Skillful Livelihood

Skillful Livelihood by Ajahn Brahm Okay, once again for this evening, I have a request, uh, because, uh, a man who emailed from the UK, he's just joined the Royal Navy and was wondering whether that's qualifies as being right livelihood. And for those of you who know Buddhism, uh, traditional Buddhism, they say the path to happiness, the path to peace, a path to liberation is called the Eightfold Path. And that Eightfold path is like right view, right thought, right speech action, right livelihood, right mindfulness, right effort. I missed out and the right I call it right stillness. Now for the last factor meditation. And one of those was right livelihood. And the fellow is very keen to make sure that, uh, his livelihood is something which is good karma rather than bad karma. So he asked me he is joining the British Navy, good livelihood or bad livelihood. But he also said he was joining as a chef, as a cook. So my answer is depends on whether you're a good chef or not. Because being a bad cook is certainly bad livelihood. I think a lot of bad karma for other people, but it's a question which many people ask when they read about Buddhism, because they want to make sure that the way that they raise their livelihood, they look after their family, they get their sustenance in life is something which does not create bad karma so that their livelihood, their career, has meaning and a positive meaning for them. So this evening I was going to be talking about the factor of right livelihood. But as I said last week, when you call it right livelihood or wrong livelihood, that gives it this moralistic, judgmental meaning of good and bad, which is not very accurate to the meaning of Buddhism. And so instead of calling it right livelihood or wrongly at livelihood, we changed the words slightly, but giving it a much more accurate meaning, calling it skillful livelihood and unskillful livelihood. So not right, not wrong, skillful and unskillful. Which means that we understand that our livelihood has a purpose, has a goal to it, and we are asking whether that particular job or career is fulfilling the goal of life. And that means, is it skillful? Is it going to create the ends we want, or is it going to be unskillful and just make more trouble and problems for us? Because we all know that our livelihood, our job, is not just to get a big bad bank balance and pay the bills and look after our family, but there's much more to life than the cheque at the end of the month. Actually, you don't get checks these days. It all gets transferred into your bank accounts over the internet. It shows you how much I don't know these days about modern life. As for me, the cheque is still in the mail. I haven't been paid ever since I came to the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, but nevertheless. And it is right livelihood. But I mentioned that later on learn about the skillful livelihood of a monk or a nun, but for you that you many people understand the idea of like karma and basically the law of karma. Is that what you do, what you save, and what you think has an effect upon your happiness and the well-being of others as well. And understanding. To see the effects of our actions by body, speech and mind would obviously mean that we should look upon our livelihood because we spend most of our days either in the office or in the workplace or wherever else you have your livelihood. And so there's much calmer, made, you know, in the office or in your workplace, both good and both bad. And so we want to try and find out how we can maximize the good karma and minimize the bad karma. And that's what the Buddha was meaning about one's livelihood. And he was mentioning that certain livelihoods and just by their very nature know quite unskillful. And, you know, we know such livelihoods, such as being a burglar or being a thief. And that's not very skillful about being a burglar. Now, we've had a few burglars come into even this place, and never once have they been skillful enough to steal a few CDs of my talks or a few books. And if they did that, they'd have some skilful burglary, although I didn't know that. There was one lady who came to complain to me because a burglar had been into her house and stole her bottles of whisky. And I said, you should be very grateful that the burglar has come and stole your bottles of whisky, which is a Buddhist. You shouldn't have anyway, because that burglar has actually stopped you making very bad karma. So thank you to such a burglar. But obviously being a thief is obvious and skilful because in the end that, you know, whatever we steal from other people, if we don't actually get caught, every time we hear an ambulance, we get afraid it might be a police car. And every time we hear a knock on the door, we don't know whether it's somebody who's come to arrest us. We live in fear of being caught. And also we live with remorse about the fact that we've gone into other people's homes and stolen what's theirs and what they care for. And having worked in prisons in Western Australia and also other countries as well, and having met burglars, thieves and other people who have done crimes, I've never yet met one criminal, or rather one person in jail because I don't call them criminals. I call them people who have done crimes. There's a big difference, as you heard before, between being a criminal means that's all there is to them. They're a criminal and that's it. A person who's done a crime means is much more to them than that crime. They're a person first who made a mistake. But those people who have robbed houses, who have done crimes, there's never once I've found someone in jail who does not feel remorse, who doesn't feel guilty, who feels a sense of pain because they do recognise the pain. Of course, for others, they may not, may not admit it, but they feel it. When you get close to these people, because you go into those jails, you're kind to them. You teach them, you guide them in meditation, you change their lives around and they out of respect, they open out to you