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| Buddhism in Action |
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| "Making a Difference" |
| By John Theaker, U.K. |
In the past few years, I have fulfilled a lifelong dream to
form a business. The inspiration for this business came from
a lifelong learning of new ideas about business and
economics combined with my Buddhist practice.
I have always been encouraged to think about how we could
change society for the better. From an early age, my parents
encouraged me to question injustice. My schoolteachers
encouraged me to question. At school my economics teacher
was current SGI-UK General Director Robert Samuels!
I started to practice Buddhism at 19 at the same time as I
started studying economics at university. I found myself
passionately absorbed by the creative power of Buddhism and
the new radical social thinking of writers such as E. F.
Schumacher and Dr. Hazel Henderson. Both sets of ideas
sought to centrally respect the human being and the natural
environment, and both sets of ideas were about bringing
about positive change in ourselves and society.
Some years later, Indra Adnan, then director of Conflict and
Peace Forums at SGI-UK's Taplow Court center, invited me to
help organize an event there on the subject of "What Can
Business Do for Peace and Sustainable Development?" It was
here I was fortunate to be able to meet and befriend Anita
Roddick, who together with her husband Gordon founded the
Body Shop, and Dr. Henderson, who were two of our guest
speakers. Hazel, who calls herself a "futurist," observes
the many social and economic rules and processes that govern
our lives. She offers future scenarios and urges us forward
with hope in the real possibilities of living in better
ways.
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| Green Network |
I was determined, following the experience of that
conference, to work with people like Hazel and Anita. With
their support I and my current business partners began to
build a network of companies and NGOs concerned with
building humane, sustainable and creative economies.
Out of this grew Green Your Office, which emerged as a
concrete business way of supporting ourselves and putting
our ideals into practice. Our business is one of a new range
of "ethical businesses" in the U.K. We offer a 100 percent
eco-friendly office cleaning service and services such as
recycling designed to save companies time and money while
making their offices as green as possible.
Everything we sell, in fact our whole organization, is based
on the aims of lessening damage to the natural environment
and fighting social injustice. We are a business with the
"triple bottom line" of protecting the planet and its people
as well as making a profit. We have many customers doing
fantastic things all over the U.K., and interest is growing
all the time.
I have always felt business can be a tremendous vehicle for
change as well as delivering jobs and economic security. As
SGI President Ikeda and Hazel Henderson agreed in their
dialogue, Planetary Citizenship--Your Values, Beliefs and
Actions Can Shape a Sustainable World, "poverty,
ignorance, disease and violence" are the real "axis of
evil."
We need to think and act quickly to overcome these issues,
and business can play its part.
Today we are struggling to find ever better, more positive
and creative ways of running our economic and business
affairs, breaking free of old unnecessarily restrictive
patterns of behavior which often cause ourselves, society
and the natural environment harm. There is still a long way
to go, but business and enterprise remains a vital and
significant force in the world and is a great platform for
achieving these aims in society.
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[Courtesy, October 2006 SGI Quarterly] |
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