Serving the Citizen with the ‘Original Face’: Some Implications for Civil Service from Buddha’s Wisdom
Irving Yi-Feng Huang
Serving the people is the main purpose of civil servants working in the modern government. According to the theory of Emotional Labor, there are two faces of civil servants when they provide their services. One is required by the work to show certain emotions. For example, the reception staff should be amiable and the police should show mighty characteristics. The other is the real feeling from inside of civil servants themselves which maybe affect by their daily life and personal attitude toward the work. The research literature indicates that civil servants will suppress their true emotion when these two faces are in an imbalance or disharmony status. In the long run, government service quality will be ruined. This paper aims to introduce some ideas from Diamond Sutra and Zen Koan to explore a better way for civil servants facing the increasing demands from the citizen to provide high quality of service for the people and happiness for themselves.