Talk Excerpt - Right Livelihood

Right Livelihood involves both how you maintain yourself in this life in regards to work and careers, but also the guiding principles by which you live your life.

Transcript

And then next is some ajivo,

Which is right livelihood.

The Buddhist definition for right livelihood is quite short and to the point.

It says one abandons wrong livelihood and takes on right livelihood.

That's it.

Nice and simple.

And actually I've thought about this for a while and it's interesting.

I think it was left vague for a purpose and I'll talk about that in a little bit when we look a little bit into the definition of ajivo.

But in the Anguttara Nikaya,

Book of fives,

Number 177,

So it would be 5.

177,

The Buddha gives five types of livelihood that he says that somebody who is a practitioner of the Dhamma should avoid.

The first one is business in weapons.

So this is somebody who is creating and selling weapons.

The second one is business in human beings.

So this is somebody who is going out and taking people and making them slaves and selling slaves,

These kind of things.

The third is business in meat.

So having animals,

Killing them,

Butching them,

And then selling their meat.

The fourth is business in intoxicants,

So making alcohol and drugs and these kind of things and then selling them.

And the fifth is making and selling poison.

So these five things are pretty much,

As far as I can tell,

The only direct careers that the Buddha says somebody who practices the Dhamma should avoid.

And so again,

In modern times,

It can be confusing.

So things that I've come across in the past,

Somebody is like,

I work for this corporation.

The part of the corporation I work for does like this,

Does something good for humanity.

But the corporation also makes weapons and things like that.

Is that wrong livelihood?

Things can get really complicated in that regard.

And people can discuss that and different teachers will say different things.

But I think in my own practice and what I understand of the Dhamma,

It always comes down to examining your intention and doing what you really feel is best for you.

Some people,

They're part of that corporation,

They feel,

Well,

I'm not directly contributing to people dying and all these kind of things.

And other people might feel,

Well,

Maybe I am,

And they feel like they have to leave.

It's up to each individual person to make that decision to look inside themselves and decide.

The same thing like when I was talking about stealing,

About downloading movies or downloading things that are copyright stuff.

I know at least two monks who have made arguments that that's not going against stealing.

I personally disagree.

And it's only because when I had Netflix and I would copy the movies and all that kind of stuff,

I did all that kind of stuff.

Downloaded video games,

All these things.

But it came to a point where in my own practice,

My practice was developing and I had a career and I had enough money to buy the things.

And then I became a photographer and I started to understand what it's like to have your own things that you create that can be used by other people.

And then I decided,

You know,

I'm not going to do this anymore.

And it's not that somebody told me you shouldn't do it.

I looked into my own mind and examined my own intentions and I decided,

I don't think I want to do this anymore.

This is important when it comes to the precepts.

People can ‑‑ you can try to ask a monk all the time.

We have ‑‑ there's this one gentleman who emails a variety of different monastics regularly with questions and concerns about every little minute possible thing that he can think of when it comes to living these precepts.

Living by right action,

Right livelihood.

And that is ‑‑ that's not going to tell you ‑‑ that's not ‑‑ nobody can give you the answer.

You have to examine that in your own experience,

In your own practice and make those decisions on your own.

Because in the end,

It's your karma.

It's not somebody else's karma.

You know,

Somebody ‑‑ if you like ‑‑ some of you might know Angulimala,

The Buddhist serial killer who became an Arahant.

The story goes that his teacher became jealous of him because he was a good student and all these things and people liked him.

So he said the teacher told him to go and kill a thousand people and take their fingers.

Angulimala means a string of fingers.

So he would kill people,

Take their finger,

Add it to his big necklace,

His mala,

Right?

Because his teacher told him,

Right?

And then it took the Buddha coming to him and snapping him out of that for him to realize,

Oh,

Man,

I was really stupid and I did so much harm and now I'm going to change that.

Right?

So we all aren't lucky enough to have the Buddha walking around making sure ‑‑ like,

You know,

Snapping us out and making that decision.

