money

Original article no longer available

The message of music mogul Russell Simmons’ latest book, “Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All” (Gotham), may seem contradictory: A person can become “super rich” by reaching the state of needing nothing.

Simmons, the self-made millionaire often credited for putting hip-hop on the map with Def Jam Recordings, is one of the wealthiest black Americans in the country, but he argues a person can become rich not by obsessing about money but by giving to others.

Being rich is about finding the happiness inside, he says.

Slender and with a kind smile, the 53-year-old still looks youthful, part of what he attributes to a strict vegan diet he embraced 10 years ago.

“The last book helped change so many people’s lives. I wanted this one to do the same,” he says of the new book he co-wrote with Chris Morrow. (His previous one, “Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success,” also co-authored by Morrow, became a New York Times best-seller upon its release in 2007.)

The following is an edited version of our interview:

CNN: What does it mean to be rich?

Russell Simmons: The idea of “Super Rich” is likened to a state of yoga, being in a state of needing nothing. There is this space where you are awake, a heightened awareness, and this kind of space is very attractive.

The title is a little deceptive to some. It certainly is the road to having success in the world, having the toys, the trappings people refer to as rich. (It’s also about) those people who are good givers and feelers — the book practices to bring you toward a more enlightened state.

CNN: Has your definition of rich always been this way?

Simmons: No, I think “Super Rich” is a fun title, and I think I couldn’t call the book “Christ Consciousness.” It’s really about being in a blissful state, and I think all of us are looking for that.

CNN: What is that blissful state?

Simmons: I think the idea is we want to be happy, and happy is something that is not based on the outside forces. It’s something from inside. And when you’re calm and you’re in a state of needing nothing, it’s a place of operation and of abundance.

CNN: Do you think you’ve reached that state?

Simmons: I certainly can’t say I’m enlightened. I have faith in the process.

CNN: Why did you write the book?

Simmons: This is my second book on the subject. The last book was a big best-seller. It was fun bringing all the scripture together and making it simple and putting the book out. I never expected it to be so big. So many people from the last book — “Do You!” — came up to me and told me that my book changed their life.

I wrote this book more as a “how to” book but with a greater intention. It was not just — can I bring these teachings together but can I really make it an offering.

CNN: What are some of these teachings people can incorporate into their everyday life?

Simmons: The idea of giving. Wake up in the morning and decide on what you are going to give. Those people, who are selfless servants, always are successful. Many of my interns from Puffy, who you could put your left hand out and there would be a cup of coffee. … If you make someone better, then they keep calling on you to make them better. Then one day you’re their president, and they look to you for inspiration.

CNN: What are the ways you give?

Simmons: I run many charities. I make music. I have a financial service company that is very special.

CNN: The book talks a lot about being focused and awake. How can we do that?

When I say you need nothing, it’s a state of awareness so you can be focused on your work. People are sometimes focused on their results, and it can be a distraction. Be focused on the action, the work, and that’s what we want to teach people.

CNN: People can often link success to material objects, perhaps a new car or house. How do you break away from that belief when so many people are inundated with material objects?

Simmons: There is a simple chapter on meditation to watch your thoughts just a bit — to not to be a sheep through that practice and other practices. You start to think on your own, and you can check what society is telling you, whether the collective unconscious behavior is your behavior or your future. Do you have to do what everyone does?

As you come to meditate and look inside, you can make your own choices. And entrepreneurs absolutely have to think outside the box, don’t they? You want to have the creativity and a spacious mind. The book is about creating that kind of mind-set so you can be a better entrepreneur.

CNN: Meditation is one way to achieve that clarity. Are there other ways?

Simmons: Take stock in yourself. When you meditate, you take inventory before you transcend the thoughts. As you come to know what they told you is true … when you hear the truth, it rings a bell. This book is written in such a way that many people who might not hear it from their mother, their preacher, their prophet or their scripture, they are hearing it in this book.

CNN: Tell me about being vegan.

Simmons: I’ve been vegan for more than 10 years. It’s maybe the worst disaster in human history — 15 billion suffering farm animals. And I don’t want to participate in it. I’m 53 years old, and do I look sick to you? I don’t eat animal or animal products, and I feel fine. I feel pretty healthy.

CNN: What are your favorite dishes?

