This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Wise Livelihood: Looking Beyond the Five Jobs to Avoid. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Kerry Dunn at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
So just a little bit more about this project. I’ve been practicing since 2010 in the insight tradition, and pretty much all of the instruction I got about wise livelihood was basically, “there’s these five jobs to avoid.” Maybe it would go a little deeper, and if you look at these five jobs, you see they’re really about ethics. This is about non-harming. And so we should just not do any harm at our jobs. And then you can check off wise livelihood on your checklist of the Eightfold Path.
Sometimes teachers sort of expanded it to being ethical in all the ways you take care of your basic needs, but it just wasn’t cutting it for me because work is my charnel ground. Work is where all my stuff gets activated. And I just needed more guidance.
I’ve spent the last several years on this hunt for the perfect job, right? The job that’s going to support me in my practice and allow me to go on retreat and provide enough fodder, but not too much fodder, for learning and development of wisdom. I was a professor for many years; my PhD is in social welfare. I even left academia to go work at a retreat center, thinking, “Ah, dream job! It doesn’t get any better than that. My practice will be amazing. I will have all this time for practice.” Which is true when you work at a retreat center. They limit the amount of time you can work per day so that you can practice.
But it was still really stressful. It was during the pandemic. There was a lot of dynamics among the staff. There was a lot of politics. There were some folks with some pretty serious trauma backgrounds that was getting activated. It was not the dream that I had imagined. And so it was a wakeup call of like, “Wow, I really live with a fantasy that someday I’m going to find the perfect job and then I will be liberated.” And it’s just not how it works.
So my exploration has both been experiential and looking at the teachings, looking at suttas that talk about this. Today we’re going to focus more on the sutta part of this. It’s fine if you’re more interested in this topic as just a way to learn more about the dharma and look at suttas, or if you’re here because you have some questions about wise livelihood in your own work life and you want to have some practical applications. There’ll be room for both of those.
I’m going to use the word “job” and “work,” but you can sub in whatever fits your situation. So maybe you own a business, or maybe you’re retired, or maybe you just have independent means for taking care of yourself. This can all be relevant for that. It’s just I’ve had jobs, so I’m probably going to use the word “job” a lot.
So, what is wise livelihood? Sammā Ājīva.1 You may have heard sammā translated in a lot of different ways. The monastics, when I hang out with monastics, they almost always use “right”: right livelihood, right view, right intention. And a lot of the lay teachers use “wise” or some of these other translations: appropriate, complete, balanced, in harmony. I think it’s useful when you’re working with a path factor to play around with these different definitions because for me there’s a really different feel to saying “right livelihood” versus “harmonious livelihood” or “balanced livelihood” or “appropriate.” They all have different flavors that can be useful. I chose “wise” for this project just because that’s the one that I’ve been hearing the most from lay teachers and because it just sort of grounds a sense that we are taking care of ourselves in alignment with the dharma, that there’s wisdom grounding what we’re doing.
So we’re talking about appropriate means of making a living or taking care of our basic needs in ways that align with the dharma.
When I first started this project, I came up with this five-point reflection tool that I used in one of my blog posts called “Wise Cheesemonger” back when my job was being a cheese counter clerk. This was based on different tools that teachers have put out, and I kind of took what I liked from different ones and put this tool together. I’m actually revising and changing this tool, but I think it’s useful for thinking about the two aspects of wise livelihood.
There’s this aspect that is, what is the job itself? What are the characteristics of the job? Is the job wholesome? Is it ethical? Are you being asked to do something blatantly unethical at your job? Is it beneficial? That may not be directly in the teachings, but it’s all part of the flavor of Buddhist teaching that our practice should benefit our community as a whole. And then for me, this big one: Am I too activated? Am I activated enough that I can learn, or am I too activated? Am I too stressed? Is there too much work? Is there too much unprocessed, unproductive conflict? And then, will I be able to do my formal practice? Will I not have time?
I was very focused on the job characteristics. I thought that’s all it was about: having the right job with the right characteristics. And I met with a teacher, Shelley Graf of Common Ground, and they said, “Kerry, it’s all about how you show up at your job. What are you thinking? It’s all about how you show up.” So this question of what’s more important: the job itself and what the job is doing in the world and what the job is doing to us, what it’s doing to our hearts, what it’s doing to our minds, versus how are we bringing ourselves to the job? How much skill are we bringing? How are we taking care of ourselves so that we can show up? Which is more important? Does it matter? They’re both important: the job characteristics and how we show up there.
We’re going to start with job characteristics. So we’ll look at some teachings on the five job categories to avoid, because you can’t talk about wise livelihood without that.
These are the teachings on what jobs we should not have. The first one is the five types of jobs that you should avoid. You probably are all familiar with this; it’s almost the entire sutta, it’s very short. It’s these five types: weapons, trading in human beings, meat, intoxicants, and poisons.
