The basis of Buddhism, the foundation on which all Buddhist principles are built, are the Four Noble Truths. These are the truths that the Buddha discovered during his years of meditation under the Bodhi tree. Like much of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths are easily learned, but take for most people a lifetime, or several lifetimes, to master.

The first Noble Truth is that suffering is the natural state of the world. The second Noble truth is that the cause of our suffering is attachment. The third noble truth is that suffering can be ended. And the fourth noble truth is the means to end suffering: the Buddhist eight-fold path.

It's amuses me that the last truth of the four noble truths is the eight-fold path, and the first of the eight paths is "right belief" which is belief in the four noble truths. Trying to figure out how the last of four truths can contain eight paths where the first path is the four truths sets my mind reeling in a manner worthy of a Buddhist koan.

After right belief, the second path is right thought, where the Buddhist attempts to align their thinking with the four noble truths. The third path is right speech: speaking with compassion, and without attachment. The fourth path is right action. The fifth path, the path I'm going to speak about today, is right livelihood.

The sixth path is right effort, which expands action in terms of personal behavior into effort in the world that increases the good and hinders the evil. The seventh path is right mindfulness, which has to do with our mental relationship to the world. And the eighth path is right contemplation: the practice of meditation.

Right livelihood, also translated as right occupation, or simply, "good work," is work that is done within the Buddhist value system.

Any lay person attempting to follow Buddhist practice quickly learns and agrees to follow basic moral behaviors known as the Five Precepts. These behaviors follow from the truths of suffering in the world, and the need to end our attachments to the world in order to end suffering. If there are anything like a Buddhist Ten Commandments, I suppose they are the Five Precepts.

They are:

1. Refrain from taking life.

2. Refrain for taking that which is not given.

3. Refrain from misuse of the senses.

4. Refrain from telling lies.

5. Refrain from self-intoxication with alcohol and drugs.

Buddhists should not murder, steal, nor misuse the senses, which means avoiding over indulgence in sensual pleasures such as sex. Buddhists should not lie, and Buddhists should not drink or use drugs. The reasons not to murder, steal and lie are obvious. Sex is cautioned against because it tends toward the kinds of attachments Buddhist try to avoid. Alcohol and drugs are dangerous because they offer a temporary escape from suffering, while Buddha teaches that the permanent end to suffering requires a sober mind seeing the world for what it is, that is, an illusion created by our attachments.

For our work to be good, in the Buddhist sense, it must follow the values of the Five Precepts, and it also must not support a system in which other people are drawn into breaking one of the Five Precepts. This means that Buddhism specifically forbids making a living through robbing, or murder, but it also forbids jobs which require or invite other people to lie, or steal, or take a life, or misuse their senses, or become intoxicated. And if murder also applies to the job of a soldier, or a butcher, or if stealing also applies to exorbitant prices, or charging interest on a loan, then knowing what is "good work" gets very difficult.

Good work is work that keeps us on reasonably good terms with ourselves and with the world at large. Whether you are a Buddhist, or a Unitarian Universalist the way we find "good work" is by finding work that supports our values.

The Five Precepts of Buddhism support values of compassion, honesty, truth telling, moderation, and clarity in perception. As Unitarian Universalists we uphold a set of values summarized in our Affirmation statement. Thus most of us would feel most comfortable making our livelihood by means that increase freedom, and responsibility, and peace, and respect for all existence, and so on. If those are you values, then you will only feel comfortable in life, if you find work where those values are upheld, both in your own activity, and in the effect your work has on other people and the world at large.

Work that is not in line with our values is incredibly dis-spiriting. The wrong work can be emotionally and physically un-healthful, even dangerous. Beginning by identifying our personal values, and then asking how a job promotes or hinders those values, can be an important first step in looking for work, or in finding a new, more satisfying job. And for those of us whose livelihood does not depend on our own work, it's important to examine the sources of our income, whether it's from someone else's work or our investments, and ask what values are supported by that source of our livelihood.

