[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: Trying to Catch an Echo in a Net

[Carolyn Gimian]

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

June 24, 2007

TRYING TO CATCH AN ECHO IN A NET

[From a talk to a group of Buddhist business people]

Conducting business and brushing our teeth should be regarded as the 
same situation....Our business philosophy should be based on 
practice, an understanding of the dharma (the teachings), and some 
kind of genuineness....You should have a settled attitude, even if 
your business is only six months old. First of all, you should know 
who you are. From that, you can know how you are going to manifest 
yourself. You might talk to other business people, who say, "Great, 
just go ahead! Let me jump in with you." Those little enthusiasms 
sound suspicious. In fact, our community has suffered a lot in the 
past by trying to snowball each other's enthusiasm to the level of 
frivolity. We should be aware that, once we begin to do that, we are 
trying to catch an echo in a net. We begin to run here and there 
looking for the origin of the echo, but our net will always be empty. 
Nothing is caught, because there is nothing in it. What I'm saying is 
that, on the whole, there is no particular trick to conducting a 
successful business. Even if the Buddha himself or Padmasambhava [the 
father of Buddhism in Tibet] set up a business, there would be no 
trick. We have to go along with the natural sense of economy that 
exists in the country, and with our sanity.

Edited from "Ratna Society Meeting," August 28, 1978, unpublished transcript.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used 
by permission.

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Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of 
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