Is Spirituality Compatible With Business?

August,

Question: Is there a contradiction in wanting or needing to make money (even if supporting yourself – and I’m not condemning or even judging but questioning if there is a contradiction) in attempting to teach buddhism-based transformation for money? You talked about the Mepkin monks running that farm with monks who are elderly, some in the infirmary, and those who work only do so four hours a day or so. How does it get done, and with what money? Is that not the rub?

Jim

Good question Jimmy,

I just finished a paper on that very subject, titled Service and Selflessness, a management approach that lets success happen rather than makes it happen.

A friend asked me how he could make sure his second marriage worked after failing at his first. I told him that the reason why his first marriage failed is because he was a businessman who happened to have a wife. If he wanted his new marriage to work he had to become a husband who happens to have a business. It was not something he could intellectually learn. It was something he had to become by changing habits of thinking. I told him that when he made this transformation he would find that his business would actually be better. Being willing to take this advice and act on it is what I define as Faith. Faith is acting a certain way with the faith that things will work out in ways you can’t foresee or even perhaps understand.

The secret to the monks’ success is that they are spiritual people who happen to have a business, because they are human beings who have to eat, and part of their mission is to offer hospitality to others, like you and me. As for money, I have no problems with money. Money is just a way of storing energy for future use. Money is a tool. All the trouble starts when you start “doing spirituality” for the money. Are you a money-driven person who happens to use spirituality to get it? Or are you a spiritual guy who happens to use money to serve your mission? This distinction is everything.

I was talking to a Wall Street fund manager recently. He asked a lot of great philosophical questions. Finally he asked me for my advice. I said, “You know, the whole time we’ve been talking I keep using business examples to illustrate spirituality and you keep making spiritual points to focus the discussion on business. It is clear to me that your heart is really in business and you see spirituality as a way to be better at business and make more money. If you want to make spiritual progress you have to reverse this equation.”

He grinned at me and said, “You’re right.” He asked me for some books to read and said he’d be in touch. I never heard from him again. My guess is that he is not spiritually hungry enough to make the change. If I was in it for the money the easy thing to do would’ve been taking this guy on as a client and helping him apply spirituality to his business problems. I’m sure he would’ve paid through the nose for that kind of advice. I told him the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and everything else will come unto you.” What Jesus said is true whether you are Christian or not and my life bears witness to that, to my own infinite gratitude. But to live that way, to put Service and Selflessness at the center of one’s life takes more faith than most people can muster. Sounds good, we think, but we can’t take that risk. “I’ll make a lot of money and then I’ll focus on spirituality.” We’re like mobsters. Once we have all we want materially, then we turn to spirituality because now we want respectability. This doesn’t work for mobsters or for us.

August

PS: Great story that touches on these themes is Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”