Honesty Enterprise

K.S. Chow

Introduction

The 6th Asia Pacific International Honesty Enterprise Keris Award 2007 was held on 26.01.2008 in Berjaya Time Square Hotel and Conventional Centre, Kuala Lumpur. More than 1000 corporate leaders from Asia Pacific region attended the award ceremony. The countries, which have won the awards hitherto, are Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Brunei since its inception. About 500 business enterprises were nominated but only 49 enterprises were awarded in the 6th Asia Pacific International Honesty Enterprise Keris Award 2007. The trophy designed with a golden-coloured Malay kris was captivating and attracted my attention. The theme of the award was ‘Honesty Enterprise’ equally drew my interest and scrutiny of the motivation behind the international business award. The news invokes my interest to probe further the news content as the issue of sincerity or honesty pertains to the fourth moral injunction of Gotama Buddha called the Five Precepts (The 4th item of Pañcasīlas). Consequently, I probed the news and the interview granted by the organizing chairman to the Malaysian Kwang Hua Daily Newspaper.

Main Theme

The organizing chairman elaborated that the goal of the prestige award is to construct an Asian Pacific Honesty Enterprise business community. In the highly commercialized society today, fallible businessmen are vulnerable to deceits, frauds, misappropriations, criminal breach of trust and corruptions in their rapid attempts to amass wealth unrighteously or ethically from business enterprises. The Asia Pacific Honesty Enterprise Organization recognizes that healthy, sustainable business development is contigent upon the application of sincerity and honesty in all business transactions. The organization endeavours to eliminate the misconception that amassing wealth through business activities can only be accomplished through deceits, frauds and corruptions. The position of the organization concurs with Gotama Buddha’s admonition that wealth ought to be earned righteously or ethically with one’s own sweats through Right Livelihood – the fifth item of the Buddhist Noble Eight-fold Path. The Exalted One utilizes the metaphor of Bees to demonstrate how wealth should be earned without harming others : One should earn wealth like a bee collecting nectars from flower to flower without harming the flowers. The Exalted One also admonishes that one should only act if one’s action does not harm oneself, others or both oneself and others.

Sincerity or Honesty

The Buddha’s promulgation concurs with the modern business philosophy that firstly, Honesty is an indicator when the entrepreneurs choose their strategic partners and secondly, it is an indicator when the consumers make their purchasing decisions. In actual fact, sincerity or honesty is the corner-stone of real business success. Sincerity or honesty wins the confidence of the business partners and the public confidence of the customers or consumers. The ethical value of sincerity or honesty is increasing in importance in the modern highly competitive business environment. This business ethic or norm results in win-win situation in which goodwill, harmony and public confidence prevail. It is therefore evident that the fourth item of the Buddhist Five Precepts of restraining oneself from the exercise of insincerity or dishonesty has a universal application. Evidently, Buddhist ethics,promulgated by Gotama Buddha about 2,500 years ago in ancient India, is still pertinent and relevant today.

It is recognized that the material dimensions of business enterprises, such as automation, technology, innovations, cost controls, research and development alone are not sufficient to satisfy the customers. What matters to the customers most is the honest pricing of the goods and services and honest after sales service. Material satisfaction must be complemented with spiritual satisfaction of sincerity or honesty. The human personality is constituted from both the material body and the spiritual mind (mind and matter; nāmarūpa)). Both dimensions must be satisfied to bring about to maximize customers’ or consumers’ satisfaction. Every human being needs both biological nutriment as well as psychological nutriment.

Conclusion

Honesty is the human trait of relating truthfully with others. From conventional perspective, no one can be completely truthful or sincere. Nevertheless, spiritual education and training can develop wisdom which engenders complete sincerity of heart and honesty of actions when the ultimate Truth of spiritual wisdom is discerned intuitively. It is manifested in the forms of lovingkindness and compassion towards others. Mere business codes of ethics can not effectively prevent the disease of insincerity or honesty. But the development of wisdom of spiritual insight into human personality can produce genuine sincerity and honesty because only spiritual wisdom can unveil the universal brotherhood of humanity and mutual dependence of inter-connectedness and co-existence. The mutualism between businessmen and customers or consumers of goods and services is symbiotic. The Buddhist fundamental doctrine of Insubstantiality (Anattā) or Emptiness (Śūnyatā) in terms of Dependent Co-arising (Paṭiccasamuppāda) reveals that all human beings and non-human beings or all phenomena are interrelated and interdependent. No man is an island. We are all travelling on the same boat of human co-existence. The same situation occurs in the world of businesses. We sink or swim together and not separately. A businessman and his customers are mutually dependent and symbiotic by nature. A close scrutiny unveals the underlying Truth of Unity or Mutualism expounded in Mahāyāna Buddhism as Non-dualism. Self and others are in the ultimate sense are never separate. The perceiver and the perceived are dependently co-arisen. They are one and the same. Countless micro-unities or systems merge to constitute the macro unity of the infinite cosmos. No independent self-contained entity exist solitarily. No human being can live in solitude. Even the ascetic does not dwell in solitude. His incessant survival is contigent upon the availability of forest or cave, fruits of trees, water of river or mountain stream, fresh oxygen from trees, offerings of basic requisites from devotees and so forth. All phenomena are akin to the nuts and screws of the boat. Every single nut or screw is of equal importance to the total system or unity and hence the security of the boat. None of nut or screw can be excluded in constructing a safe or secure boat. The totality or unity of the boat is its unquestionable security. Genuine lovingkindness and compassion ensue from the genuine practice of sincerity and honesty. Lovingkindness, compassion, sincerity and honesty are the major portion of the nuts and screws of the business boat. Every system or micro-unity functions holistically. All systems or micro-unities merge into the macro-unity of the infinite cosmos in which individual identities vanish. What exists eternally is infinite cosmic unity known as the Dharma Realm of Unity. Insincerity or dishonesty rocks and sinks the boat. In actuality, secular training alone is not sufficient to produce a person of complete sincerity or honesty. The first class human capital can only be produced from both intellectual and spiritual development. In other words, religion plays an integral role to conglomerate materialism and spirituality. From the Mahāyāna perspective, Phenomena and Principle are never separate. The phenomena are the shadows of the Principle. From the monotheistic vision, the Creator and the creations are never separate. The creations are the images of the Creator. The phenomena and the creations are synonymous ; the Principle and Creator are synonymous. All major esoteric religions,such as Vedānta or Hindusim, Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam seek the same ultimate Truth in the Centre of the human heart in which self-redemption is realized through the annihilation of illusive Self or Ego. Secularity and spirituality synergize and empower human beings to work more wisely and therefore more effectively and efficiently for the benefits of self and others.

Not only the fourth moral injunction of sincerity or honesty is universally applicable in all human activities, either daily or commercially, but also the entire five moral injunctions of the Five Precepts are universally applicable to the human society. They are actually normative ethics which are universally applicable to construct goodwill, harmony, confidence and happiness between the businesspersons and the customers in particular and among all human beings in general. Therefore, it is evident that spirituality does not collide with secularity or materialism. They actually interpenetrate to maximize customers’ satisfaction – the highest good of consumers. Public confidence originates from sincerity and honesty. Insincerity and dishonesty create conflicts in all human relationships and not only in business relationships. Spirituality is universally applied in all activities of human beings in all fields of human endeavours or enterprises. It is not exclusively confined to business enterprises. A customer who desires to buy a set of multi-coloured A4 papers, will reject the whole set of papers if even only one piece of the papers is tainted or it is overpriced above the standard price. Human beings have the innate conscience to value sincerity of heart and reject any deceit or overcharge.