and they tell you what it really feels like. They reveal things I don't reveal to others, and I've always found that people have done anything wrong. Always. They feel this remorse is guilt. Is conscience inside. Surely you can try and mask that by making yourself busy, or taking drugs or alcohol to try and dull out your conscience, but it always comes back to you eventually. So it's an unskillful lifestyle. Anything which harms and hurts another person is unskillful. And so the Buddha actually gave a whole list of like, uh, occupations, he said, which is basically unskillful livelihood. But when you give a list, it must always be approximations and have to have some sort of writers to it, because one of those occupations was like being like a prison officer. And I've known many prison officers who were really nice guys, nice women who actually really tried to do the right thing for me. Meaning why the Buddha said that I was the wrong livelihood because in India, many, many centuries ago. The prison guards would actually be torturing and killing and executing some of the prisoners. And obviously that is so wrong. And skill for livelihood and having to sort of torture or kill or oppress, beat up or whatever or execute someone. Imagine what that will do to you. Remember one of the the monks in Malaysia who said he once met the executioner, the man who was employed in Malaysia to actually to pull the lever to hang, hang people. And I remember him saying in great detail that when this fellow came into the room, everybody, including him, felt scared. There was an aura about the executioner of Malaysia, which no one could miss his negative energy. And he just wanted, even as a monk wanted to get out of the room straight away. And this is actually what would happen, even though, you know, you're not actually doing the killing. Well, you are doing the killing, but it's not sort of your own motivator. You're just doing your job because the government legal system says that it has to be done. But nevertheless, the feeling behind it, the effect that has on a human being is terrible. And if any of you know people who have fought in battles or in wars, even though it might be for what they thought was a just cause, it creates a terrible trauma on that human being. And because, you know, I grew up in an age where the war at that time was the Vietnam War. And some of the people who I grew up with as monks were veterans of that war. And as you can see, just by, you know, their experiences in Vietnam, just how that could torture them again and again. And one of the stories which I always remember because, uh, was the story of the My Lai massacre a few years ago, there was a 25th anniversary of this terrible, uh, war crime done in the Vietnam War. And some enterprising TV crew wanted to trace as many of the people who had gone into this village in Vietnam and with the orders of killing every man, woman and child without exception, to shoot on sight, it was a war crime. Hello. Interviewing these soldiers and all of these soldiers, except for one exception, is always one exception, which proves, you know, like the placebo or the the thing. You can actually, uh, compare the results with all of these soldiers, without exception, had terrible social, uh, inabilities, uh, psychological problems, never being able to have a relationship, never being able to hold down a job. They were actually mentally wounded by what they had done. Because you can't forget the shooting. Women and children or men even maybe she later found out, have done no, no crime. They weren't communists. No. Just little villages, simple villagers who just going about their ordinary lives. You can see the the result of that, which is why it's unskillful karma to have a job where you have to shoot people. But the exception was this one Afro-American. I've told this story about a year ago. This Afro-American actually refused to follow orders. He said, no, I'm not going to go in there and shoot anybody. Even though he knew that the penalty for refusing orders in what was a war was to spend 2 or 3 years in military jail, which was much tougher than any civilian jail. So now he was really asking for a lot of pain. And tribulation for 2 or 3 years, but he'd rather have that and actually shoot what he thought was innocent people. And when the TV interviewed him and asked him, why did you do that when you knew you were going to be punished for 2 or 3 years? He said, I just knew to kill these women and children was wrong. I just could not do it. He followed his conscience and sure, he had to suffer in a military jail for 2 or 3 years. But apparently, out of all those soldiers who went into this village and shot every man, woman and child, he was the only one who was at peace with himself, who had a relationship, who was enjoying his life. He'd done the right thing. He stood up for what was right, and he was receiving the karmic consequences of feeling good about himself and feeling at peace with his life, and having the opportunity to have a relationship and share his love with other people. As of telling story, I told that story and brought it up here because actually, even like being a soldier by itself, you know, it's not as it were, unskillful. It's actually what you do as a soldier makes it unskillful. And there was a guy who obviously they may have actually shot other people, but at that time he said no. And he made some good karma at that time, even though it cost him dearly. And there is other soldiers who actually do take an interest in the communities and who do find a place in the Army or in the Navy or in the Air Force, where they're not just shooting people, but they're actually doing something which can help and and serve people. So just being a soldier by itself is not wrong livelihood. It's actually what you do with that. And I know because I once, once read a review of a very fascinating military journal written by some sort of general, I think, in, again, the British Army, who had served for many years, who was an expert. And he said one of the most