Reviews
From IKTWiki
The Magician's Way
Reviewed by Jillian.
Coming later
The Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach
Reviewed by Steve.
This book describes Geshe Michael Roach's fascinating experience after graduating to the Buddhist academic degree of Geshe. After more than a decade of Buddhist study Geshe Roach was told by his teachers to move to New York with nothing more than a cheap business suit and start a career in the New York diamond business. He had little money and lived at a Buddhist temple in New Jersey at the start of his New York experience. Another condition put upon him was that he could not tell anybody about his Buddhist background. This is the story about how Geshe Roach became a successful businessman by secretly living by Buddhist values.
The most important thing that I leaned about this book was the idea of an "imprint." Imprints are seeds that we plant in ourselves by our actions and deeds. Just like seeds, when planted they grow and come to fruition affecting us in this or future lives. Geshe Roach teaches us that imprints are created by us at the rate of about sixty per second. Each thought and deed affects each imprint that is being implanted into us. The eventual result of each imprint can effect us at any time and is this karmic result is sometimes easy to understand and sometimes not. For example, if you notice more and more heath problems as your career progresses, we are told that we can fix this by paying special attention to the health and comfort of the people that we supervise. This means that the seeds that we plant in ourselves by ignoring the welfare of others will eventually cause us to be ill: cause and effect. If we change our ways and plant more "caring" seeds inside of us, it has the karmic effect of making us healthier.
As an computer engineer I have learned about cause and effect and it is very easy for me to see how imprints could work at a spiritual level. If a computer program that I have written has a certain effect, it is sometime difficult to find a reason that a program crashes or behaves incorrectly, but I understand that every bug has an underlying cause. Just so, Geshe Roach tells us that bad (and good) things that happened to us are caused by imprints that we have planted inside ourselves in the past.
To me, this gives a different view on the concepts of "good" and "bad." Our attitude and actions determine what imprints we are seeding ourselves with. Thinking bad thoughts or doing evil deeds, really means that we are polluting ourselves with imprints that are going to cause us to suffer in the future. Conversely, caring about others is implanting us with seeds that will cause us to thrive. In a way, doing bad things is equivalent to poking ourselves in the eye - we are only causing suffering for ourselves (in addition to others). The conclusion is that it is simply self-destructive to apply ourselves to things we class as bad or evil. To a Taoist, this is very similar to the concept of cultivating our true selves.
The Diamond Cutter uses as its subtext the Diamond Sutra. Geshe Roach's story describes how he becomes a successful businessman by following Buddhist principles. At times, he describes situations that are far from the serenity of the temple, such as the time when he mistakenly ordered ten times the number of diamonds that his boss wanted. I found his description of the Buddhist principles at play when is boss is yelling red faced at him at almost ruining the company fascinating.
This book introduced some very important Buddhist concepts to me in a very understandable way. It was also a very entertaining read. I would recommend it to anybody interested in cultivating themselves to be successful in both business and life.
