Ethical Investor - June 2007 (Australia)
On Buddhism and Business
The Dalai Lama's sell-out national tour this month includes high-ticket business fundraisers. Author David Michie
relates Buddhist teachings to corporate responsibility, philanthropy and ethical investing.
Although Buddhism evolved 2,500 years ago, it could have been developed with busy Westerners specifically in mind.
In contemporary terms, it might be described as the ultimate self-development program. Its objective is increasing our
happiness and decreasing our dissatisfaction which, when you think about it, underlies most of our behaviour. But the
strategy use to achieve that objective is radically different from the traditional Western approach.
Money, relationships and status are key elements of most Westerners' strategy for happiness, but these really are
unreliable. For example, we may set ourselves a particular financial net worth goal, but when we reach it, all too often
instead of feeling a fantastic sense of achievement we think to ourselves, "actually, all I need is 20 percent more and
then I'll be happy!" What's more, our best attempts to reshaped the world around us never really succeed because
of the only constant in our lives — change.
The Buddhist view, by contrast, says that instead of spending all our time re-arranging the external aspects of our lives, we should also focus on the internals, or how we interpret reality. What makes us happy is not so much circumstances themselves, as the meaning we attribute to them. To use a very obvious example, if we were to wake up tomorrow our net worth is $5,000, most of us would be pretty depressed. But for at least 60 percent of the world's population, this would be a fantastic sum of money and the cause of great celebration. It's not what happens to us that matters so much as how we interpret it.
The Dalai Lama is famous for telling people to be 'wisely selfish' — if we want to look after our own interests we should look after the inter-connected interests of others too. In the corporate world it's much the same understanding that underpins ideas like community consolation and stakeholder engagement: if we really want to achieve sustainable success, we need to ensure that the impact on all those affected is positive or at least neutral.
Buddhism also has something to say about making money. Early on, Buddha taught the importance of the so-called "Six Perfections" and the first of these, generosity, was taught because it is considered to the be the karmic cause of wealth, Or, 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap'. The fact that generosity comes first underlines the point that most of us need a certain level of material comfort before we have the motivation to engage in higher level pursuits. Like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, financial security might be seen as the foundation on which we can build a useful and happy life.
This also has implications for ethical investment. Wisdom, power and compassion are closely aligned in Buddhism. Given that money is a basis of power, what Buddha taught is that together with money and compassion, if we really want to be effective we also need wisdom. The implication for ethical investors is, first and foremost, to emphasise the importance of using one's critical faculty dispassionately. Are we investing in a company because it provides a useful flag to wave, or because it really does deliver results? Are we doing this to make the CEO look like the Patron Saint of Rainforests, or because we really are helping the environment?
David Michie is author of 'Buddhism for Busy People'.