The Diamond Cutter

March 30th, 2011 . Posted in business, money, relationships 46 Comments »
Tags: Buddhist, business, success

The central lesson of The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life by Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally is a bit like the Golden Rule. Remember that one? Goes something like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Yes, it’s just like that, but then if the Golden Rule added, “because that is creating what will be done unto you”.

It sounds to me like the concept of karma explained in a different way, the Tibetan Buddhist way. It explains a mechanism for karma, that by doing the actions, especially with awareness of what you are doing, you plant seeds in your mind. The seeds grow and eventually ripen and bring you the fruits.

Geshe Michael Roach, author of the main part of the book, is a Buddhist monk who lived in a monastery in intensive training for 12 years after college until his teacher told him to go out into the “real world,” into business. So he continued to live in the monastery in New Jersey (who else finds the idea of a monastery in NJ hilarious?) and commuted to the diamond district in New York City, where he helped build a new diamond company into a hundred million dollar business using Buddhist principles.

Part of the book is like a memoir (my second-favorite book genre) and it is well written. I never thought I’d be interested in knowing how diamonds are cut or anything else about the diamond business, but I found it fascinating, and yet not detracting from the idea of the book, the practical principles by which we can become wealthy and improve our lives in other ways too.

This is a business book that explains convincingly that all success in business is a result of the kindness you have done to others. That means that all those mean bastards out there making a killing are simply reaping the seeds they have sown in the past, and that current seeds of their greed and selfishness will not bring them continued fortune.

The book explains how you can control it all due to the Buddhist principle of emptiness, the “hidden potential of things”. Objects and persons have this quality too. Nothing is either all good or all bad; instead it all depends how you look at it. And every problem can be an opportunity if you get in touch with its emptiness.

The Diamond Cutter is the kind of book to read again and again. I know I have not absorbed or even remembered most of the advice in here, so I plan to come back to it at some point, and also read the sequel, Karmic Management. There is much advice to work on, like refraining from gossip with the result that people take your input seriously. Like helping others succeed in their jobs, which plants seeds for success in your own career. And like supporting others in their love relationships, which plants seeds for growing your own. Sometimes the work can be a challenge, like when you’re sitting across from the lovey-dovey couple in the coffee shop and trying to find them adorable rather than annoying. But practice makes perfect or, until then at least, better.