THE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
Once we have disciplined our actions in the world to correspond to our new spiritual view and resolution, we will want to assure that the way we earn our living is also consistent with the rest of our practice. This concern expresses itself in the fourth noble path, Right Livelihood. A person's vocation is so much a representation of their own life energy that we often define a man by his profession. John is a policeman, Joan is a fireman, is the way we describe someone. We do not say John is a person who works as a police man. Somehow John's being has become synonymous with his vocational activity.
This is not only important to others, but it also helps us to define ourselves, to the extent that we identify with our actions. From a Buddhist perspective, there are only a few professions which are by nature intrinsically wrong, such as criminal activities. Those are trades that deal with the destruction or denigration of life, (arms dealer, raising or killing animals for profit) and those vocations dealing in intoxicants. There are many professions which may or may not be right livelihood, depending upon how the vocation is carried out. Sales, for instance, is an acceptable vocation provided one is honest in their relationship to customers.
The important thing is not the vocational title, but the energy that vocation has toward the world. For someone on the noble path, it is vital that the energy they put forward in work will resonate with their spiritual life energy. If it does not, it is inconsistent with life itself. A spiritual person participating in an activity which is destructive will rob that individual of their own energy, as well as the collective energy they share with the world.
A person is cut off from their own spiritual resources when they allow themselves to participate in a vocation which they know to be deleterious to other beings. When we choose to accept employment in a vocation we know to be wrong, we set up a tension between our world view and will that produces dukkha, the dis-ease, which is suffering. The spiritual energy of unity with our world is disrupted, and the destructive action itself sets in motion more disruption of the spiritual ecosystem. Eventually the disruption in the system will come full circle and manifest itself in a negative impact on our own life.
Most dharma students are more aware of the moral ramifications of wrong livelihood than is the general population. Many of them are graduates of the environmental and peace movements of the sixties, and while they have abandoned many of the trappings of that period, some of its positive impact still remains. In few of these cases have people changed their values sufficiently to endorse the more destructive vacations. Unfortunately, there are some of the students who have gone to the extreme of determining that almost anything to do with business is wrong. In this case, they are mistaking politics for dharma and have set up a judgmental attitude toward work that is harmful to their practice.
It is the nature of our existence that we have to accept a certain amount of darkness in our life. No profession is without its contact with injurious elements. We can certainly resist participating in the promotion of destructive attitudes, but we cannot escape from encountering them.
There are few jobs in the modern world that do not call for the use of some technology that involves chemicals that potentially dangerous to the environment. There are also few vocations in the world that do not require communication with people that are morally questionable. If we were then to choose not to accept work in any position that involved dealing with destructive people or situations, we would not work at all. An essential part of right livelihood is to promote a correct attitude toward our environment and fellow human beings by being examples ourselves. If we simply leave our job when we are faced with incorrect attitudes toward the world without attempting to influence others in a healthy approach to work, then we are guilty of wrong action.
Of course, any vocation that requires the violation of right speech and right action, is a wrong vocation. There is no way to avoid confronting these issues in one's work, however. The most difficult task is convincing co-workers and superiors to abandon incorrect thinking toward the world. This can rarely be done through a direct confrontational approach. We cannot preach someone into a good conscience, they have to see reality for themselves.
In those rare situations where someone orders us to lie, we will have to stand up for what is right, but in doing so, we should be gentle and conciliatory while remaining firm. We should never adopt a self righteous attitude, for it will do nothing to help the situation. Rather, we should look upon the other person the same way we would a child who insists upon playing with a hornet's nest despite our warnings. It is not you who will take the brunt of the stings, but the person initiating incorrect action. Therefore, there is no reason to be overly angry with them. Instead, we should pity their ignorance and intractability.
