Diamond Cutter The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life

This book is the story of how I built the Diamond Division at Andin International, using principles culled from the ancient wisdom of Buddhism, from nothing into a worldwide operation generating many millions of dollars per year. I did not do so alone, nor were my views the only ones we followed , but I can say that the majority of the decisions and policies in our division during my tenure as vice president were driven by the principles you will find in this book. What, in a nutshell, are these principles? We can divide them into three. The first principle is that the business should be successful: that it should make money. There is a belief prevalent in America and othe Western countries that being successful, making money, is somehow wrong for people trying to lead a spiritual life. In Buddhism though it is not the money which is in itself wrong; in fact, a person with greater resources can do mcuh more good in the world than one without. The question rather is how we make the money; whether we understand where it comes from and how to make it continue to come, and whether we keep a healthy attitude about the money. The whole point is to make the money in a clean an honest way, to understand clearly where it comes from so it doesn't stop, and to maintain a healthy view toward it while we have it. As long as we do these things, making money is completely consistent with a spiritual way of life; in fact, it becomes a part of a spiritual way of life. The second principle is that we should enjoy the money; that is we should learn how to keep our minds and bodies in good health while we make the money. The activity of creating wealth should not exhaust us so much physically or mentally that we cannot enjoy the wealth. A business-person who ruins his health doing business is defeating the very purpose of the business. The third principle is that you should be able to look back at your business, at the end, and honestly say that your years of doing business have had some meaning. The end of every business enterprise we engage in, and in fact the end of our lives, must come to every person who ever does business. And at the most important part of business -- at the end, when we are looking back on all we have achieved -- we should see that we have conducted ourselves and our business in a way that had some lasting meaning, that left some good mark in our world. To summarize, the goal of business, and of ancient Tibetan wisdom, and in fact of all human endeavor, is to enrich ourselves -- to achieve prosperity, both outer and inner. We can enjoy this prosperity only if we maintain a high degree of physical and mental health. And over the length of our lives we must seek ways to make this prosperity meaningful in a larger sense. This is the lesson of what we accomplished in the Diamond Division of Andin International, and it is a lesson which can be learned and applied by anyone, whatever his or her background or beliefs.Roach, Geshe Michael is the author of 'Diamond Cutter The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life' with ISBN 9780385497909 and ISBN 0385497903.