Right Livelihood And Vocation, by Donald Rothberg:

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About Donald Rothberg:

Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.

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So this morning, I wanted to continue to what ___ explored last week. Last week, he explored right livelihood. I talked to some—how many people were there? Do you like him? Was it good? He’s a very sweet man, and deep experienced. And I wanted to continue—so, how many people were not here last time? Okay, so that’s a big chunk. So, I was going to continue with the theme of right livelihood, but take a little further, particularly into a very deep question of “How do I find and deepen my own, personal vocation?” as to “How I live with integrity in this life?” A small question. And so, I wanted to continue with some of the material on right livelihood.

And I’ll do a little bit more on than I was intending to do, because of people’s background. And I’m doing this partly in honor of—yesterday was international worker’s day. And I want to acknowledge that and really honor that deepening of reflection on our own work or own vocation that is so much a part of our Dharma path or Dharma practice.

So before I say anything, I’d like to just invite, for each of us, a quiet reflection right now. So, just be yourself.

So I’d like you to ask yourself a few questions. You know, just say them. Maybe just say them right at the beginning so you can just take your time with them. We’ll take a few minutes to reflect.

If I had to describe my own vocation or quality type of work in the world that expresses my deeper intentions, what is it? What is that vocation? And then, some of us may know that quite clearly, others may be lost clear, but just into that question, I’d like to have us ask a question and reflect on it—what, right now, is the way to deepen that sense of vocation? What deepens my sense of my own calling? My own way of working on the world? What takes it further right now?

So as I explore the theme of right livelihood, and vocation, and calling, I’d like to invite you to connect the themes that come up with your own reflection, then we’ll have a chance to talk together. I’ll try to give a little more time than usual, so we can explore this together. And so, I want to primarily talk about two themes. The first, being right livelihood, and the second being the sense of vocation in which we touch and express our own deep, personal intentions, but also in a way, touch the universal. I think vocation has this quality of both, of something very personal and also something universal. We’ll come back to that.

So, ___ explored some last time, the theme of right livelihood. And as you know, it’s one of the eight factors on the ___ path, this roadmap as it were, for development. And again, it’s kind of interesting that right livelihood made it to the ___ path, even though we sometimes think that the path, when it was designed, was primarily for monks and nuns. So what do they have to worry about? ___ about? You know, don’t they go, their livelihood and as kind of, taking care of them, and just go and you know, and the community basically supports them with food and with shelter and so forth. So I think it’s very significant that we have these aspects of the path, ___ livelihood and right speech as well. Sometimes, we think—why do we have to silent ___ guidance for? But we certainly do. And as also, I think that right livelihood actually doesn’t get as much attention as the others? And I think, I would say, in our community. So, it’s a good one to look at. And it comes in the ___ path under the __ of three factors that are more ethical in nature. Remember the ___ path has two that have to do with wisdom, right understanding and what could be called right aspiration. And we’ll actually come back to that with—and so I can talk about ___. And that sense of right. I think that’s, as I’ve said sometimes, that’s a Victorian translation of the word ___, and the—I think a better translation would be more mature or developed. ___ has the same root, etymologically, as words as summary. Summation. ___. So, it has that connotation of something that’s developed, mature, reached a good level. So, that’s, so we could say, so we’re really talking about a way of working a sense of livelihood and work when we’re mature, or when we’ve been developing this question of what is my vocation, or what is my work.

And so, the three ethical aspects of the ___ path are— I call it ___ speech, ___ action or right action, ___ action, and then livelihood. And then there are three aspects of the ___ that are connected more with meditation—right effort and right mindfulness and right concentration. So livelihood is on the script of three, and it connects with ethics. And it’s primarily how right livelihood is framed by the Buddha. He talks about right livelihood as particularly in the text having to deal with earning a living while refraining from those kinds of work, which go against the ethical guidelines. That’s pretty much the nature of it. And remember the core ethical guidelines are about non-harming. There are not harming physical, not taking which is not given, and then being very careful with the energy of speech, sexuality and intoxicants. And so, this gets translated into the understanding of the livelihood. And so, there was a kind of provision for Buddhist practitioners of dealing in arms or weapons. In other words, that which that contributes to harming others in the ___ trade. And also, actually, in killing animals—being a butcher, selling meat, actually was on this list of types of livelihood, which are practicing Buddhist would not follow.

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Find more exercises related to mindfulness at work here. 

