Spiritual Practices

No one I know has penetrated the koan of leadership. A koan is a riddle, the solution to which can only be found by going completely beyond all conditioning and thought. The solution originates from a place utterly free from image, belief, and...

There is a lot of talk about importing spirituality into business as an antidote to various forms of malaise. I think it’s important to ask, “Will it fit?” Personally, I don’t think so, because it would be like trying to...

I am sometimes consulted by people in the corporate sector to shed light on a particular situation or relationship. In one such case, I walked into the office of a client and he looked at me as though I were an alien from outer space, still dirty...

I have been searching for a metaphor to describe the ending of the spiritual path, about which people never speak. I found it today, or rather it found me, in the theater. In the movie “Shine” a young pianist named David Helfgott wanted...

He wept. I was silent. I had seen him approach this threshold before, but not cross it. Now that he had, the real issues were clear, and they had nothing to do with the company or his “leadership.” The issues were sadness, despair...

In writing this column, I sometimes clash with a part of my brain which offers advice. “Read other columns, write in the first person, tell instructional stories: entertain and inform. Above all”, suggests my brain’s advisory...

My father worked for a living; he didn’t play for a living. My father died at 53. He died of heart failure. The autopsy revealed that he also had pancreatic cancer, which would have killed him within months. For years, I had watched him...

On Christmas Eve, 1995. Susan asked, “A friend called me and said she was going to kill herself. Should I have interfered and tried to stop her, or let her be responsible for her own life? I tried to think about what was right for her.”...

Our conditioned, patterned way of living may be disrupted by the unexpected. An accident, a sudden reversal of fortune, the death of a loved one, or a confrontation with our own mortality can open a window to another world of significance. Another...