Simmons: I like this spicy tempeh dish. I like that a lot. People ask my favorite stuff, and I say the thing in front of me a lot. Right now if I weren’t on a liquid diet, if I had an avocado roll and some soy sauce, it would be that.

CNN: What can people learn from your book?

Simmons: I hope people become more compassionate and happier, and I guess the fringe benefit is they will be successful in the world.

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Review of “Super Rich,” a self-help book by hip-hop promoter Russell Simmons

January 23, 2011

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The transformation of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons from the recreational drug-using, model-chasing manager of seminal 1980s rap artists Run-DMC, LL Cool J and Will Smith into a serene 21st-century prophet of veganism and meditation may be surreal, but it’s also quite real.

Even in his dark days of excess, Simmons had a lot of light around him. As 1990s entrepreneurs like Suge Knight made the rap business virtually synonymous with invective and violence, Simmons stood above them as a relative paragon of virtue, achieving unmatched success with humor and hustle rather than brutality. As he matured and embraced his holistic lifestyle, Simmons became “Uncle Rush,” purveyor of hip-hop brands but also philanthropist and father-figure.

Title: Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All
Author: Russell Simmons with Chris Morrow
Publisher: Gotham
ISBN: 978-1592405879
Available from: Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com.

Simmons takes his mentoring role seriously. In 2007, he wrote his first self-help book, a go-get-’em career primer called “Do You.” Now, he issues his follow-up, “Super Rich,” a slim, succinct and sagacious volume about the true meaning of wealth (spoiler alert: It ain’t about the money).

Abba star loses multi-million dollar case against resort

November 29, 2010

Original article no longer available

Former Abba star Anni-Frid Reuss has lost a lawsuit aimed at pushing a Quigong resort specialising in Chinese medicine and meditation into bankruptcy to recoup a multi-million dollar loan, a lawyer said Friday.

“My client (Marcus Bongart) is very relieved,” his lawyer Arne Kaellen told AFP after the court rejected Reuss’s petition.

The Malmoe district court on Thursday ruled against Reuss and her companion Henry Smith. They had asked that the Yangtorp Qigong resort be liquidated to allow them to recover a loan of 46 million kronor (4.9 million euros, 7 million dollars).

The Yangtorp resort, which comprises a hotel and temple, meanwhile insisted the money was a donation from Reuss, better known as Frida to Abba fans.

The court ordered Reuss and Smith to pay the legal costs in the case, amounting to 65,575 kronor.

Their lawyer Carl-Gustaf Soeder told the Expressen daily he was surprised by the verdict, but added that the ruling was “just the first step in a long process.”

Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.

Have less, give more

August 8, 2010

Bodhipaksa

on practice

I’m fascinated by the psychology of giving and/or financial exchanges. Just this morning I was noticing my hesitation in committing to pay 99¢ for an iPhone app without having tried it first. But when I go into a coffee shop I happily plonk down $1.50 or so for a cup of Joe, without hesitating or asking for a free trial. The coffee will last me for 20 minutes, while I might end up using the app on a daily basis for an indefinite period of time. There’s no guarantee I’m going to find the coffee pleasant. Screwy, but normal.

One peculiarity regarding money is that people who have less of it are more willing to give it to another person in need. The following is from an article in today’s Boston Globe:

Given the opportunity to share money with an anonymous person, people who considered themselves lower in socioeconomic status shared more. When asked how much of one’s salary should be donated to charity, they designated a higher percentage. And, when confronted with a distressed person in need, they offered more help. These differences don’t seem to be innate. For example, after simply asking people to contemplate their socioeconomic status relative to those with higher socioeconomic status, people became more charitable. The authors theorize that people in the lower strata of society are particularly motivated by a greater dependence on — and, thus, concern for — social relationships, though affluent individuals may be more inclined to abstract charity (e.g., the environment).

The research is from, Piff, P. et al., “Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).

Isn’t that interesting? It’s not a simple case, as I would have assumed, of “the rich” getting that way by being tight with their money. It seems more that poorer people are more tied into social networks and value the support they give. In my experience, many people who are better off are unable or unwilling to empathize with the difficulties of those who are less well off. In the US it’s common to blame people for being poor, even though it’s impossible for every single person to accumulate wealth, given how our society operates, with the people who have wealth setting the wages and conditions for those who don’t, often making it very difficult indeed to escape poverty.