difficult things of training soldiers is actually to make sure that when they're in a battle, they actually pull the trigger and shoot the enemy, because it said it's well known in an army that when the crunch comes and the enemy are moving onto you and shooting real bullets, many people just can't do it. They can't pull that trigger and shoot another human being. They'd rather take the bullet themselves and die. He said one of the problems in military strategy is to use whatever psychological conditioning they can muster to ensure that their troops actually fire those bullets, which is probably why that these days, in modern armies, the people who actually shoot the bullets actually don't really shoot the bullets. They just press the buttons. They don't see real people on the other end. It's much easier for you to kill if you don't see what you're killing. If it's just a figure on a computer screen or whatever. But nevertheless, people still feel the karmic consequences of what they did. I know this one fellow here this evening who told me an interesting story some years ago, and he was working for the Samaritans on their lines in the evening, which were taking calls for people who were so depressed that they were considering suicide. And the Samaritans phone number is there for people who are contemplating suicide as a last resort. I remember him telling me that one evening this fellow called him who was so depressed that he was suffering so much he could not stand himself. He wanted to kill himself. And the reason was that he had just been watching the television of the first Gulf War and saw cluster bombs destroying the lives of so many people. And he was the inventor of the cluster bomb living in Perth. You can imagine what that might feel like. You can't really imagine it, but you may have a taste or some idea of what it must be like to be like an inventor of a bomb or a gun or something, and then look on the television news one evening and see the pain and suffering and the death which that caused. That's really pain. That's suffering. That's the result of bad karma. And so you can see that if you are in the arms trade, that is very, very bad karma. But there are always exceptions. Because I am in the arms trade. I live on alms every day. People bring me arms, but that's a different type of arms. That's arms. Food with arms, not arms. But the point is, the Buddha said like being in the arms trade is also unskillful livelihood. Sure, it fulfills the goal of getting a salary so you can look after your family and enjoy your life. But in the end, whatever enjoyment you get from the money you receive or from the joy of inventing something, it's all taken away by the effect of what you've done. So it. Generally, Buddhist ethics always comes down to this principle, which the Buddha gave to his son rather than don't invent these things. It comes from the Buddhist text. It's basic ethics. If whatever you do or say harms another person or harms yourself, it's called bad karma. Whatever helps another person supports them, increases their happiness, or increases your own well-being. That is called good karma. So it becomes quite easy for you to work out what is good karma, what is bad karma. And from that you can understand what is right livelihood, what is wrong livelihood. You know, sometimes, you know, doctors come along and say, is this the right livelihood or the wrong livelihood because it sometimes is a doctor or even though let's get even closer as a vet, sometimes you get somebody's cat or dog and you have to put them down. That story happened not so long ago when this man took his Labrador to the vet, and he only had an ear infection, apparently. But the doctor, the vet picked up the Labrador looked above and below his backside and said afterwards, I'm very sorry we have to put the dog down. And the owner was just stunned. What do you mean put the dog down? It's only got an ear infection. Why do you have to put the dog down? And the vet said because he's heavy. That's a terrible joke. I've said it before, but it's. What? But what? But what is it like being a vet? Because a lot of times you're actually saving animals lives and you are looking after them and you're caring for them and you're actually lessening their pain. But what happens when you have an animal who knows a dearly beloved pet, know who's got some injury or, you know, some great sickness and they're in pain. Should you put it down or should you keep it going in agony? What should you do? And for vets who are in that situation, I said it's. Being a vet is not really the problem. It's not skillful livelihood or unskillful livelihood. It's how you do that job is most important. And the standard piece of advice which I give in such situations, again, is deep, profound advice is not so simple like this is right or this is wrong. It's skillful or unskillful. Again, I always say that you should ask the dog or the cat what it wants. And that's actually skillful. Because if it's that, if that's your pet, or if you're a vet who is a sensitive person, you can just look in the eyes of that cat or that dog or whatever other animal you are treating, and you can see what it wants, whether it's hard enough or whether you'd rather just keep on living for a while. Because you can never tell with animals or even with human beings. No. There comes a time you may have visited some loved relationship in their hospitals, and there's their dying. And sometimes they come. I've had enough. I was visiting one man, a very long standing Buddhist of our Buddhist society. They were visiting him in Armadale Hospital, and he kept telling his son, please just take me out the back and shoot me, because he was suffering and he had enough. It was only a matter of time, 1 or 2 weeks before he died. He said, I can't stand it, and sometimes you can understand what that might be like for you. You can understand what that might be like for a dog or a cat. So in the end, you say my actions. Is it going to harm another being or is it going to help them? And that becomes your standard