How
is it that I manage to take a fairly straightforward topic and ramble on about
it for pages and pages?!? I was pretty convinced that Right livelihood would
require half a page and be done. How wrong I was! In this blog post I explore right
livelihood in its typical Buddhist format, and then I look at the relationship
between affecting change on our lives and dealing with life circumstances as
they are, and in particular how this plays out in the world of work. The first
part then will cover the Buddhist issues of right livelihood concerning job
selection and our contribution to the world through how we make a living. For
those of you who've found my take on the world of Buddhism stimulating to some
degree, the second part of this blog post will explore the relationship between
the self-development field and Buddhist deconstruction of the self.
Let’s get started then
Right
livelihood is an extension of right action and right speech. It therefore
concerns the way we interact with the world and in this case how we interact
with work. In a way this step on the eightfold Path is relatively straightforward.
There are two questions that we need to ask ourselves in relationship to the
work we do;
Does
the way I earn money and make a living contribute to suffering in this world?
Does
my work support my practise and provide conditions in which I can actually practise
as I need to?
If
the answer is yes to the first, your work may fit into one of the following
categories. There are the classical definitions found in most traditions for determining wrong livelihood.
1. Selling arms, or dealing
in weapons and instruments of death and torture
2. Dealing in slavery
including prostitution (I would add slave labour too)
3. Dealing in meat including
raising cattle for meat, slaughtering & butchering
4. Selling alcohol, drugs,
or poison (does this include tobacco?)
In
looking at these definitions of wrong livelihood, it seems that we can make a
clear distinction between the first and the last two. Yet, even in
exploring the first two there is ambiguity and I can’t help but feel that a decisive
split from associating ourselves with these two potential forms of livelihood
seems to be an expression of both excessive idealism and naivete. As general
guidelines, they are on point, but as is almost always the case, there will be
exceptions to the rule.
It is sometimes said that what you do is
determined to be good or bad based on your intention. I think this is
a problematic approach that potentially leads to a form of excessive
permissiveness. So, as per usual, there is a need to find a healthy middle ground
in weighting up facts and options by not just examining our intent for
taking on the work that we do, but looking at how the company or organisation
we are working for is interacting with the wider world and how we contribute to
that, both directly and indirectly.
Many
forms of work cause immense suffering and they fall outside these categories. Unscrupulous
money lenders have led many an individual to suicide and the banking industry
has destroyed the lives and future of millions, if not billions, or people
globally through greed. Vulture funds which rip the heart out of businesses that provide a
livelihood for many for short term profit are another example. People who knowingly manufacture and sell
harmful products to children are another.
The
basic principles of right work are simple and
they mirror general ethical behaviour, which is certainly not limited to Buddhism.
Not getting wealthy from the misfortune of others, not actively deceiving and lying
are really the basic elements of an ethical approach to work.
On
a practise level it becomes increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye to the
impact our actions make and the recognition that our involvement in wider fields of activity may
cause harm. In time a need naturally arises to align our type of work
and our behaviour at work with the principles that form the basis of our
meditation practise and path.
Weapons & other
issues
The
manufacture, sell and use of arms is the most likely to contribute either
directly or indirectly to suffering globally. Weapons cause death and
unimaginable suffering every day in multiple locations around the world.
Oppressive regimes use weapons against their citizens on a daily basis and the producing of those weapons and sell of them to dictators and suppressors of human
rights is quite clearly highly unethical.
A
blanket ban on weapons production is unrealistic though. Nations need to be
able to defend themselves from invasion and from attack. When war is justified,
the use and production of arms is also justified. In defending yourself, your
country, or the weak from tyranny, the use of arms is appropriate when all
other means have failed. Of course in an ideal world we may wish to see
violence and war eliminated, and yet that world does not exist.
Let’s
suppose though that an ethical arms industry could exist; how would it look?
For starters it would be vastly smaller than it is now. It would not sell
weapons to countries that carry out human rights abuses and to those where torture
and indiscriminate murder take place as the US and UK routinely do. It would produce weapons for internal
security services that are designed to incapacitate with minimal harm and it
would refuse to give space to the production of weapons that can destroy the
entire planet like nuclear weapons and atomic bombs. Again, this sounds
extremely naive and unrealistic. But, perhaps it's not.
