This series is called Touching the Earth, and it's based on the story of Buddha when he sat up at night, the night he was enlightened. And first Mara, the lord of illusion, came and tried to scare him with horrendous armies and weapons. Does this sound familiar? And then he tried to seduce him with wonderful-looking people and great food, etc. But Buddha was not deterred. But the last thing that Mara said was, by what right have you to sit here? Both to point him to self-consciousness and say, are you doing this selfishly? And Buddha touched the earth as he was sitting to make the earth his witness. And so that's the... hook for this series, making Earth the witness, and also celebrating with all of those of you who have tried to make explicit your connection with the Earth and not with exploitation.

[01:15]

I would also like to introduce Mark Lesser, who has the Zen of business administration. Mark has been a long-time Zen student. and has been involved in business for a long time, too. Ivan's book is Let My People Go Surfing. Thank you, Michael. Suzuki Roshi, who is the founder, first Zen master of the San Francisco Zen Center, in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, said, the best way to control your sheep or cow is to give it a wide pasture. And Ivan Chouinard has... implemented this philosophy in quite a radical way. In his book, Let My People Go Surfing, you can tell he doesn't have a lot of faith in traditional MBAs or masters in business administration. Instead, he uses an MBA philosophy, which he calls management by absence. Ivan entered the business world in the 1950s when he was a champion rock climber.

[02:21]

and he began designing, manufacturing, and distributing rock climbing equipment. In 1964, he produced a one-page mail order catalog in which they advised people to expect very slow shipments during the rock climbing season. By the mid-1980s, his company was doing $20 million in sales, and by the mid-1990s, Patagonia was doing $100 million in sales. And today, Ivan Chouinard is the owner of Patagonia, based in Ventura, California, with current sales of more than $230 million. And this management by absence has continued, despite the size of the company. And he spends his time testing equipment in the Himalayas, in South America, Africa, or can be found kayaking in the Russian Far East. Working Mother magazine called Patagonia one of the 100 best companies for working mothers. And Fortune magazine named Patagonia one of the 100 best companies in the country to work for.

[03:27]

He also began an ocean initiative in 2004 to support the sustainability and health of oceans. And Patagonia has given away more than $22 million in cash and in-kind donations since 1985. He also began an organization called 1% for Peace, an alliance of businesses that contribute 1% of revenue to environmental organizations. As a lifetime mountain climber, he learned that by perfecting each element and that by focusing on the process of climbing, you'll end up on the summit. And in his books, he talks about his Zen studies is a quote from the book that says, as it turns out, the perfect place I found to apply this Zen philosophy is in the business world. Yvon Chouinard continues to perfect each element and discover new and uncharted summits through his vision, passion, and generosity.

[04:32]

Please welcome Yvon Chouinard. This is a little different than last night. Yesterday I gave a talk at Harvard Business School, and after the talk, one of the MBA students came to me and said, You know, everything you talked about tonight is exactly the opposite of what all my professors have been telling me. So that was a success, actually. I've been a businessman for almost 50 years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I've never respected the profession. It's business that has to take the majority of the blame for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and for poisoning the earth with the effluent from its factories.

[05:36]

Yet business can produce food, cure disease, control populations, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it could do these good things, and make a profit without losing its soul. The first line of my book, no young kid growing up ever dreams of someday becoming a businessman. He wants to be a fireman, a sponsored athlete, a forest ranger. The Lee Iacoccas, Donald Trumps, and Jack Welches of the business world are heroes to no one except other businessmen with similar values. I wanted to be a fur trapper when I grew up. I'm a very, you know, reluctant businessman. And I never, ever wanted to be a businessman. You know, I'm a kid from the 60s when we rejected all of that stuff. And so because of that, you know, it's kind of like a samurai.

[06:39]

You know, they say if you wanted to be a samurai, you can't be afraid of dying because if you flinch a little bit, you know, your head gets cut off. Since I never wanted to be a businessman, I could take a lot of risk and I could break a lot of rules because I didn't care whether I lost my business or not. So it gave me a lot of freedom. It's kind of like, you know, anybody that wants to be president of the United States shouldn't be allowed to be. Well, when I was a kid, I was born in Lisbon, Maine. to a French-Canadian family, and I couldn't speak English until I was eight years old. In 1946, we moved out to California, six of us in a car, kind of a grapes of wrath migration. I was put in school as soon as we got to Burbank, California, and I couldn't speak English, and shortest kid in school, so I immediately ran away from school.

