Right Livelihood

[Seiko]

I think that "Right Livelihood'" was a recommendation regarding how Buddhists earned money. Today with increased lifespan and increased leisure time I feel that this should apply to all activities, regardless of whether they are remunerative work or hobbies/pursuits. I would be interested in other people's views and comments.

Bows
Seiko
stlah

[Bion]

It is a part of the Eightfold path and I believe it serves a clear purpose. We find it easier to focus on and adjust things that have less impact on our lives, when it comes to being honest, generous, kind etc This puts an emphasis on that which really tests our determination to act in accordance with buddhist morals. We make clear distinctions in our lives and draw hard lines at where we choose to stop sacrificing or self-regulating and earning money is one of those areas that tests us. There are the boddhisatva precepts that clearly paint a picture of a boddhisatva’s naturally manifesting code of conduct and thinking and they touch upon many aspects of our daily lives. While the precepts deal primarily with the mind and thinking behind actions, this aspect of the Eightfold Path deals with acts we perform in a particular context that proves to be challenging for most humans. It’s important I believe to maintain the focus of this particular branch of the Path on how we earn a living.

Sorry for the eternal ramble and very long paragraph.

[emoji1374] SatToday

[Ryumon]

I agree with Bion. We have a lot of latitude in what we do in our free time, but are much more limited in how we earn a living. To be able to survive, people have to make choices for the types of jobs they do, but they still need to eat. Whereas in leisure time activities, you're totally free to do or not do something according to its impact.

Gassho,

Ryūmon

sat

[Jundo]

Today with increased lifespan and increased leisure time I feel that this should apply to all activities, regardless of whether they are remunerative work or hobbies/pursuits. I would be interested in other people's views and comments.

Hmmm. Yes, I feel so.

One point I emphasize in our "Buddha-Basics" series is that, in both this modern day and age, and in the Buddha's time, it has been often difficult to have totally pure work (in the Buddha's day, his students might be kings, soldiers, land owners and merchants and all manner of folks). I think it is even more important to emphasize "right" in our hobbies which are even less necessary to feeding our families etc.

Buddha-Basics (Part VIII) — Working Right

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?7713-Buddha-Basics-%28Part-VIII%29-%C2%97-Working-Right

Nurse, social worker, and teacher seem obvious choices. In our interconnected economy, so too do bus driver, honest salesman, cheerful office worker, waitress supporting her kids, the engineer or businessman providing goods or services which benefit lives. Remember that the bus driver who gets people where they need to go, the teacher, the receptionist, the doctor or farmer, the researcher may be helping people in seen and unseen ways. On the other hand, perhaps the bus driver makes air pollution, the researchers work is used for harm, the receptionist answers phones for a big company with labor abuses in the third world ... . It is a complicated world, and there are no totally harmless jobs.

Sorry to run long.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Koushi]

This has been something on my mind for years now. At my last job, prior to resigning at the start of the pandemic due to a lack of Covid safety protocols, I worked as an engineer for a payment processing company. The 2nd largest in the world. A large part of our revenue came from Big Data—selling people’s spending habits to the highest bidders.

I personally have issue with such an invasion of privacy, let alone the consumerism needed to fuel such an industry (the company only survives and thrives if people spend money). Yet, my salary allowed me to donate to charities freely. Help my family without budgeting. Donate to Treeleaf. Give to the homeless in the summer.

Although we might have troubles finding a calling or place that’s 100% pure these days—our actions can always be right. Just. Not everyone is like me: single, no obligations (children, spouse), free to leave if a company goes against their morals or standards. But everyone can choose how to use what they receive from the companies.

Sorry to run long,
Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

[Kaishin]

Certainly there are practitioners as well who cannot or do not work, for various reasons. So yes, Seiko, I agree.

