Good morning. Welcome, everyone. As this is Labor Day weekend, I want to talk today about right livelihood and the dignity of work. So right livelihood is part of the Eightfold Path, very basic Buddha's teaching, part of the Four Noble Truths that Shakyamuni taught. The truth of, usually it's translated as suffering, but just that things are a little out of line, or sometimes a lot out of line. And then that there's a cause for that, our attachment to objects of desire in various ways. And then the good news is the third Noble Truth that there's an end to that. And then the fourth is the Eightfold Path. So this is a kind of practical guide to how to live with awakened awareness.

[01:10]

One of the various systems of practical guidance for everyday life like our precepts and the bodhisattva transcendent practices. But the Eightfold Path, well, a number of them are relevant to current situation. Right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness. Somehow I skipped. Oh yeah, along with right livelihood, right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration or meditative stability. Others are relevant like right view, which is not about having one right view, but refining our view and not being dogmatic about it and listening to others' views.

[02:18]

So that's certainly relevant. in our current situation and divisions in our world. But right livelihood is particularly important and appropriate in our world. So these are, we call them right livelihood, but it's not about being right as opposed to wrong exactly. It's more like being upright, being true in terms of studying and asking the questions that each one of these eight brings up. In early Buddhist teaching, right livelihood was considered about not pursuing harmful occupations, trading in weapons or intoxicants, or killing animals, or making a living through deception or cheating others. So I would say the spirit of

[03:22]

right livelihood still, and today, and very important today, is how do we support ourselves and our family and do that by dignified, honorable means, not harmful, but helpful to others and oneself. So right livelihood involves being in harmony with the precepts, supporting life rather than killing, generosity rather than theft, truthfulness instead of lies, awareness over intoxication, and hopefully respect for all beings. So how do we find a way of supporting ourselves that is right livelihood, upright livelihood? Another criteria would be just the pace of the work, whether the activity itself allows us the space to be mindful and aware in our work.

[04:26]

This is true even if the work is, as in many contexts now, involves complexities and multitasking. Still, can we engage our work with awareness? So one. fundamental perspective from Right Livelihood that's relevant now is that in our work, in our livelihood, people should have some means to support themselves and some meaningful activity that allows human integrity and dignity to employ our interests and express our abilities with vitality, with creative energy. How is our livelihood constructive to people, to communities? And this is not about having glamorous or high-status livelihood, but just the dignity of regular work.

[05:40]

So I've witnessed, for example, bus drivers or cashiers at the grocery store or shop clerks who, through attentiveness and just ordinary kindness, are doing bodhisattva work, just engaging with people and help to encourage the people who they come in contact with in the same way. So right livelihood's not a matter of, again, of particular livelihoods or jobs, but it's a matter of how to, whatever you're doing, how to find basic helpfulness and I would say dignity. So this relates to our zazen too.

[06:43]

Part of what zazen, this sitting meditation, sitting upright for 30 or 40 minutes or however long, allows us to find our inner dignity. Just being able to sit upright and still in the middle of Well, out in the world, when we step out into our everyday ordinary world, of course, there are all kinds of difficulties and conflicts. But even just sitting, just being on our seat in the meditation hall, thoughts and feelings come up. We feel various, various difficulties of our own life, the various difficulties that confront us, How do we... Just to be still and upright in the middle of that is tremendous dignity.

[07:52]

We can find our own uprightness, our own sense of being willing to be present and kind to ourselves, to others. Even, you know, maybe especially when we're having some struggle, inner struggle, or, you know, struggling with pain in our legs or whatever, just to be present and upright in the face of that, as we face the wall, as we face ourselves and face the world. There's a tremendous dignity to that. And this is, and we can sometimes gradually, sometimes just in a period of zazen, have a sense of that, and that is helpful in our work. And particularly in this branch of Buddhism and suttas, and we emphasize the expression in our everyday activities of the signity.

[08:59]

So we have on Sundays after the Dharma talk, a temple cleaning, and this is something we do mindfully, quietly, as a way of also of carrying this dignity of Zazen into some slightly more active or somewhat more active mode. In terms of the dignity of work, I also want to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, who was killed 50 years ago this year, who talked about the dignity of labor quite a bit. And he was actually killed in Memphis when he was campaigning for sanitation workers there and talking about their work and talking about how they should get a decent wage. So I'm going to talk more about that, but I'm going to just quote some of what Dr. King said.

