Management the Buddhist Way

How to read this

In 1988, the editors of Thammasat University's Business Administration Journal did something unusual for a management publication: having decided that every Western and Japanese management theory they reviewed had a flaw, they went to interview a Buddhist monk — on the logic that the Buddhist community had run as a functioning organization for 2,500 years without anyone needing to publish a new theory to replace it. What follows is that interview, translated and lightly adapted into English.

This edition is built to be belief-optional. The monk's answers are kept whole, in his own framing — karma, rebirth, heaven and hell, meditation and all. Nothing metaphysical has been secularized away. But wherever the text rests on a claim you'd have to take on faith, you'll find a clearly-marked aside offering the practical or psychological reading alongside it, so a reason-first reader can extract the management wisdom without being asked to sign on to the cosmology. Interestingly, the interviewer does much of this himself — at one point naming the mechanism outright as "Self-Motivation."

What's the teacher's, and what's ours

The translated interview is always kept visually separate from anything the adapter has added. Editorial additions sit in tinted, labelled boxes:

The interview itself appears as a question-and-answer exchange: the Journal asks, Phra Phadet (the teacher's ordained name) answers.

Provenance, in brief

This is an adaptation of a specific teacher's words from a specific tradition — not anonymous or original wisdom. The source is Management Principles the Buddhist Way (หลักการบริหารตามพุทธวิธี), a booklet reprinting a 1988 interview that the editorial board of the Business Administration Journal, Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Thammasat University conducted with Phra Bhavana Viriyakhun — Luang Por Dattajivo (Phadet Dattajivo), Vice-Abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, Pathum Thani. It was distributed free, as a dhamma gift. Full details are on the source page.

A short glossary

Every term is also glossed on first use in the text; this is a quick reference.

• dhamma (ธรรม / ธรรมะ) — the Buddha's teaching; the way things truly work.
• sammā-diṭṭhi (สัมมาทิฐิ) — right view; seeing things correctly. Its opposite is micchā-diṭṭhi, wrong view.
• lokuttara / lokiya (โลกุตร / โลกิยะ) — transcendent / everyday. The two levels at which the Path is read here.
• santosa (สันโดษ) — contentment: satisfaction with what you have and earn — not laziness.
• kalyāṇa-mitta (กัลยาณมิตร) — a good friend or mentor who points the way.
• apāya-mukha (อบายมุข) — the "roads to ruin"; the vices (drink, philandering, idleness, gambling).
• saṃsāra (สังสารวัฏ) — the round of rebirth; further terms (taṇhā, mettā, magga, Nibbāna…) are glossed where they first appear.