-satToday

[Kendrick]

A lot of great posts in this thread. I agree that we should not forget to also look beyond our work and extend this to how we spend our time away from work as well - it all makes an impact. There is certainly wisdom in the Buddha making the recommendation of Right Livelihood and I've felt that affect myself whenever I've been working for a company I dislike the actions of, or a line of work (when I did marketing in particular) that seems not-100%-honest as in when having to attempt a sale to a client of services you didn't truly believe would produce the results THEY wanted but was what your boss wanted pitched to them. This dissonance between what kinds of actions I wanted to be taking/what effect I wanted my actions to produce versus what kinds of actions I had to take to keep my job/what effects my actions actually produced created a disharmony that pushed me in a direction I didn't want to go. Eventually, after realizing that what I was then doing was not inline with what I wanted to be doing I found my way in my current social work position as a case manager. Even as such, working in this field, you have to be careful of your actions since they still contain the potential to have very negative results if done improperly or without proper forethought (or just by the unpredictability of events). As Jundo said, in a complicated world there are no totally harmless jobs.

Apologies for the post length.

Gassho
Kendrick
SAT/LAH

[bakera3312]

I think that "Right Livelihood'" was a recommendation regarding how Buddhists earned money. Today with increased lifespan and increased leisure time I feel that this should apply to all activities, regardless of whether they are remunerative work or hobbies/pursuits. I would be interested in other people's views and comments.

Bows
Seiko
stlah

I would agree with this. Right livelihood would be broken if we had an "Honest living" yet in our leisure time we harmed our fellow beings for "Fun/leisure".

[bakera3312]

Hmmm. Yes, I feel so.

One point I emphasize in our "Buddha-Basics" series is that, in both this modern day and age, and in the Buddha's time, it has been often difficult to have totally pure work (in the Buddha's day, his students might be kings, soldiers, land owners and merchants and all manner of folks). I think it is even more important to emphasize "right" in our hobbies which are even less necessary to feeding our families etc.

Buddha-Basics (Part VIII) — Working Right

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?7713-Buddha-Basics-%28Part-VIII%29-%C2%97-Working-Right

Sorry to run long.

Gassho, J

STLah

Completely agree. I live in a city, but close to rural ares where hunting and fishing for sport are common. Im my veiw of the boddhisatva precepts hunting and fishing for sport is not Right Livelihood, so I would not do it. Although I dont go out of my way to condemn those that do.



Tony,

[Ryumon]

I sometimes wonder if there are too many precepts; couldn't there just be one, about Right Activity?

Gassho,

Ryūmon

sat

[Bion]

I sometimes wonder if there are too many precepts; couldn't there just be one, about Right Activity?

Gassho,

Ryūmon

sat

Just think how many different interpretations there are on how and when to apply these precepts, even though they are pretty clear. We also tend to look for ways to bypass them and just look at how many times the question “ok, but is there a way around this?” pops up. We struggle to apply principles and thus require explicit prohibitions.. Think of the COVID situation: everyone knows that wearing a mask helps protect everyone from infection, and that limiting social gatherings was a way to avoid a spike in new cases, yet unless specifically mandated by law, people just shrugged it off and carried on doing whatever they wanted, because “it’s not prohibited officially”. It has been a common things throughout human history.. We seem to need clarification.. That’s how simple Ten Commandments turned into hundreds of specific rules… We just refuse to apply broad principles.

Sorry for running long … again [emoji53]

[emoji1374] SatToday

[Risho]

But the 16 Bodhisattva precepts are not to be taken the same way as The Ten Commandments. Unlike in Judeo Christianity, if you do not uphold the precepts, Avalokitesvara won't whack you with a stick, and Manjushri will not strike you with a sword. But the more you deviate, the more likely you will experience your own form of hell, right here and now. The high level idea may be similar, and the basic principles behind each is pretty black and white from a high level - but you quickly get into the grey area when you start thinking about them. And we live in the grey area. hahaha

The bottom line is that no one can keep them even though we make our best effort to try. Further, while they provide a basic Buddhist ethical framework, so to speak, it is up to each practitioner to apply them in their own lives. Just like everything else with Zen that gets crazy , from one perspective, it's common sense stuff which keeps our sangha - and human society viable and ordered - like don't kill people, don't lie to each other, don't talk down about others.

But then when you start digging into it, good luck trying to live and not kill or not lie. I mean frankly - and this gets into one of the koans we are studying right now, we only see reality through a filter by which we can construct it so it is useful for us to survive. For example, we don't see everything; we basically get the "least minimum dose" of reality so we can identify things for survival like food, water, etc etc. That is another crazy rabbit hole; albeit to say, if we don't really see all of reality from one perspective how could anything we say be fully true. We don't even know what we don't know in the universe.

