{"id":374,"date":"2009-07-10T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-10T21:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.wpdude.com\/test\/?p=374"},"modified":"2009-07-10T21:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-10T21:46:00","slug":"what-can-business-teach-the-buddha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/07\/what-can-business-teach-the-buddha\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can Business Teach the Buddha?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> I spend much of my life packaging material from the \u201calternative\u201d world to produce a form that appeals to business and the mainstream in general. I use mindfulness in stress workshops, embodied exercises in corporate leadership training and <\/strong>NonViolent Communication <\/strong><\/a>on appraisals courses. Next week however I will be doing things the other way around \u2013 \u201cselling\u201d business at <\/strong>Buddhafield.<\/strong><\/a> <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Buddhafield is a wonderful festival of meditation, yoga, and music where you get sent if you\u2019re too big a hippy for Glastonbury. I led a workshop there last year on Embodied Peacebuilding which went down well. This year I decided that for a challenge I would lead a talk on \u201cConscious Business \u2013 Can Business be a Spiritual Practice?\u201d And \u201cWhat can Business teach Buddhafield?\u201d<\/div>\n
I\u2019m still deciding on the content and thought I\u2019d start thinking out loud here. Here are a few thoughts on things that alternative communities I\u2019ve been in contact with might learn from business:<\/div>\n
– Effectively coordinating action over time. Rigour and commitment
– Evidence base \u2013 i.e. what actually works – the limits of fundamentalism and relativism
– Putting feeling over rationality instead of alongside it.
– Basic ethics and keeping things simple
– Self \u2013reliance (as well as communion)
– Re-owning the urges for power, prestige and achievement rather than repressing them<\/div>\n
I\u2019d love to hear from readers who have some additions to these?
My thinking on the matter is influenced by Ken Wilber\u2019s<\/a> \u201cPost Trans Fallacy\u201d \u2013 pre rational\/materisalistic and post rational\/materialistic look a lot alike but the former is superstitious and dogmatic while the latter \u201ctranscends and includes\u201d to be truly integral. In Spiral Dynamics <\/a>terms it\u2019s the movement from relativist green (much of Buddhafield) to a world view that includes achieveist orange (much of business) and traditionalist blue (old-school business as well as much traditional spirituality).<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

As for the Buddha \u2013 well that was just a nice title. More on Buddhism and business here.<\/a> Perhaps he set the tone for spiritual practice as \u201canti-wealth\u201d by renouncing his position as a prince. But then as Fred Kofman <\/a>points out- the last ox-herding picture in Zen is \u201creturn to the market-place with helping hands.\u201d The marketplace not the bloody hot-yoga studio. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spend much of my life packaging material from the \u201calternative\u201d world to produce a form that appeals to business and the mainstream in general. I use mindfulness in stress workshops, embodied exercises in corporate leadership training and NonViolent Communication on appraisals courses. Next week however I will be doing things the other way around \u2013 \u201cselling\u201d business at Buddhafield. Buddhafield is a wonderful festival of meditation, yoga, and music where you get sent if you\u2019re too big a hippy for Glastonbury. I led a workshop there last year on Embodied Peacebuilding which went down well. This year I decided <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9xvDN-62","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}