You may not know the author of this book, but he wrote a previous book in 2018 that earned one of our “Best Spiritual Books of the Year” awards.
This one is similar. Here we have a Buddhist monk (ordained in Jodo Shinshu, a school of Pure Land Buddhism) with advice – not on meditation techniques or concentration or anger management, but on how to work better with others. He does this by bringing together his Buddhist understanding of the world as it encounters work challenges, reflecting on his own experience of running an organization-development company, as well as what he has learned from others’ experiences on the job.
We appreciated how Matsumoto seems to understand the modern world in which we all live and also avoids simple answers. For example, he writes about using a mobile device, himself, and then says: “Would everything improve if we just turned off notifications? Not really. Silencing external noise or alerts doesn’t silence the commotion inside us.” He writes also about riding bullet trains on work excursions (he lives in Tokyo), listening to English musician Brian Eno, pursuing his MBA, and having business meetings. Also, he occasionally swears; he writes in a colloquial way that’s unheard of in “Buddhist master” sorts of books.
Working better, in his advice, involves a lot of practices such as “listening first” and “mindful listening,” which then leads Matsumoto to offer what he calls “Ambient Buddhism” — “when mindfulness isn’t limited to set times or places, but becomes part of daily life.” All of that happens in the first, short chapter.
This is a small book in stature as well as total word count, but it’s rich in short wisdom. We paused to reread the section on “Fellowness as a Moral Dimension” twice, as well as “Impermanence as the Core of Business Evolution.” This monk knows what he’s talking about. Also fascinating was the section of “A Way to Solve Problems without Solving Them.” For those who are elbow-to-elbow with others in an office, this is good stuff. And it should be worth anyone’s time who wants to blend spiritual practice and their workplace.
