Beacons of Business - 25

[Guest guest]

Sairam Sisters and Brothers,

We continue to listen from Ananth Raman, Chairman & CEO, President, Graphtex,

Inc., New Jersey, US.

---

"In a business sense, I like to talk about spirituality as ethical values.

Initially the ethical guidelines that my corporation set up guided me in the

right direction. When I was in one of the West African countries, the country

was full of corruption, and you couldn't do anything without bribing someone.

Sometimes I tried to rationalise this, because we were losing contracts and

losing business. But the policy in my corporation was that you could not give

bribes. At first, I wondered how I was going to get along without giving

bribes. Ultimately, I chose to stick with the company policy - I chose to stay

with the ethical values that the company ascribed to. Initially, I followed

these ethical values because this was what I was taught. When I began thinking

more spiritually, it gave me the reasons for why to behave this way.

Values such as justice, truth, respect for others, equanimity, ability to take

decisions, honesty and integrity are the core values that became very strong

for me when I went into business. These are more on the ethical side, rather

than on the spiritual side. Somewhere along the line however, these two kinds

of values began to link.

Now I think of ethical values as nothing but a reflection of my spiritual

values. For instance, in business you must respect yourself, your feelings,

your customers, your employees. But then when you go deeper into spirituality,

your self-respect begins to include respecting the inner Self. Then you try to

understand: "What is meant by Self?" Self means 'I', it means awareness.

>From this perspective then, self-respect takes on a new kind of meaning. When we

talk about self-respect in an ethical sense, we are talking about being

respectful to your colleagues, shareholders and customers because it is a good

business practice. But when you go a little deeper and look at it from a

spiritual point of view, you realise that it is really about respecting the

inner Self. You need to think about this, but when you do think about it you

realise there is a linkage between the two. Then I think it brings about a

whole new dimension. While ethics originally became something to maintain order

in society, order in business, now it also gives you a level of equality with

your self and everything else. This is how I like to link spirituality with

ethics and values in business."

© Global Dharma Center 2004

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