of good karma or skillful karma or unskillful karma. It's why you're doing it. Much more than what you are doing is important. Intentional. What is said is karma. So even if you are a, uh, vet or a doctor or a nurse, and I've been told that, you know, with euthanasia that there are many doctors and nurses who actually, when it comes down to a person's suffering, who sometimes terminate a person's life, they're just reports, which I've heard, and they do that out of compassion. So it's not necessarily unskillful livelihood. If you really are acting out of compassion, out of wisdom, not out of fear for the happiness, what you believe is the happiness of other people. That means that in Buddhism it never becomes black and white, but it gives you these guidelines for you to make the decision. And I know that's one of the reasons why these ideas, Buddhist ideas, do become popular in the world, because these are practical ideas. It's all right saying, yeah, killing is wrong. Or you know, euthanasia is right or abortion is wrong, or abortion is right or whatever. But when you have to make that decision, what all these people sitting in the big seats, the experts or the religious leaders say, that just complicates the issue for you. When it comes down to these ethical decisions which you have to make. Then what religion or what ethics or what leaders should be doing is not making it more difficult for you, but giving you wise guidance so you can make not the right or wrong decision the most skillful decision in your circumstances. But that's getting away from the right livelihood and the the wrong life, or the rather skillful livelihood and unskilled for livelihood. You can see that just it's the law of karma just defines what that livelihood is. I go back to being in an army when sometimes you got no choice. You're conscripted into the army, and I know that that used to be the case in Australia. It's still the case in places like Singapore where you have to do national service. So what should I do? That even happened in Thailand when a monk who was one of Accenture's disciples, he got conscripted into the Thai army. He had no choice. And so he thought, no, he went up to my teacher. I said, what should I do? You know, should I just go and hide in the forest monastery? And I said, no, this is your duty. You have to disrobe as a monk. Join the army for two years afterwards and come back again. I'll ordain you again. He said, what happens if I'm in a firefight and I have to shoot bullets that are always being very, very practical? He said easy. And if there's people shooting at you, you shoot back. But make sure you shoot over their heads on purpose because they are the army captain watching you. They won't know. Know what you're shooting at because they'll be too scared to themselves. They'd be probably hiding, ducking under some sandbag or whatever. But make sure that when you're in training, you become an accurate shot so you can always make sure that you miss. It. He said it's much better that you give your life than you take the life of somebody else. And that was his advice to the market. Actually the monk. I know him very well. He sort of went in the army for two years and he always shot to me, so he never killed anybody. He managed to survive the bullets himself. And then after two years, he became a monk. He's one of the leading teachers now, but it was actually a way of understanding. Just sometimes you're in a box and you can't. You haven't got the freedom of choice. And perhaps the most telling story about livelihood or skillful livelihood and unskillful livelihood, which actually surprised many people. But it actually the surprising stories is where you really learn. The heart of all of this was the story of this woman in the time of the Buddha, who was a very devout Buddhist, in fact, that she was a stream winner while in Sri Lanka they called a soul one, and she was married to a man whose profession was hunting, who go into the jungles and kill animals for his livelihood, which was always, in nearly all cases. I can't imagine the case when it wouldn't be unskillful livelihood, bad karma, killing animals. Every morning she would get up, sharpen the knives for her husband, prepare the bows and arrows and other tools of her husband, the hunter. And when other people complained, said, how can she do this? She's contributing to the death of other animals. Now she's making bad karma. And when they came to the Buddha and asked him, he said, no. She is doing her duty as a wife. In those days, this is what she had to do. She had no choice. Therefore, it is no bad karma for her. Now, as a fascinating piece of advice which came from the Buddha. Authentic. Because, you know, I would know when I thought of that. First of all, I said, no, the Buddha is wrong. You can't do that. She should make a stand. But there's something deeper there in that story. And a deeper part of that story is to get the idea. The paradigm is what your intention is. And also understanding just the restrictions, the limitations of your life. Sometimes people don't have choices. They have to make the best of the situation which they face themselves, which they are faced with. And this is the practicalities of our life. Even the farmers, they have to plow the fields and destroy many animals in the process. Even myself, who came here this evening to give a talk. If you look at the windscreen of our car, there are many insects were smashed on that windscreen. Should I have stayed in serpentine? And that way there were a few insects that wouldn't have died today. And you can see there that whatever you do in your life will always be some destruction there. But the idea of right livelihood or skillful livelihood is trying to minimise it. So you hardly destroy anything at all. You give your life meaning by trying to do something good in this life, by trying to make it better. So. Skillful livelihood is not just making a checklist of making sure I'm not hurting or harming anybody, but also doing the positive checklist. Am I really contributing to the