It’s encouraging that reflecting on one’s relative lack of wealth compared to others boosts empathy and generosity. At least these attitudes are not fixed, and reflection, self-awareness, and social awareness are tools for change.

“The Heart of the Buddha,” by Chogyam Trungpa

July 29, 2010

Suriyavamsa

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Trungpa Rinpoche was a deeply flawed man, but an inspiring teacher. A new book gives Suriyavamsa a chance to reflect on Trungpa’s genius, and on the visceral and striking teaching it gave rise to.

I remember studying with my teacher Sangharakshita in a group of Triratna Buddhist centre teachers a couple of years ago. He expressed his admiration for Chogyam Trungpa and, using Gurdjieff’s distinction between the narrow saint and the broad genius, considered Trungpa to be a flawed genius of intelligence, flair and imagination. Sangharakshita went on to encourage us all to become ‘geniuses’ – to be broad and other regarding, and to develop the many diverse talents necessary to spread the Buddha’s teachings.

Title: The Heart of the Buddha
Author: Chogyam Trungpa
Publisher: Shambhala
ISBN: 978-0-87773-592-2
Available from: Shambhala and Amazon.com.

This memory returns to me on reading The Heart of the Buddha, a recently re-released collection of Chogyam Trungpa’s articles. Trungpa was certainly broad. He had the genius, the flair and talent necessary to inspire many people to take up the Buddha’s teachings and he has had an enormous impact on Buddhism in the modern world. Many of the famous Buddhists teaching today such as Pema Chodron, Sherab Chodzin Kohn, Judith Zimmer Brown and Reginald Ray owe their foundation in the Dharma to Trungpa Rinpoche.

Trungpa has had an enormous impact on Buddhism in the modern world.

It pays to watch some of the YouTube videos of his lectures and get a sense of the author before reading this book. On these we see him sitting calmly, holding court before hundreds of people. He is immaculately dressed in a suit and tie and is carefully emphasizing each sentence with an impeccable elocution acquired during his stay at Oxford University in England. This is not a traditional Tibetan teacher fresh out of the Himalayas with trumpets and robes but someone deeply immersing himself in Western expressions. Someone out alone in a foreign culture determined to communicate the heart of the Buddhas teachings in a language accessible to the people before him. Trungpa’s presentations combined a thorough training in traditional Tibetan Buddhism with a radical re-visioning of what it means to practice the Dharma today. He tapped into a broad range of sources from Erich Fromm and psychology to Zen flower arranging and military discipline, and was keen to avoid the distracting allure of exotic Tibetan cultural trappings.

The articles in The Heart of the Buddha were chosen to represent “as complete a range of Rinpoche’s teachings as possible,” according to the introduction. There are edited introductory talks with questions and answers as well as more scholarly essays. In the first section we have a more experiential evocation of what is involved in meditation practice, in devotion and in the integration of intellect and intuition. Here is a taster from the article on mindfulness:

‘It (mindfulness) is a worldwide approach that relates to all experience, it is tuning into life. We do not tune in as part of trying to live further […] Rather we just see the sense of survival as it is taking place in us already. You are here, you are living: let it be that way – that is mindfulness. Your heart pulsates and you breathe. Let mindfulness work with that, let that be mindfulness, let every beat of your heart, every breath, be mindfulness itself. You do not have to breathe specially; your breath is an expression of mindfulness. If you approach meditation in this way, it becomes very personal and very direct.’

I’ve never found a clear overview in a Chogyam Trungpa book. He never wrote a 101 of Buddhism. I have thoroughly enjoyed my wanderings through these articles, but have been glad of my studies in my own tradition for an underlying framework to help hang it all together. For this reason I wouldn’t recommend even this broad compendium as an introduction to Buddhism. What you do get with Trungpa Rinpoche is something at least as important – vivid evocations of spiritual experience and a living sense of the scale and detail of the Buddhist perspective. He uses unexpected and surprising imagery which is often visceral and always striking. Reading his books is like making out the Buddha’s Dharma by flashes of lightning – you are left with memorable impressions and a stack of vivid quotes. Here are a few:

