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While on a holiday last year in Singapore, I found myself relearning
the ABCs of the world’s great teachers: Aristotle, Buddha,
Confucius and Christ. This happened because I intentionally shed my
role as a professor while on vacation, allowing many experiences
coming my way to teach and guide me. This has helped me in my search
for peace and harmony in a world that has gone into extremes.
Aristotle at the National Museum of Singapore. I
was invited to the National Museum to view its Grecian exhibits. For
the first time I came face to face with the life-size bust of
Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. I recalled how these great thinkers
shaped not only the Grecian civilization but also that of the entire
Western hemisphere. They became an inspiration to the European
Renaissance, Enlightenment and modern science.
I single out Aristotle more for his logic and
his idea of the importance of virtue (staying on the balance,
without going into extremes). Lou Marinoff in his book, The Middle
Way, suggests that Aristotle’s ethical and philosophical thoughts
are most needed today in a world that has gone into extremes. Today,
the absence of ‘virtue’ is so pronounced. We are pushed to
extreme TV excitement (Fear Factor, XGames, Ripley’s Believe It or
Not, Ultimate Guinness World Record, etc), extreme medical
intervention (cloning, beauty enhancement, DNA testing, stem cells),
extreme politics (people power, assassination, corruption and
manipulation) and extreme religion (fundamentalism, cult and
terrorism) to name a few.
Singapore, a modern city-state, appears to be
the Athens of today, providing its citizens [and visitors like me] a
life of socio-political stability, of flourishing arts and culture,
and of economic prosperity. Even for a short respite during my
holiday, Singapore has allowed me to experience the peace and quiet
my spirit has been longing for while staying at a suburban high-rise
residence.
Buddha and the Diamond Cutter. I rode a taxi
driven by a female driver who was friendly and who exchanged
pleasantries with me. Having introduced myself as a university
professor teaching business ethics she surprised me when she
recommended a book, The Diamond Cutter, written by Geshe Michael
Roach. Roach founded a million dollar diamond business in New York.
He tells his reader to put Buddha at the center
of one’s personal life and one’s business concern. For him, the
creation of wealth begins with a full discipline of the mind that
requires meditation and attention to the minute details of
perfecting business procedures and operations in a highly delicate
business like buying and selling diamonds. For social
responsibility, he says, “At its peak then the generosity reaches
a place where you are seriously investing all…because you have
consciously readjusted the borders of ‘me’ to include all of
‘them,’ and you are, basically, just taking care of a (much)
bigger ‘me’ now.” In search for life’s meaning, he
continues, “The person who has the best chance of truly being
generous to others is a person who has figured out the biggest
secret of life – the biggest source of happiness; a person who has
figured out that just working for a single ‘me,’ a single mouth
and a single stomach, is profoundly boring, uninspiring, and false
to our whole human nature.”
More next week on Buddha, Confucius and Christ
Jesus.
Dr. Emiliano T. Hudtohan teaches Business Ethics
and Corporate Social Responsibility a at the De La Salle
Professional Schools Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. Graduate School of
Business and is a visiting professor of the De La Salle MBA program
of Maranatha Christian University, Indonesia. A lecturer at the
Graduate School of Social Work of Philippine Women’s University,
Manila, he also serves as adviser for human development of OFW
Legacy Corporation. His email: emilhudtohan@yahoo.com
The above column is part of the celebration of
the silver anniversary of De La Salle’s DBA(Doctor of Business
Administration) program where Dr. Hudtohan is a faculty. We invite
all interested parties to join us in celebrating 25 years of
significant business research and practice in a program on March 28,
2008, 5:30pm at the 20th floor, Gonzales Hall, 2269 Taft Ave.,
Manila.
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