well-being of myself, my family and society and those livelihoods which are really contributing something which the end of your life? When you retire, you look back on your job and you don't really concern yourself about how much money you made, but just what contribution you've made to the society, then that really makes it quite clear now what the skillful livelihood is, the livelihood which will give you like material prosperity, but also the mental spiritual prosperity as well. And that's where as a wise people, we should try and find livelihoods which are actually helping. But we should always remember now look deeply into the livelihood and remember that even if you work for the tax office, that someone has to work for the tax office and the taxes go to pay for the hospitals and for the nurses and for the roads and for all these other things which we take for granted the schools. So instead of just thinking, oh, this is a terrible livelihood. No, it's. You're doing a service for society. I remember many years ago this fellow. His job was a bus driver, and he was just so down upon himself. What am I doing with my life? Just driving a bus backwards and forwards. And I said, driving a bus is neither skillful nor unskillful livelihood. It's actually what you make of that job makes it really skillful or unskillful. Well, look, just be kind to your passengers. You have like hot days like today and everybody comes in and complains, oh, it's so hot. Oh, the bus is late. Oh, I've had a terrible argument with my wife. Whatever else they say. No, it's the bus driver. That's the first person you see when you go in the bus. The bus driver can always give a smile, can make people feel at ease. Can I just be kind? And so that way, you're turning an ordinary job into a very skillful, wonderful job. It's what you do with your job. And that also means that when we are working with other people, part of our skillful livelihood, it doesn't matter what your business is or what your job is. Make sure that you can value the people you work with and be kind to them. Because it's great. Like, you know, having a Buddhist society and being in an office. And we're doing so many good things for other people. We're getting a Buddhist society together. But if people in the office are arguing with each other, what type of Buddhist society is that? Fortunately, our Buddhist society is very harmonious is the first thing which I say we're Buddhist before we're society. I always remember that. So I don't care if it's not efficient, but I do care if it's not efficient. But I care much more if it's harmonious before it's efficient. So if anything in this, the temple here is dirty or things aren't going absolutely correctly or it's a bit mucky. I'd rather have that and have people being harmonious and happy in this place than having a very clean and efficient temple where everybody is afraid of each other while watching each other's backs or angry at each other. That would then be unskillful livelihood. Because sure, we get things done, but how do we get things done? And is that sort of killing human beings? Is that creating stress and sort of this terrible feeling of of anxiety and anger and frustration? You know, in our lives, there's too many people going around depressed because their life in their office is just dysfunctional. So it doesn't matter what your job is to make it school for livelihood by looking after each other. And there's many studies, study after study after study, which shows that when people, uh, care about each other in the office, when they have empathy for each other, people work harder and the profits go up. In May, I'm going to be giving a big keynote speech at the 11th International Human Resources Conference in Singapore in front of all these CEOs. And the reason I'm invited there is because they understand that, right? Attitudes are important for success in big business. Reason. Well, one example, one of the stories I'm going to tell is that there was an engineering firm in the UK. I can still remember its name because I looked it up the other day. Farrelly brothers, who did building maintenance and one of the directors of the company, one day decided to ban overtime. No one could come to work before 9 a.m.. Everyone had to leave. By 5 p.m. overtime was absolutely banned. And the reason he did that because he he read in many newspapers he heard from his workers that people weren't seeing their family. They were getting stressed out. In the first year, profits doubled and turnover trebled, and the turnover rate of staff went from about sort of something that went to basically nil zero. Everyone wanted to stay there and work there. It was this basic good business sense. You care for your workers? The workers care for you. And for those of you living in an office, I mean, you understand that? You know how this works. If you're being oppressed by somebody, even if it may be in some great charity who's helping the world, but you're having arguments, feeling oppressed in the office for care or for Amnesty International or whatever. Then it becomes unskillful livelihood for you. You know, it sounds good for livelihood because it leaves you stressed out, anger, angry, frustrated. You know, there's too many I've seen when I was a young student. There's too many spiritual organizations. They do not value the people who work for them. They're missing the goal of why you're there for. I often remember that, you know, why am I a monk? Why have you got a Buddhist society? It's not to be rich or have lots of possessions, or have a big buildings or be famous. It's for people. You keep on saying that in my monastery in serpentine, it's the people are more important than the things. People, first of all, are their wellbeing. Net understands what a skillful livelihood is for even a monk. You know, if you read the Buddhist text, it say the most skillful livelihood of all is being like a monk or a nun. Is that always correct? It's how you're a monk and nun. Because there's many rules for monks that if you don't keep those rules, then