‘People have difficulty beginning a spiritual practice because they put a lot of energy into finding the best and easiest way to get into it. We might have to change our attitude and give up looking for the best and easiest way. Actually, there is no choice. Whatever approach we take, we will have to deal with what we are already.’
‘True admiration has clarity and bite. It is like breathing mountain air in winter which is so cold and clear that we are afraid that it may freeze our lungs. Between breaths we may want to run into the cabin and throw a blanket over our heads lest we catch cold – but in true admiration we do not do that.’
‘Spiritual shoppers are looking for entertainment from spiritual teachings. In such a project devotion is nonexistent. Of course if such shoppers visit a store where the salesman has a tremendous personality and his merchandise is also fantastically good, they might momentarily feel overwhelming trust of some kind. But their basic attitude is not desperate enough. Their desperation has been concealed or patched over, so they make no real connection with the teaching.’

The second section of the book contains three articles chosen to represent the three phases of the Tibetan Buddhist path – taking refuge, the self transcendence of compassion, and the tantric path of ‘Sacred Outlook’.

The chapter on “Sacred Outlook” is the longest article at just under forty pages. Originally written for the catalog of an exhibition of ancient Buddhist Silk Route art, it is one of the best introductions to Tantric Buddhist practice I have come across, both in the thoroughness of its description and in its simplicity.

I found reading these articles induced an experience not unlike that of digging out old rock music and being struck by its fresh energy and imagination…

The final section is a bit of a mixture with articles on relationships, death, poetry, money, Buddhist/Christian dialogue and a piece on drinking alcohol. This is where Trungpa’s dangerous side comes out. He writes on the limitations of a moralistic attitude to pleasure and on the difference between alcohol being poison or medicine lying in the level of one’s awareness. A meditator undertakes ‘conscious drinking’ as a means to keep connected to others. It is difficult to read this as anything but naive in the light of his early demise at forty seven from cirrhosis of the liver and the chaos of his community after his death.

Nevertheless, I found reading these articles induced an experience not unlike that of digging out old rock music and being struck by its fresh energy and imagination in contrast to the formulaic, safe and commercial nature of so much of today’s music. These articles come from a time when Buddhism in America was more radically alive. Their vitality, originality and indeed danger, as well as their deep rootedness in the Buddhist tradition contrast strongly with so much of what passes for Dharma today. Amidst the mountain of secular Buddhism, domestic Buddhism for couples, therapeutic Buddhism for stress management and a strange fixation on our everyday, commonplace laundry, this book stands out for its ability to inspire and stir us from our complacency. Cold, clear mountain air indeed.

Mindfulness over market matters

March 29, 2010

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The next time the stock market takes a sickening plunge, perhaps you should take time out to meditate.

That would be the recommendation of certified financial planner Graham Byron and meditation coach Maria Gonzalez. The pair recently published a book called The Mindful Investor. The book’s subtitle makes an impressive claim: By maintaining a calm mind, you can obtain both inner peace and financial security.

Gonzalez, president of Toronto-based Argonauta Strategic Alliances Consulting Inc., says the book was conceived after Byron noticed how practising “mindfulness” and “equanimity” helped his clients when the market crashed.

Mindfulness meditation involves cultivating the simple awareness of whatever is arising in the moment. “It enabled him to work with clients more effectively, listen to them more deeply and help him in ways he didn’t think of before he learned about mindfulness.”

Or, as they write in the second chapter, mindfulness meditation is “simply noticing the way things are.” The ability to accept what is, without resistance, is called equanimity. That means accepting things you can’t control, such as stock prices or interest rates.

That doesn’t mean the authors recommend a passive indifference to investment portfolios. It means, simply, “don’t fight with yourself.”

Failure to keep a calm mind when financial markets are plunging may lead to…

making wrong decisions, like selling at the bottom, crystallizing what might otherwise have been only temporary paper losses.

After a 30-year career as a successful businesswoman, including stints at several Canadian banks, Gonzalez had as much exposure to the market as many investors did when the crash of 2008 occurred. How did she react to it?

“Honestly, it wasn’t that stressful. It was shocking, absolutely, but not stressful in the sense you can’t control the outcome. The only thing I could control was my response, which was to become calm.”

Stock crashes will happen again, “so it’s really a matter of maintaining a calm centre. It’s a very trainable skill.”

Byron, a vice-president and associate portfolio manager with CIBC Wood Gundy, doesn’t ask clients to meditate but says they get the benefits of his own half-hour sessions, which he performs immediately on waking in the morning. But the focus on mindfulness also pays off when he’s talking to them.

