In Buddhist teachings, making money is an unlikely path to nirvana, but in increasingly iconoclastic China it just may well be a leap of faith.
Taking a page from their Communist Party brethren, 18 monks in Shanghai have signed up for master of business administration (MBA) classes in hopes of better managing their temple, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
“Through this programme, we want to learn how the secular world is managed,” Xinhua quoted Chang Chun, a Zen Buddhist monk and general manager of the city’s century-old Jade Buddha Temple, as saying.
Shanghai’s Jiaotong University has just launched a special half-year MBA course for monks running Buddhist temples.
The course offers basic economics and accounting as well as temple management and philosophy and religious product marketing.
Required reading also includes divining business negotiating tactics from China’s most renowned military expert, Lao Tsu’s work The Art of War, mandatory on almost any MBA course around the globe today.
As China has moved away from communist ideals and towards market-system reforms, commercialisation of sacred or religious sites has become common.
One egregious example is the 1 500-year-old Shaolin Temple in central Henan province, which is inundated by tourists.
The monastery’s monks and practitioners have few places left for quiet contemplation or the rigorous practice of kung fu. — AFP