A Buddhist Take on Kylie Jenner's Self-Made Billionaire Status

Recently, Forbes magazine crowned Kylie Jenner as the "Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever."  Kylie is a reality TV star, model, and cosmetics entrepreneur who's net worth recently crossed the 1 Billion mark thanks to a cosmetics deal with Ulta Beauty.  She accomplished all of this by the ripe-old age of 21.

However, Kylie's success hasn't been free of controversy.  While no one doubts the number of zeroes in her bank account, there are a lot of people who take umbrage with her being called "self-made,"

After all, she was earning money from her family's reality TV show as a teenager, and her forays into the worlds of modeling and cosmetics were undoubtedly smoothed over by the Kardashian-Jenner clan's numerous connections.

In an effort to put an end to the controversy, Kerry A. Dolan of Forbes Magazine described the term self-made by stating the following:

To be clear, Forbes defines “self-made” as someone who built a company or established a fortune on her own, rather than inheriting some or all of it. 

This is a reasonable definition since many of the people on the Forbes' billionaire's list inherited huge swathes of generational wealth.  And according to this definition Kylie is most certainly self-made.  Yes, she grew up in a wealthy family, but Kylie invested her own money to start her companies.  And she is the sole owner of Kylie Cosmetics, her flagship enterprise.

That being said, this entire debate is a bit silly from the Buddhist perspective.  The term "self-made" suggests that we as individuals are somehow separate from the world around us.  But this couldn't be further from the truth.  In fact, we're all part of a single living organism.  And our health and happiness depend entirely on one another.

Of course, this doesn't mean that individuality doesn't exist.  But it exists in the context of a much larger, interconnected whole.  One way to think of it would be to look at organs within the human body.  The lungs, heart, and brain are all separate and distinct entities. 

However, the brain won't last long if the heart dies.  And the heart can't survive if the lungs stop pumping oxygen.  So, our organs are individuals to an extent.  But they exist within the framework of a human body that makes them interconnected and dependent upon each other.

The same is true of human beings.  When we argue about who's self-made and who isn't.  We naturally argue about where the "self" stops and everyone else begins.  But any boundary we choose will be artificial because there is no boundary between the self and others.  In truth, there's only a "we."  And when one of us wins, we all do.

When we understand this, we naturally progress into the awakened mind-state of sympathetic-joy, which allows us to be happy when others succeed.

So, it's with a full heart that I place my hands in gassho, and congratulate Kylie Jenner on her success.  And while I know less than nothing about mascara and lip kits, I'm glad her products bring joy to the people who use them.

Namu Amida Butsu

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A Buddhist Take on Kylie Jenner's Self-Made Billionaire Status