Last time, we looked at the fourth piece to the puzzle of a fulfilled life free from unhealthy attachments, according to the Buddha’s teaching: right action. Its focus is on avoiding actions that will negatively impact ourselves and others, and actively seeking actions that work to the freedom and benefit of all. We also saw that, while Christians have often reduced the idea of ethical conduct to a moralistic checklist, the New Testament itself, especially the teaching of Jesus and Paul, strongly suggests a similarly outcomes-based approach to ethical conduct. Today we’ll look at the fifth piece, one that’s so closely related that it’s often treated as a footnote to right action: right livelihood.
Right Livelihood in Buddhism
The reason why right livelihood hasn’t garnered as much attention in the literature as right action is because it is really just an application of right action in one’s career, money-making, or any other way we support our lives. (For example, some suggest that how we source or food or use resources like energy and water are also part of right livelihood.) The traditional ways right livelihood was understood are pretty common-sense: if you’re on a journey to decrease harm and improve wellbeing for oneself and others, it only makes sense to avoid professions that bring harm to others: arms-trading, ponzi schemes, military, false advertising or message skewing, slaughtering animals, or profiting from others’ addictions, and so on. You can’t dedicate your life to doing right by others while supporting yourself through by doing them harm.
But it’s not quite that simple, especially in our present, global economy where everything is interconnected. As Buddhist teacher Krishnan Venkatesh writes for Tricycle Magazine:
Even professions that seem admirable and praiseworthy can be tangled up in negative consequences. A physician today is implicated in a dubious industry that often benefits corporations and shareholders more than patients. My own career as a professor at a private college is mottled with questions about the consequences of the debt these young people take on in order to study. Is it truly worth it for them, or will it hurt them in the future in ways they cannot yet imagine? And, if so, does this negate the beneficial aspects of my work?
Almost every profession carries a burden of nagging doubt. Life was simpler 2,600 years ago. A butcher’s job related to the farmer who sold him the cow, the cow he butchered in his yard, and the customers who bought the meat.
Today, any means of livelihood is knotted into a vast system that impacts lives and landscapes thousands of miles away. A modern butcher’s livelihood is inextricable from the powerful farming and slaughtering industry that has the power to wipe out small farms and entire communities.
The questions this raises are unanswerable and are part of the puzzle of how to live a right — that is, skillful — life. But they don’t let us off the hook; rather, they require us to examine the impacts of our livelihoods on the world around us and to act mindfully and skillfully about them.
Christian Response
This is an area on which Christianity is largely silent. Certainly there were strong Jewish traditions of lists of proscribed trades, and until well into the Renaissance, it was prohibited (on very solid Biblical grounds) for Christians to lend money at interest, severely limiting their roles in banking and finance. Indeed, St. Basil the Great called lending at interest “the height of inhumanity” and denounced it in no uncertain terms:
Tell me, do you really seek riches and financial gain from the destitute? If this person had the resources to make you even wealthier, why did he come begging to your door? He came seeking an ally, but found an enemy. He came seeking medicine, and stumbled onto poison. Though you have an obligation to remedy the poverty of someone like this, instead you increase the need, seeking a harvest from the desert. (”Against Those Who Lend at Interest” 1)
But beyond usurious practices, the question of skillful, intentional livelihood has not been formally spelled out in Christianity the way it is in the Eightfold Path. That isn’t to say, however, that it isn’t present. Especially as opportunities for different kinds of work have opened up, a lot of attention has been paid to vocational discernment, and I know a desire to make one’s money ethically and in ways that promote human and other-than-human wellbeing and dignity was a major concern for many of my friends when we were starting out.
Why is this? While Christianity may not have a lot explicitly to say about our livelihoods, it does have a lot to say about justice, community, and peace, as God’s vision for creation. And while it is suspicious of any human attempts to create God’s Kingdom on earth, we are still called to live our lives in ways that contribute to such an aim. Again, this is no human kingdom based on domination and greed, but rather our efforts and contributions are to be a foretaste of God’s reign of peace in which all have enough to meet their needs, in which all live together in community as neighbours, living faithfully into our reciprocal, whole, and healthy relationships. And so, as Christians, it is only natural for us to seek livelihoods that allow us to live into this as much as possible.
This ties in well to the general thrust in Jesus’ teaching towards a focus on serving the wider community. We are called to live not out of selfish ambition (Philippians 2.2) but with the benefit of all of our neighbours in mind:
- “The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves” (Luke 22.26)
- “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (John 13.14-15)
Likewise, 1 Peter contains the teaching: “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4.11).
All of this is consistent with the New Testament’s promotion of fruitfulness — bringing forth quality, beneficial outcomes in the world — as the main goal of Christian life, a theme I’ve explored extensively here over the years. St. Basil, whom I quoted above, offers his own spin on this all-important theme:
Imitate the earth, O mortal. Bear fruit as it does; do not show yourself inferior to inanimate soil. After all, the earth does not nurture fruit for its own enjoyment, but for your benefit. But whatever fruit of good works you bring forth, you produce for yourself, since the grace of good works redounds to those who perform them. (”I Will Tear Down My Barns” 3)
Conclusions
While Christianity lacks an explicit teaching similar to the Buddhist concept of right livelihood, this is a teaching that is wholly consistent with the spirit of the New Testament and Christianity as a whole. We are called to serve God primarily in our service of — and the good fruit our lives bear for — others. And there are few better places we can do this than in our livelihoods.
Matthew Root 