7 Lessons on Business from a Buddhist Monk

Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO). Now it’s time for the news:

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Lesson 1. You're going to fail - and that's okay

The man sprinted for the government building, each step lost in the loud march of car engines and phone chatter. The morning commute was something to behold: the mass crossings, storefront neon buzz, the collective breath of the workforce. But the man was running late; he had no time for contemplation. So instead he weaved through suited men and women, rounded the last corner and collided with a seated Buddhist monk. 

 The crash caused a ripple of attention on the sidewalk. Office workers stopped to face the monk and fallen man, while in a nearby shop front old vagrants let noodles dangle as they stared. Even the smog watched, waited. 

The man was desperate to resume his dash, but to turn and run was immoral. He first needed to apologise. But when he approached, the old monk bent to one side and thrust his hands in a hessian sack. He rummaged for an eternity, so the man shot a worried glance at the government ‘s high walls and grey towers. The monk then revealed a jug of kerosene, which he turned upside down and raised like a portable shower, before setting himself alight.  

The flames rose high and fast, bright and loud. Mere seconds separated the kerosene touching his stubbled crown and the heat singeing the street sign above. 

And in those seconds, as his orange shawl blackened and his soft skin melted, the monk remained stoic. Not a single thought clouded his mind, nor a muscle twitch. A woman nearby snapped the moment - the flailing bureaucrat, the flaming monk - and then it was over. The monk ventured to the bardo to be reincarnated, and the bureaucrat was late for work.  

Lesson 2. All ideas must be rooted in practicality 

Before he became a Buddhist monk, Aden lived on the Tibetan Plateau. He lived with his parents and older brother in a village that stood like a tollbooth at the mouth of a small valley. Travellers would pass through, buy supplies, and stay if they could be convinced; that is how Aden’s parents made a living - tending to nomads and foreigners. 

When they had guests, Aden’s mother sent the boys to wash up in the river. Aden always raced ahead, and though his brother knew why, he never intervened. Instead he watched his little brother sprint for the shallows and plunge in his hands. The boy’s giggles and high-pitched threats floated on the wind, and then came the rocks. But Aden’s brother knew how far the boy could throw, so he stood safe on that precipice until Aden shivered and quit, and for years this went on, the freezing water, the arc of rocks and brothers. 

Upon his reincarnation, Aden felt on his old skull that same freezing water. He smiled, and the stretch of his cheeks caused ripples that bounced off unknown shores and returned. He was an island in an ocean, we all are. But when he finally opened his eyes, there were no waves and below was strange white soil and black grass, and ahead lay nothing but a death-like void. To gain his bearings, Aden lifted his head and the void came alive. 

Two massive eyes rose like twin suns and cast their burning gaze on the trapped monk. Then the eyes retreated and revealed more features of a giant woman’s face. Her teeth could mulch a man like a yak does grass, and when she opened her blackhole mouth, Aden waded through the nothingness and smacked the clear barrier over and over. He screamed, resorted to common panic. But his endless pounding was in vain, for there is no escape here, no end and no death, not when you are reincarnated as a LinkedIn post.

Lesson 3. Success requires one simple thing: passion

Fran Moore had just successfully put her son, Axel, to bed and planned to browse the internet before combating the day’s housework. For that time of night she saved the silent tasks - the folding of clothes, wiping of benches - because even the iron’s cough would wake the boy and the day is already so long, for both of them. 

At the time, Fran was working as an executive assistant at a quantity surveyor in Melbourne, an office with beige walls and stiff filing cabinets. She often had trouble keeping work, but this firm seemed to like her and they let her bring Axel most days, so it would do. For her role, Fran did not require a LinkedIn profile but she had one. She enjoyed scrolling the feed, and seemed to take something from seeing her old friends, their successes, their lives. 

That night there was a job update from Amanda, an old netball friend. She’s proud to be starting a new role as director of marketing. She’s posing in a fitted blue suit. She’s presenting a freshly baked cake. She somehow looks younger and wiser than Fran, happier, more important, but Fran does not look away, and maybe that something she takes from LinkedIn is not enjoyment at all but something more human... 

Soon she came across an article entitled 7 Lessons on Business from a Buddhist Monk. The author was Gary Sensek, famous for bestsellers such as Succeed to Fail and The Offline Digital Economy: A Detailed Summary. Normally Fran would have scrolled on, but there was this image:  a burning monk, flame and smog, shawl and skin, so alive it flickered. 

Later, Axel stumbled into the lounge room. He had been awoken by his mother’s loud cries, and he stood in the dark, chin nestled against his shoulder, a boy torn between disobeying and caring for his pained mum. Fran understood the gesture, of course; he was too good for her, always would be. 