I've been reading a fascinating book called "Gig." It's subtitled "Americans talk about their jobs at the turn of the millennium." The book consists of interviews with people about their jobs. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to have a certain job, or said, "Boy, would I hate to have their job," this is the book for you. The variety of jobs represented are wonderful: basketball player; crime scene cleaner; gun store owner; food stylist; super model; palm reader; prison guard.

I'm going to read excerpts from five interviews. Each of these represents a job that would be forbidden by one of the Buddhist Five Precepts and thus would not be considered "Good Work" from a Buddhist perspective. But I invite you to listen to them from your own value perspective, and ask yourself whether these jobs would be "good work" for you. Whether or not you would ever do this job yourself, could you support someone else taking this job, within the values that are important in your life? And also listen to the way that each of these people talks about the values that are important in their life, and whether they find that their job promotes or hinders those values.

Here's the first job. This one goes against the first of the Five Precepts: refrain from taking life.

Slaughterhouse Human Resources Director Sandy Wilkens

[...]

I'm the director of the plant's human resources department. It's a multitasked position, but mostly I hire and train our employees-the people who process the cows and do the slaughter. I'd hoped that I would come in here and use some of my background. My master's degree in counseling and guidance, and I thought I'd be able to take care of the employees if they had any problems and write safety policies and make sure everything was going smooth. And I do write policies a bit, but really, the job is a lot more basic than that. It's all about getting people in the door, getting workers. We just need bodies in this place. We're desperate. Because even though we pay a very decent wage, the working conditions are terrible. It's not a job that normal people want anymore. It's just very tough.

[She goes on to describe the processing procedure and it is pretty horrible.]

It's a big operation. We need to have at least two hundred and seventy workers every day to run the plant. And like I said, we're just desperate for workers. Last month, I hired eighty-five people and ninety-two left. That's not uncommon. We're bleeding people. I hire them and they leave. No matter how I sell them on the job, they go down there and find it not exactly to their liking. Some people will quit fifteen minutes after they get on the floor because it's so ugly to them. It's a special kind of person who wants to work in a meat-processing plant.

[...]

I'd say two-thirds of the people working here right now are from other countries. Very few of them speak any English and they really don't understand our culture at all. Most of them are frightened. I end up trying to help with that, but there's only so much I can accomplish.

[...]

A lot of what I end up doing is kind of like social work. I've gone and gotten dentists for the workers if they have bad teeth. Or when the babies are sick, I've found them pediatricians. I've arranged child care for them so they could come into work. I've talked to Immigration about their green cards of other problems they're having. Sometimes if they get drunk and don't come in, I'll go try and pick them up. The workers who work hard are valuable since so many people quit all the time, so we'll tolerate a lot. I've gone and gotten people out jail. If problems are really bad, I get them to see an actual social worker.

Here's a second job where the worker violates the Buddhist principle against stealing.

Pretzel Vendor Isabelle Quinones

When I was a senior in college, I got a part-time job selling pretzels at a farmer's market. It was a day a week, ten bucks an hour under the table, which was really good money. And, in reality, it was even better than that because, since it's an all cash business, it was really easy to steal-sometimes like forty bucks a shift-to supplement your earnings. [Laughs} At the time I thought well, this is just a silly something to do while I'm a student, but the money was so good that after I graduated, I switched to full-time. I ended up selling pretzels for four years. Way too long,. I just recently stopped. [Laughs] I kind of retired myself for personal reasons.

I think the reason I kept at it for so long, besides the money, is that it was a nice, simple job. You'd roll out of bed in the morning, pick up the van from the parking lot and get to the market around eight A.M., set up the table, which was a piece of plywood on two sawhorses, and hang the sign that said how much the pretzels cost. Then you put the bags of pretzels underneath the table and that's it. The rest of the day, you'd sit outside and talk to people and sell pretzels. There were usually three of us working in the stand together all day. It was really low-key and fun.

