佛教心靈環保的經營管理策略
A Buddhist Perspective on Management Strategies Through Protecting the Spiritual Environment
Across different for-profit, mission-driven, or spiritual organizations, management and operations aim at maximizing rather than minimizing effort, work, and aspiration. For-profit business chases after profit while mission-driven organizations aspire to achieve wider reach to benefit more people. Even though spiritual organizations wish to guide people to transcend mundane life, the people, issues, and principles involved still require effort to be put into management in order to allow the nourishing Dharma rain and the enlightening Dharma drum to spread far and wide. Nevertheless, the unique contribution from the Buddhist perspective on management is the insight of dependent arising, realizing the wisdom of impermanence and selflessness, and manifesting the compassion which goes beyond forms or attachments. There seems to be a conflict between goal-oriented development and minimalist environmental ideals. There is also a meaningful difference between environmental protection in worldly affairs which focuses on reusing, reducing, and recycling, versus the focus on mind-purification in Buddhist spiritual environmental protection. This paper begins with a brief review of the apparent conflict between worldly management and Buddhist spiritual environmental protection, then further elaborates that Buddhist spiritual environmental protection involves mental and behavioral balance, stability, and transformation through moral discipline, mental concentration, and wisdom. This paper attempts to contribute to the discussions on management models through which the “mind skills” of spiritual environmental protection could be implemented as “management skills”, and moral values could be combined with operational returns. Buddhist management is an inner practice for oneself and for others, a process of fine-tuning selfless, interdependent, and symbiotic relationships with great agility and flexibility while keeping one’s vision in mind. Based upon Venerable Sheng Yen’s framework of Protecting the Spiritual Environment—which is to “implement changes on the basis of a value system and insight, everyone taking care of themselves and other people, issues, and things with a healthy, peaceful, and happy mind and body” —this article explains that Buddhist environmental protection aims at an equanimity which transcends “self” and “others”. It means no more damage or pollution due to greed, no more selfishness and short-sightedness due to ignorance, no more silo-building due to splitting interest, no more craving for short term profit while disregarding the sustainable and mutual interests of humans and the earth, and no more simplistic, linear and calculative analyses which ignore the boundless possibilities of dependent co-arising. This article concludes with three brief case studies to illustrate potential applications of Protecting the Spiritual Environment in managing our relationships with staff in the workplace, with other living beings and with nature.
Keywords
protecting spiritual environment, Buddhism, change, strategy, management and operations