The Role of Buddhist Wisdom in Business

This post is the first in a series meant to look how buddhist wisdom is applicable in today’s business environment. Candid conversations with people who work in business often reveal extremely high levels of frustration, stress and the inevitable comments of “I wish my career was further along at this point”, “the business should be performing better” of “if only I could get change directions or get out”. Buddhist wisdom was developed as a potential remedy to the pain, suffering and frustration that we all find in our personal lives.

The Middle Way

Traditional Buddhist teachings focus on an individual’s relationship to themselves and an individual’s personal relationship to others. The idea being the healthier these relationships are the more productive we are and the more value we create in the world. These writings are a continuation of the Buddha's teachings called the “Middle Way” that provide strategic and tactical teachings for people who are in and of the world. The fundamental premise of these posts is that by integrating buddhist wisdom businesses will be more profitable, run more efficiently, and deliver higher quality of service to customers while better serving their employees and enabling businesses to be better corporate citizens.

The Buddha's Resume

The Buddha was born Prince Siddhartha to a wealthy and powerful king who ruled a province, which is now part of India. As Prince Siddhartha came of age he was considered to be a champion athlete, an extremely gifted student, and an exceptional musician. His family had enabled him to experience all forms of pleasure and protected him from worldly pain. The story of his youth is that the Prince saw no animal, plant or person who was old, ill or poor. One day while he was riding a horse on the Palace grounds he came across an old man, an ill woman and a poor mystic. This so threw Prince Siddhartha that at the age of thirty, he decided to leave behind a life of fame, wealth, power, his beautiful wife and young son to pursue the spiritual life in order to liberate himself from the pain that comes from simply being.

Prince Siddhartha spent several years studying with several different teachers mastering many forms of meditation techniques. However, none of these liberated him from the suffering he felt.

On the last night of his sixth year of meditating, Prince Siddhartha vowed to not to arise prior to attaining enlightenment. During this night he was tempted by powerful and compelling visions of material desire, sexual lust and alluring distractions. He resisted these temptations and achieved enlightenment and was therafter known as Buddha. By achieving enlightenment the Buddha was liberated from emotional and mental suffering but was still a man subject to old age, sickness and death.

After becoming enlightened the Buddha realized that his calling was to teach. His teachings were so powerful that thousands of people became his students from all walks of life including princes, teachers, monks, householders, priests, soldiers, criminals and beggars. During the fifty years of his life after enlightenment he was the CEO of a huge faith based organization that spanned multiple countries and had to deal with personnel issues including class, cultural, gender and racial issues.

The Buddha’s teachings and organizational skills were such that his teachings and descendant organizations (read brand) are widespread throughout the world today, twenty-six hundred years after his death. A fun fact is that the oldest continuous running commercial business in the world is Kongo Gumi which was founded in 578 A.D. Their first commission was building a Buddhist Temple in Korea. They build and repair religious temples and manage a general contracting business from their headquarters in Osaka, Japan.

Caveats, Disclaimers and Future Posts

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This post is the first in a series that looks at how Buddhist Wisdom can be applied to business. I have also created an an index / table of contents for all the posts at http://linkd.in/V7Yugv

The writings in these posts represent my personal interpretations and understandings of buddhist wisdom as it applies to business. The responsibility for any errors, misconceptions and/or alternative interpretations of traditional buddhist teachings are completely mine and mine alone.

I hope to post additional thoughts and writings each Tuesday and Thursday but this will vary as life’s circumstances require. I sincerely appreciate and look forward to reading any posted comments.

My next post http://linkd.in/1kGe2ol looks at how the First (of Four) Noble Truths that the Buddha articulated apply to business.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.