it is not a skillful livelihood at all. You can destroy the inspiration of many people. That's why that they say that if when monks start selling fortunes or start amassing money or playing in the stock market, I just heard the other day that some monks, I won't say were were actually investing their ill gotten gains, you know, in shares. What are you doing that for us, monks? And if you did have psychic powers, you get done for insider trading, wouldn't you? They just shouldn't. It's unfair. So. And the point is that these people can't tell fortunes anyway. There used to be this scam going off in Thailand. The National Lottery also had an illegal lottery along with it. And the illegal lottery went like this. You just choose the last two numbers of the National Lottery, and then they gave also about 60 to 1 or something. If you got it right, you get 60 times your, um, your investment. And obviously it's just by chance it was 101 chance of getting the right numbers. So, you know, the the illegal lottery people were winning all the time. And so the, the people running it were winning. People were always losing. But every now and again that people come up to monks because monks were supposed to have these powers to see the future and people sometimes would come and beg me, said, you know, you are a monk, you're a meditator, you know, you must have psychic powers said, I'm so poor, you should look at what's happening to my life. I really need money. I know you can do it. I just like how you talk about compassion all the time. Just be compassionate. Just two numbers, please. Just two. Two numbers. That's all. I don't ask for much more. The courses are marked by say no, but some marks. You come up and say, okay, number 12, someone else 23, someone else 34. If you get enough people coming to ask you, one of them is going to be right. And when they win, they always give you, you know, a donation for your monastery. So that's very, very unscrupulous. But I don't know what it is. And sometimes though, that, you know, it's actually it works because I remember just in this one occasion, I was, I was in Thailand meditating on top of the mountain, and all these villagers were coming up and, and one day. And it wasn't the, the, you know, the prior day, the moon days where we have the big celebrations just all day, people were coming up and talking with me and I didn't know what was going on. I found out afterwards, of course, it was a lottery day the next day, and they're all coming up, and some of them were just, you know, outright and they kind of give us, you know, two numbers for the lottery. And I said, no, I'm a monk. Good monks don't do that. That's not skill for livelihood. And so I always said, no, no, no. For the next day, the headman of the local village came up and said, we're very pleased with you. Can you stay here for a long time? And that rang bells. What do you mean? You're very pleased with me. So you give good lottery numbers? I didn't give any lottery numbers. What are you talking about? And apparently I found out afterwards that when somebody asked me, they said if they asked these three questions, they asked me, how long are you staying? And I said, I don't know, and no means zero. And then afterwards I say maybe 2 or 3 days and 2 or 3 means five. So they brought number 50. And that came up that day, and the whole village really cleaned up. That's why. That's why they asked me. Can you please stay, stay, stay. You can't do that. So I left the next day. I just disappear quickly before I get into trouble. Because that is not how a monk lives even. And this is a wonderful story from the time of the Buddha. Even. The Buddha was on an arms round, and he passed a farmer who was giving the lunch to his workers, and he went down to actually get some alms food. And the farmers said, why should I give any food to you? You've done no work. And then the border actually explained, as the work of a monk about keeping precepts, about meditating, about cleaning out the weeds of the mind and growing this wonderful crop of wisdom. And he said it so beautifully that the farm was so impressed. He said, wow, I never heard such inspiring Dhamma. Here, take some food. And the Buddha said, no, I teach Dharma for free, not for getting food. And the Buddha walked away and went hungry that day. And I always was impressed by that story because even as a monk, my livelihood is arms. You don't give Dharma teachings expecting money back in return. In fact, I would never do that. Even sometimes we've taken funeral services for people and especially for Westerners. And they say, how much do you charge? We say, look, we do this for free. If we want to make a donation, you can do offers, but it's nothing to do with the funeral service. I'd do it even if you give us nothing. So many of them give us nothing. Thing? Not even petrol money for our car. It doesn't matter. We'll still do that. And the point is there that, you know, the livelihood of a monk is actually to give, expecting nothing back in return. You do it for free, and you're very happy to do that. But if, like a monk does it and they want something back, that's wrong livelihood, unskillful livelihood for a monk. Because the purpose of monk's life, its meaning, is for the compassion of other people and for the abandoning of your own greed and your own ego, and your own defilements and ill will. So when you understand what the meaning of your life is, then you can understand what skillful livelihood is. And it's not just for money, but it's not just without money sometimes. And I give talk sometimes about letting go and being simple. And sometimes people complain and said, do you really expect everybody to live in a little cave like you do at serpentine? Look, I've got a husband and wife and kids. We can't fit each other all in the one cave said, no, no, no, no. Sometimes I do sort of explain it too much in the in the way of simplicity, but I always remember what my teacher said. If someone's leading to the left, you always tell them to go to the right. So lean to the