WE ARE ALL ZEN STUDENTS, WE ARE ALL BUSINESSPEOPLE

In the fall of 1983 I left Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, with my wife and infant son, and went to New York City to attend my last semester of Rutgers University in New Jersey to complete my undergraduate degree and to enter New York University's Graduate School of Business. At Tassajara I had been a Zen monk and a respected administrative leader. In New York City I was a thirty-one-year-old unemployed new father, without a college degree and with no experience that anyone could relate to. My résumé showed that I had been director of Tassajara and had spent the last ten years living at the San Francisco Zen Center and the last four years as a Zen monk.

Shortly after arriving in New York I went into Manhattan to an employment agency to find temporary work. I put on my best (and probably my only) suit and tie and arrived on the fifty-second floor of a skyscraper on Madison Avenue in the office of an agency that someone suggested I visit. I gave my résumé to the receptionist and sat in the waiting area. After a few minutes I looked up and saw several people gathered around a desk looking at my résumé, smiling, laughing, and looking at me. I overheard someone say in amazement, "There's a Zen monk in our office looking for a job!" As you might imagine, I had a hard time finding work in New York City.

Despite my difficulties finding a job, a basic truth that I have come to learn, and a primary assumption of this book, is that we are all Zen students, and we are all businesspeople. We are all Zen students in that we all must contend with birth, old age, sickness, and death. We have no idea where we come from or where we will go. At the deepest level we all have the same aspirations — to love and be loved, to discover and express our unique gifts, and to find peace and equanimity in the midst of whatever life may bring us. Zen is a practice and set of values to help us be aware, to awaken, to uncover our innate wisdom and authenticity. Though Zen is often perceived as enigmatic and difficult to understand, it is at its heart a system of simple practices that can be done anywhere — even in the middle of our busy work lives.

We all have to deal with difficulty and crisis — taking care of dying parents, troubled friends, or children; meeting the changes that come suddenly or gradually; confronting pain and difficulty for ourselves and for those we love. Meditation practice and Zen practice are much like creating a controlled crisis — we have nowhere to go and nothing to do; we're depending on our own bodies and minds, completely alone, and completely connected. Zen practice can help us reveal ourselves, our pain and suffering, our bare feelings, the immensity of our lives. By sitting still, just by being present, we learn that we can fully accept our imperfect selves, just as we are. This process can be cleansing and transforming; it can influence every part of our lives. Zen practice is ultimately about finding real freedom and helping others.

And we are all businesspeople. There is no avoiding having to deal with money, with the basic needs we all have for food and shelter and clothing. All professions, even those not primarily focused on business, are embedded in the world of business. Doctors and therapists call their customers patients. Teachers and social workers cannot escape budgets and management structures. Nonprofit organizations and religious institutions need to attract employees, pay salaries, and perform within financial frameworks.

At the heart of all businesses, whether they are overtly within the business community or not, is a focus on meeting the needs of people. Businesses make things or provide services that people need. We sometimes forget that the starting point of business is much more than making money or creating wealth. During the recent bursting of the dot-com bubble we learned firsthand what happens when businesses are started without a thoughtful plan for meeting the needs of people: they often disappear rather quickly.

In 1973 I took a one-year leave of absence from Rutgers, where I had been majoring in psychology. A year later, when I first entered the San Francisco Zen Center building, I heard a clear, quiet voice saying that this place, this practice, was worth ten years of my life. I was drawn to the discipline of a daily meditation practice and the blending of a deep, mystical philosophy with a grounded, practical approach. I was impressed by the maturity, sincerity, and wisdom of the teachers and students. I was intrigued by the possibility of living within a community of like-minded people and by the concept of work as an expression of spiritual practice.

During my tenth year at the San Francisco Zen Center I was asked to be director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, a monastery in a mountainous wilderness area in central California. I loved my work as director and was surprised when I first noticed that though I was living the life of a Zen monk, my daily work activities were primarily business related — managing people, overseeing budgets, solving problems, and devising strategic plans. I came to realize not only that there was no conflict between spiritual practice and business practice but also that these two activities were vital complements to each other. I was a more effective manager because of my Zen practice; and my Zen practice was more focused and vibrant through the disciplines and challenges of my management activities.

While at Tassajara I began thinking about what would come next for me, feeling it was time to move outside the sphere of the Zen Center community. Again I began to hear a clear and quiet voice saying that it was time to enter the business world. I thought for sure that this voice must be mistaken or that it was whispering to the wrong person. And yet, in some peculiar way, it made perfect sense.

I aspired to combine my Zen training and my intention to make a difference in the world with the belief that it might be possible to integrate spiritual practice and business practice within the business community. I reasoned that since this was what I was doing at the Zen Center, there must be some way to take this activity to the business world. I also observed that business now played a prominent and influential role in our world. After many years of training in spiritual practice, I felt that I needed some business training, so I decided to get an MBA.

This was the opening paragraph of my business school application, written while I was director of Tassajara, after having been a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for ten years:

I have always been a "manager." At age six I was organizing the children on my block to protect themselves from the bully on the next block. In Little League baseball I led the Suburban Delicatessen team to win the "world series." In high school I was the captain of the...