Geshe Michael Roach

You have to be able to look back and say not only that you made money, and not only that you enjoyed making and spending it, but also that you made a difference in the world, while you made the money and afterward.

The ancient books of wisdom say that, to really throw yourself into this stuff with the amount of effort it takes to pull it off, you *must* start from a firm belief that it works.

Buddhism has always taught that there is a time and a place for taking on the life of a secluded monk, for living apart from the world in order to learn to serve the world. But serve the world we must, and to do so we must be in the world.

The ancient Buddhist books say that every person is driven, deep down inside, to discover what is truly meaningful, and we are incapable of being happy until we find it.

We are always in the business of gardening for the future.

‘What’s the best way to teach young children how to lead an ethical life?’ ‘At that age,’ said His Holiness, ‘it doesn’t matter what you tell them to do. They will watch and imitate you; they will do what you do, and so you are faced with the hardest task of all—to be ethical yourself.’

We are not in this system of ancient wisdom talking about how an attitude might color your perceptions of your financial situation. We are, rather, setting forth the details of a process which actually determines the reality around you. We are not talking about how you feel about not being able to make your payments. We are talking about how you feel actually determining whether or not you can make your payments.

In and of itself, independent of how different people are perceiving it, it has no such nature; it is neutral or blank or empty. In short, it has ‘emptiness,’ and this—according to the deepest books of ancient Tibetan wisdom—is its hidden and ultimate potential.

We have seen first of all that everything has a hidden potential, a kind of fluidity about what it could be. No person we meet is irritating from their own side, because there’s always someone there who finds them quite charming; no matter how they seem to us, it’s not something that’s coming from them. So where’s it coming from? Obviously it’s somehow coming from us, from our own minds.

So now we’re down to the brass tacks. Admit it. You want to be good in business, you want to be a success in your life, but you also have a strong instinct that tells you life wouldn’t be much unless it had a spiritual side to it. You would like to make a million and meditate, too.

The truth though is that the market will appear kind, and the market will therefore be kind, to any dealer who has the right mental imprints coming up to his conscious mind at any given moment.

You fix your life, and your business, and your world by fixing yourself.

If a situation can be fixed, Why get upset about it? If a situation cannot be fixed, What’s the use of getting upset?

Imprints works the same as plants, don’t doubt it. Nobody would plant some flower seeds in their garden on Monday, and then stand in the garden all day on Tuesday waiting for their flowers, angry and disappointed when they failed to appear by evening.

Imagine, just for a moment, what would happen if the entire world thought and acted as if everyone else were themselves.

It’s good if you can spend fifteen to thirty minutes of silent time every day. And the ‘every day’ part is important; these things don’t work if you don’t keep them up every single day, without a break. The best way to make sure you get your silent time every day is to do it at the same time every day.

There’s no word in Tibetan for ‘guilty.’ The closest thing is ‘intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.’