Most of the time we hear, if you look at this, all of this is saying don’t be violent, don’t do harm. Don’t harm other humans, don’t harm animals, don’t poison people, and don’t poison their minds. Don’t poison their bodies, and don’t poison their minds. And then we can sort of extrapolate that to just, don’t do harm at your job.
I learned from one of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s books that there’s more to it than this. There are all these other categories of jobs on the list. One of them being dancers and performers. This idea that if you’re performing for people that are not fully enlightened, you’re going to stir up greed, you’re going to stir up delusion, you’re going to stir up heedlessness, you’re going to stir up hate. And that we need to be careful in what we’re stirring up in other people.
I work in a for-profit, high-end grocery store. And the whole ethos of the store is that people should come in and be delighted. They should always be coming in and tasting something they’ve never tasted before. The whole idea is to get people wanting the next delicious bite. And to me, I don’t feel good working with this being the organizational culture. How much of it is a bright line? Is your job a butcher, versus how does it feel in the heart to do what you do? I now make sandwiches at the grocery store. I have to slice meat and cheese. It does not feel good. It doesn’t feel good in the heart. There’s an ethical twinge there. That’s a sign to me that maybe this is not part of my path. It’s not going to help me get free, staying at this job long term.
So we’ve got dancers, we’ve got warriors. We don’t want to be violent. We don’t want to have this level of ill will for other people in our job. At one point, we had a power outage and the grocery store across the street got the power back after we did, and everyone in the store was cheering that we got our power back first so we could trump the other grocery store. Of course, it’s not the same as killing people, but it’s that same sort of flavor of energy. A gentle competition, but like we’ve got to snuff the other company. That would not be in line with a path of practice. It’s not wise livelihood.
Then we have this teaching that talks about mortifying others. Other translations of that are torturing and humiliating. This is a teaching that the Buddha gave for lay folks on how to use rational reflection to learn how to have good outcomes in their life. He talks about four kinds of persons: a person who mortifies themselves, mortifies others, mortifies both, or doesn’t mortify themselves or others. The lesson being that the last person is going to have better outcomes in life. So I think this gives us a little hint too of the kinds of jobs we should not have. We should not have cruel jobs: being a jailer, being an executioner, being a bandit. We don’t want to be cruel. We don’t want to be having power over people or animals. We have to bracket all this with the realities of economic life in this country and what’s possible for people as they try to survive in a very expensive world. We also don’t want to judge people who are correctional officers. For some folks, that is a very good job that lifts them out of poverty and gives them meaning. But for our hearts, what job is going to feel like wise livelihood?
And then this last piece, from the Great Forty sutta, is that we shouldn’t be deceitful. We shouldn’t use flattery, hinting, belittling, or using material things to chase after other material things. This is getting into not just categories of work, but how we behave at work. What is our job asking us to do? Are we having to be disingenuous with ourselves or not treating others as fully human in our work?
On the flip side, we have jobs that lead to happiness. I had never heard of this before. This little piece comes from a sutta in the Numbered Discourses. This is a teaching the Buddha was asked to give to lay people about having success in life, in this life and beyond. And he talks about these four things that lead to welfare and happiness: initiative, protection, good friendship, and balanced finances.
Initiative is how we do our work. Protection, also translated as vigilance, is how we take care of what we’ve accumulated. How do we protect what we have and keep ourselves and what we have safe? It’s a really interesting sutta, but I just pulled out the piece about work here. The Buddha did mention categories of jobs that are considered wholesome or that can lead to happiness: farming, trade, raising cattle, archery, government service, or one of the professions. And that covers a lot of the jobs that people have today. So I found that helpful for thinking about it’s not just in a negative sense of “don’t do these things.” There’s also some uplifting instruction on how to be happy and have good lives.
Another teaching that really shifted the way I think about wise livelihood was the Maṅgala Sutta.2 It is a list of 38 blessings. I was talking to the monks of Clear Mountain Monastery one day because I take care of my parents and I was really struggling in that role. Ajahn Nisabho turned to me and said, “Taking care of your mother and father is one of the highest blessings.” And I was like, “What? It is? Tell me more about that.” And he mentioned this sutta.
Also in the sutta: education and training are highest blessings. Being skilled in a craft is a highest blessing. And having unstressful work is a highest blessing.
I had spent so much time being frustrated, like, “Why can’t I find a job that supports my practice and that is not super stressful?” It’s because that is rare. It is a blessing if you have a relatively unstressful job that you are pretty good at and that you like. Congratulations. Like that is amazing. And we should appreciate what’s not stressful about our jobs. We should appreciate when we have jobs where there is some peace and consistency, when there is not a lot of conflict.
The Buddha wrote a lot about conflict, and it wasn’t about avoiding conflict or ignoring social conflict or oppression. It was about not stirring up conflict, not creating conflict, not harboring ill will toward people because you disagree with them, but really seeing conflict for what it is: something to be known and not letting it fester.