“It’s all about focus, tuning out the noise, and concentration,” he says. “Mindful listening is one of the best things about meditation.”

In a long investment career that began with Winnipeg-based Investors Group, Byron has experienced seven major market corrections. The 2008 crash was the worst of them, but he didn’t stop meditating when it occurred. He says he didn’t have the same “visceral reaction” earlier crashes caused.

“I felt in control and that I could communicate with clients clearly and with focus.”

As a fee-based advisor, Byron doesn’t trade often, preferring clients use the money managers he recommends.

How many other advisors meditate? “I’ve not run into too many,” Byron admits. “The other way to be calm and stay focused is to have experience. Experienced advisors are pretty much all good at this stuff. Once you have a few years under your belt, you can really stay calmer automatically.” But he still believes meditation gives him an edge over advisors who don’t practise it.

The authors say another way of staying calm about money is to reorder your priorities, keeping money in perspective. The authors suggest your priorities should be: 1. spiritual and mental health; 2. physical health; 3. time; 4. helping others; 5. money

“We talk a lot about risk and the possible downside, but money is a tool,” Byron says. “You should use it for good things you enjoy, like giving to charity. At the end of the day, a good financial plan will help you relax and enjoy your money. Most people are better off than they think they are.”

Meditations on ‘lazy investing’

December 29, 2009

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Commentary: Turning to Buffett, Bogle and Buddha for wisdom on how to invest

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Last May, 35,000 shareholders crowded into the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. One of the faithful asked a fundamental question: “What is the secret to value investing?”

According to an article in Harper’s Magazine — “The Church of Warren Buffett: Faith and Fundamentals in Omaha” — Buffett replied with all the serenity of the Buddha: “Independent thinking and inner peace.”
Billionaire’s bright lights bring big cheer

WSJ’s Alan Murray shows us the latest extravagant light display decorating the home of hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones in Greenwich, Conn.

Independent thinking? Traditional left-brain wisdom you’d expect from a Western leader. But inner peace? That’s hot Eastern wisdom served with down-home Nebraskan wit by Buffett the Buddha.

Recently, I reflected on the world’s wild ride since the catastrophe Wall Street’s Scrooges created more than a year ago. Through it all the Lazy Portfolios were, like Buffett, quite serene. Check out our Lazy Portfolio pages.

I started wondering how the inner peace and wisdom of three of my heroes — Buffett, Bogle and Buddha — would translate into meditations to help Lazy Portfolio investors. Suddenly it all came together in the “Zen millionaire’s” 12 principles we’ve written about before.

Here’s how I see our three wise men meditating on Lazy Portfolios in 2010:

1. Zen first — get it before you get the million

Buffett the Buddha was born with it. “I am really no different from any of you,” he says. “I may have more money than you, but money doesn’t make the difference. Sure, I can buy the most luxurious handmade suit, but I put it on and it just looks cheap. I would rather have a cheeseburger from Dairy Queen than a $100 meal … If there is any difference between you and me it may simply be that I get up every day and have a chance to do what I love to do.”

And he still “tap-dances into work every day.”
2. Your mind creates money

“We are what we think,” Buddha says. “Our thoughts create our world.” Today, Wall Street’s thoughts are driven by a mindless, obsessive addiction to “get rich quick,” creating a world of endless self-destructive bubbles. In contrast, Buffett creates long-term wealth.

“One of the keys to Buffett’s success,” says an admirer, “is compounding … If you put $2,000 a year into an IRA for just eight years, until you are 27, when you retire at age 65 the $16,000 will have ballooned to over $1 million. You do not need unusually high returns to make good money with compound interest, but you do need to be consistent.”

Bogle adds: “Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after Wall Street’s substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game.”
3. Being a millionaire is ‘nothing special’

Ancient Zen masters warned students that enlightenment is “nothing special.” Neither is having a million. Nor even a billion, to Buffett: “Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”
4. Investors play a lazy game of solitaire

The Buddha: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Jack Bogle introduced us to the Lazy Portfolios doctrine: “Start with the total stock market index. The idea is to own the stock market, own every company in America, and hold it for Warren Buffett’s favorite holding period: Forever. And that’s the secret: Own everything, and hold it forever. The S&P 500 is about 80% of the value of the total stock market.” The Wilshire 5000 is a great alternative.

