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Buddhist Monk-Turned-Entrepreneur Runs SA Business School

Buddhist Monk-Turned-Entrepreneur Runs SA Business School

An entrepreneur who runs a business school in South Africa is applying the spiritual lessons he learned as a Buddhist monk to differentiate himself.

Marko Saravanja is co-founder and chairman of Regenesys Business School in Sandton. He spoke to HowWeMadeItInAfrica about moving to South Africa in 1991 to volunteer. He worked as a volunteer in Orange Farm township south of Johannesburg, living without material possessions or luxuries.

Originally from Croatia, Saravanja became a Buddhist monk at age 21, following the traditions of the Ananda Marga yoga and meditation movement.

In 1995 he changed his mind, deciding he wanted to leave the monking life and enjoy worldly pleasures such as falling in love, starting a family and gaining material wealth.

He got a job at the University of the Witwatersrand and “I started my life from scratch, from nothing,” he told HowWeMadeItInAfrica. “When I left (my life as a monk) I had nothing except my orange robes. I didn’t have a TV or even a bed to sleep on.”

In 1998, Saravanja started Regenesys Business School with colleagues Penny Law and William Vivian. His vision: a business and management school that focused not only on rational thinking, but also emotional and spiritual intelligence.

Saravanja defines emotional intelligence as the ability to understand the needs of others, to inspire others, to exercise gratitude, compassion and be humble. As a monk, he said he developed emotional and spiritual intelligence through meditation, helping people through volunteer work and living a simple life uncorrupted by material posessions.

“Those things are actually very important in terms of leadership and management and that is what is missing from our education system and from business schools,” he said. “Business schools globally tend to produce MBA graduates and business graduates who are quite arrogant and they think they know it all.”

People who lack gratitude, humility and compassion are generally unhappy and incapable of reaching their full potential, he said. Spiritual intelligence is about identifying and understanding one’s purpose in life to achieve greater things and to make the world a better place through serving and helping others.

“If you look at all the successful entrepreneurs, they utilize this emotional and spiritual intelligence,” he said.

Regenesys claims to have educated more than 100,000 people. Saravanja earned a Ph.D. in performance management and wrote a book, “Secrets of Success.” Three interconnected qualities will lead to entrepreneurial and business success, he said.

1. Fall in love with your dream

“When you fall in love with your purpose you fall in love with your clients… Clients and customers will want to be a part of that,” Saravanja said. “When we fall in love with the things we do, work stops being work. We don’t think about headaches and problems… we look forward to going to work. You get lost in time…you operate on a higher level… everything is possible, you want to run an extra mile… you don’t count hours… you get so much happiness.”

The same thing will happen for entrepreneurs who love their work, clients and customers, Saravanja said.

2. Dream big, think big

“If you think small you become small,” Saravanja said. He tells entrepreneurs to develop their spiritual intelligence by defining their life dream or purpose. “It’s so important to dream big, think big, because everything starts with big dreams. Big dreams inspire us, they stretch us, and without dreams there is no success.”
Money and material things will never inspire quite like the understanding of a higher purpose or goal, he said.

3. Perseverance and self-affirmation

Ambition and the desire to achieve one’s goals have the power to keep entrepreneurs working 18 hour days without even thinking of eating or sleeping, Saravanja said. “If you have a desire and ambition to succeed then self-disciple comes naturally.”

He recommends affirmation, an exercise he learned as a monk, to maintain focus and motivation. “Affirmation is one sentence, one thought… I repeat this thought every day so this thought goes into my subconscious mind, and it affects the way I think, the way I behave, the way I act. It’s very powerful because what you think you become.”

Saravanja siad he used this technique for years to help him to achieve all his goals. For example, he said he used to focus on thinking “I am healthy, I am fit” every day until he found that it inspired him to want to play sports and eat right. He did the same on an intellectual level to write his book and earn his Ph.D.

“Our actions are influenced by our behaviours and attitudes and our behaviours and attitudes are influenced by our thoughts,” he said. “So in order to change our actions we have to change our thoughts. So everything starts with thoughts, ideas or dreams.”