right. You tell them to go to the left. So sometimes in an affluent society, you ask people to be more simple. They get into two simplicities they know you're going to find. They look after your family, look after yourself. I know the Buddha actually said many times, there's nothing wrong with amassing wealth as long as it is rightly earned. In other words, not by exploiting other people, not by harming other people, not by harming exploiting yourself. You don't want to become rich at the expense of your health. Otherwise, you can't enjoy, you know, the fruits of your labor, or instead all the work which you've done, or the hard work which you've done and the money you've achieved all goes into hospital expenses to cure your stress. And what a waste of time that is, so that it's okay to have wealth, but not at the expense of your time, your freedom, your family and whatevers. Understand what life's meaning is. It's not just being wealthy, it's no material wealth. It's being like spiritually wealthy. Now, with your relationships. Time with your friends. Time for yourself. That's what the meaning of a right livelihood. So I'd even say these days, if you are working from six in the morning till 10:00 at night, that counts as unskillful livelihood. For part. It doesn't lead to peace. It doesn't lead to enlightenment. Now, this is actually taking the meaning which is said in the suitors to a different level, but it's actually valid. If you are stressing yourself out, you're not spending time with your family. You're not spending time with yourself. You can't even find time to come to the Buddhist society on a Friday evening. It must be bad livelihood. So understand what the meaning of your life is. If you can manage to skillfully enough, have enough good karma to make money and be able to have time with your family, you're doing a wonderful job. But you know, balance your life and find out what's really important. And if you can do that, you understand that skillful livelihood is not so much what you do. You can be working in this amazing job as like the doctor of a hospital, healing and saving so many people. But your wife never sees you and your children hardly know your name because you're never there. That's unskillful livelihood. It will not lead to good things. It will not lead to happiness. To freedom. To enlightenment. So balance your lifestyle. And when you do live that lifestyle, remember that it's not just for you, it's for others. Couple of weeks ago, a fellow came to see me here. He was some big businessman. He's made a lot of money, I think, selling spring water or something. And he was saying, yeah, he's been there, done that, got the big house and lots of money. But he said that many of his friends are in the same sort of state. You know, having built up companies and being very successful in life, they need more than that and they need a meaning in life. So they understand that, you know, making the money is not everything. You have to actually do something for society to increase the happiness of other people. To be someone who's. And when you die, you look back on what you've done, and you've done something to increase the peace and the happiness and goodness of others. And that's why, like a monk's livelihood can be excellent, a man's livelihood can be just so inspiring. Because at the end of your life, sure. I haven't had any kids. No one's going to take up my name. There's not going to be a lineage of Brahms when I die. But, you know, you look for what you've done. You know just how many people you've served, you've helped, how many people's lives you've changed. And that is the meaning of my life. One of the meanings, anyway, and that is just so valuable to be someone who has served and actually made a difference to people's lives. If good karma is giving happiness to others and also happiness to yourself, you understand the livelihood is really great. So whatever job you do. See if you can increase the happiness which you generate. Not just your income, but the happiness with all the people you meet in the office or on the way to work or on the bus or on the the, the train, on the way to work and on the airport. When you go back to Melbourne or wherever you go to, there's always this amazing opportunities when you're driving to stop and let somebody else go in front of you when they're trying to, you know, get into the lane or whatever, create happiness, whatever you're doing in life, and it becomes skillful livelihood and the end of your life. Now look after charities like the Buddhist Society or the nuns monastery or whatever other charity look after Amnesty International, whatever contribute. So you feel that you're part of something which is really helped our world and served other people. Now the times when I have been generous, I always remember them, sometimes with tears. You know, the time when I was a student, when I gave £10 to this orphanage. I think somewhere in the north of India. And that was two weeks food money for me as a student, as a £10, as I used to say I'd ever spent in my whole life. I could have spent that on a sort of a new suit, or going out at night with girlfriends or whatever. I'd never remember that. But when you did something which actually helped someone, wow, what a wonderful thing that was. So the best right livelihood or the most skillful livelihood is which brings happiness to yourself and happiness to others, which you look back upon and say, wow, I'm so glad I did that. What a wonderful thing that was. I created happiness, I made a difference, and that becomes your right livelihood, your skillful livelihood. It's actually a step towards nirvana, towards ultimate happiness, towards peace and freedom. Never think you can't make a difference to this world. Never give up. I said a few weeks ago that you are the creator of your world. There's no sort of God creating this world. No fate runs this world. Every moment we have the opportunity to turn the world around. By our actions, bodies, speech and mind. We are always creating this world. The Buddha called it