A talk on mindfulness at work by Sharon Salzberg:

So, my book, Real Happiness At Work, came out on January 1^st and I’m sure it was here a couple of years ago. My book, Real Happiness, came out, and talk about how that particular title wasn’t something I’ve chosen. It was something that the publisher had given to me out of a series of circumstances. The book was going to be called “something else.” And then, I got an advanced copy of a friend’s book with that “something else” as the title.

And, so, we quickly had to find another title and I came up with Real Happiness, which I felt some ambivalence about.

And on one hand, I think it’s what we all actually want. And it strikes a chord. We want something that’s around inner sustenance, resource fullness, a sense of wholeness that isn’t going to be so dependent on circumstances, isn’t going to shatter and break as things shift, and we don’t get want we want, or someone disappoints us, or we get afraid, even, you know, there can still be something that is, like, a resource for us. I think that’s what we actually want. And on the other hand, I thought, well, that’s going to be difficult, and I was right.

In the first interview I had, the very first question was something like, “Are you trying to tell me that the kind of happiness I feel when I’m having lovely dinner with my wife isn’t real?” And I said, “Of course, I think it’s real.” And I think, if anything, if we paid more attention, and we’re more appreciative, and more grateful, we will enjoy it a whole lot more, and we also know how joyful and wondrous are those experiences are, but they’re not forever. They come and they go. And I said to him, “What about the night you don’t like your dinner all that much?”

And I thought, but didn’t say, “What about the night you don’t like your wife all that much?” Because that happens, right?

So, it’s not to put down or disdain those experiences, but I know we can have a much deeper, more refined, more sustainable sense of happiness so we enjoy the pleasure fully when it comes and we don’t feel so defeated and so defined by the difficulty when it comes. So, I went through with that book and it was really very funny, because people were not very happy with what they’re happy, or happiness. You know, so often, seems like something happy-go-lucky and superficial, and just the endless pleasure seeking which we’re used to and people say, well, that’s where I start to practice, to unhook from that.

You know, what is this happiness obsession? And, I kept trying to redefine the word so that it didn’t mean just pleasure, it certainly didn’t mean something selfish. Because, like when I would go on tour, people would say to me, town after town, have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says “If you’re not depressed, you’re not paying attention.” And I’d say, “Well, I actually have seen it.” And I understand the sentiment and what about when we’re depressed, and we’re exhausted?

And we feel depleted, and we feel overcome, we feel overwhelmed. There’s not a whole lot in us that we feel we can give to somebody else.

And it reminds me a lot of the teachings about generosity where they say that the best kind of generosity actually comes from a sense of inner abundance. It’s not dependent on how much you have externally, and we know that right? Because we probably all know people who might have very little, materially, externally, but they’re very generous, and perhaps, you know people who have a huge amount more, externally, but don’t ever seem to have the internal feeling that ever have enough. And so, it’s so much harder to give and to share. It’s not just about material generosity. It’s about generosity of the spirit.

When I teach loving kindness meditation, one of the categories that we offer loving kindness to is that someone is a benefactor, someone who has helped us, maybe they’ve helped us directly, they helped pick up us when we fallen down. Maybe not, maybe we’ve never met them, but they’ve inspired us. They embody the sense of possibility of love and kindness for us, and so, many times, people, given instructions, okay, now, it’s time to offer love and kindness to benefactor, and afterwards, somebody will come up to me and say, you know, I chose the ___ as my benefactor, and things were going fine, and then suddenly, I thought, wait a minute, he’s the ___, what did he ___ for? And I find that interesting. First of all, how do we know that, right?

For all we know, every single day was life, he’s sustained by the prayers and well-wishing and loving kindness of others, and what an interesting assumption— what I have to give is so nothing, is so negligible, couldn’t count, couldn’t possibly ever, ever make a difference. So, from that state, we don’t have love and generosity, because we don’t have a lot of that sense of inner abundance to feed it, to be the wellspring. We can’t even pay that much attention to somebody else. It feels like an intrusion, because we feel so impoverished within. And so, when I say happiness, I don’t mean, you know, just like endless delight and enjoying yourself, but more that sense of that wellspring and being able to access it.

If you liked this recording and would like to make a direct financial contribution to this teacher, please contact them here: http://www.sharonsalzberg.com/contact/

*** Material on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

Find more exercises related to mindfulness at work here.