Hello. Today, Sunim arrived in India after a long-haul flight. When Sunim arrived at the airport, Dharma Teacher Bogwang from JTS India came to greet him at the airport.
Sunim spent the entire day with his schedule in India. Tomorrow, he plans to go to Sujata Academy to continue his activities.
Since there was no Dharma talk today, this post concludes with content from a previous Dharma Q&A session.
Should I Follow Principles or Accept Reality?
“About three years ago, I started working in management due to business expansion. In the process of casting actors, I’ve experienced many people secretly requesting cash or in-kind commissions behind the scenes. Those who have been in this industry longer say this is just how the industry works, that we have no choice until our actors become famous, treating it as no big deal. While I think I should accept such proposals for the sake of casting our actors, since this is my first time in this business, I wonder, ‘Is it right to go this far?’ When faced with such unethical demands, I’m curious whether I should endure and comply for the sake of results.”
“This can be seen as the contradictions and conflicts that arise in our lives between reality and principles.
I’m building and operating schools in India, and when I request electricity installation, they demand bribes. I said, ‘I’ll gladly pay any official amount and process receipts. But I can’t give undocumented bribes.’ The reason is because it’s a school. If we teach children to live honestly while the operators give bribes to run the school, wouldn’t the children perceive what they learn at school differently from reality? That’s why I said I couldn’t do it because it’s a school.
After this happened several times, they said, ‘All foreign organizations in this area give bribes, why don’t you?’ I said, ‘This is a school, and I’m doing what your government should be doing. I’m running a completely free school and hospital – I can’t operate a school while giving bribes too.’
If I were building a temple, I might give bribes for Buddhist expansion, or if I were in business, I might give bribes to make money, but I don’t want to give bribes while running a school and providing free support. So I said, ‘We’ll live without electricity if we have to,’ and we lived without electricity for 20 years after starting the school. Of course, when absolutely necessary, we ran generators for electricity.
In the end, the fuel costs for generators over 20 years were dozens of times more than electricity bills would have been. Now India’s electricity policy has changed, and the power company has shifted from state-owned to private. Being privatized means that whoever wants electricity must bear all infrastructure costs like power lines and poles. So it cost dozens of times more than the bribes they used to demand. But this was done through legitimate payment with receipts for electricity installation.
So everyone around me criticizes. They say Sunim is supposed to be wise but acts like a complete fool in these matters. They ask why I’m so unnecessarily stubborn when that’s the reality. I say it’s about ‘principles,’ while they criticize it as ‘stubbornness.’ They call me rigid.
This is a matter of choice. In this world, for economic efficiency, you need to follow worldly customs and practices, but if you want to change the world for the better, it’s good to maintain principles while accepting losses.
But why does the questioner have this concern? It’s because you’re thinking, ‘Isn’t there a way to both follow regulations and increase efficiency?’ If you think, ‘Ah, it would be good to change the bad practices in our industry,’ you need to be prepared to take losses in the process. But if not, you have no choice but to run your business while tolerating certain practices to some degree.
If you ask me, I’d say follow principles, but since this is a Dharma Q&A session, I’m saying you need to make a choice within that context. Don’t stand on the perspective of absolute evil or absolute good, but first decide what principles you’ll follow in your business. Second, you need to consult with people in your company. Discuss: ‘These practices exist – should we try doing things principally even if we suffer some losses, or should we follow the customs a bit?’ If there’s no agreement and you suffer losses from not following customs, your actors might leave for other companies, right? Then your business might fail. I’m also a principled person, but I’ve compromised depending on the situation. When we had meetings about certain issues and people said, ‘Sunim, let’s leave this to the experts. That’s better,’ I would assess the situation, listen to others’ opinions, and if I judged that compromising with reality would be better, I would compromise. But whenever possible, living by our principles comes first. So I’d like to say that your question is less about worry and more about choice.”
“Yes, I understand. Thank you.”