In the future my children will have to run the business for me. What are the principles of Dhamma or viewpoints that I can teach them?

 
Answer
 by Venerable Dhattajeevo Bhikku   

 It’s good that you ask me this question. Most parents who own businesses hope that their children can run the business after them, but sometimes their hopes cannot be fulfilled without knowing why their hopes don’t come true.

 

The reason why somebody’s hopes are fulfilled is because they teach their children work and Dhamma, i.e. the first thing they need to teach their children is the goal of our lives. It’s not only the work they are assigned. The goal of life is not having fun in this life, but…

     1. Solving our deficiencies since this life. Do not take them over lives since this is not our one and only life, but we still have life after death. But where we are going after we die is up to how far we can solve ourselves. This is the thing you always have to remind your children before giving them work heritage. Tell them that they were born in this life to meditate and to do good deeds. This is the furthest goal of a human life like what the Lord Buddha taught.

 

Before giving them your factory and business, you need to give them this Dhamma heritage, and then your hope will be fulfilled since the children will perceive that they have to work because it’s the way to earn a living and make merit. Merit is an important tool that can solve their deficiencies and get rid of suffering and defilements.

 

If they have this picture in mind, you don’t need to be worried that they cannot work well. However, when they see the goal of their lives clearly why they were born, you still need to tell them again that your business is unblemished. You have a right livelihood. The factory you run doesn’t break any precept and virtue, just like the Lord Buddha said clearly that it was an unblemished career.

 

In this world, only the right livelihood can guarantee that you will not go to unfortunate realms. Tell your children that you have run this business this far from the right livelihood, so they should run it well because the money they make from a right livelihood like this is unblemished; and when they make merit from this money, they will gain a lot of merit, also that merit will be unblemished and full of quality, they need to see this picture clearly in their mind and then they will be proud.

 

Besides, you need to tell them that you teach and train the employees, just like how you teach and train them; and you tried so hard to teach your employees to understand about merit-demerit just like how you teach them; you don’t have any bias between the children and the employees; therefore, they need to hold as they are full of merit because they have virtuous people to be their strength in working.

 

Thus, tell your children to take good care of the factory and the right livelihood, and make it prosperous, take good care of the people you trained as the same time with them, give the employees power to do their jobs, and give them chances to improve themselves, and then they will gain merit with the children. Then the children will have the most merit. Tell the children that if they can do and show the employees these things, the employees will love you and your people.