[09:59]

So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight, this was something he said the night before he was killed, that Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth. One day our society must come to see this. One day our society will come to respect sanitation workers if it is to survive, or the person who picks up our garbage, because the person who picks up our garbage in the final analysis is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity, he said. But you were doing another thing. You were reminding not only Memphis, but you were reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.

[11:02]

Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? He said this 50 years ago. It's still true. And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen. And it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income. You are here tonight to demand that Memphis will do something about the conditions that our brothers face as they work day in and day out for the well-being of the total community. And he says, we are here to demand that people will see the poor. So this is another part of Right Livelihood. And we can judge our society or any society with using right livelihood as a criteria.

[12:04]

People who work with diligence and honesty should be able to support themselves and their families through their work. So having a living wage, people now are campaigning for a $15 minimum wage. I don't think that's enough. Having a living wage. is an attempt to support this ideal, asking that all who work wholeheartedly be supported at a minimum level sufficient to ensure livelihood. This reasonable standard has become more difficult in our current economy. The interests of corporate profits have been given legal and electoral precedence over the well-being of the citizenry. How will our society respond to the extreme and increasing huge disparity between the income of corporate CEOs and the masses of working people, people who work for them. Right livelihood and the opportunities for dignified, productive, and sustaining employment would seem one appropriate assessment of a healthy society's ethical standards.

[13:10]

So how can our society develop jobs that help support constructive development, necessary awareness for the future of the world. So again, this isn't about having some glamorous job. Even in glamorous jobs, people can act in ways that are helpful rather than harmful. How do we just have the dignity of appreciating our work, of working in a way that supports us, that can support families, in which we can express wholesomeness and kindness? This is a primary Buddhist value. So what is Wright's livelihood?

[14:15]

We have a variety of, in our sangha, people who do various kinds of work, many different kinds of work, including a couple of guys who are grade school teachers. which in some ways is a respected job, but it's not paid well. Teachers these days are not paid, in many cases, a living wage, so we have teacher strikes going on in a number of states. How do we respect people's work? This is a struggle, and we have people in our sangha who are out of work, a couple of whom recently got jobs, which is great. But how do we express the dignity and meditative awareness that we find, that we commune with in zazen, in our everyday activities, in our everyday work?

[15:25]

How do we respect others' work? Part of that is being able to make a living. And I think I heard recently 40%, and I think maybe it's more than that, 40% of working Americans have to do without some basic need, housing or health care or even food. There's tremendous poverty amongst working people. in our society, even though, you know, the mainstream media would have, you know, indicates that our economy is doing well. Well, it's doing well for the, you know, for the 1% or whoever. So, and then part of that in our society is where are main sources of livelihood? The original Buddhist right livelihood standard implied strong disapproval of all war and violence.

[16:26]

of sanctioning against work involving weaponry. So Buddhist teaching indicates a preference for nonviolence and resolving conflicts through diplomatic mediation rather than aggression. But the reality these days is that our country's policy is controlled by, to a large extent, by the people who make mass weapons. So how does that relate to right livelihood? There are people in the Pentagon who do meditation, and I'm glad of that. So I don't mean to criticize People who go into this armed service, often that's done for noble means and consider it a right livelihood to defend our country.

[17:35]

Although, I would say that the people who control the policies about that are, and we have this tremendous military budget which impeach right livelihood for so many people. So I'll quote going back to Republican President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell dress and 1961, said, our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. He was cautioning against the military-industrial complex and its control and influence over our country. is back then a new conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state, every office of the federal government. He said, our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved.

[18:39]

So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist, unquote. It's not just that there is a weapons industry in a military, and maybe we need that to some extent, but the domination over the American economy and government by arms corporations and their overwhelming lobbying of legislation that Eisenhower warned against more than 50 years ago is a situation where policy is made in the service of military might rather than to protect people. So there's more I can say about that. The concern about that goes back, even Thomas Jefferson in 1791 said, if there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the minds of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

[19:56]

And now we have military all over the world. So again, there's many aspects to this right livelihood. As an ethical value, as a part of the Eightfold Path to expressing awakeness in our lives, how do we use whatever livelihood we have to promote awareness and kindness? And as a society, how do we support people who work to be able to make a living? It's kind of criminal that that's not the case for so much of our country now. So is there just a few thoughts about this teaching of right livelihood in this Labor Day weekend?

[20:58]

And, you know, I'm impressed by the many people in our sangha who do very helpful kinds of work. But even in jobs that are not explicitly, you know, helpful work, How can we take on our positions in ways that we are kind and helpful to the people around us, where we express that dignity in our work, where we appreciate being able to work? So I want to open this up to comments, questions, responses. about dignity and the dignity of our work and right livelihood.

