Are You A Buddha Or A Badass?

Here's a question for you. Would you rather be the type of person who is spiritual and in flow and having those persistent feelings of oneness with the universe, or would you rather be the type of person who is absolutely crushing it at money and your career? And if you think of these two as archetypes, you can think of one as the Buddha and the other one as the badass. The question is, can you be a Buddha and a badass? And this question brings up this whole debate on why is it that some people talk about hustle and hard work as a means to success, while others talk about flow and surrender. What is the truth? What if both of these ideas are fundamentally wrong? This is why there seems to be such a polar opposite between two different approaches to work. You might remember the recent New York Times article on Elon Musk and how he was burning himself out. He couldn't get to sleep without Ambien, he was working excessive number of hours. And the article from Arianna Huffington telling Musk that he has to relax. And Musk's reply on Twitter saying that there is no way he could cease to work hard because of how big his mission in the world is. Now, what if both of them were represent these two sides, badass and Buddha? And what if there's a way to reconcile these? So I used to be flipping between both these sides. I'd be in periods of my life where I wasn't concerned about work, I was concerned about self actualization. And there'd be periods in my life where I was obsessed with work to the point where I didn't really have time to relax. During these times of life, I always had a mentor I could call on, and his name is Sri Kumar Rao. And I kind of think of Sri Kumar Rao as my personal Yoda. Every time I'm going through a distressing dilemma, I call up Sri and he just sheds wisdom that blows me away. So here's the distinction between badass and Buddha. You see in integral theory, which is a theory of human development, it says that human beings exist in different stages in terms of how they view the world. And. And there's a particular stage called the orange stage. And when you're in this stage, you're operating like Wall street, you're operating like Silicon Valley. This is the rational, materialistic stage. This is about hard work, getting wealthy, hustle. And there's a stage evolution. Beyond that, and certain people move to this next stage, evolution. They're called greens. Greens are about enjoying life. Greens are about being one with the Environment Greens were the people in the 1960s that were labeled as hippies because they were anti war, they were anti commercialization, and all they seemed to want to do was relax with music and smoke up a joint. Now, in our world, we tend to see both of these levels as quite different. You have the orange materialistic, the green peaceful hippie. But in human development theory, there's a level above that and that level above that and is the level that we sometimes refer to as integral. The integral level is where you want to move up to if orange is badass when you talk about hard work and hustle and green is Buddha when you talk about flow and surrender. The integral level is where you want to move up to. And at the integral level, you integrate both. You take the badassery and you take the Buddha and you make them one. Ken Wilber, the famous philosopher, wrote about this in a powerful essay called Egolessness. He argued that the great Buddhas or saints of the world, from Jesus to Muhammad to Padmasambhava, in his words, were not feeble minded milquetoasts. They were movers and shakers who rattled the world with the power of their mission from subduing entire continents to bullwhips in the temple. And he goes on to say that the great myth of the Buddha level or the spiritual level is that you have to resign yourself from the world. Likewise, the great myth of the orange level of Silicon Valley and Wall street is that hustle and hard work is the secret to success. It's not, and that's a bullshit rule. Where you want to go is to integrate the two to move to that next level, that integral level where you can be a badass Buddha. And I found that when we can operate from that level, that is when we do our best work. That when work is meaningful and fun. So how do you move to that integral level where you can be Buddha and badass? Well, I decided to bring Sri Kumar Rao, the famous MBA professor and my mentor on a master class. And Sri Kumar Rao is phenomenal at how he explains this because he has become one of the top MBA teachers in the world by integrating the wisdom of the east with modern American MBA program. In this masterclass, Rao is going to talk about five things that will help you ascend this level. The first thing is labels. He teaches you to reframe the world so there's no such thing as good and no such thing as bad. The second thing he teaches you is to understand the concept of the benevolent universe. When you start to think of the universe as benevolent you, you start operating in a different way. The third thing is non attachment. It doesn't mean not having goals, it means having goals. But, and this is the tricky bit, being completely unattached to the outcome of your goal. The fourth thing is a very simple concept. It's how to elevate your states of positivity and happiness on a consistent basis. And the final thing is reframing. It's how do we create grit? How do we create perseverance in our life? By being able to go beyond the bad things that happen to us by reframing them. So if you would like to understand how to take your work and start integrating elements of the Buddha within your work, I think you're really going to enjoy this master class.