Han Transmitted Chan Buddhism and Modern Business Ethics:
A Mutual Fit between Dharma Drum Mountain’s Protecting the Spiritual Environment and Business Ethics Diffusion
Chen-Fong Wu
There seems to be a certain fit between the idea of protecting the spiritual environment, which is advocated by the founder of Dharma Drum Mountain, Master Sheng Yen, and a model of business ethics diffusion that has been verified in modern empirical researches on management. The fit mainly depends on the notion of service innovation. In other words, religious services for society and modern business ethics may exhibit shared behaviors in terms of altruistic self-interest, mutualistic care, and reciprocal sharing. The paper attempts to express the value of religious services for society and combine ethics diffusion with the religious career to help strengthen social cohesion in expectation of creating a new service type which meets realistic needs. The paper also suggests some considerations to support the feasibility of implementation while, at the same time, developing a systematic framework that describes the relationship of the abovementioned fitness as the main purpose of this paper and for a discussion of related ethical issues.