So it's good to talk to somebody who is a Kalyanamita,

Like somebody ‑‑ a good friend like Bonte G and things like that.

But in the end,

You have to make the decisions on your own.

The Buddha doesn't say ‑‑ he gives you five examples of wrong livelihood.

And he says do right livelihood instead of wrong livelihood.

So that can be like,

Well,

What does that mean?

You'll know the answers if you look inside yourself.

The practice ‑‑ the practice and the understanding,

Looking inside yourself,

Looking at your intentions,

Understanding these things through wisdom allows you to ‑‑ you don't need to question as much.

You know.

You can sell it.

Even maybe later you realize you're wrong.

But at least at that point you say this is I think the best thing for me to do.

So I guess that's my little aside there.

But coming back to right livelihood,

The Buddha also in a sutta he talks about how to manage your income and your expenses.

And he says ‑‑ he's talking to a householder who asked him about this.

And he says one should live so that their income ‑‑ their expenses do not exceed their income.

He's even given ‑‑ this is Buddha the financial planner.

Don't live above your means.

Don't get into all kinds of debt and don't get ‑‑ you know,

Don't spend ‑‑ you know,

Get five credit cards and all these kind of things.

Live within your means.

And of course all throughout the sutras the Buddha gives many such advice to lay people on living,

Honoring and taking care of your family and your spouse and mother,

Father,

You know,

Community,

All these kind of things.

So this leads me to how I wanted to extrapolate from the word agivo.

Giva simply means life.

And one of the ways that you can translate agivo other than livelihood is living or mode of living.

So the reason why I feel like the Buddha was pretty clear and not so detailed in his definition was because he wasn't just talking about what you do to make money to survive.

He was talking about how you live.

What you do in your life.

What you take on in your life.

And so what I've come to understand and what I've come to see in my own experience and my own understanding is that following the noble eightfold path,

Taking that upon and practicing that,

Making that part of your life so that it is not just what you do,

You know,

Like with meditation.

Like,

Oh,

I just,

Okay,

Four o'clock I do this,

Five o'clock I do this,

Six o'clock I practice meditation and then I'm done for the day.

The whole of the noble eightfold path is something that you take on as not what you do,

But part of who you are.

And what is,

And not only what you do in terms of your work and your family and your,

In your not habits,

You know,

Whatever things that you do,

Like play the piano and all these kind of things.

All these things that you define as this is what I do.

Somebody who is living right livelihood and has taken up on the noble eightfold path.

The noble eightfold path is what they do.

It infuses every,

In every interaction,

Because they have that mindfulness.

Whatever they're doing,

Am I living by right action?

Am I living by right speech?

Whatever the situation that's coming up in their life.

So for me,

Right livelihood is not what am I doing that I get a paycheck every two weeks.

It's what am I doing,

How am I living so that I am encompassing,

I am becoming the,

I guess what would you call it,

The avatar of the Buddhist teaching.

The avatar of the noble eightfold path.

And so that understanding is actually kind of how I,

What I see is how,

The reason it led me to becoming a monastic.

Because when I started to live the noble eightfold path as a lay person,

And I did it for years,

So it's not just,

Oh,

I became a monastic,

Now I'm living the noble eightfold path.

I integrated the noble eightfold path into my life.

And it became part of who I was.

So much so to the fact that it's all I want to do.

So when you do that,

When it's not something that you just tick off on a habit trainer or something that you put on your schedule,

When it becomes part of your life,

It becomes a lot easier to live by these principles.

It becomes a lot easier to live by this noble eightfold path.

I mean,

It really is so simple and amazing to me.

This is like,

I was raised Catholic,

And I love some of the stuff that Jesus says,

Like,

Turn the other cheek,

And why are you looking at the moat in somebody else's eye when you have a log in your own eye?

Buddha basically says the same thing.

These kind of things,

Right?

Almost all religions,

All the religions that I've studied and looked at throughout my life,

They all say a lot of the same things,

But only one gives you how to do these things,

And that's Buddhism.

Only one,

The Buddha,

Says,

If you want to do this,

This is how you do it.

I've laid it all out for you.

Follow this noble eightfold path.

And as a matter of fact,

The Buddha himself,

He doesn't say that he created the noble eightfold path.

One of the coolest similes in the suttas is the Buddha talking about how he found the noble eightfold path.

The noble eightfold path,

The Dhamma,

Is always there.

It's always in existence.

It doesn't die out.

What dies out is people's knowledge of it,

That people knowing and understanding it and following it and practicing it in their life.

So the Buddha describes the noble eightfold path as the simile goes that there's a person and he's going down a path and he comes to a fork and he sees a path that's really all overgrown and he follows that path.

And when he gets to the end of that path,

He sees this ancient city that's fallen into disrepair and it's this beautiful city and all these avenues and colonnades and all this god,

This wonderful,

How this city used to be this amazing grand place.

And then he says,

And then this person would go back to the king and would say,

I found this path in this city.

Go back to this city and make it anew.

Bring it back to life.

And so the Buddha says,

Just in that way,

I found this path,

This noble eightfold path,

I followed it and I found this city.

And now I come back to you with this noble eightfold path.

And so when you,

In my humble opinion,

When you are living the noble eightfold path,

Whether you're a carpenter or a doctor or whatever,

A plumber,

That's what you do as part of your livelihood and it can be a very meaningful part of your life.

You can do,

Sometimes your job really does something to help people.

But what can be utterly meaningful is living by this noble eightfold path that transforms you,

That begins the long process of clearing out your mind,

Clearing out the gunk in your mind.

As I said yesterday in the beginning,

The cleansing of one's own mind and the gratitude and the happiness that arises as you begin to do that.

And you have so much gratitude for the Buddha and gratitude that there's this noble eightfold path.

You search your whole life and you're trying to find truth and seeking things.

That's what I find that most,

Many Westerners that I've met who came from all different kinds of religions and things like that,

They're truth seekers,

They're spiritual seekers because they were raised,

They didn't find truth in it.

They tried all kinds of different religions.

I was a,

My major in college was anthropology,

I loved history as I said,

I've grown up,

I love humanity and culture and religion so I learned about all types of religions.

But for me the truth was in this noble eightfold path.

When I found this noble eightfold path I said yes,

This is something that fits with my life and this is something I want to try to take on.

And the power of following this path I can't say enough of.

Reviews

Sadhu sadhu sadhu I hope next tome I am NJ visiting my family I can come to Empty Cloud again and hear a Dhamma talk in person.

Loved ymthecsincerity and reference to your own prwctice. Thanks so much,,Jill Siler

Thank you

Best explanation I've ever heard of this factor of the Path.

Paraphrasing a line that resonated to give it context:

“Religions espouse a lot of the same aspirations, only Buddhism says how to live those aspirations"

Excellent!! What’s the spelling so I can investigate more, please? Sounds like you’re saying “Super8 Path” but I think it’s a Hindi word...

Thank you for sharing core truth. 🙏🏽😊

Very well explained, Venerable Sir.

Very Interesting, Informative and Thought-Provoking❣️🙏🏻💕

As always, Bhante Jayasara presents the Dhamma with a contagious enthusiasm and welcome clarity.

A very helpful talk with great sound quality!

Thank you for the talks on the Noble 8fold path Ajahn 🌸🙏

I really enjoy his enthusiasm in his talks. Very positive energy.

Beautiful perspective and self discovery truth...

I am forever resonant and grateful for this. This exact moment in time, nothing could have been more eloquently spoken to what I needed to hear. My city and myself in ruins. Thank you for this invigorating talk🙏🏽. Many blessings.

Thankyou Ajahn , very inspiring dialogue 💚🕉💫

So eloquent and to the point

What profund and yet so clear and easy to understand teaching - I feel encouraged - thank you so much - I was listening in the train and could go into even when people were talking around - with love and light 🙏🏽💖🙏🏽