Compassion is Our Nature
Jack Kornfield writes in The Wise Heart, Buddhist Psychology for the West: From the perspective of Buddhist psychology, compassion is natural. It derives from out interconnection, which Buddhism calls “interdependence.” This can readily be seen in the physical world. In the womb, every child is interdependent with its mother’s body. If either of them is […]
Meeting Expectations Quarter After Quarter
Warren Buffett asserted at the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting: Businesses do not meet expectations quarter after quarter and year after year. It just isn’t in the nature of running businesses. And, in our view, people that predict precisely what the future will be are either kidding investors, or they’re kidding themselves, or they’re kidding […]
Doing Less and Being Okay with It
Charlie Munger said at Daily Journal 2019 Annual Shareholders’ Meeting, We tried to do less. We never had the illusion we could just hire a bunch of bright young people and they would know more than anybody about canned soup and aerospace and utilities and so on and so on and so on. We never […]
A Second Handle on Reality
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe wrote in Hopes and Impediments, Literature, whether handed down by word of mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality, enabling us to encounter in the safe manageable dimensions of make-believe the very same threats to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life; and at the […]
Charlie Munger on Being Properly Educated
Charlie Munger said at the Daily Journal Meeting 2019, My definition of being properly educated is being right when the professor is wrong. Anybody can spit back what the professor tells you. The trick is to know when he’s right and when he’s wrong. That’s the properly educated person.
Pleasure of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s Literature
In Dawn to the West, his “History of Japanese Literature” series, Japanologist Donald Keene, the eminent American-born scholar of Japanese literature, writes about the vividness of the works of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, one of Japan’s most popular novelists: No one would turn to Tanizaki for wisdom as to how a man should live his life, nor […]
Having a Too-Hard Pile
Charlie Munger said at Daily Journal 2019 Annual Shareholders’ Meeting, Part of our secret is that we don’t attempt to know a lot of things. I have a pile on my desk that solves most of my problems. It’s called the too-hard pile. And I just keep shifting things to the too-hard pile. Every once […]
Appreciating the Moment
Self-help guru Leo Babauta writes in Dropping Distraction, Sit still for a few minutes and pay attention to what’s around you. Notice the quality of the light. Appreciate any people who might be nearby. Notice the quality of your thoughts, the sensations of various parts of your body, the loveliness of your breath as it […]
How to Handle Failure
In the bestselling The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, New York University-academic and business analyst Scott Galloway advices taking things in stride: Nothing is ever as good or bad as it seems. All situations and emotions pass. When you have a big victory, pull in your horns and be risk […]
Comparing Abortion and Killing Chimpanzees
Richard Dawkins writes in A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, Science cannot tell you whether abortion is wrong, but it can point out that the (embryological) continuum that seamlessly joins a non-sentient foetus to a sentient adult is analogous to the (evolutionary) continuum that joins humans to other species. If the […]