'Buddhist inspired values in business' workshop

On 24-25 Nov, I spent the weekend in Brussels with 40 wonderful, like-minded people of varied background - academics, business managers, entrepreneurs, nuns, nonprofit leaders, management consultants, public servants and students - exploring the application of Buddhist values in business management. I had the great privilege to coordinate the event and share a few thoughts about my ongoing journey of discovering Buddhism, Buddhist economics, GNH and Bhutan.

More importantly, I learned a lot from our panel of excellent speakers such as Prof. Laszlo Zsolnai, Joel Magnuson, Bart Weetjens, Keturaja, and Dr Karma Phuntsho. Via video interview, Dasho Karma Ura was also sharing his inspiring thoughts about Gross National Happiness, Buddhism and Business.

Active participation, thoughtfulness and open-mindedness of the audience made the workshop a fruitful and enjoyable event to be continued in the future.

More: www.bububrussels.blogspot.com

To visually support my talk, I borrowed and changed a bit the title page of
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse's popular book 'What makes you (not) a Buddhist?'

Launching the Hungarian Bhutan Friendship Society

With a few friends of mine, I have recently initiated the establishment of the Hungarian Bhutan Friendship Society that aims to provide information about the Kingdom of Bhutan in my home country, Hungary. The Society’s goal is to encourage and promote knowledge and understanding of Bhutan in Hungary and create links between the two countries. It's a very exciting venture we all look forward to. 

The inaugural event of the Society took place with great success on 15th September at ELTE University in Budapest with around 200 people attended. Our honorable guest speaker was Dr Karma Phuntsho, cultural expert and Buddhist scholar from the University of Cambridge. His talk was titled “The Journeys of the Thunder Dragon: Bhutan's transition from a medieval country to a postmodern happiness state”. 

"Bhutan is roughly the size of Switzerland with 38,394 km2, so less than half of Hungary" - said Dr Karma in his talk - "But, it is a vertical country. So, if we flatten our slopes, we will be bigger than you." 

Dr Karma Phuntsho was trained as a Buddhist monk in Bhutan and India, and received D.Phil in Oriental Studies in Oxford. He is currently Research Associate at the Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge and Editor of the Oxford Journal for Buddhist Studies dividing his time between Bhutan and England. 

Dr Karma specializes in Buddhism, Tibetan & Himalayan Studies and Bhutan, and has published a number of books, translations, book reviews and articles on Buddhism, Bhutan and Tibetan Studies. He is also founder and trustee of the Loden Foundation, Bhutan’s first registered charity that supports education and youth entrepreneurship and where I was a volunteer.

In Budapest, Dr Karma talked about Bhutan, its history, distinctive culture and the country’s unique approach to social and economic development based on Gross National Happiness (GNH) as well as Bhutan's exciting transition from a medieval country to a postmodern state. His talk was very timely given that the UN General Assembly has recently adopted a non-binding resolution that aims to make happiness a "development indicator” - based on Bhutan’s proposal and with the support of 66 countries, including the UK. 

At the end of his talk, he presented us a Bhutanese thangka portraying the four harmonious animal friends and delivered his best wishes for the new friendship society. The event took place in collaboration with the Hungarian-Indian Friendship Society and generated excitement and interest among a number of Hungarians wishing to discover Bhutan.

Please read more about the event on Kuensel Online and visit the Society's website.

Does Bhutan need another golf course?

In my humble view, it does not. That's why I signed a petition that was recently initiated by Dr Karma Phuntsho against a plan of constructing a new golf course near Ura village in Shingkhar valley, Bhutan. 


What does a Hungarian have to do with Ura village and development projects in Bhutan? Well, I think, a lot. This is a globalized world where the environmental impact of one golf course in a country can shape the climate in another. Hence I'm as much concerned about Bhutan's future as a chilip (foreigner) could be. I visited Ura this year and met with local people, ate their food, enjoyed their hospitality and walked around with them enjoying the pristine nature. I also stayed in a local hotel and visited local temples spending money, consequently supporting the local economy. If there was a golf course in this place, I would think twice to come back. 

Ura village without a golf course

Globally, there are issues about golf courses and they don't strike me as lucrative and forward-looking investments. Especially not in Bhutan which has an entirely different proposition to visitors and a very limited pool of potential local golfers. 


But let's hear two golf experts on this:

"Bhutan is known all over the world as a country that keeps its traditions high, it is a unique destination for those who want to experience the culture and wonders of nature and of sustainable way of life in its authentic form: why build a new golf course in this paradise? Bumthang's plains and pastures should stay as they are, pesticides and chemicals are a necessity on a golf course and will affect the soil and environment of the whole valley."

Kristel Josel, manager of the Union Golf Club Schloss Ernegg, Austria and partner of Bhutanese tour agents.

"I love golf but having lived in Thimphu and played golf regularly on the local course do not think that another course would be of any benefit to the country and people of Bhutan."  Steve Hogan

Should you agree with Kristel, Dr Karma, me and more than 300 others, feel free to join the petition clicking HERE

Long live football, the real democratic sport that connects people :)

How did I get to Bhutan?

Readers of this blog rightly asked how I had got to Bhutan. Here is my story:

I was working for the Levi Strauss Foundation when I came across with the London-based 'think and do tank' the New Economics Foundation. nef explores new ways of organizing our economic system as if people and the planet mattered. In 2006, nef published the first Happy Planet Index that was basically a list of countries in the world ranked according to happiness or unhappiness of their citizens. More precisely, the index combines environmental impact with human well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which, country by country, people live long and happy lives. Bhutan, by the way, ranked 13. in the first and 17. in the second index published.

Through discussions with nef staff about the report and their work, I discovered Bhutan as the only country on earth where the government declared that GNH or Gross National Happiness was more important than GNP and GDP or Gross National / Domestic Product. That was very exciting and I tried to learn more about this approach to development.

In 2010, I was in London to attend a board meeting of the Resource Alliance that builds fundraising capacity of nonprofits across the globe. At the dinner that was organized for board and staff members, I got introduced to Dawa Dem, a new staff member who happened to be the first Bhutanese I had met. I got excited about the opportunity to discuss GNH with someone who actually lived in  the country. As I learned Dawa and her husband, Dr Karma Phuntsho, were associated with Bhutan's first registered charity, the Loden Foundation.

Meanwhile, I decided to leave the Levi Strauss Foundation after 12 great years and pursue new opportunities which meant that I suddenly had more time for volunteering. Given my interest in Bhutan and my acquittance with Dawa Dem, it made sense to explore if I could support Loden as a volunteer. The answer was positive and I got invited.

Voilà, that is the way I have got here to spend 9 weeks working with the leadership of Loden  and its network of young entrepreneurs as well as study GNH in practice, in other words: the everyday life in Bhutan. 

My project was made possible thanks to help and support of several people such as staff at nef; Prof. Laszlo Zsolnai promoting Buddhist economics; Dawa Dem, Dr. Karma Phuntsho, Gerard Tardy, Anne Tardy, and Dorji Tashi from Loden; the Bhutan government that issued my visa; and last, but not least my wife, Heni, and the rest of my family who have been supporting me in this adventure. I hope to give them back at least as much as they gave me.