Right Livelihood

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
January 8, 2017
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Avenue, Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

This element in the Buddhist Eightfold Path asks us to experiment with examining our means of making a living. Can we make a living without harming anyone? Can we make a living without violating other people?

Call to Worship

This is a story that Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig tells: “I was late for a meeting, and I was quite stressed. I got off the turnpike and drove up to the toll booth feeling quite stressed, and the woman in the toll booth took my money and gave me the most extraordinary smile — it was just amazing. It was like having the Dalai Lama take your money at the toll booth. It was an extraordinary experience.”

Reading

A VISION
by Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it, if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides, fields and gardens rich in the windows. The river will run clear, as we will never know it, and over it, birdsong like a canopy …. Families will be singing in the fields. In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground. They will take nothing from the ground they will not return, whatever the grief at parting. Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove, and memory will grow into legend, legend into song, song into sacrament. The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds, will be health and wisdom and indwelling light. This is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its possibility.

Sermon

I heard a man in the hospital say “I had a wasted life.” There was such sorrow and resignation in his voice. What would make a person say that, as he lay, old and running out of road, in a hospital bed? What kind of a life can I live, I thought, so that I won’t think that when I’m lying in a hospital bed facing my end?

We are more than halfway through the sermon series on the Buddhist 8-fold path, and the element we’re going to talk about today is “Right Livelihood.” It’s about making a living at something that helps the world rather than harms it. Again, the Buddhist teachers don’t ever say you’re a bad person for working at a hedge fund selling credit default swaps and blowing up the world economy. They say if you want to have peace, if you want your soul to be free, add to the life in the world, not to the suffering.

Many people, if they had the choice, would not do most of the work they do. We do it to feed our families, to pay our rent or the mortgage, take care of our children, change the diapers, fix meals, buy socks and medicine and gasoline. You spend the coin of your life’s time and energy to receive the things you and your family need.

Work for pay is not all of it, though. Right livelihood is about how you spend your life’s coin working at home raising children or caring for elderly parents. We also work on volunteer projects, we make phone calls to our representatives and senators, we run for local office, we spend ourselves to make our community a better place to live. Our lives are slowly paid out, traded, spent. If we do it right, we will feel that we got good things in trade for our time and energy. If we see our work as the trade of our energy for security, for freedom, for family life, pleasure, rich experiences, the betterment of others, then at the end of our lives we will look back on life well spent.

Many among us spend more time in work for pay than in any other aspect of our lives, except for sleeping. We pour a lot of our vital energy into it, and so it is important what work we choose. It is important to be clear about why we do it, what values and principles guide us as we work. It becomes important to explore how to be there at work in a way that can be a spiritual path.

If we practice, we can notice how our work can transform us and others. You heard the story that Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig tells:

“I was late for a meeting, and I was quite stressed. I got off the turnpike and drove up to the toll booth feeling quite stressed, and the woman in the toll booth took my money and gave me the most extraordinary smile — it was just amazing. It was like having the Dalai Lama take your money at the toll booth. It was an extraordinary experience. It was the highest quality contact that I had that day, or that week, with someone who was obviously a bodhisattva — someone who basically took their work and, because they transformed it, there was a very deep, human connection, even though it only lasted for seconds.”

Most of us have to work for money. An important question to ask ourselves is “How much money do we need?” What is enough? Most Americans feel that everything would be great if they could make just 20 percent more than what they do. Whether you make 34,000 or 349,000, you feel things would be their best if you made just 20 percent more. Right Livelihood means making time for our families, our health, our community.

Most American work places do not give much room for time off, for play, for volunteering. We look in amazement at the 30 hour workweek of some European countries, at the several 6 week vacations people take, at the laws that employees don’t have to respond to the boss’ emails outside of work hours.

Many workplaces are toxic with disharmony, with all kinds of politics and struggles over power, and sometimes we can make a difference in that by refraining from participating in the toxicity, by being a centered and compassionate presence there. Most jobs encourage overwork, which is one of the main harms that our jobs do. Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk and a writer, says:

The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything, is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes her work for peace. It destroys his inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of her own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Over-activity is a form of violence that actually does harm our beings and to our families, and we live in the most hyperactive society in the history of the world. I think most of us are challenged by that. How do we find balance in our activities? How do we remind ourselves to take a Sabbath, a day of rest?

If I’m too busy, then there might be no time for the children, for a partner or spouse. It’s really important to ask, “How much do I need? How much activity do I need to do to stay balanced? How much income do I need in order to live a balanced life? Can I live with less, and work less?” Thoreau says, “How much of my life will I give to possess this thing?”

Right Livelihood asks us to love our world through our work, to be “slow-growing trees in a ruined place,” to quote our reading from Wendell Berry, “asking not too much of earth or heaven” (or ourselves and our families) to think of the lives our lives prepare. Work provides a daily opportunity to put our beliefs into action, to bring an intention to work together in a friendly way, treat people fairly and pleasantly, bring out the best in our co-workers, rein in our egos, and see what freedom and harmony can come our way. It’s a challenge to do our activist work, as well, in a way that mirrors the word we dream about: kindly, not frenzied, grounded, in for the long haul, understanding that this is a marathon and not a sprint. Resistance rooted in spirit is grounded, longer lasting. Let’s take care of each other out there.

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