Today my view about Right Livelihood is not about the job we do to earn a living. It’s about abandoning the eight worldly concerns and instead putting everything we do in the light of abandoning the causes of our dukkha. So for me Right Livelihood is about putting the dhamma in the centre of all our concerns.
It’s an interesting reply. I’m wondering what you mean by ‘directly helping to put the meat to the customer’? We might suggest that say planting feed for livestock has more of an impact on meat production, or a maybe politician reducing business rates for supermarkets that sell meat? What do you think in these cases? Would you consider that as ‘directly helping to put the meat to the customer’? How about people who stock the supermarket shelves or work in the warehouses where meat is sold? How about the engineers that design and build the robots that will deliver the meat in the near future?
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Most of all, in these issues of Right Livelihood, have Metta for yourself, Be kind to yourself. It’s hard to make a living in the world, and most of us have to do some things that are arguably harmful in some ways. I have to drive a car to some meetings and kill bugs (my windshield is proof) and harm the environment with my hybrid car’s use of gasoline. I’m doing my best to be a good Buddhist and reduce harm to all things. I am sure that most of us are doing the same, but for our monastics who have appropriately set a high bar on this issue. But, at the end of the day, be kind to yourself on this issue of how we do work.
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