The eight Lazy Portfolios had a successful year in 2009, riding the turmoil with inner peace. Just before Christmas, all eight no-load index portfolios had one-year returns averaging 24% to 33%. Check out our Lazy Portfolio pages.

The Second Grader’s Starter Portfolio consists of just three funds including the Bogle-recommended big-cap index fund plus the Total Bond Index (FUND:VBMFX) and Total International Stock Index Fund (FUND:VGTSX) . The portfolio’s 33.3% returns beat the S&P 500, proving Buffett’s point that “a great IQ is not needed to do well as an investor,” just “the ability to detach yourself from the crowd.”

We know the crowd will focus on the two hottest funds in the eight Lazy Portfolios — Vanguard’s Emerging Markets Stock Index (FUND:VEIEX) was smoking at 79% this year, and its REIT Index Fund (FUND:VGSIX) at 39%. But remember: Diversify, don’t just trade hot funds of stocks.
5. No outside authorities — you are centered within

“The future is never clear,” Buffett warns. “You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.” Strategy: No trading, buy value, never sell. “I never have the faintest idea what the stock market is going to do in the next six months, or the next year or two,” Buffett says. “But I think it’s very easy to see what’s going to happen over the long term.”
6. You are always a beginner

Zen masters say: “Zen mind, beginner’s mind.” Step into Buffett’s Zen mind, and meditate: “I’m going to buy hamburgers for the rest of my life. When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up, we weep. For most people, it’s the same way with everything in life they will be buying — except stocks. When stocks go down, you can get more for your money, but people don’t like them any more. That sort of behavior is especially puzzling.”
7. The Zen-millionaire makes peace with the dark side

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently,” Buffett says. And to Congress: “I want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear on the front page of their local paper the next day, be read by their spouses, children, and friends … If they follow this test, they will not fear my other message to them: Lose money for my firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”

Meditate on working for Buffett every day … you’ll get the “Zen first.”
8. Wealth-building is about building character

Today Wall Street’s addiction to massive wealth is creating an America with the mind of a teenager on speed, hell-bent for instant gratification. “Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies,” Buffett says. “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” Meditate on this: Who are you? Are you a money machine or rich in integrity?
9. You are the only guru

Bogle offers a practical reason for being your own guru: A decade ago “the total revenues paid by investors to investment bankers and brokerage firms exceeded $1 trillion” and “more than three-quarters of the cumulative financial wealth produced by stocks over an investor’s lifetime will be consumed by fund managers.” You cannot trust Wall Street. Zen masters warn: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Why? Because Buddha is never “out there.” Not on CNN. Nor at Goldman. Not even Buffett. You’re it.
10. You’re on a never-ending journey of self-discovery

“You do things when the opportunities come along,” Buffett says. “I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing. … You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”

You’re on earth for a reason. Not just to get rich. What is it? That journey never ends.
11. You are making a difference

“It’s class warfare and my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be,” Buffett says. “If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.” Most don’t. So it’s no surprise that Buffett’s actions speak louder than words: The richest man on earth is giving away all of his fortune.
12. The secret power within you

Life and investing are simple for Buffett: “We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.” He lives in the same modest house, drives an old car. The computer in his office is only used to play bridge with friends around the world. He knows you get the Zen first, or you don’t get it. The secret? “Independent thinking and inner peace.”

“I can only to point the way for you,” Buddha says. “Be a lamp unto yourself.” And if you wonder how you’ll ever know if you got the “Zen First” secret (because Buddha also says “you may be enlightened but never know it”), I’ll bet Buffett would reply something like: “You’ll know you’re enlightened when you sense inner peace while tap-dancing with your portfolio.” At least I hope he’d say something Nebraskan like that.

Bottom line: There’s no secret to the Zen. If anything, it’s too simple. Zen is within you. So here’s my gift to help you discover your “Zen First” this wonderful season and all through 2010. Discover 40 wonderful ways people worldwide and throughout history have meditated to find inner peace: Download my free book, the “Millionaire Meditation.” And yes, both work and dancing are in the top 40.

“To Buy Or Not To Buy,” by April Lane Benson, PhD

June 24, 2009

Priyamitra

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