PNTV: The Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach (#95)

Foreign. Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got the Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach. Awesome book. Subtitle to the Diamond Cutter is the Buddha on managing your business and your life. So Geshe Michael Roach. First, Geshe is kind of like a PhD in. In Tibetan philosophy, if you will. He was the first Westerner to get the Geshe degree from Sera Monastery in India. Good guy. The backstory to the book is he was a Tibetan monk living in a monastery in New Jersey, going to work in New York in a diamond business, applying the lessons from a dime, a Tibetan sutra called the Diamond Cutter. Really cool. And no one at his office, at least in the beginning, knew that he was a Tibetan monk living in a monastery. He'd just go and rock it and apply these principles in the practice of building a diamond business as the head of their sales department. Really cool. So he tells that story about the building of the business and ties it to all the great Buddhist ideas from this sutra, the Diamond Cutter. So first, the diamond cutter. Why is it called the diamond cutter? Really quickly. The diamond is one of the hardest, most perfect pure elements or pure substances there is in nature, right? It's one of the closest to the absolute in beauty, in strength and durability, all these different things. But it's not the absolute. It can be cut. The diamond can be cut. And. And this is. Can't be cut by anything in nature, but it can be cut by this sutra, by these higher truths. And the foundation of those truths is the idea that, as you know, in Buddhism, as you may know, in Buddhism, there's a concept called emptiness. Everything is empty of meaning. This was the coolest description I've heard of it, where he basically says, everything is empty. And that's not a nihilistic, negative thing. It's actually an incredibly optimistic thing. And within that emptiness, there's a hidden potential to interpret any event in the most positive, extraordinary, loving, spacious perspective possible. So again, quickly on emptiness, and I've talked about this in a bunch of different notes, but the idea is that anything that happens in our lives is empty of meaning. Oftentimes we think that because someone dies or because a business dies or because we get laid off or because a relationship ends or because we get hit by a car on the way to work, we think that that event has inherent meaning. Either good or we could say those are all potentially bad, right? We could say we get married, we win the lottery, we do this, this, this and this. That would be Supposedly good. But the fact is, all of those are empty. The event itself, itself doesn't cause a particular emotional response. If it did, then every single person, every single time they experience something would have the exact same response. And the fact is, not everybody gets depressed and doesn't get out of bed for three months when they get laid off. Some people look at it as an opportunity. They look at it and say, well, that sucks and I need to pay the bills. And I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to really, really strengthen my practices, train harder than I have ever, Journal more as I look for the next job or I look to create the next business or whatever it is that they're going to do. The event was neutral. It didn't have meaning. It was empty. And what the idea here is, is that we have the ability to bring to that emptiness our highest potential. I'm sorry, the highest potential of that given situation. Isn't that cool? And that becomes our practice. So for me, that's what I strive to do day by day and moment by moment, especially when I'm feeling frustrated and stuck. What's the highest potential within this irritating event? What can I see from this perspective that I can bring to it? And he says one of the key things that helps us more consistently see the hidden potential of an event. The hidden potential. That's the beautiful phrase he uses again and again. What helps us see the hidden potential is planting positive seeds, making what he says imprints on our consciousness, the kind of positive imprints on our consciousness that make it more likely that we're going to see the hidden positive potential in any given experience, any given situation, particularly the challenging ones. Now, imprints are kind of like karma. You know, if you plant seed thoughts or you do certain actions that are negative, you're likely to get more of that negativity back. If you're a rude jerk, you're probably going to have a lot of experiences with other rude jerks. If I'm really kind and benevolent and generous and I give that energy to my experiences, the same person that you, if you're a rude jerk, might experience as rude jerkness. That same person might be really kind and benevolent to me or to you, if you're kind. Really powerful idea. But the idea here is that we want to imprint our consciousness with goodness, the technical word for it. And we know we talk about this in all the different notes, all the different practices we can do to kind of pull out the weeds of the negative thinking. We don't want to plant seeds of Negativity that are going to come to fruition. We want to plant seeds of positive energy that will come to fruition and give us a stronger foundation to see the hidden positive potential. Another thing he says that I talk about in the beginning here is the idea that Buddha is looked at as kind of this stout, chubby, fat dude who just sat there and kind of had a shaved head and smiled. He says, no, no, no. Imagine the Buddha as a tall, regal prince, which is what the Buddha was. Siddhartha Gautama is who the Buddha was before he became the Buddha. He was the son of essentially a Nepalese king. He was a prince, right? And he left that life in search of the keys to happiness. But he was a tall. He says, think of him as a tall, slender, graceful, strong prince, and don't think of him as just talking to people who chanted Om into a wall. The greatest students of Buddhism in his day were effectively the business equivalent, the business leaders of his day. Royalty, the kings and queens and princes and princesses, the people who were strong enough to run entire countries and economies and had that same drive that business people have today, which is why this is all about business. Buddha applied to business, and all the ideas in here are applied to our business lives. He says as well that business people are the perfect people to go for it hard and intensely in the spiritual domain. He says it takes the same intensity and perseverance that it takes to succeed in business, to succeed spiritually. And then a lot of business people kind of poo poo it. And he says, no, no, no. You're perfectly qualified for the spiritual aspirations. And in fact, those who are only in the spiritual need to round it out and need to bring a level of intensity and persistence that they sometimes get rid of, thinking they're going to be more spiritual. See, he's all about marrying the two and making in our common era our spirituality and our capitalism integrated. It's not either or. They're an integrated. Yes, and I talk about that a lot more in the note. We're already rocking some great ideas. Intensity and perseverance. Emptiness. The hidden potential imprints. He's got a great idea. Spend time in silence every day. Every day, 15 to 20 minutes. He says, huge idea. I talk about that all the time. He says, at the end of it, the Tibetans have a practice. They spend a couple of minutes before they enter the busy day imagining their most powerful, radiantly alive, compassionate, beautiful versions of themselves, right? And they call that shooting the arrow. There's actually a phrase in Tibetan or pen patong. I'm not sure how you say it, but it's shooting the arrow. They set their intention for the day. And he says that's a very strong imprint on your consciousness. You want to get in the habit of doing that. Shoot the arrow. So do your meditation best at the same time of the day. That's how you get consistency, he says. And I agree. In my own practice, I've seen that. Shoot the arrow. See your ideal. I love doing that at the end of my practice. Couple other big ideas here. Mental gardening, he says, that's your second job, cleaning out your mental garden. And finally, he talks about. He talks about a lot of other stuff, finally, but one other big idea. He says you need to spend at least a week, a year in what he calls your forest circle, where you go there with no books, nothing but a journal, no tv, no distractions, and you imagine your ideal life. And then when you go back to reality and you think all those ideas that were awesome that you came up with are impossible, do them anyway. It's an awesome idea. We talk about it more in the note. Then he says, finally, the ultimate wealth is giving yourself in service to the world. Let's never forget that business is a vehicle. Wealth is a vehicle. Prosperity is a vehicle. It's not a destination. We want to give ourselves to the world most fully. That's ultimate wealth. And that's the diamond cutter in a nutshell. Hope you dug it. Have an awesome day and look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.