Plato on Wealth
August 19, 2012 7 Comments
Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
Plato
Learning From Sir Richard Branson
August 9, 2012 16 Comments
Here is what Sir Richard has to say:
1. On big companies vs. small companies
“Small is beautiful.” Sir Richard doesn’t see size as a competitive advantage.
His Virgin Records label is not the biggest in the music industry, but in 1992 it attracted the Rolling Stones. Virgin Airlines has a mere 37 airplanes versus the 700+ maintained by its competitors. It’s better to spin off a company into a second smaller company (as Virgin Atlantic spun off Virgin America) than grow larger, Sir Richard believes, because smaller companies can stay both more nimble and more customer-focused. They can also maintain the style and “cheekiness” of their early trailblazing if they stay relatively compact. Read more of this post
Use Envy To Get You Going!
August 1, 2012 5 Comments
In Buddhism, the term irshya is commonly translated as either envy or jealousy. Irshya is defined as a state of mind in which one is highly agitated to obtain wealth and honor for oneself, but unable to bear the excellence of others.The term mudita (sympathetic joy) is defined as taking joy in the good fortune of others. This virtue is considered the antidote to envy.
Moreover, psychologists (van den Ven et al., 2009) have recently suggested that there may be two types of envy: malicious envy and benign envy – benign envy being proposed as a type of positive motivational force.Do read the article here http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/05/why-envy-motivates-us.php and note the following:
We tend to feel malicious envy towards another person if we think their success is undeserved. This is the type that makes us want to strike out at the other person and bring them down a peg or two. However when another’s success feels deserved to us, we tend to feel a benign envy: one that isn’t destructive but instead motivates.
…people who felt they had little control over their ability to improve resorted to admiration. On the other hand, those who thought they could improve experienced benign envy and were motivated to work harder. It’s the feeling of control that motivates.
Benign envy encouraged people to perform better on measures of intelligence and creativity, when compared with both admiration and malicious envy.
The Buddha On Hoarding Wealth
July 25, 2012 34 Comments
Obtaining wealth in immoral ways and using it to harmful ends are two evils associated with wealth. A third is hoarding wealth — refusing to either share one’s wealth or put it to good use. In this story, the Buddha recounts the evils of miserliness:
Once, King Pasenadi of Kosala visited the Buddha. The King told the Buddha that a rich old miser had recently died leaving no heir to his huge fortune, and the King had gone to oversee the transfer of the miser’s wealth into the kingdom’s treasury.
King Pasenadi described the amount of wealth he had to haul away: eight million gold coins, not to mention the silver ones, which were innumerable. And, he said, when the old miser was alive he had lived on broken rice and vinegar, dressed in three coarse cloths sewn together, used a broken-down chariot for transport and shaded himself with a sunshade made of leaves.
The Buddha remarked:”That is how it is, Your Majesty. The foolish man, obtaining fine requisites, supports neither himself nor his dependents, his father and mother, wife and children, his servants and employees, his friends and associates, in comfort. He does not make offerings, which are of great fruit, and which are conducive to mental well-being, happiness and heaven to religious mendicants. Read more of this post
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