The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Robin Sharma, 1997
A famous lawyer collapses in the middle of a courtroom, sells his red Ferrari and leaves for the Himalayas. Three years later he returns and tells a former colleague a strange parable about a garden, a lighthouse and a sumo wrestler. Behind each of its details stands one of seven rules that help you manage your mind, find your calling and stop putting life off until later.
Who it is for
For people who live on the run and ask themselves more and more often what it is all for. And for people for whom wisdom comes more easily in the form of a story.
Life does not always give you what you ask it for, but it always gives you what you need.
The Lawyer Who Collapsed in Court
Picture a person who has everything people are supposed to dream of. Julian Mantle is counted among the most famous lawyers. He has a luxurious mansion, and by its door stands a red Ferrari, which he is prouder of than anything. He wins high-profile cases and almost never leaves the office. His marriage fell apart long ago, there is no time for those close to him, and at fifty-three he looks seventy.
One day Julian collapses in the middle of a packed courtroom. It is a heart attack. The doctor is blunt: you will have to choose between your work and your life. And Julian does what nobody expects of him. He gives up his practice, sells the mansion and the Ferrari, and leaves for India.
Three years later a stranger walks into the office of his former colleague John, from whose point of view the story is told. He is fit and calm, and looks to be in his early thirties. John does not recognise Julian at once. Julian explains that he has found, high in the Himalayas, a village of sages called Sivana. Their leader, the old Yogi Raman, agreed to pass his teaching on to him, on one condition: once back home, Julian will share it with others.
All the teaching is packed into one strange parable. In it there is a garden, a lighthouse, a huge sumo wrestler, a pink cord, a golden stopwatch, yellow roses and a road of diamonds. Behind each detail stands one rule for living, and there are seven in all. Julian was invented for the parable and did not really exist, although Robin Sharma himself, like him, once gave up the law. Ahead we will walk through this parable step by step, and work out what you can take into your life today.
A Garden You Must Not Let Just Anything Into
The parable begins with a picture. Imagine a beautiful, quiet garden full of wonderful flowers. In the view of the sages, this garden is your mind. If you tend it, what makes life richer grows in it. If you leave it unattended, weeds choke it.
Sharma repeats an old idea: the mind can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master. While it serves, it helps you think, decide and create. When it starts giving orders, a person spends whole days replaying worries, resentments and old failures. The author believes that anxiety drains the mind's strength and stops you from focusing on what really matters. Remember an evening when one unpleasant remark from your boss went round and round in your head until midnight. That evening the garden did not belong to you.
Yogi Raman teaches Julian three practices that help him take the garden back.
• The Heart of the Rose. Take a living rose and sit in a quiet place. Look into the very middle of the flower, study the petals, their colour and their curves. When your thoughts drift away, and they will, calmly bring your gaze back to the rose. This way the mind learns to hold on to one object, instead of jumping after every thought.
• Opposite Thinking. When a gloomy thought comes, do not argue with it or drive it out by force. Replace it with its opposite, a bright one, and turn your attention to what brings you joy.
• The Secret of the Lake. Early in the morning the sages of Sivana looked at still water and imagined that what they intended had already come true. Sharma sees in this a way of tuning the mind in advance to what you want.
None of these practices requires hours. Their point lies elsewhere: you stop being a spectator of your own thoughts and start deciding for yourself what to plant in your garden.
About the author
Robin Sharma is a Canadian writer and former lawyer. He left legal practice for books on leadership and personal growth, among them The 5 AM Club and Who Will Cry When You Die?
All books by this author: Robin Sharma
Terms from the book
- John
- Mantle
- Dharma
- Kaizen
- Mantra
- Sivana: A fictional village of sages high in the Himalayas, where Julian found his teacher.
- Raman: Yogi Raman, an old sage, head of the community of Sivana and Julian's teacher. A character of the book.
- Sumo: A Japanese wrestling sport in which heavy wrestlers try to push an opponent out of the ring, or make him touch the ground with something other than his feet.
- Heart of the Rose: An exercise from the book: calmly look into the middle of a living rose, and bring your gaze back to it when your thoughts drift away. The name is given in the parable; it is not a scientific term.
- Opposite Thinking: A technique from the book: replace a gloomy thought with its opposite, a bright one. This is the author's name for it, not a psychological term.
- Secret of the Lake: A practice of the sages from the parable: look at still water and imagine that what you intend has already come true.
- Book of Desires: A notebook from Sharma's method, in which goals are written down by areas of life and pictures of what you are moving toward are stuck in.
- Magic Rule of Twenty-One: A rule from the book: repeat a new action every day for twenty-one days in a row, so that it becomes a habit. This is the author's idea, not a scientifically established period.
- Vow of Silence: A voluntary decision not to speak for some time. In the book it is an exercise in self-control.
All terms
Similar books
- The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery, Brianna Wiest
- The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
- The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Work and Life, Paul Millerd
- The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
- The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, Catherine Price
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer
- The Montessori Method, Maria Montessori
- The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, Florence Williams
Read in Livria