The pretzels cost five for a dollar. Eleven for two dollars. They were hard pretzels, made by the Mennonites in Pennsylvania. The way they're made is they're boiled, which is what soft pretzels are, and then they're baked, which takes all the moisture out and makes them hard. People loved them. They were addictive. We sold a ton. About twelve hundred dollars was a good day. All cash. It was enough so that, like I said, I could pocket a five here and a ten there and no one would notice. I stole all the time, every shift, and never got caught. It was one of those jobs that was sort of like the golden handcuffs thing-totally menial, thoughtless labor in one way, but it paid really good. With stealing, I was making almost a hundred and fifty a day, cash.

The third job illustrates the third Buddhist principle: misuse of the senses.

Stripper Sara Maxwell

I moved to San Francisco, alone, after graduating from a very small college in a very small Virginia town, and I didn't come out here to sit in my apartment and watch TV. I wanted to meet people and enjoy myself, so I went out a fair amount. And one night I accepted an invitation to go to a lesbian nightclub with some friends. On this particular night at this club, Carol Queen, who I was to later find out was a fairly famous sexpert," was hosting an amateur strip show. Well I had a few beers and watched the pretty awkward volunteers dance onstage, and I thought, "I could do that," And after a few more beers, I did.

[...]

about an hour later, a hippie-ish woman in Birkenstocks leaned over to ask me if I would consider dancing professionally

At first I said I wasn't interested, but I took this flyer she had anyway and at home later I started to think about it. So I finally decided it might be a really easy way to bring in some extra money and I went in for an audition.

I took the bus to the Lusty Lady, a generic club near the financial district. I told the bouncer at the door that I was there to become a stripper he brought out the stage manager, Shannon, who took me into the dressing room I danced three songs on a stage with the regular girls and I guess I did well enough even though I was the only one who seemed to be sweating-because Shannon offered me four nights a week. I took it

The Lusty Lady was a glorified peep show-this wasn't a gentlemen's club where you actually go up to the tables and do lap dancing or anything like that. The dancing stage was u-shaped, encased in Plexiglass and surrounded with booths that customers could enter, pay twenty-five cents, and a curtain would rise to let them see the dancers. The shifts weren't that bad because you were physically separated from the customers by the glass. They couldn't talk to you and you could only see their heads.

There wasn't any kind of typical customer-I dealt with everyone from frat boys to a McDonald's counterman to a schoolteacher to an ex-con to a lot of stockbrokers. And every one of them was capable of turning violent. It started to really warp my sense of men. Every guy I saw walking down the street turned into a customer in my eyes. Even my boyfriend exhibited customer like qualities. He'd say something like, "You need to brush your hair." And I'd hear it as, "Brush your hair for me." With the implication being, in my mind, that he wanted to have some fun. And of course, he would also ask for sex, which further demoted him to the role of a customer.

[...]

I wouldn't recommend the job to anyone. It was a negative experience. You have to be extremely tough, and even then, I think it gets to you deep down. The dancers I met who said, "I love stripping" had only been working at it for a month. Be a waitress.

Here's the fourth job and the fourth precept: refrain from telling lies.

Telephone Psychic Ken Jorgarian

Six years ago, I was unemployed and looking at the classifieds. One week I saw an ad that said, "Astrologers/Psychics," and I just gave them a call. I had no special training, but I made it through a series of auditions. They test you out, so to speak, for accuracy and ability to carry on a conversation and things like that.

Accuracy is very subjective because what happens is the clients are paying three dollars and ninety-nine cents a minute and they have a vested interest in getting their money's worth. They don't want to feel like a fool. They want to be able to tell their friends they talked to this wonderful psychic, not that they got gypped. So the main requirement is just listening skills, having the ability to tune in to a client. I'm not talking psychically, I'm just talking about being sensitive to what the client is saying and wants to hear.

If you can listen to what somebody has to say and give them some positive encouragement, then most people are going to think that you're an accurate psychic if you're even close with your predictions. People are just really eager to have a phenomenal psychic in their lives.

