For the past twenty years, Lawrence Levy has been dedicated to studying and practicing Buddhist philosophy and meditation with his teacher, Tibetan Buddhist master Segyu Choepel Rinpoche, and to understanding how these practices and ideas intersect with modern life. At its core, Buddhist ideas are a deep inquiry into the nature of the mind and reality combined with a system for unfolding the mind’s potential for wisdom, peace and joy. He believes these ideas and practices have enormous potential to help humanity in this time of revaluation and agitation, and to balance material progress with spiritual well-being, all without resort to dogmatic thinking or ideas.
We asked Lawrence to recommend some books that have influenced his life’s work as a human-centered leader in business. It’s interesting that, for a business leader that led the turnaround of one of the world most beloved companies, there’s not one business book on this list.
- Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Novels have so much to offer. This one is about the journey of a young man finding himself in World War 1. His stay at a tuberculosis sanitorium causes him to reevaluate every part of his life.
- Herbert Guenther’s Ecstatic Spontaneity. This is a tersely worded and difficult to follow assessment of the words of a two thousand year Buddhist yogi. Still figuring it out, but there’s much gold in those hills!
- Jay Garfield’s The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Another challenging read on an old philosophy. Very much to learn here.
- Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and Making of the Western World. A tour de force worth it for the introduction and conclusion alone.
- Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, James Corey’s The Expanse and many other science fiction and fantasy titles. I’ve always got one of these on deck!
- Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time and James Suzman’s Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen. Eye opening surveys of physics, time and anthropology.
- Jeff Galloway’s Half-Marathon: You Can Do It and Jonathon Sullivan’s The Barbell Prescription. As a big believer in exercise, these books have been a great influence.
Lawrence Levy is a the business leader behind Pixar’s epic turnaround story, a meditation and philosophy teacher, an expert and keynote speaker on Workplace Culture and Burnout, the author of To Pixar and Beyond, and Founder of the Juniper Foundation. In 2003, together with four co-founders, Lawrence created a non-profit called Juniper Foundation that focuses on bringing Indo-Tibetan meditation practices to contemporary life. He teaches meditation weekly and continues to write and is a highly rated keynote speaker on creativity and innovation, collaboration, realizing our potential, and building human-centered organizations. To book Lawrence Levy to speak at your event, contact us.
