Customer Reviews

The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

and I don't end up speechless often.
Since I started reading this book 4 days ago I retold the basics of its lessons to half a dozen friends, and they have been adding their names to the waiting list to borrow it.
This book came into my life at the time when I already reached the level of spiritual understanding needed to put it into practice.
The bottom line of the book (and the buddhist teaching) is that every thing we DO, SAY and THINK, leaves an imprint onto our minds. Good or bad.
The more positive imprints we "stamp" onto our consciousness, the more positive our life's circumstances will be, resulting in more positive experiences.
Most desirable imprints we can plant in our minds, summarized in an 1800 years old poem by an indian master (quoted from the book):

I'll tell you briefly the fine qualities
of those on path of compassion
Giving, and ethics, patience and effort,
concentrating, wisdom, compassion and such.

Giving is giving away what you have,
And ethics is doing good to others.
Patience is giving up feelings of anger,
And effort is joy that increases all good.

Concentration 's one pointed, free of bad thoughts,
And wisdom decides what truth really is.
Compassion's a kind of high intelligence
Mixed deep with love for all living kind.

Giving brings wealth, a good world comes from ethics;
Patience brings beauty, eminence comes from effort.
Concentration brings peace, and from wisdom comes freedom;
Compassion achieves everything we all wish for.

On how to use the knowledge given in Buddha's teaching in everyday life, do read the book. Its going to change your life. Or rather, it will give you tools to start changing your life.
I already started changing mine.

This book is a wonderful story about a Buddhist priest who comes to the New York diamond business and works his way up from the bottom using Buddhist principles anonymously. The business is a great success selling millions and still being true to the most unlikely of business attitudes. It's a great story and it actually rings true. Along the way he talks about a lot of the problems westerners have with classice Buddhist writings.
This book made me rethink the way I deal with the people I work with and my goals in life.
I want all my friends to read this book.

Geshe Michael Roach combines 15 years as an international business executive, with the wisdom accrued by living a life dedicated to spiritual evolution. In fact, his phenomenal success as a business man was directly caused by following the principles outlined in The Diamond Cutter.

This book is an incredible guideline for not only how to be an sucessful, ethical businessperson, but how the world actually works. The point is not the dogmatic notion of virtue, but the logic behind it. Why does generosity lead to wealth? Why does kindness lead to happiness? The key lies in two concepts clearly articulated by Geshe Roach in The Diamond Cutter: Hidden Potential and Mental Imprints.
Read this book if you want to know why you experience your world the way you do, and the speciic causes for creating the business, and the life, that you desire. Learn how to get to the end of your career, and look back and know that it was worth it. This book is highly recommended.

Wow, what a troubling book, wherein the principles of Social Darwinism are twisted with Buddhist philosophy. According to the author, not only does one attain wealth and success by being the smartest, strongest or "fittest"--but by being the most spiritual as well! If only that were true...unfortunately, my life experience in the world of film and business has led me to observe the exact opposite. Let's take this quote from the "Diamond Cutter":

"The greatest business people have a deep inner capacity - they hunger, as we all do, but perhaps more strongly - for a true spiritual life. They have seen more of the world than most of us; they know what it can give them, and what it cannot. They demand a logic in spiritual things; they demand that the method and the results be clear, as clear as the terms in any business deal. Often they have dropped out from an active spiritual life - not because they are greedy or lazy, but simply because no path has measured up to their demands. The Diamond Cutter was literally made for these people - talented, tough and savvy... The wisdom of The Diamond Cutter says that the very people who are attracted to business are exactly the ones who have the inner strength to grasp and carry out the deeper practices of the spirit."

By this rationale, Donald Trump should be one of the most profoundly spiritual human beings on the planet. And the impovershed Buddhist masters of old should be spiritually bankrupt. I am wondering how the author of "The Diamond Cutter" would reconcile his philosophy against the teachings of past Buddhist Masters, such as the following by Ehei Dogen:

"To study the Way, first of all, you learn poverty. After having learned poverty and becoming poor, you will be intimate with the Way. From the time of Shakyamuni, up to the present day, I have never seen or heard of a true student of the Way who possessed great wealth." --Shobogenzo-zuimonki

Or the following from 20th century zen master Kodo Sawaki:

"It's clear what you like: having sex, wining and dining, and making yourself a career without having to make an effort. Running after what you like and running away from what you don't like is what is meant by 'wandering around in the impermanent world'. Even a rat begins to run if you give him an electric shock."