[07:42]

And that's kind of one of the first lessons I learned You know, one of my favorite quotes about entrepreneurs is, if you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. Because, you know, the juvenile delinquent says, you know, oh, this sucks. I'm going to do it my own way. You know, when I was young, I could do all the different sports as well as any kid. But when it came time for a real game, When people were watching and stuff, I'd fumble the ball. I learned pretty soon off that team sports wasn't my thing. I started just doing, inventing my own games. You know, when everybody is at the prom, I'm down in the LA River gigging frogs. When I was about 12 to about 16 or so, I got interested in falconry. You know, where you're training hawks and falcons.

[08:45]

to hunt for you. One of the ways you train these birds is you go out and you trap one and a wild hawk and you have them sit on your hand, stand on your hand until they finally fall asleep. And that may go through all night long. So, you know, when a 12-year-old kid has to do that, the Zen master would have to say, you know, who's getting trained here anyway? And it's, you know, you don't, When a hawk doesn't do a wild thing like that, doesn't do what you want them to do, you don't slap them around and say, bad dog. So it has to be done all with positive reinforcement. So I've applied that, you know, management and raising my kids, you know. When my kids did what I want them to do, I'd feed them. So in high school, I was so bored in high school, it drove me crazy.

[09:50]

I'd sit in math class. I'd practice holding my breath. It's my first little meditation thing. I'd hold my breath so that I could go free diving on weekends and skin dive. And I got so I could hold my breath three minutes. The falconry turned into climbing for its own sake. In other words, climbing to these falconaries, pretty soon I got interested in just plain climbing. In those days, all equipment was European, and it was pretty poor quality. The pitons, you know those spikes you drive into the cracks in the rock, they were made out of soft iron, because the European attitude was to conquer the mountains, you know. conquest of Everest, this kind of thing. And their attitude was, you know, you go do a first ascent and you put these pitons in and you leave them in place, which makes it easier for the next party.

[10:55]

But we were brought up with the teachings of, you know, Emerson and Thoreau and John Muir with an attitude of you don't leave any trace of having been there. And so we were doing some really big climbs in Yosemite. We wanted to have better equipment, better pitons that could be put in and taken out without the heads breaking off and stuff. So I got myself a forge and an anvil and some tongs and a book on blacksmithing. I taught myself how to blacksmith. I started making pitons out of steel instead of iron. And those pitons could be placed over and over again and we could do like some of the walls on El Capitan that take 10 days. We could go up with like 40 pitons and place them 10 times each. So it revolutionized climbing. It seemed like every time I came back from the mountains, I always had ideas on how to improve the equipment.

[12:01]

I'm not an inventor, I'm an innovator. There's a big difference between invention and innovation. Like invention is, you know, zero to one, and innovation is one to 1,000. So every time I look at any piece of gear, my mind is always spinning on how to make it better. Another little Zen lesson I learned, I used to stand on my forge for hours at a time. I'd have my forge here, a little trip hammer, I had my anvil, and I'd grab my tongs and grab a piece of steel, put it in the forge, grab a hot one, go over to the trip hammer, bam, bam, bam, go over to the anvil, hit it two, three times with my hammer, put it back in the oven, grab another piece of steel. After six or eight hours, I was constantly trying to minimize my movements and simplify everything, never crossing my hands,

[13:08]

And it became like a little dance. And I kept working on getting it smoother and smoother. And if I hit the piton four times with a hammer, I'd try to do it only three times. And after like six or eight hours, it's just exactly like meditation. In fact, I remember there was an old 55-gallon barrel, rusty barrel there. And I'd stare at it. and the thing would start glowing. It was real catharsis. I love working with my hands, I love working with my body, and I have to do it every day. Even if it's just chopping vegetables, I have to do it. When we designed our equipment, we always felt like we achieved perfection, not when there's nothing else to add to the product, but when there's nothing to take away. are always working towards simplicity.

[14:09]

In fact, that's a big lesson I learned. I'm trying to do that with my life, and it's the hardest thing there is. It's so easy to work towards complexity, and it's so difficult to work towards simplicity. I applied the same philosophy to other sports. One thing I learned about big wall climbing, or any kind of climbing, is that what's important is the process of climbing. You know, when you climb in Yosemite, you get to the summit, it's just flat up there. There's nothing there. There's nothing on any summit. So how you climb is what's important. And, you know, the purpose of doing a difficult climb or climbing a dangerous mountain like a Himalayan peak is to affect some kind of a spiritual or physical change. You know, evolution doesn't happen without stress. And if you compromise on the process, it doesn't work.

[15:13]

You know, if you...

[15:14]

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