The fifth step is Right Livelihood.
Obviously, if we can't participate in illegal activities for
fun, we certainly can't participate in them for profit.
But any livelihood that is honest is honorable. Honest
work is honest work. There are no noble occupations and no ignoble occupations. But for some reason this isn't so elementary a concept as it seems.
In India, for example, there has traditionally been a caste
system. There's a priest class, and a warrior class, and a merchant
class, and a worker class, and, down at the very bottom, a class of
untouchables or social outcasts. In whatever caste a person is born,
he remains. He can't jump around from job to job. No matter how
talented or intelligent he is, if he's born into a family of farm laborers, that's the only work he's permitted to do. He's not even allowed
to socialize outside his caste. The system's not so rigid today, but in
the Buddha's time the rules were inviolable.
Despite this, the Buddha refused to participate in such an
unjust system. He wouldn't follow the rules at all. People liked that
about him. He was a prince, but he wouldn't discriminate against
others who were more lowly born. And actually, most everyone he
met was more lowly born. When you're a prince you don't have too
many social superiors.
So the Buddha wasn't influenced at all by a person's occupation or social rank. The Buddha, you see, possessed the "Eye of
Discernment". No pious fraud could fool him. He only had to look
at a person to see just how holy that person was. Not too many people have this gift.
It so happened that near Shravasti there was an outcast
named Sunita, a man so low on the social scale that he was not permitted to work for a living. He was an untouchable and nobody
would dare break the caste rules to hire him. So Sunita earned
money for food by being a flower scavenger. Every day, he'd go to
the town dump and rummage through discarded flower bouquets
searching for that occasional flower which inexplicably manages to
stay fresh while all the others have wilted.
Sunita would arrange all the scavenged flowers into a bouquet and sell it to people who passed on the road.
There may have been other people in Shravasti who were
just as poor as Sunita, but certainly there was no one who was
poorer. Yet despite his poverty, Sunita had attained enlightenment.
He was a gentle and loving man. Needless to say, he had heard the
Buddha preach and was a devout believer.
One day, in a procession, the Buddha came down the road
near the dump where Sunita was picking through the trash.
As soon as Sunita saw the procession approach, he
quickly crouched behind a rock. But the Buddha had already seen
Sunita, and with his Eye of Discernment he recognized an enlightened being.
"Hello, there!" he called to the crouched man. "Please,
stand up and let me see you."
Abashed, Sunita slowly stood up, keeping his head bowed
and his hands prayerfully pressed together before his face.
"Why were you crouched behind that rock?" the Buddha
asked.
"Blessed One," said Sunita, "I didn't want the sight of me
to offend your eyes. I am unworthy of your glance."
Many people in the Buddha's procession agreed. They
tugged at his sleeve, trying to get him to continue walking away
from the outcast. "He's unclean," they said. "He's just a trash
picker, an untouchable!"
"Is he?" said the Buddha stepping across some refuse to
put his arm around Sunita's shoulder. "Look! I have touched him,
and still he lives."
Then the Buddha asked Sunita, "Good Sir, if you are not
too fond of this labor, could I induce you to come to assist me in my
ministry? I could use a good worker like you."
With tears streaming down his face, Sunita agreed. And it
is said that for the rest of his life, in accordance with the Buddha's
wishes, Sunita always stayed close to the Buddha's side, where the
Buddha could reach out and touch him.
The sixth step is Right Effort.
We exert Right Effort when we discontinue bad habits and
practices and develop good ones. This is easier to say than to do.
We know that skill comes with practice, but in order to
practice the spiritual lessons we have learned, we need to find
opportunities. In Chan we must become aware that every breath we
take provides us with an opportunity for practice.
People think the world intrudes on them. They do not
understand that they are the gatekeepers of their own minds, that
they can easily shut and lock the doors to their minds. If people
intrude, it is because the gatekeeper has left the doors open.
Some people who cannot control their own minds strive
instead to control the minds of others. They find it less daunting to
try to direct the thoughts of hundreds of other people than to direct
their own thoughts. This situation is what the Buddha had in mind
when he said that the man who conquers ten thousand men in battle
is not so great a hero as the man who conquers himself.
Everyday, in all our interactions, we must act to further
our goal of enlightenment and self-awareness. If we have acquaintances whose company leads us easily into error, we should avoid
contact with those acquaintances. If we have insufficient time to
meditate because we're too busy with clubs or hobbies or sports, we
should cut back these activities.
It takes conscious effort to gain Chan tranquillity. Spiritual composure is gained by practice. A very wise man once noted
that the mind of a true Man of Chan cannot be distressed or intimidated because, whether in good times or bad, it simply continues at
its own steady pace, like a clock ticking in a thunderstorm. I like
that. We should all try to be like clocks that even in thunderstorms
just keep on ticking.
