In a message from HH the Dalai Lama to Spirit in Business

" I am pleased to express my encouragement and support for the “Spirit in Business Conference" and the Spirit in Business World Institute, in which religious and business leaders will meet to discuss and advance the role of spirituality in business and economics. For a long time I have advocated the need for ethics or spiritual values in the world of politics and economics. In order to make this world a better, more humane and safer place, we need to realize how interdependent we all are and therefore how we should take responsibility for one another. At the present time, globalization and advances in information technology have made our world so Much smaller. This particularly applies to business leaders, whose actions affect the lives of many people, both their employees and the customers they serve all over the world. Personally I don’t believe you need to be a religious or spiritual person to appreciate this reality and act accordingly. However, the world’s religions all have in common an emphasis on developing qualities such as ethics, tolerance and compassion. Some people may think that these sort of ethical attitudes are not much needed within economic activity. I strongly disagree. The quality of all our actions depends on our motivation. In economics and business, as in all other fields of human activity, if you have a good motivation and seek to contribute to a better human society, you will be a good and honest businessman or economist.

On the global level, we must take immediate measures to create ethical codes in the worlds of business and finance. For instance global degradation of the natural environment and climate threatens life itself. We must also remember that economics is responsible for creating the unacceptable gap between the rich and the poor both amongst nations in the world and between different sections of the society within a nation. If we continue along this pat, the situation could become irreparable. The yawning gap between the "haves" and “have-nots” is going to create a lot of suffering for everyone, including the world of finance itself. Therefore, it becomes necessary for us to widen our perspective to include the well being of the whole world and its future generations in our vision of economics and business. On a personal level, if you practice tolerance and compassion, you will immediately discover that these qualities are causes of happiness. There are many methods, some of them religious and others derived from what I think of as fundamental human values, that you can employ to develop these qualities and become a better person, and naturally you will also become a better and more effective businessperson. There is no machine that can produce inner peace; there is no shop that sells inner peace. No matter how rich you are, there is no way you can buy inner peace. It is something that has to come from inside, through mental practice. I am happy to learn that the mission of Spirit in Business is to deal with all these questions. They are indeed big questions. I believe that the answers can be found on the basis of increased awareness: we should meet and discuss these issues more often and in this way we will gradually he able to create solutions. I am confident that the Spirit in Business New York conference provides an excellent opportunity for this and I look forward to hearing what practical steps you agree to take. "