But thanks to the 7 Lessons on Business from a Buddhist Monk, Fran met the burning truth. Her son was dressed in his cousin’s hand-me-downs and odd socks, always odd socks. He spends his weeks at her work rolling a single matchbox car. He has no friends, no father. He has no clothes. He eats no cake because his mother cannot bake. In the past, Fran found excuses as frequent as stains on the boy’s pants, but if success requires one simple thing - passion, then why was Axel not getting what he deserved? 

She found the answer deep inside and knelt before her son. “Listen to me,” she said. “Axe, Listen. From now on things will be different, better. I swear on my life, on my soul.” 

Lesson 4.  Selling is serving

An organ exploded in hymn. The graduating class filed in and filled the rows on stage. These were bright young men in adult coats. Sitting in the packed crowd, Fran craned her neck in search of Axel, and when he pressed through the curtain she gasped and began to cry. Pimple-faced Axel, a late bloomer, was to graduate from Walton Boys Grammar with excellent grades.

Many painful years had passed since Fran encountered the 7 Lessons on Business from a Buddhist Monk, more than a decade since she broke down and made her son a promise. 

But as Axel crossed the stage to fetch his diploma, it was not the early mornings studying that came to mind, nor the late nights and weekends at work. It was not the jokes, harassment or humiliation she endured, nor the areas of her life sacrificed, burned away. No, in that moment, Fran thought of one thing: the beauty of hope, hope for progress from one generation to the next.  

Then, instantly, Axel graduated from the ANU. He crossed another stage, shook another hand, stuffed a rolled-up diploma in his Country Road bag. Unfortunately, Fran could not attend the ceremony in Canberra but instead paid for Axel to fly home the following weekend to celebrate. 

Two hours before his plane landed, Fran was descending a glass elevator on her way to the CEO’s office. Together they would close out a sensitive legal issue before Fran bolted to the airport. In her arms was the gigantic celebratory cake bought by her executive assistant, and in the boot of her Mercedes was an expensive croquet mallet for Axel. 

Over a year had passed since she last saw her son, more than two since they really spoke, so Fran was unaware that Axel no longer played croquet, and in fact detested his previous love. But that was a topic they could discuss, providing she was not late to the airport.

Halfway down, Fran noticed she forgot to press the CEO’s floor. Because of the cake, she had to reach for the button with her elbow, which caused her open handbag to slip off her shoulder, and her phone and lipstick to topple out. Like a circus performer navigating high-heels and juggling a cake, Fran lowered herself, but a stabbing pain struck her chest and she died. 

Lesson 5. People are your most important commodity

Few wish to die at work, and no workplace wants their employees to die, least of all at work. Fran’s death was curious, though, because she died in the elevator. This created a circus among the forty-five floor’s building services regarding who was responsible. So while they deliberated, Fran, now the corporate version of stateless, rode the clear box up and down for forty-five minutes, her face covered in cake and on her limp wrist a flaming monk tattoo.

That evening, Axel had taken the SkyBus and train from the airport, having assumed his mother was held up at work. Therefore he was unaware of her death until he arrived at his mother’s house and was met by the police. He was reserved, polite, with the officers. Then they left and he sat on her bedroom floor wearing odd socks, crying the tears of a son not yet prepared. 

The bedroom itself seemed foreign to Axel. On the phone his mother often spoke of renovations, decorations, and if the ladder from serious to frivolous only has four rungs, then he was not sure what to make of the polished concrete floor and Aboriginal art. 

Then a sudden panic set in, and Axel marched to his mother’s walk-in wardrobe. 

Inside there were three crowded racks. Axel picked a garment at random, a fitted blue suit that fainted across his arms, and for minutes he stared at the lapels, the silk lining. Then he selected another, a dress, and soon at his feet was a mound of discarded clothes and shoes and the racks were bare. 

Then he went downstairs and emptied the fridge of sauces, pre-made salads, strange yogurts. He toppled the bookcase. Every drawer was emptied, every shelf cleared. Within an hour the house appeared as if a rushed thief had left all the gold, jewellery and electronics and taken only what was valuable, or nothing at all. 

Lesson 6. Your most important commodity is time

Fran Moore’s funeral was the following Thursday, held in a brick church much closer to her birthplace than where she died. Behind a lectern on the modest stage was her only son, Axel, and projected on the screen behind him was Fran’s kind face, smiling. 

To those present, the similarity between mother and grieving son was striking. And in that moment of ostensible finality, their likeness voiced some cosmic comfort: that things go on, from one generation to the next, the arc of mother and son. 

