“The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma
This book begins in an epic way. Told from a third-person vantage point, this is a story about a hot-shot lawyer named Julian who drove himself to overwork and stress, whom eventually had a heart attack in the court room. Sure he had all the worldly luxury we can imagine, but with his workload he never really forge a sincere friendship nor marriage, making him feeling empty inside.
And the heart attack was apparently the last straw. After recovering, he never went back to practicing law, sold everything from his mansion, to his Rolex, and of course his Ferrari; let go of his playboy bachelor lifestyle; and then travelled to India.
Julian spent the first several months wandering around in India in search for a teacher, all to no avail. That is, until he met with an Indian lawyer that turned into a monk, and he told Julian to seek a certain sage in the Himalayas. He then walked for 7 days with little food and water, until he met a disciple of the sage, who eventually brought him to meet Yogi Raman. 5 stars of a story, so far.
That is, until about 15% of the book, when Julian is suddenly back home – looking radiant, calmer, more youthful, and happy – where he was found visiting John (the narrator of the story) at his office, to tell him about the trip.
John was Julian’s junior associate in his legal practicing days, who has been telling Julian’s story from the beginning. And now we’re going to find out why John is the narrator. You see, this book is about John’s transformation afterall, where he is glorifying Julian as a American guru fresh from pilgrimage and mentorship from Yogi Raman in the Himalayas, and now Julian will teach everything he knows to him.
This is where, for the remaining 85% of the book, Julian turned from a badass wanderer slash monk ( who sold his Ferrari) into a figure more similar like a spiritual salesman selling a multilevel marketing scheme. And for his part, John seems to be a person who are completely oblivious about spirituality and just willingly accept anything that Julian tells him, without any skepticism.
So what are the life changing secrets taught by a sage in the Himalayas? If we strip away the guru-language, the vague indirect messages from this “fictional fable”, and every other sage-related anecdotes to give this book some fake credibility, at the very essence there are 7 main lessons:
- Master your mind
- Follow your purpose
- Practice Kaizen
- Live with discipline
- Respect your time
- Selflessly serve others
- Embrace the present
I mean, I get it. I understand why this book has such low ratings in Goodreads, with quite a lot of people giving 1 star seemingly almost in contemp. It looks like your typical self-help bullet points, but wrapped around a fictitious story. But this is not actually an issue if done right.
I can see how in writing this book Robin Sharma is trying to emulate what George Carlson did with “The Richest Man in Babylon”, delivering lessons from a fictional fable. But unlike the way Carlson wrote his excellent book, Sharma’s book is not consistent with its context. Like the usage of “Kaizen”; this is such a 1990s self-help Japanese buzzword about constant and never ending improvement, which surely no secluded sage from the Himalayas would know.
In addition, the book also uses way too many unecessary jargons to make certain normal action sounds more mystical than it is. Such as rebranding the 80/20 rule into “the ancient rule of twenty”; or teaching about “the Heart of the Rose” technique, with the “thorns” represent the challenges or hardship you face in your journey and the “flower” represent the glory or the beauty you can experience once you can discipline your mind and can overcome your challenges. You know what is it really about? Meditation.
Moreover, Julian also likes to quote the likes of Winston Churchill, Viktor Frankl, Emerson, or Benjamin Disraeli, even Chinese proverb, in deliverying his points. Which is excellent in the broader sense of self-help approach, but poorly forced within the specific context of a wisdom from India.
This got me thinking, why force it to make this book about Indian wisdom, while in truth there’s hardly any Vedic approach in it? Because if you read the likes of Baghavad Gita, the Upanishad, or at least the introduction of Eknath Easwaran’s Dhammapada, you will find a completely different sets of wisdom that will expose this book to be nothing but a self-help book. Heck, read “Inner Engineering” by an actual Yogi Sadhguru and you will see how he riddicules the feel-good but empty mantras of self-help approach.
Hence, I can’t help but thinking that maybe, just maybe, this book is specifically catered to the stereotypical non-religious [white] people who are seeking spirituality from Eastern wisdom, but not bothering to actually dive deep into the whole sets of sub-continent religions. You know, those people who ended up joining the cult of Osho in 1980s Oregon; or those meditation app subscribers; or those vegan hippie that you can find living in Canggu, Bali, today.
However, I also understand the positive hype around this book when it was first published in 1997, because despite all the poor narration the messages are actually good. Not only the big picture framework but also the little sub messages scattered all over the book, such as “Ten Rituals of Radiant Living” (however cringy the title may sound). Hence, the popularity of this book, with millions of copies sold worldwide since it was first published and with the book have since been translated into 51 languages, not to mention that it was indeed one of the early fews book for the self help genre.
So to be fair, this could be more about wrong timing rather than quality per se. Had I read this book earlier – and haven’t read the dozens more self help books throughout the decades – I can see how it could have a big effect on me back in my teenage years in the 1990s; placing this book among “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”, or the Chicken Soup series, Andrew Matthews’ cartoon series, or the Tony Robbins books and cassettes.
THE CHAOS THEORY 