Idealism
is a problem when it has no connection to reality. To consider ideals is an
important and valuable exercise in thought. Wishful thinking is another kettle
of fish entirely and believing that we can somehow live without weapons and
without war is frankly ignorant of history. It may happen one day, but the past
is replete with war in all parts of the world including such sources of immense spiritual wealth such as Tibet, and North
America before the arrival of the white man.
Does
that mean we cannot pray for it? Of course not; in fact it is important to do
so as we align ourselves with a non-aggressive approach to life. But if we are to look at actual potentials and alternatives to the
circumstances that are now present, in order to give space to a more ethical
society, holding up an image of a reality in which government-sponsored
industries don't sell weapons to torturers and dictators does not seem too much
to ask.
For
most people involvement with the arms industries is unethical employment. For the rare individual that makes weapons for sports
shooting on the range, they will find their work inhabits what I would consider
a neutral territory.
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude: slavery and the slave
trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” United Nations: Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
Slavery &
prostitution
Slavery
is the second form of wrong livelihood. The basic behaviour underlying any form
of slavery is to treat a human being as an object, devoid of value other than
monetary. Modern day slavery is not as rare as you might think. There are
multiple forms of modern day slavery taking place all over the world with
figures ranging from 12-27 million slaves worldwide. The vast majority are debt
slaves. From the shanghaiing of Indian labourers to the Emirates, to forced
prostitution of Africans and Eastern Europeans, there are endless horrendous
stories of individuals being lied to and tricked into going abroad for phantom
jobs and then being forced to work endless hours to pay fictitious debts. The
sell of children and young desperate women to predators and pimps is
surprisingly commonplace, even in Europe and the US. Migrant workers from
Africa into Europe, and from Mexico and many central and southern American
countries into the States are forced to work in slave like conditions.
In
all of these cases there is a total inability to see the humanity in another
individual. It is hard to imagine how inhuman the people have become who can
actively and consciously force a fellow human being into slavery. Slavery is an unaddressed global issue that needs more attention.
Prostitution
is another form of unethical work. In most cases women (and men) have very
little choice about ending up as prostitutes. Many come to it through being
enslaved. Others are simply desperate. Some have been sexually abused and carry
out this work as a way of self-harming. There are very few prostitutes that
take on this job through choice. The illegal nature of prostitution has put it in bed with the illegal drugs trade
and organised crime.
Prostitution
has always existed it seems, so perhaps legalising it and enforcing regulation
on the industry is the wisest step to take in the west and may counter the human
trafficking of sex slaves from Eastern Europe and Africa. It would not cancel
out the presence of slavery in the world of prostitution, but it would make the
whole affair much cleaner here. For some people prostitution is a means for
earning enough money to survive. In countries like Denmark it is legal and can
provide a very good income. Is it ideal? No, but to rule it out entirely seems
to smack of idealism again. We do not live in a Buddhist culture or in an
enlightened society, so we must do the best we can with the circumstances we
have. Change always starts with realistic and doable steps.
Another
form of modern-day slavery is the exploitation of workers. We see many, many
stories in newspapers from China and from India about the exceptional
conditions in which people are often forced to work for pathetic wages, working
very long days with no breaks and no rights. They often have to work in toxic
environments and do so in fear of violence or abuse.
Some economists talk about
the great shift in the increase of affluence and the growth of the middle-class
in China and India as a reason to excuse such conditions, yet we all know that
this is no reason for forcing people to work 18 hour days for less than one
dollar in horrendous conditions in which they are treated as less than cattle. Perhaps
economists find it easier to view all forms of life as monetary units, or
machines defined by their production capacity and value?
In these conditions people
become like machines. They lose touch with their basic humanity and the
opportunity to practise a spiritual path becomes greatly reduced, if not
eliminated. When humans are treated in this way they become like animals, running
on instinct, mindlessly absorbed in mundane and highly repetitive work.
It
is easy to argue that modern-day capitalism is a machine for turning humans
into objects and increasingly we see that people are losing their livelihoods as well
as their lives in order to keep an exceptionally unjust economic system
afloat. This is a form of slavery as far as I'm concerned in which democracy
and human rights are being eroded in the name of economic progress for the very
few. When an entire economic system has shown itself to be deeply unethical at
its core, change needs to emerge. The challenge for the next generations will
be to leave behind the old dichotomy of capitalism or communism and find
alternatives that give rise to ethical government and the return of ethics to the world of work.
