Shaolin Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

This is a story of two boys born in Chinese countryside around 1964. One comes from a destitute family, is sickly and frail and almost dies at the age of two, like his siblings before him. The father sells his only treasure – a calligraphy brush – to pay the doctors, but they can’t help. As the boy’s shattered parents carry him home to certain death, a man in rags stops them and asks why they are crying. He tells them to unwrap the child and with a few needles brings him back to life. Convinced that the stranger was a Bodhisattva, parents take the boy to Shaolin monastery where he reveals an uncanny talent for martial arts and becomes the pride of Shaolin kung fu.

The other boy has a happier start, his parents well off and quick to notice their son’s intellectual prowess. Devoted Buddhists, they encourage him to join Shaolin at 16. In a few years the pudgy bespectacled kid rises to become the right hand of the head monk, and when the latter dies the 22-year old is enthroned as the monastery’s 300th abbot.

It is around that time that Shaolin itself is swept by the tides of time. The days of the Cultural Revolution are over and suddenly the monastery is no longer a liability but a commercial opportunity. An 80s movie, starring Jet Li, brings it out of the oblivion and tourists flock to admire the unlikely mix of Zen and kung fu. The local government smells profit in this new notoriety. Our boys – let’s call them the Fist and the Brain – are now in their mid-twenties, each holding a key to the future of the Shaolin legend.

A plot of the next Hong-Kong blockbuster? No, a true story which takes an unorthodox turn when in 1992 the Fist defects to the West during the Shaolin tour of North America. He sets up Shaolin USA in an East Village basement, picks up a bunch of celebrity students and becomes known as “crazy shifu”. He is the monk we see flying around in Nike and HP commercials and starring in Jim Jarmush’s “Ghostdog”. Around the year 2000, the Time magazine captures him at the height of his success, wearing Prada sneakers and explaining that he likes wine because it is “special water” and champagne because it is “ a very very special water”.

Meanwhile the Brain steers the Shaolin ship onwards, trade-marking the monastery’s name, “relocating” surrounding villages for the sake of a UNESCO application, producing reality TV shows and even a cinema blockbuster starring Jackie Chan. Armed with a degree in business administration, the Abbot becomes a controversial figure, accused at some point for planning to float Shaolin on the stock market.

The two monks meet briefly again around 2005 during a kung fu competition at Shaolin. “I brought my students here to see their spiritual home” says the Fist, smiling his best Hollywood smile. “I always knew you stayed out there to teach the Dharma” replied the other. “This was your calling”. And so, in a happy ending, the heads of Shaolin China and Shaolin USA live happily ever after, each building their empire, including TV commercials and the online shops where you can buy “monk bags”, prayer beads, and kung-fu DVDs. Look up their names online and you will see torrents of criticism, as the paths chosen by our Shaolin super-stars go against anything we have come to expect from devout Buddhist monks. Yet look at their faces and you will see a Zen demeanor and not a trace of doubt in the course they have chosen.

So what if the two monks were heralding the new economic order? To simplify to the extreme Max Weber ‘s seminal “Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, our Western capitalism was born out of guilt: guilt about spending, guilt about being rich, guilt about wasting time, guilt about enjoying life. Driven by these moral convictions, pious Protestants worked ‘round the clock, and then, instead of spending their hard earned money, reinvested it in building their business further, thus giving birth to modern enterprise.

As China and India enter the front lines of the economic race, we should prepare for new belief systems to kick the ass of our stale morality, Shaolin kung fu style, transforming the way we think of business. If I were running Harvard Business school, I’d set up a Shaolin branch fast – and not forget to trademark it right away.