[...]

But some calls are actually a matter of life and death, so if you have any genuine feelings for the client base, it can make you feel awful-really helpless and conflicted. Some psychics actually think that they are Nostradamus-types or New Age healers who can heal people through the sounds of their voice inflections. They may have it rationalized and think that they're really helping these people, but I know that they can get better help somewhere else. And it's hard for me to reconcile that they're often taking three-ninety-nine a minute from a person who's calling for financial problem, and sometimes feeling suicidal about those problems.

[...]

I'd say maybe one out of fifteen calls will be crisis calls of this nature. A suicide call is rarer, but I get one of those a week, possibly two a week. I keep a list of resources next to my phone-different self-help groups, suicide hotlines, and such-and I've given them out sometimes, but it could be career-threatening. I mean, if [my employers] are monitoring me while I'm telling somebody to hang up the phone and call somebody else-well, I'm gonna need to go find another telephone psychic network.

And here's the fifth job, going against the precept of no alcohol and drugs.

Drug Dealer Chris Muller

I started selling mushrooms six years ago when I was a junior in high school. I was living in Brooklyn and it was a good gig because I had the connect. He was my friend. He lived right down the block from me. I'd known him since I was a kid, and he had the mushrooms. I don't know how he got them, but no one else had them. So what I did is I hung back and picked out these three kids, gave them some of the mushrooms and they just flipped. And I told them, "I'm your connect, you're the man, don't tell anyone I exist." And they were cool with that. They would roll up in their neighborhoods and be like, "Yeah, I got the connect, it's me."

They were promoting for me without saying who I was. They were making money, I was making money and my friend was making money and it was going really, really well. Basically I was a junior in high school and I was making like twenty-two hundred bucks a week profit. And I didn't have to do anything, you know because I had a niche in the market. No one else had mushrooms, and everyone wanted them.

[...]

My parents had no idea because I always worked. I always held down jobs. Like I worked in a pet store and they knew I was a hardworking kid. I also cried poor a lot. You know, I'd be like, "Oh shit, Ma, I don't have any money. What am I going to do?" While, really, at that time, I had all the loot I could spend. I bought like a couple two-thousand dollar bikes. And I hooked my room up. Also my hobby is setting up coral reef ecosystems. [Laughs] So I have this, like four-thousand-dollar fish tank in my room. Since I worked in the pet store, I told my mom, "I got this at Carl's store. He gave it to me." You know?

But it had to end. Too bad, you know? But I bounced back. I moved to Manhattan and I started selling bud.

[...]

I'm twenty-two and time's passed and I can safely say I'm glad to be done with those crazy mushrooms and the whole hallucinogenic scene. Even though I miss the crazy money, there's really too much that can go wrong with that. The reason why I started selling bud is because people can hold real jobs and smoke bud every day. People who have real jobs, they don't take mushrooms every single day. I just want to deal with people who have more to lose than I do. You know? It's much safer. My target market is models, actors, and doctors and their friends. Doctors are great clients because they have more to lose than I do. [Laughs] Way more. Like ten years of school. And a license.

It's not true that people don't have ideals and ethics any more. What we don't have is a culture that encourages us to be guided by our ideals and ethics. We don't value our values. Instead we are guided by our need for money. More money is more valued. The most money is the most valued.

But even in these five jobs, more or less dubious, each of the workers displays other values important to them. Values of compassion for other people, values of positive self-image, and wanting to see others at their best, values of safety and security, and self-respect. Either by choice or circumstance they aren't able to let those values guide their work decisions, guided instead, in most cases, by the need to make more money. But those values are still there, and their satisfaction or dissatisfaction in work is directly tied to how much their core values can be expressed.

As we celebrate Labor Day, a week from tomorrow, consider the relationship between labor, and the quality of life. May we all find "Right Livelihood." Livelihood that enables us to live by the core values of our lives, and that increases those values in the lives of other people and the world at large. Let us all find "Good Work."