To commit to a life of right action always requires a bit of faith in ourselves and our path. There is a unity to life that responds to our spiritual efforts. A resonance of spirit that finds its way into our destiny. This is something that someone has to experience for themselves. I have found in my own life that I have never really lost anything by doing right action. When I have had to sacrifice something for what I knew was right, I have always been given much more in return, than I had given up.
When one continues with this faith in the beautiful and good, allowing it to resonate into all areas of their personal action, they will find a corresponding tone in their environment, and harmony of life begins. Difficult people are no match for a mind grounded in love for the good. It is like trying to strike your shadow with a stick, attacking someone who does not acknowledge the attack.
The biggest danger most of us face in the quest for right livelihood is in confronting the issue of honesty. The term business ethics has almost become a contradiction in terms in the modern world. Truth itself is seen to be a notion of only relative importance; a utilitarian concept of a flexible truth has arisen, giving birth to a new plastic art. People often regard truth as a tool of business, and lying as a complimentary tool. A little truth here, and a little lie there, and we come up with a "nice promotion". Truth actually is an acceptance of the reality of life and cannot be separated from life. To lie is to separate oneself from the actual, which is life.
Because in Buddhist practice we do not rely on words to contain reality, a deluded student could also get on this band wagon of "there is not right or wrong". This statement, however, is only half true even though right and wrong, as concepts, do not exist as absolutes. In each moment there is nothing but right action and wrong action. To understand this is to understand the other half of the truth.
These seemingly contradictory statements about right and wrong are expressing the same reality, that moral concepts themselves, divorced from the ground of the dynamic flow of existence, have no substance. In action, in the moment, every action embodies an energy which is either pro life, promoting unity, compassion, healing and love, or pro death promoting hatred, anger, delusion, greed, etc. The problem arises when we abstract the concepts right and wrong from the spirit of the moment and render them meaningless.
There is an old Zen saying, "there is no right or wrong, but right is right and wrong is wrong". The spirit of right action requires skillful means; the ability to adapt to a situation and perform miraculous feats of compassion in it. Every time we influence another being to take a look at themselves and the world in the light of wisdom and compassion, one has performed a miraculous feat. It is such feats that eventually form a chain of magical events and transform the world.
We must bring this magic into our life in the work place, with freedom in mind. A mind that only sees possibility for loving action and is not concerned with the polarities of good, bad, right, wrong, acceptance, and rejection miraculously transforms the world into a balance of harmonious action. It is only through a freedom mind that we can approach the problem of right livelihood with the necessary balance to be successful.
Serious students for instance, ask me should they be vegetarian and should we avoid working in places that serve meat. The answer is that it would be better from both the perspective of health and compassion to be vegetarian, not to mention the fact that it makes great economic sense. However, the Buddha allowed even fully ordained monks to eat meat, provided the animal was not killed for them. Does not this seem a bit duplistic?
Not really when you consider that first of all, many of the animals that we eat would or could not exist without the farmers supporting them. If we stopped eating beef and poultry tomorrow, what would happen to all the animals? Would we keep on feeding them and let them live out their lives? Would we allow them to reproduce undisturbed? Would we turn them loose in the wild to destroy the ecosystem or die from the inability to adapt? It presents quite a dilemma, doesn't it?
That is because farm animals have their own karma, and it is tied up with being eaten by man. I am not encouraging this awful activity by mentioning the reality of the situation. I am just making it clear how complex karma is and how each of us has to reflect upon how we are going to face it in our vocation. Right livelihood can only be approached successfully with an attitude of openness and compassion. Then each person, within each situation will be able to find their path.
It is the nature of spiritual practice that one moves on in life and what was appropriate at one moment may not be so in another. The more we practice, the more our heart opens up to the suffering of others, human and non-human. There comes a point when the suffering of others becomes so intolerable to us that we are pushed into a corner and we can only emerge from that corner transformed. It is only such a person who has undergone the personal hell and heaven of identifying completely with this world and merging with it beyond both suffering and not suffering, who can fulfill the vocation of Bodhisattva.