And have even better luck with Right Livelihood. I mean we are part of an interconnected global society - conscious of it or not, we are all participants in things that happen good and bad.

But we should still do our best in our own small part of this place to not intentionally cause harm and not to have a job as a "hitman" as Jundo would say.

I apologize for going over, and I think this will be a great discussion during Jukai study, but imho the precepts should not be laws for people to follow. It may have made sense in Buddhas day to have a precept to not smoke cigarettes while meditating (making that up), but I think our 16 have us covered, and they probably all really boil down to a single one or at least the first three:

Do no harm
Do good
Do good for others

Or actually as the Bill and Ted Bodhisattvas say: "Be Excellent to Each Other".

I will sit extra and apologize for going over.

Gassho

Risho
-stlah

[Bion]

Right Livelihood

But the 16 Bodhisattva precepts are not to be taken the same way as The Ten Commandments. Unlike in Judeo Christianity, if you do not uphold the precepts, Avalokitesvara won't whack you with a stick, and Manjushri will not strike you with a sword. But the more you deviate, the more likely you will experience your own form of hell, right here and now. The high level idea may be similar, and the basic principles behind each is pretty black and white from a high level - but you quickly get into the grey area when you start thinking about them. And we live in the grey area. hahaha

The bottom line is that no one can keep them even though we make our best effort to try. Further, while they provide a basic Buddhist ethical framework, so to speak, it is up to each practitioner to apply them in their own lives. Just like everything else with Zen that gets crazy , from one perspective, it's common sense stuff which keeps our sangha - and human society viable and ordered - like don't kill people, don't lie to each other, don't talk down about others.

But then when you start digging into it, good luck trying to live and not kill or not lie. I mean frankly - and this gets into one of the koans we are studying right now, we only see reality through a filter by which we can construct it so it is useful for us to survive. For example, we don't see everything; we basically get the "least minimum dose" of reality so we can identify things for survival like food, water, etc etc. That is another crazy rabbit hole; albeit to say, if we don't really see all of reality from one perspective how could anything we say be fully true. We don't even know what we don't know in the universe.

And have even better luck with Right Livelihood. I mean we are part of an interconnected global society - conscious of it or not, we are all participants in things that happen good and bad.

But we should still do our best in our own small part of this place to not intentionally cause harm and not to have a job as a "hitman" as Jundo would say.

I apologize for going over, and I think this will be a great discussion during Jukai study, but imho the precepts should not be laws for people to follow. It may have made sense in Buddhas day to have a precept to not smoke cigarettes while meditating (making that up), but I think our 16 have us covered, and they probably all really boil down to a single one or at least the first three:

Do no harm
Do good
Do good for others

Or actually as the Bill and Ted Bodhisattvas say: "Be Excellent to Each Other".

I will sit extra and apologize for going over.

Gassho

Risho
-stlah

It was merely a comparison to prove a point. And one should aim to keep them in the strictest of interpretations, but that is everyone’s personal business. During the Jukai preparations, as you say, more will be discussed but, let me just say, there is a tendency to minimize the depth of the precepts and to make them fit comfortably in our lives, so that they don’t limit us too much, and that is not the Buddha way.

[emoji1374] SatToday

[Risho]

ah yeah I agree with you - it's easier to change anything other than ourselves

Gassho

Risho
-stlah

[Seikan]

Wow. Great discussion on the precepts here, and Jukai study has yet to "formally" begin. ;-)

I don't disagree with anything above, but I do like to keep things simple (when possible). We can slice and dice the precepts up into any number of more prescriptive ones in order to provide helpful guidance related to specific situations, etc., but they still distill down (not to be watered down, mind you) to the sentiment found in the Three Pure Precepts. When we truly embody those first three, all of the other precepts are actualized accordingly. Is that an easy task? Certainly not, but for me, I find it to be a more workable approach. Otherwise, the precepts can get too "heady" for my already overdriven brain.

For me, the precepts really do come down to the Three Pure Precepts, or better yet, as Risho noted, "Be Excellent to Each Other". I've invoked that one myself many times in the past. Although these days, I may amend it as "Be Excellent to All Things (including yourself)."

Gassho,
Seikan

-stlah-

(Apologies for running long...)