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A Week in a Buddhist Monastery: An Exercise in Patience and Forbearance

November 21st, 2023

I first encountered meditation in my mid-twenties. Surprisingly perhaps, it was while working at the international management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company. I was part of a project which was analysing how the performance of executives was impacted by how they spent their time. With the key caveat that correlation does not always equate to causation, the most striking finding for me was that almost all the top performing executives meditated. Furthermore, they didn’t just meditate before/after work, or at weekends, it was incorporated into their working day.

Work at McKinsey is largely project based, so there is a continual cycle of working with one team, and then moving on to work with another. A year or so into my time at the company, I joined a team which seemed ‘different’. It was calmer. Although work was still conducted at a fast pace, it was more relaxed. Deadlines were still set and met, but the atmosphere was ‘loose’ rather than ‘tight’. It turned out that everyone on the team (apart from me) meditated regularly.

Up until this point, I’d had a very narrow/biased view of meditation. To me it belonged in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, or to the counter culturalists who wanted to ‘Turn on, tune in and drop out’. Now I was seeing it in the ‘mainstream’, and it appeared a useful aid to performance. So, for the last 20 years or so, I’ve ‘dabbled’ with meditation. In a good week, I may meditate five or six times for around 10 minutes each time. More typically, I manage three to four 10-minute sessions and a smattering of ‘micro-meditations’, where I pay attention to the inhale and exhale of 10 breaths.

I’ve persisted though; in part, because my experience at McKinsey established a belief that mediation aids performance. Given my desire to perform well in various areas of life, I therefore felt it was something I should do. It’s also piqued my curiosity. I find it intriguing that something that appears to be so simple;

‘Just focus on your breath’

can be so difficult to achieve, on account of distractions by thoughts, feelings and other sensations.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ meditation. The very thoughts and feelings that prevent me focusing on my breath are often ones that I’ve been unaware of or have tried to dismiss too soon. Creating the time to meditate allows me to acknowledge my thoughts and feelings and either accept them more fully, or attend to them more constructively. On the rare occasions when prolonged focus on the breath is achieved, I perceive that I’m subsequently calmer and able to think more clearly.

So, with this ‘amateur’ interest in meditation, how did I end up at an intensive, week-long meditation retreat at the Samye Ling Centre (the largest Buddhist monastery in Western Europe, situated in the rural lowlands of Scotland)? Well, old friends will tell you that a personal motto of mine is;

‘If you don’t have a go, you’ll never know.’

Having just gotten over a potentially life changing illness, my (often naïve) enthusiasm for new experiences has been reenergised. Added to this was a growing interest in Buddhism. My perception that it advocates universal compassion on the one hand and emotional non-attachment on the other, interests me in relation to both intimate and professional relationships. I’m also a great believer in the inherent value of immersing yourself in a completely different way of life (even if just for a few days). Doing so invariably broadens my perspective and helps me appreciate what I truly value. If I’m lucky, it can also make me aware of, and then question, truths I’ve (often unconsciously) developed in my ordinary life with respect to ‘how life is’. In terms of the retreat, each day was structured around six 60-90 minute sessions, so 42 sessions in total. The first session on each day started at 5.30am and the last finished at 8.30pm.

The first session felt quite auspicious, around 140 people were assembled in what to me was a very elaborately decorated temple: lots of gold and hundreds of statues of the Buddha. Then our teacher for the week, a purple- and orange-robed lama, who had flown in from Nepal, entered the temple with his translator. Gongs sounded, chants were made and the more ‘serious and knowledgeable’ attendees (of which I was not one) performed a series of prostrations and genuflections. An overview of the week and some very basic rudiments of meditation were then outlined.

Of the remaining 41 sessions, 40 of them basically involved non-directed meditation, or the lama sitting at the front of the temple and (via a translator) telling the assembled that we could NOT learn ‘real’ meditation because;

“you are fixated with happiness and most of you have mental health problems.”

Instead of teaching meditation, he gave what, to me, were very different perspectives on some fundamental human characteristics. For example, in his view;

“Kindness is understanding your stupidity and then showing continual endeavour to reduce it. The general Western approach to kindness is spoiling the individual.”

From my perspective, time was also given over to publicly criticising the monks and nuns of the monastery and hours were spent talking about a yearlong retreat which only a handful of people seemed remotely interested in. Questions could be asked, but they had to be submitted in written form. There was also some sporadic, but very in-depth analysis of (what seemed to me) an obscure Buddhist text.

In short, it was bizarre. People were leaving early and many (including myself) were asking why a meditation retreat had been organised, if it was not considered possible for us to meditate. The need for a translator compounded the frustration, as there could be over 20 minutes of incomprehension before the lama stopped speaking and the translation began.

And then came the 42nd and final session and the lama’s answer to the final question; ‘Can you give some insights into how to meditate?’.

The lama proceeded to introduce the six Buddhist perfections:

1. Generosity.
2. Morality.
3. Patience.
4. Energy.
5. Meditation.
6. Wisdom.

He stated that the order of the perfections was very important. He then proposed that many of us may well have found the week frustrating, because it was uncomfortable sitting for hours and not understanding what was required to meditate. If so, this was good, as this was developing the third perfection of patience. By sticking at it, and returning to the temple, session after session, we had also been developing the fourth perfection, energy, grit, forbearance and perseverance. These are the key precursors for meditation: you can’t hope to meditate without patience and energy. Finally, at the very end, he gave a 10 minute insight into how to meditate and then it was all over! As a trainer and facilitator, I had deep admiration. On the basis that the lama’s approach was intentional, in my view it takes real resolve to try and frustrate 140 people for almost an entire week, in order to illustrate a point.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Ultimately, it gave me some valuable insights for meditation, which was my primary aim for the week. Like with so many memorable experiences though, the most valuable insights were unexpected. Firstly, it was a privilege to gain a completely different perspective on fundamental issues such as kindness, happiness and suffering. It highlighted that certain ‘truths’ I have are WEIRD: they are based on experiences and research from largely Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic countries. Alternatives exist.

