Buddha or Badass? How to Reconcile Spiritual Wisdom and Ambition

Would you rather be the type of person who is self-actualized, spiritual, and always connected to their purpose?

Or would you rather be the type of person who is working hard, accelerating their career, and making money?

This is the current dilemma that so many of us have — but it’s a false one. You don’t have to choose between being a Badass or Buddha. You can be both.

And believing you can’t could be the one brule holding you back in your life.

Here’s how you can balance spiritual wisdom with ambition to unlock true mastery over your life.

Moving to the Next Level of Mastery

There was a time in Vishen’s life where he believed this brule: the brule of having to choose between pursuing ambition or spiritual wisdom.

And that’s because it’s something that we’ve all been told: you can be a hippie or a businessman, you can have peace or money, you can enjoy yourself or work hard.

But you can’t have both.

During one phase, Vishen was only concerned with self-actualization and not with business. In another phase, he found that he was so driven by his goal that he ended up having no time to rest.

But he learned from his personal mentor (who’s also one of the world’s leading MBA teachers and author of The Quest for Personal Mastery), Srikumar Rao, that there’s a way to integrate your Badass and Buddha sides.

Being spiritual doesn’t mean being passive or giving up on creating positive change.

This is why Vishen says “the most spiritual people shake things up… they move mountains, build legacies, feed millions.”

By integrating both sides, you end up ascending to a whole new level. Life flows with you when you’re on this level. You end up achieving being able to move those mountains, build your legacy, live a better life, and leave a better world.

How to balance spiritual wisdom with ambition?

So, how do you move to the next level?

These two forces don’t need to oppose each other. This is a false dichotomy we’re taught from a young age.

It doesn’t need to be one or the other. We can pursue our ambitions and our spirituality if we learn how to bring these pursuits into balance.

This requires reframing the way we pursue success and spirituality.

Ken Wilber, American philosopher and author of Integral Spirituality, urges us to recognize the two great myths that surround these states.

The great myth of the Buddha state is that we must resign ourselves from the world. And the great myth of the ambition state? That hustle and workaholism are the keys to success.

Both are incorrect. And if we can learn to recognize this, we can learn to balance these states and pursue both simultaneously.

In fact, there are 5 ways can use to bridge the gap between these states.

In the video above, Vishen shares Srikumar Rao’s 5 tools to bridge the gap between spiritual wisdom and business mastery.

Can you be spiritual and ambitious at the same time?

In other words — Combining the concepts of the Buddha and the concepts of the Badass.