craving. He called actually Chanda. This will which creates the world in this way or another. You can create your family, change it into instead of a dysfunctional family, a family of happiness, of mutual respect, of sensitivity to each other. Never think that you are confined because of some karma of the past, or some bad actions of the past. Acknowledge. Forgive. Let go. The AFL code, which I keep on saying. And that is how you can let go of the past and you can change the future for the better. That becomes your livelihood, your life. And whatever it is in your office, in your business. I keep reading again and again and again. There was another article which somebody posted to me from the East about, uh, this group of big businessmen who were going on a meditation retreat every year. These were CEOs of big companies. And one of the guys was a CEO of the Australian Opera and a lion, Nathan, as our company or whatever. And something else I can't remember now, some big company. And he goes on a meditation retreat every year just for a couple of days, not just to make himself peaceful, but actually to get this compassionate attitude for the people he works with. So instead of being the boss from hell, he becomes an empathetic boss. And when he started doing this, I think he was CEO of Lion Nathan. And the first year the company profits doubled simply because his attitude was more compassionate, more empathetic, and people wanted to work harder. So the skill for livelihood is also the most profitable livelihood as well. So you don't need to cut moral corners and make sort of, uh, bad ethics. You can do both. Have a spiritually fulfilling livelihood and a profitable one as well, which you can share with others. If you can do that. You understand what real skillful livelihood is. So the guy who asked me that question has joined the Royal Navy as a cook. Just whatever you're cooking for, those people, just put everything you've got into that cooking. Make it delicious. Put extra into what you're doing. The people you work with. Be kind and caring to them. Make something out of the livelihood which you've chosen and then it will be skillful. You'll be adding to your happiness and the happiness of other beings. But if you now never actually get on the end of the gun, or on the end of the missile or whatever, or if you happen to and I get into trouble, make sure you know the program so well that you program it to destruct in mid-air or whatever, I don't know. So you always shoot over the heads so it lands in the desert and doesn't kill anybody. So that is a little talk this evening on not so much right livelihood or wrong livelihood, skillful livelihood or unskillful livelihood to making the best with what you've got. Sometimes it's difficult, but you try your very best and you can always make it better. And that should be your main job. Okay, so that's the talk this evening. Does anyone got any questions or comments about. It's quite a difficult subject. Skill for livelihood. Anyone got any comments? Yes. Ah, yeah. From the executioner. Negative. From the executioner? Yeah. Okay. Okay. If you are faced with other people with lots of negativity because of their maybe unskillful actions, unskillful livelihood, the standard way is actually to have the loving kindness towards them, actually to have a lot of, like, softness. So you're not critical to another person who's done those terrible things or chosen that very unskillful path. You give them kindness, non-judgmental attitude. That's one of the reasons why I did very well when I was teaching in prisons, because when I saw these criminals, rapists, murderers, I never judged them. You know, you just accepted them as people, not as the the murderer. And when I did that, they responded just so amazingly well. And that's just common. If you go up to a person and you give them kindness instead of negativity. A good I don't know if I told, I don't think I told a story in Bali when I was, uh, ten days ago. But there was one of my disciples in Sydney, uh, she had a fashion business, uh, importing, um, I think it was actually, uh, frocks and selling them to Myer's and Coles and stuff. And she went to UK, to London. Did I tell the story? I did. Last week? Yeah. Okay. Don't worry. You weren't here last week. Uh. No. Okay. But just just for you, I started. I just finished it very quickly. She went to London. It was a big business deal. When she got there, she was jet lagged. She went in the office. The other directors of the company say you've got no chance at all. The boss is in a bad mood. He's using a very aggressive mood. He's worse than ever today. No way. And so she sat in the corner just away and did some metta meditation and her loving kindness for this boss. And the result was actually quite unexpected. When the boss came in in a really stinking mood, she just said automatically, why, you've got such beautiful blue eyes just like my baby girl. It just came out spontaneously. She never planned it. And the the the boss melted and he sort of, you know, smiled and signed the contract. And the other directors were just. How do you do that? How do you tell us how you do that? It's just loving kindness can melt the hardest of people. And that was a little story about, you know, how negativity can always be overcome with loving kindness. But you got to be good at it and practice it well. And then this poor guy, I don't know why he chose the job as executioner for Malaysia, but he had it. And the last he wanted was more negativity. And if someone could just give him a hug and a spiritual hug and get him to forgive himself, and that's his try and make amends, sometimes whatever bad karma you've done, you can't get rid of the bad karma, but you can always dilute it by making lots of good karma. That's always a wonderful thing to do. So if you have made bad karma, see what you can do to make some good karma instead. So dilute it. Okay. Any other questions before we finish off for today? That's it. Okay. So thank you for listening to the talk on skillful and unskillful livelihood.