Perhaps that doesn't quite gel with our modern consumerist, "success" oriented culture...and as such, "The Diamond Cutter" may sell more copies by offering needy folks a quick route to fame and fortune. Sad to say, "The Diamond Cutter" is the path to the Dark Side, and directly conflicts with the very foundations of Buddhism. Run a thousand miles from this stuff...

This book looks not from an external and lofty perspective at a business system such as Good to Great nor externally at the competitive process such as the Innovator's Dilemma but looks instead from a personal and inside perspective at the internal process of all business and life as driven by our individual thoughts and actions.

In an ever more complex world where our business challenges demand that we make large and difficult changes, it provides us with the insight for a new kind of control. A control that does not depend on us having and using the power of our position to force change but that enables us to use the power of our control over ourselves to influence change. Any of us that have had this job of changing set behaviours know how hard this is.

The heart of the book is the realization that we do indeed create our own reality. The author explains how, in a chaotic world of change and risk, when we have an awareness and ultimately a control over our thoughts and our behaviour, we have a conscious power over how events unfold for us.

Geshe Michael Roach blends his vast experience as a Buddhist Monk and as an executive in a very successful diamond trading company in New York to give us the teaching and the story that makes this insight real.

The irony is that one of the great texts of Buddhism is called the Diamond Cuttter and his chosen apprenticeship in the world was the diamond business. A business where trust and reputation are central. A business that is all done by word of mouth. A business where the slightest error ruins a stone. A business of illusion where pebbles are made valuable wheen the light is let in by the cutter. A business where a person can become a diamond when their light shines too.

Many of us who are not practising buddhists are aware that a tenet of buddhism is that the world is an illusion. We may laugh at this as we bump into a table, when we are offended by another, let down, betrayed or face a competitive or natural crisis. It is easy to feel that others and events have control over us - in particular in a world that grows more complex everyday. We may seek to "Plan" more effectively and to put more hours of effort in to cope with these ever greater outside powers. But plans, as we have seen in New Orleans, are not enough.

Geshe Michael's blend of anecdote from the diamond business and the wisdom of the "Diamond Cutter" help us see that all of the outside world is in effect neutral. The person who drives me mad is also a person who may be loved by another. My competitor thinks that he is doing the best. Some put their trust in God but he can appear to let us down. President Lincoln in his private writings understood that God could not be on either side of the civil war and had to have a higher unseen purpose. The author gently reminds us that our lives are ours to control and our life is in effect our project and no one else's.

He makes a compelling case that we, by our thoughts and actions, drive the reactions of others and the world upon us. If all he did was to make this statement, then many would not be persuaded. But in this short book, itself a diamond, he builds layer upon layer on this perspective and includes a powerful chapter that only talks about the many types of situation that we all face in business where he shows the reader the flow back from an external event and us. People don't do what I ask of them - am I listening to them and to others?

He shows us that it is not only about being aware of our actions and the impact that they have on others but that it is our thoughts that drive everything. Like a small seed a thought, such as "my mother did not love me", if not dealt with, can grow into a plant and then into a tree that overshadows our life and affects all our reality and our interaction with others. If I keep telling myself that I don't much like John Brown, he will feel this and react accordingly. If I am not aware of my driving because I am churning with rage about something that has happened. I am more likely to have an accident. If I am suspicious of others, I attract crooks into my life and so on.

Your reaction may be "This sounds like mumbo jumbo". Are human fields of energy mumbo jumbo? I wonder. Michael Faraday took this strange field produced by a magnet and found out how to create electricity. Electricity and electro magentism are at the heart of our modern world and yet who could see it 200 years ago? Rupert Sheldrake's ideas of Morphic Resonance suggest that all living beings have fields that drive not only collective behaviour but even the physical shape of related groups. Why would there not be a deep legitimate insight in this Buddhist tenet of reality being a construct? The very basis of Quantum Mechanics is that the observer affects all experiments. This is what Geshe Michael is helping us understand.

Do we not have a field ourselves? Do we not recall entering a room after our parents have argued to "feel" the chill? Or in a Cinema rock with laughter as the audience, as a collective, winds itself up? Have we not as a speaker felt the connection to the room and danced with it? Have we not looked across a room at another and felt the connection? Is this mumbo jumbo?

