Success, Success, Success, Success
Does it matter?
“Happiness does not come from success;
success comes from happiness.”
- Fake Buddha quote (N/A BCE)
Work and work for love and sex
Ain't you hungry for success, success, success, success
Does it matter? I’ve been shattered
- Rolling Stones, “Shattered” (1978, ACE)
OK, I confess I got fooled by the fake Buddha quote a few years back and even quoted it in one of my dharma talks. I should have hunted down the attribution, which I have since investigated (with the help of the website Fake Buddhas Quotes…. It turns out it was maybe Albert Schweitzer, maybe not.)
In any case, I’ve always had a conflicted relationship with the word “success”, especially as it is used in our culture. It usually means some kind of socially-acknowledged achievement, the kind that is certified with degrees and titles or “proved” by large bank accounts or adoring fans. I had a taste of early successes in academia and business, and while I enjoyed them, they never seemed that meaningful to me.
I may have been excessively influenced by the spirit of the Rolling Stones’ “Shattered,” which came out when I was 14, the age they say when one’s musical tastes are most impressionable!
For the Buddha, success always referred to progress on the path of spiritual development. Spiritual development is a very real path: it extends the path of personal development — the domain of your faculties, qualities and skills — and expands them to the larger contexts of community, world and universe.
That might sound grandiose, but it is just the opposite. The goal of spiritual development is to be aligned and integrated with larger forces. With this alignment it is not so important whether your personal goals are always met. It’s good, essential even, to have personal goals, but it’s best to hold them lightly, with a healthy dose of humor.
An example of success on the spiritual path is to be genuinely kind to others. This is of course not so easy sometimes, which is why it is an accomplishment. From the spiritual perspective it is a greater accomplishment to cultivate genuine kindness than to make a lot of money.
Deep down, we all know this to be true, but we lose sight of it sometimes. We’ve internalized a lot of voices that whisper false truths to us. That’s why Mick and company are “shattered”: there’s a fragmentation inside. Success in the bigger context is working with the limiting beliefs so that you connect with the bigger picture. There is incredible freedom and, yes, happiness that comes from dropping limiting beliefs. Then the material and socially-respected forms of success tend to follow, if you want it.
When I work with individuals as a Zen teacher and coach, I help them identify the false voices and nourish the true voices. People in professional and personal transition — entrepreneurs and many others — face a kind of vortex of voices at distinct stages of their development path. The main ones are 1) finding inspiration and clarifying their vision, 2) articulating their vision, 3) creating relationships and finding allies (clients), 4) developing resource flows, and 5) growing foundations and scaling reach. These inner stages apply for anything you want to bring forth in the world, whether it is entrepreneurial venture or a new season of your professional or personal life.
My process is to use the awareness and skills I have cultivated in 35 years of Zen practice, including thousands of 1-on-1 sessions with teachers, students and clients, to provide breakthrough insights and transformative practices that facilitate your movement forward in a way that is authentic and resourceful across the key domains: material/financial, emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual.
I have had a great response in the few weeks since I have re-started my coaching practice, and I would truly love to connect with you. Book a free Discovery session if you would like to explore working with me. I have added some advanced (but simple) bio-energetic practices to my program, which have proven very effective in transforming adverse states (confusion, anxiety, overwhelm) into deeper concentrative states.
I traveled back to Boulder today from our outpost in Montana for Eon Zen Center’s May one-day retreat and am looking forward to seeing my Zen students and the deep immersion of Zen practice.
Whenever you take a leap out of your small concerns and venture something big …. that’s success for me.
take care everyone,
Paul
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay