Right livelihood is the poor stepsister of the eightfold path. It’s the factor that the Buddha hardly defines at all. He simply says that the disciple of the noble ones avoids wrong livelihood and makes his or her living through right livelihood—which doesn’t tell you much.
Part of this may have been simply a question of etiquette. There’s only one passage in the Canon where the Buddha clearly comes out with a general statement condemning certain trades as wrong livelihood. He lists five—trading in poison, trading in weapons, trading in intoxicants, trading in meat, and trading in human beings—saying that the disciple of the noble ones avoids engaging in those forms of trade. You don’t set yourself up with a shop to sell alcohol, poison, weapons, meat, or slaves. But otherwise, the Buddha is very circumspect when talking about other people’s occupations.
There are two cases where people of questionable professions come to him. One is an actor; the other, a professional soldier. They say pretty much the same thing. “Our teachers who taught us to be actors,” the actor says, “claimed that if you spend your life entertaining people with your imitations of reality, making them laugh, you’re going to attain the heaven of laughter after death. What does Master Gotama have to say about that?”
The Buddha twice refuses to answer, but the actor keeps after him, and asks him a third time. So the Buddha finally says, “Well, it looks like I can’t get anywhere with you by saying I don’t want to answer that. So I’ll answer you.” He goes on to say that if, as you’re acting, your motivation is to give rise to greed, anger, and delusion in your audience, then after you die you’re going to go to the hell of laughter—i.e., not the place where people laugh with you, but where they laugh at you. So the actor breaks into tears. The Buddha says, “See? That’s why I didn’t want to answer your question.” The actor says, “No, I’m not crying because of what you said. I’m just crying because I’ve been deceived by my teachers for so long.”
The Buddha’s etiquette here is interesting. He didn’t set out on a crusade against actors or professional soldiers or advertising people or bankers or whatever. Only if he was pushed would he condemn a particular occupation. Otherwise, he would ask you to reflect for yourself on your means of livelihood. Is it harming other beings? Does it involve lying? Does it involve unskillful mental states? If it does, then maybe you should look for another occupation—which, of course, may take time. This may have been one of the reasons why the Buddha observed his etiquette, because a lot of people are stuck in their occupation. It’s going to take a while for them to disentangle themselves if they realize that their means of livelihood is unskillful.
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But there’s another side to right livelihood, and that’s looking at your attitude toward what you consume.
You should reflect while you’re eating: Why are you eating now?
When you put on your clothes: Why are you putting these clothes on?
When you fix up your house or your hut: Why are you fixing it up in this way?
When you take medicine: Why are you taking this particular medicine now?
What’s your motivation?
Ideal motivation: Wear clothing to protect yourself from the elements, to cover up the parts of body that cause shame. Take food not to put on bulk, not for the fun or the flavor of it. After all, those who provided the food that you’re eating—the farmers who worked, the animals who gave up their lives—didn’t provide it in fun. You take the food simply so that you can continue practicing, so that you can eliminate hunger pains and yet at the same time not over-stuff yourself until there’s the discomfort that comes from eating too much. You’re not eating just for the flavor of the food; you’re eating for the nourishment of the body, so that you can practice in ease. Your use of shelter should simply be to protect yourself from the elements and to provide a place where you can be quiet, find some privacy, so you can practice. And as for medicine, you use it to eliminate pain and to maintain freedom from disease. That’s all.
When you think about these things, it forces you to look at the ripples you send out when you choose what to eat, what to wear, where to live: What is your impact on the world? The fact that you’re alive and breathing means that you have a lot of needs, and the needs can be met only by relying on others. How can you rely on them so that you’re not harming them or causing them unnecessary pain?
This reflection ties in with one of the important principles of what are called the customs of the noble ones, which is contentment with your material possessions. When you think in these ways, you find that you’re buying less, using less, because you’re looking elsewhere for your happiness. I.e., you’re looking inside. This is where the concentration comes in. This is why concentration is an important element of right livelihood. It provides you with the honey, the butter, the grain, and the other foods you need for the mind’s true happiness deep down inside. At the same time, this happiness provides you with a good foundation for the insights that are going to come as you start looking at the various ways in which you keep on taking birth. Because, again, the fact you’re taking birth keeps placing a burden on other beings, a burden on the world.
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The insights you’re going to need to stop that process can be pretty harsh. As the Buddha said, when you take food, think about the story of the couple who were going across the desert with a baby, their only child. They got more than halfway across the desert and ran totally out of food. They realized that if they didn’t eat anything, all three of them would die. So they decided to kill their child and make jerky out of him: baby jerky. That way at least two of them would survive and then they could start a family again when they got to the other side of the desert.
Now, the Buddha asked, what would be their attitude toward the baby jerky while they were eating it? Would they be eating it for fun? No, they’d be thinking with sorrow of what they had to do in this horrible circumstance. That, the Buddha said, is how you should regard physical food: as baby jerky, not something you eat out of joy or for the flavor, but simply to keep life going, realizing that your having to eat causes suffering, causes pain.
That’s a harsh contemplation—one of many harsh contemplations in the Buddha’s teachings. The only way the mind can stand up to that kind of contemplation is if you’ve got the strong sense of wellbeing that comes from nourishing the mind with right concentration. Otherwise, the insights that can come from meditation, if you don’t have a good solid foundation like this, can be disorienting, destabilizing.
So as the foundation for your practice, you want to keep working on these skills. Appreciate the simple quality of getting the mind still, finding a sense of ease simply through the way you breathe; gaining a sense of wellbeing, rapture, equanimity when you need them. In this way, you nourish the mind with good, harmless food. That’s right livelihood in the highest sense. It puts you in a position where, while you’re still alive this time around, you weigh lightly on the world around you. And you’re developing the skill so you don’t have to come back and weigh the world down again. This is why the Buddha’s teachings are not selfish. They’re not something you get through so you can then get on with your life. They’re a way of living so that you cause minimal harm to others and ultimately can find the happiness that frees you from coming back and causing harm again and again. They’re an act of kindness both for you and for the whole world around you.
The Noble Eightfold Path – Ajahn Geoff