[22:05]

So please, comments or questions, responses, feel free. Yes, Sid. Thank you for your talk. the anger and disdain I feel when I think of people who are earning so much more than they need while others are struggling so much, or the people whose work fuels the destruction of the planet, or our ability to hurt each other. I know it's not helpful for me to harbor anger and demonize, but I really find myself sticking to that often, so do you have advice? Good, yes, that's certainly a relevant question. So, there are people who are making a profit from the fossil fuel industry, particularly from destroying human habitat, possibly for decades or centuries in what they're doing right now.

[23:18]

So one of our precepts is, as you said, as you referred to, to not harbor ill will. It doesn't mean that we should not ever feel anger. Of course, when we see what's happening to people in our world, it's reasonable to feel anger or outrage. The point is, what do we do with that? We can just, as your question implies, we can let that eat at us. It can be corrosive to ourselves. How do we turn the energy of anger? So this is a whole other Dharma talk, but maybe there's time to say more. To turn our anger into, and that energy of anger, into some positive right action, right view, right thought. So to demonize those people isn't necessarily helpful.

[24:26]

From the Buddhist point of view, it's not that there are these evil people creating mayhem in the world. It's that people are confused and deluded and ignorant. And how do we support awareness and how do we support mental health programs and less access to firearms for people who are disturbed on that level, and on the larger level of those promoting warfare and destruction of the climate for short-term personal profit, how do we respond by right livelihood might include Actions against that so there's a there are a week from Today September 8th or a week from next next Saturday. I guess it is there are large demonstrations around the country About supporting

[25:34]

supporting end to climate change and alternative energy. There's something on the Ancient Dragon Facebook about how to connect with the one that's in Illinois, that's in Chicago area. There are things we can do to support sanity, to support kindness, to support right livelihood and right speech and right thought. So right speech is relevant too. One of our precepts is not to speak of the faults of others. So it's not about blaming individual weapons merchants, but to talk about the processes of what's going on, to talk about the realities of what You know, through human history, we've changed our energy systems from whale oil to electricity. Now we have to change from fossil fuels to the sustainable energy systems that are out there.

[26:41]

How do we support that? So there are lots of groups who are working to, in various ways, to support helpfulness, to support right livelihood. State of California just passed a law that, in their legislature, that they have to have all sustainable energy by 2045. Maybe it should be sooner, but still, there are people who are doing good work to respond to this. So, when we feel anger about something going on in the world, about all the wars, how can we, you know, how do we support people who are promoting diplomacy and peace, to turn that energy Instead of getting caught up in anger, it's not helpful. Turn that energy to trying to be helpful. And just talking about it is one way. But just letting anger fester doesn't help.

[27:44]

So that's a little response. Other comments about right livelihood and dignity? Do you understand what I mean about dignity and zazen? Yes, Nicholas. or, you know, it sounds reasonable. So I often don't necessarily see it as doubt.

[28:46]

So today, I was experiencing this sense of doubt about many things, and I was able to kind of just name it and see it for what it was. But I was right there with him. You said something about just being here now, being here now, being here now.

[30:01]

Just waking up to this process of death and being with it. And about the anger, one way that's been helpful to me is to read about history. is just screwed up. And that this is the story of the world and that this is just how it is on a certain level. So I think that the more I explore that, the more I understand that, the more I can accept that this is a flawed place. What's that line, take a sad song and make it better?

[31:07]

Anyway, yeah, so both Sid talking about anger and Nicholas talking about doubt, part of this dignity I'm talking about is being able to, is being willing and actually facing that. not the opposites, not the obstructions to dignity, but the processes of finding deeper dignity. So to face our anger, and then how do we work with that? And the same thing with doubt. So doubt, you know, all of these things are subtle. To really investigate, study this deeply, as Stokken says, what doubt is, and, you know, There are different words in Chinese and Japanese and Sanskrit for different kinds of what you're calling doubt. There's kind of skeptical doubt, which is undermining, which is, you know, kind of promoting helplessness and turning away from.

[32:14]

wholesomeness. But there's also doubt that, I prefer to use the word questions, questioning. So I was reading from some writing I did about Right Livelihood in this book, Zen Questions, that I did, and questions there is a verb. So our doubts are also questions. How do we How do we find right questioning? So, of course, questions come up, you know, in terms of what am I doing here, sitting facing the wall, but also in our life, you know. Is this something, is what I'm doing worthwhile? How do I take care of this situation or that situation? How do I respond to? the things that allow me to feel anger. So this questioning can be very constructive and very positive and creative. And it's not about questioning to get some answer, like, oh, there it is, now I know what to do.