From his coat pocket, Axel retrieved his speech and cleared his throat. 

“My mother, Fran Moore,” he began, but stopped. He gripped the lectern’s edge, dropped his head and fought tears. His aunty moved close and placed a comforting palm on his back. 

“My mother was born on the 4th of December.” Again he stopped.

A sympathetic murmur spread through the church. Axel’s aunty, who had remained by his side, whispered in his ear. The young man shook his head, brushed her aside and scurried off stage. He was shaking and could not speak, for how is a son expected to say, at the celebration of his mother’s life, that he did not know her?   

For years there was the expectation that, after boarding school and university in Canberra, Axel would return and they would reconnect. But now it was too late, and idle questions such as ‘What was your first boyfriend like?’ and ‘How did you feel about being a mother?’ would go unresolved. And when he ransacked his mother’s house, he found no journals or diaries, no post-its to send for hand-writing analysis. No, his mother would remain a mystery. 

But then a few months later, Axel came across a serendipitous article on LinkedIn while working as an engineering graduate in Melbourne. The piece was called How to 10x Your Business Using Origami Principles, by Gary Sensek. This was the very business influencer who had changed his mother’s life, and seeing his name gave Axel an idea. 

That night when he got home Axel visited his mother’s LinkedIn page. It was still active, and under her professional photo and third-person bio was a feed of everything she had said and done. Axel was able to trawl through more than a decade’s worth of data, of congratulations, perspectives, endorsements, to find who she might be. 

Lesson 7. Self-immolate on a dry day because content is king

Separating Axel from the graduates was a glass desk. The desk was free from personal effects, and otherwise clear except for Axel’s laptop and monitor, which he spun to face the eager graduates so they could all see the 7 Lessons on Business from a Buddhist Monk and the image of the burning man.  

Axel was delivering his famous graduate pep-talk to the firm’s four fresh faces. He had long ago left engineering in favour of consulting, and each year the other partners begged him to deliver his spiel. They bribed with nice red, jokingly promised to clean his car; that is how good he was, that’s why stapled to his reputation were phrases like ‘staff retention god’.   

The spiel he gave went like this: When my mother died I failed to speak at her funeral. I thought it was because I didn’t know what to say. My mother and I were estranged and in many ways I resented her, even hated her for never being around, for shipping me off to boarding school. But that was not the real reason I choked, and it took truly understanding my mother to understand my own failing. 

After she died I read everything she posted on LinkedIn. I was an engineer at the time, so I created a systems map to see how every job update, kudos and comment fit together thematically. That process took months, but it enabled me to see a singular message: the true meaning of her life. I finally understood that the one thing my mother held dear, was branding. And there, clear as glass, was my own shortcomings: I had failed at the funeral because, unlike that monk, I had no personal brand, and neither do our clients, but we can help…    

There was an eight-handed applause and then three graduates left. The young man that remained coughed into his fist as his eyes darted between eclectic art pieces on the walls.   

“I just wanted to say thank you for your time,” he said.  

Axel unbuttoned his white jacket and clomped his boots on the desk, revealing a matching pair of umbrella-pattern socks. “You’re more than welcome,” he said. “Now I must-” 

“You’ve reframed so much for me,” interrupted the graduate. “After a four year degree I finally… get it.” 

“Well, we are as excited to have you here as you are to-”

“It’s all chance. You said the monk self-immolated in the city centre and not inside a shipping container as an act of branding; that’s why he wore the shawl, the shaved head. But I get what you are really saying - I listened. 

“Like, what if it rained that day and the flames didn’t catch? What if the bureaucrat ran into the bag with the kerosine and kicked it into traffic? So many things could have stopped the monk’s message getting to the world, to you. It’s a miracle. So we just wear the right suit or shawl, say the right things, and then ride these waves and hope the current carries us far. But our success won’t be because of our effort, no way. Effort is a ruse, hard work: a lie. That is what the monk is telling us: branding is a mitigation for our inherent powerlessness! Branding: because while the fire might not catch, you must bring the kerosene!”

Before Axel could respond the graduate sprinted into the hall to join the others. Through the glass wall, Axel watched the young man retell his epiphany and then he removed his feet from the desk and slammed them on the floor. 

“That’s not what I meant, at all,” he said to himself. “How could he have misunderstood-” Axel stopped himself and sat in near-silence with an uncomfortable realisation. 

Soon the graduates left and he was alone, like an island. Now the office was quiet, silent except for a strange tapping sound coming from his monitor, from the image of the burning monk.

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Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.