Dharma uses the word “God” with the frequency of a televangelist. It’s his way of reminding students that yoga isn’t gymnastics. Where other teachers urge students to “rotate the thighs inward” or “engage the quadriceps,” Dharma offers this instruction for refining postures: “Now, think of God.”
I was talking to Woody Allen’s manager, Jeff Rawlins, and he said he used to handle Lenny Bruce. I said, “Oh, I knew Lenny, what did you think of him?” And he said, “He sinned against his talent.” That line changed my life, I threw away all kinds of corruption out of my system, I just went back to being pretty normal.
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia.
“This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”
Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date.
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Though he’s capable of mirth, Cook’s default facial expression is a frown, and his humor is of the dry variety. In meetings he’s known for long, uncomfortable pauses, when all you hear is the sound of his tearing the wrapper of the energy bars he constantly eats.
Mike Janes, who worked with Cook for five years, ultimately as head of Apple’s online store, recalls a Macworld conference in New York when Cook convened a meeting in the afternoon after one of Jobs’ mesmerizing morning keynotes. “A number of us had tickets to see the Mets that night,” says Janes, now CEO of an event ticket site called FanSnap. “After hours, he was still drilling us with question after question, while we were watching the clock like kids in school. I still have this vision of Tim saying, ‘Okay, next page,’ as he opened yet another energy bar.”
Man must always bear in mind that God is omnipresent and is always with him; that God is the most subtle matter everywhere diffused … Let man realize that when he is looking at material things he is in reality gazing at the image of the Deity which is present in all things. With this in mind man will always serve God even in small matters.
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.