[33:16]

It's the part of Zazen is this endless process of questioning, wondering, looking at what's going on and how do I take care of it. And there's a way to do that that's not skeptical doubt, but that's a constructive, positive inquiry. So, again, this is a good example to look at doubt and see how to turn that into constructive questioning. It's not that you shouldn't have questions, that everything is fine. It's not that smiley face Pollyanna or something. That's not our practice. Our practice is to be present in the reality of our life and the world and our relationships and the difficulties of all that. But also then how do we, if we feel some anger at something, somebody said, how do we look at it

[34:20]

use that energy of anger to look at it more insightfully, how to look at it more clearly. And when questions come up, not to be overcome by the questions, but positive questioning, constructive questioning. So thank you for that. Other comments or questions? Yes, Phyllis, hi. I would like to talk about guilt. Guilt. Okay. Yeah.

[35:33]

And I always feel guilty because I am an Amazon Prime subscriber. And I subscribe to Amazon Prime because I want free shipping. You want what? The free shipping. The free seven-day shipping. Oh, free shipping, yeah. Yeah. I want it quick. I want it. I always want it. Well, the guilt is extra, but the questioning is useful. And that doesn't mean that You know, I don't think right livelihood or any of these eightfold paths is about being totally pure and perfect.

[37:08]

I don't know that that's possible in this world. We're all caught up in, we're using electricity that's produced by fossil fuels. I mean, we can't, and you know, I get things from Amazon sometimes too. I usually let them come, you know, more slowly, but yeah, it's, having some question about it I think is good. But adding some feeling of guilt doesn't help anything. So maybe sometimes don't get it that way. To be aware of the conditions of workers at Amazon and other places, and it might help us decide to be more careful. get alternative products from places that are not, where there's not a cruelty happening to the workers, but it's difficult. I used to try and buy things that were not made in China, because I knew after Tiananmen Square and all, I knew that there was oppressive work conditions, and it's pretty difficult anymore.

[38:21]

to find anything that's not made in China. I mean, if there's a choice between something made in China and something else, I still might choose something else. But I don't think right livelihood or right effort or right thought or right action is about being perfect. are totally pure. We live in, and Nicholas was saying this about our history, that we live in a world that is challenged. And it's not that, you know, excuse me for saying so, that our current president of the United States is the first president who was a warmonger and responsible for mass murder, in some ways. The whole teaching of karma is to see that what's happening in our world, and this is a way of looking at the anger that we feel, is not just something that has happened now.

[39:32]

It's part of a process of human evolution, of human, you know, our country was founded on slavery and racism and taking over native people's lands. This is just true, and it affects all of us. So in the three-day session coming up, I'm going to be talking about the fox koan, which is about karma. And it's very complicated. So the guilt is extra. And if you click on Amazon Prime, fine. It's not the worst thing in the world, but you might think about it. Sometimes you don't need to. To be aware of that, I think, is helpful. Then what do we do with the awareness? That's like, what do we do with the questioning? What do we do with the anger? And my favorite Zen koan is from a great American yogi who said, if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be. So, you know, we live in this challenging, difficult,

[40:36]

place where our efforts at right livelihood, at being careful, at being kind, do make a difference. But if you're judging yourself by some standard of perfection, that kind of gets in the way, I think. So thank you for your question and comment. Time maybe for one more question or comment or response if anyone has something. Yes, Jason. Okay? Yeah, right. Which is part of the process of looking at it. Yeah, go ahead. Good. Yeah. So when I talked about dignity and zazen, just facing our anger or doubting or questioning or our guilt

[41:51]

We can feel pleasure and joy in that. I mean, really, joy. That we can be, that we can stop, sit down, face the wall, and see these things. And also, there's the joy of appreciating when we see somebody acting kindly in their work. When we see people doing constructive things in their work, that's wonderful. We can appreciate that and feel joy. Satisfaction. Or when we feel like, you know, we don't have to, you know, get all conceited, but when we feel like, you know, we've done a good job at something. When we've done our work and we've done it well and we've gotten to where we wanted to get to in some situation, there's a satisfaction. That's another word to throw in there along with dignity. A kind of satisfaction. that right livelihood and right effort and right thought and right action and right speech can allow us. And yeah, we should appreciate that.

[42:54]

And then keep paying attention to the questions and the anger and the guilt when they come up. So yeah, thank you for that. That's an important part of it. That's where the dignity comes from. So thank you all very much.

[43:11]

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