There are these different translations of anavākula ca kammantā: “unstressful work” (Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation), “consistency in one’s work” (Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu), and my favorite is Nārada Thera’s “peaceful occupation.” There’s something about that, like, ah, peaceful occupation. Isn’t that what I crave? Peace. World peace, inner peace. This idea that we could have a job where what we’re doing is so in line with the dharma that there’s peace in our hearts. That to me is worth all the work that it takes to show up every day, putting forth the effort to call up some wisdom, to call up some compassion, to stay connected to the heart, stay connected to the body. It’s worth all that work to maybe someday be blessed with peaceful occupation.
The flip side of this is that for most of us, work is inherently stressful. I’ve come up with a long list of forms of dukkha3 that arise for me at work. Here are some that came up during our discussion:
I had heard of the Eightfold Path, and I thought of it as one of those many lists that I should memorize one day. It wasn’t until I started digging into wise livelihood that I really understood that the Eightfold Path is not just another list. It is the path. The Four Noble Truths: there’s dukkha, there’s a cause of dukkha, there’s a way that dukkha can cease, and the ceasing of dukkha is through the Eightfold Path. This is how we get free.
The path factors are not a checklist. It’s a spiral. Wise view supports wise intention, which supports wise speech, and so on. They are all active processes, working together until we are fully enlightened. Wise livelihood is part of the three ethical path factors: wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood. The purpose of ethical training is twofold. One is because the Buddha wanted us to have good societies where people could thrive. But it’s also about our own personal liberation. When we’re more ethical, we can meditate more, we can sleep better, we can see more clearly. If our heart isn’t riled up with regret, then we can settle and pay attention to what else is going on more readily and clearly.
The Great Forty sutta talks about how right view helps us understand what is right and wrong livelihood. Right effort helps us abandon wrong livelihood and enter right livelihood. And we mindfully abandon wrong livelihood. Right livelihood doesn’t live on an island; it is deeply connected to these and other path factors.
The whole point of the path is liberation. Can we bring that spirit, that desire for liberation, to our jobs and see work as a site where freedom is possible? Can we wake up at work? Work is my charnel ground. It’s where all my childhood boo-boos, where all the social concerns I care about are present. It is the hard place for me. It’s a doorway to liberation. It’s where I can learn everything I need to learn about letting go, about aversion, about ill will, about compassion, about clinging and letting go, about identification and non-identification. All of the lessons are there. No matter what my job is, every job is where I can learn those things.
I stumbled upon a series of teachings in the Numbered Discourses aimed at monastics about what leads to decline. A recurring item on these lists was “relishing work.” The Pāli word, kammārāmatā,4 is also translated as “enjoyment of activity” or “being fond of the state of working.”
Let’s look at what else is on the list with relishing work: relishing talk, sleep, and company; not guarding the sense doors; eating too much; being covetous; having bad friends; stopping halfway after achieving some distinction in meditation; taking on other people’s responsibilities.
What do these things have in common? They are all forms of avoiding our practice, of greed, of clinging and attachment. They are about clinging to the world, to sense pleasure, and to a sense of “I.”
One sutta gives an explanation: “Take a mendicant who relishes work, talk, sleep, company, closeness, and proliferation… This is called a medicant who enjoys substantial reality, who hasn’t given up substantial reality to rightly make an end of suffering.”
This “enjoying substantial reality” can also be translated as being “pleased with, delighted by, or indulging in personal existence or identity.” When we are overly attached to our job, when we relish our work, we’re keeping ourselves tied to this process of identification and clinging to sense pleasures. This becomes a barrier to freedom.
In the West, we have this idea that we’re supposed to be fulfilled by our jobs, that we’re supposed to have a calling and love our jobs. If you don’t, you’re doing something wrong. But are we supposed to love our jobs? Is loving our job part of wise livelihood? These teachings suggest that relishing it, becoming attached to it as part of our identity, can be a significant obstacle on the path to liberation.
Let’s appreciate all of our coming together, all of our reflections, and how much we’ve all benefited from hearing each other’s experiences and wisdom. Let’s take a minute to connect to the benefit that we’ve created together.
And let’s give it all away. Let’s give it to those who are suffering, those who have good fortune, those who we love and those we have trouble loving. Those who are pleasing to the eye and those that are less pleasing. To all beings everywhere without exception.
May all beings be free. May all beings know peace, including us.
Sammā Ājīva (Pāli): “Right Livelihood.” The fifth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. It refers to earning a living in a way that is ethical and does not cause harm to oneself or others. ↩
Maṅgala Sutta (Pāli): The “Discourse on Blessings.” A popular Buddhist text in which the Buddha describes thirty-eight “blessings” or auspicious conditions that lead to happiness and well-being. ↩
Dukkha (Pāli): A core Buddhist concept often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” “unease,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the fundamental suffering inherent in conditioned existence. ↩
Kammārāmatā (Pāli): Delight or pleasure in work, activity, or business. In this context, it points to an unskillful attachment to the activity of working, which can become a distraction from the path of liberation. ↩