertainment. It can’t last forever like this.

But I’m starting to digress from the topic 🙂 Except, I’ll still want to share an article I have been reading now. I had to check if Steve Jobs really was a Buddhist, and came across this piece of writing. I thought it was quite interesting, not from the perspective of what kind of person Steve Jobs really was, but from the perspective of approaching work and product design with certain simplicity and honesty. To pay attention to even the parts of your work that can’t be seen by others. I’m not terribly impressed by the quality of Apple products, but that’s unimportant. The idea is what really stuck with me and it’s something I would love to practice myself: to approach your work (paid or unpaid) as a craft, and make it something beautiful, even if it’s not all perceived by the eye or there is no direct gain in doing so. There is something about work that has been done with love and care that is hard to describe, but you know it’s valuable.

Anyway, here’s the article: http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/10/28/what-kind-of-buddhist-was-steve-jobs-really/

TR,

“I can’t quite grasp what would make someone want to hoard money like that. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to. I’m saying that I don’t understand the reasoning behind it.”

The same reason people walking on a broken ankle think a lot about their ankle, hoard crutches. Its tough to find a doctor, cast, heal our materialism. So, instead, get lots of tools for the journey of a billion limping steps.

Consider checking out “The Diamond Cutter” a book by Geshe Michael Roach, a Buddhist that explores corporations from the inside. Less “oh, everything is cutthroat”, and more “hmm, what causes what here?”

With warmth,
Matt

Thank you, Matt! That actually sounds really interesting. Sorry, Lurker, for possibly slightly derailing your thread 🙂 I’m just honestly so very interested in the topic.

Like I said, I don’t see any problems combining Buddhism and entrepreneurship (though I’m admittedly not a Buddhist, so I’m probably not the right person to make a comment like that), and I would like to see more of those practices put into use in the business world. Nothing wrong with making a profit, but maximising profits at the cost of the well-being of the workers, as an example, is so very shortsighted and quite horrible. Especially larger businesses have a huge impact on people’s lives and the society in general, so there is so much potential there to make a positive change.

As for your point about the intention, Lurker, I agree. Anything can be done with good intentions or not so good intentions.