Secondly, it provided a valuable reminder that cognitive understanding is not the same as knowledge. Experience and the emotions that come with experience are crucial too. For example, before the retreat, I understood and agreed with the value Buddhism places on accepting unpleasantness. I cognitively accepted that it is often my response to the event (rather than the event itself) that creates the most suffering. When I suffer the most, it’s due to the effort I’m making to resist the way things are, because I want things to be different. However, experiencing almost a week of persistent frustration made me really know this to be true. For me, the author Arnold Bennett summarises it well;

‘There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.’

Finally, I valued experiencing a series of dichotomies in relation to my emotions. During the week, I felt: • Pride, hubris and humility • Frustration, boredom and the energy/motivation that comes from gaining insight • Loneliness and connection • Confusion and clarity • Dread and excitement • Resentment and admiration • Sadness and happiness • Guilt and compassion In short, by the end of the week I felt a fuller, more authentic human being. Going forward, it will be interesting to discover the extent to which this fullness can be retained, back in my ordinary, WIERD world.

Aligning Organisational Values with Your Personal Ones

January 8th, 2021

In my adolescence and early adulthood, I developed a series of core values that I felt would stand me in good stead for life. They were as follows:

• Service: Equipping myself for life, not just for my own benefit, but for the whole community.
• Balance: Balancing work with life outside of work. Trying hard, without becoming a fanatic. Knowing when enough is enough.
• Equality: Endeavouring to create equality of worth and opportunity and striving to ensure that these are not inhibited by any inequality of resources.
• Fun/Positivity: Life’s too short to commit myself to careers or activities that I don’t enjoy.
• Health: Emotional, mental, physical and societal health enable life to be lived to the full.
• Integrity: Telling myself the truth. Am I really living my values if I proceed in this way?
• Relationships: What brings most purpose to life: very little of any true worth is done completely on my own.
• Quality: If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. If I live all my other values, this value should take care of itself.

When I founded mch in 2005, it seemed obvious to me that the company’s values should align with my personal ones. On its inception though, I chose only to declare publicly three of the above values as company values:

1. Balance
2. Integrity
3. Quality

I took the view that these were the most relevant to my company and the values that clients would be most interested in. By 2008, my values-based approach to business gained sufficient attention that I was asked to write a short article for a regional enterprise network on how values can inform business. An edited extract of this article can be viewed below.

Fast forward to 2018 and, while my values remained constant, a considerable amount had changed in both my personal and professional life. A notable change was that I had started a relationship with someone who also led a company. A period of turmoil ensued as I felt that the way they were leading their business was in conflict with some of my personal values. In particular, my partner’s organisation was distributing resources in ways I found difficult to reconcile. I felt that they, like most businesses, were perpetuating the inequalities of opportunity that exist in society. Essentially, I found it very hard to separate the personal from the professional. Indeed, I began to appreciate that there really wasn’t a separation of my personal and professional values. Although I had only listed three professional/company values on my company’s website, the other five personal values had informed, and continued to inform, my professional practice.

In particular, I was reminded of just how much the value of equality had shaped my career choices. For example, my initial decision for mch to exclusively serve charitable organisations and social enterprises was, in part, driven by a desire to provide a level of support and expertise that such organisations wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. Furthermore, a key motivator in taking on the role of Chief Executive of Rumbalara, the indigenous sporting and community development organisation in Australia, was to assist a community that had been deprived of equality of opportunity.

The experience also strengthened my view that so much of my own situation and success stemmed from an inequality of opportunity. The biggest contributors to my good fortune were nothing to do with anything I had done. Yes, I have worked hard throughout my career and have tried to make the most of opportunities. However, the greatest opportunities have arisen on account of being born in a country where I had access to free education and from being born into a loving and supportive family. My innate intelligence is nothing of my own doing either, and even my work ethic is likely to have been influenced by the cultural environments I have found myself in. The result is that from an early age, I have felt that I am already a winner in the lottery of life. Consequently, I have tried to find careers and adopt a lifestyle that utilises the skills I’ve been lucky enough to develop, to help others win too.

A key outcome of this experience has been to be more public about mch’s broader values and to use my business to promote them. For example, the value of equality informs the pricing of mch’s online courses and the appeal to support equality of opportunity in learning and development that features within them. I’ve also experienced the positive impact that can come from engaging with organisations with differing values. In addition to clarifying what’s really important, experiencing differing perspectives can help bring about positive changes in thinking and acting.

Original mch Values Article

10 Words to Describe the Ideal Organisation

July 12th, 2011

At a recent conference, a speaker from a social welfare charity shared some research that their organisation had conducted. They had asked over 2,000 adults to choose up to 10 words that they thought best described the ideal charity working in social welfare. The top 10 words were:

1. Caring
2. = Trustworthy, Friendly and Supportive
3. Helpful
4. Professional
5. Honest
6. Approachable
7. Practical
8. Informative

A key omission that struck me was ‘Effectiveness/Impact’: is the social welfare organisation effectively addressing/solving their priority issues.

Does such analysis suggest that despite growing calls for proof of impact amongst funders, proving impact is not such an issue to the typical person in the street?

Also, what 10 words would you use to describe your organisation at the moment? Are there any words on your current list that shouldn’t be there? Are there any glaring omissions?