Conversely who of us that is tasked with change in an organization does not feel the fear that no matter how "powerful" we are on the org chart that we may not get all these recalicitrants to see it our way?

I think that our world is too complex for power of position to work anymore. Even the power of force is not enough to cow a people. Jonathan Schell's book, the Unconquerable World, makes the case that in the 20th century we see the rise of moral power in the lives of men like Gandhi, King, Mandela and Havel. It is their light that moves not only their supporters but their enemies. They operate in conditions where all the cards are stacked against them but their force of character, not the brilliance of their plan or the discipline of their forces, is what helps them prevail. Their selflessness becomes their power.

I, like many of us today, am faced with work that is so complex to be all but overwhelming. I am drawing great strength from this gem of a book. I hope that you will as well.

This is a guidebook to achieving 'success" in the business world through application of perception practices developed by Tibetans. The book is based on sound Buddhist methodology, written by a highly competent and experienced person (geshe, no less).

One potential concern is that some of the suggestions and ideas Roach writes about are about becoming a clever manipulator. Becoming skilled in these practices gives one an edge over fellow humans. Roach himself is controversial, has broken his monk vows, was excommunicated from his order, renounced by his teacher Geshe Thubten Rinchen, and is no loner welcome in Dharamsala. One view of his current situation might be that Roach is pioneering a new, revolutionary Vajrayana path; other views are not so charitable.

This work opens the question of compatibility of vajrayana and business practices. I can understand that Roach is selling the idea that business canbe a 'chop wood-carry water' activity, no different from practice as, say, meditation. Yet, i know of no zen monks or Tibetan masters who actually subscribe to or embody this idea. Modern business is based on profit and ego. Perhaps tantrikas rightfully scorn the traditionalists. Yet the guy who comes to mind is no other than the ultimate scam master, Rajneesh himself. Dangerous territory.

This is wonderful book that clearly shows how every situation in our life emanates from one's state of consciousness. Whatever religion you are, you can benefit from this book. eg.The law of gravity applies to us all!
Spiritual truths are universal even tho stated somewhat differently.
eg. Karma, you sow what you reap, etc.
I really loved the concrete examples Geshe Roach gives us that delineates very down to earth approaches to various business problems and their solutions. So many other books of this genre are so theoretical and abstract, that it is difficult to apply it to one's life life in any appreciable way.
This book also gives us hope that no matter where we are now in our lives, we can always begin to build anew.
I have recommended this book to all my friends!!

Geshe Michael Roach's "The Diamond Cutter" weaves ancient wisdom, contemporary commentary, and real life examples in this enjoyable book about life. Written specifically for businesspeople in the West, the book consists of three stories in one. First, a translation and explanation of the Diamond Sutra, one of Tibetan Buddhism's most important Sutras. Second, it tells the story of Geshe Roach's life as a young monk taking up the challenge to see if Buddhist principles could work in the 'real world'. Third, it's a self-help kind of text, showing how his experiences and the Sutra can be used as examples for your own life.

The subtitle of the book, "The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life" pretty well explains what the book is and is not. It is not a dry scholarly exegesis. It is not new-age 'skimming the surface' of Buddhist wisdom. It is not a critique of everything Western from a supposedly superior standpoint. It is practical advice, carefully converting ancient strategies into our fast-paced, money-obsessed world. It is a book claiming to show you how to have your cake (a successful career and lots of money) and eat it too (keep your health, family life, and other interests intact).

If you are the type of person who has difficulty working/thinking independently (outside-the-box in a big way) then you probably shouldn't read this book. If you are the type of person who isn't looking for 'meaning' (ie just looking to get rich and powerful), then this book won't hold your attention very long. But if you are thoughtful, creative, hard-working, and realize that a ton of money and a big office doesn't automatically bring happiness, (or if this is what you aspire to be) then this is a perfect book for you.

Speechless, I would give this book as a gift to all my friends, family and business partners. this is the book that reconciled me with the business world and gave me a clear direction.

Presents another view on business. The spiritual side.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Make money, find success without regrets or suffering.

Really an inspirational, uplifting book that is life changing for those that will take it's lesson's to heart.

Highly Recommended for all those who want to achieve success, and not 'lose themselves' along the path. Implementing the lessons from The Diamond Cutter, can help you stay humble, and for you to not forget what's truly important along your journey.