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[79] Right livelihood is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we get rid of all evil ways. 正命是法明門、除滅一切惡道故。 . When this gate refers to all evil ways, it’s referring to something specific in the Buddhist tradition. Let’s start by understanding what right livelihood is about and then we’ll see how it’s related to these evil ways, also knows as unfortuate destinies. In general, right livelihood means not making a living by things like stealing, gambling, killing, pandering, etc. Clearly, these things break the precepts. They’re unwholesome activities in any event, but if the motivation for doing them is to make money, now we’ve added a whole new layer of trouble. The tradition has two sets of teachings about right livelihood, one for householders and one for the ordained sangha. Buddha says, “A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.” Elsewhere, he says there are two other jobs we should avoid: being a soldier and being an actor, soldiering because of the killing involved and acting because we stir up the passions and emotions and delusions of the audience. Overall: don’t make your living by engaging in breaking precepts yourself or causing others to break precepts. It’s unwholesome for you and unwholesome for others. Trafficking in weapons enables killing by others even if you yourself aren’t doing the killing. Selling drugs creates delusion and suffering for others even if you yourself aren’t taking them. We can’t predict the outcome of our actions, so it would be easy to say, well, it’s not my fault if people use something I sell them to do harm. However, if we really aspire to skillful action and liberating beings from suffering, we have to look at our motivation for engaging in a particular form of livelihood. Frequently that motivation is money, and we’ll come back to that shortly. There’s an additional set of warnings for monks. In the Chiji Shingi, or Pure Standards for the Temple Administrators, Dogen warns the monks that there are four wrong livelihoods for them. These come from a commentary on the Mahaparinirvana Sutra attributed to Nagarjuna. The four wrong livelihoods are:
Dogen says if your food comes to you by means of any of these four wrong livelihoods, you shouldn’t eat it. (For more on right livelihood food, see this short video.) The first wrong livelihood about doing things for the government or laypeople is pointing to a larger teaching about doing things in direct exchange for some reward. If Buddha stopped to give a teaching to a layperson and that grateful person went into his house to find something to offer in return, Buddha wouldn’t accept it. He says we don’t teach for personal gain; we just offer the dharma freely without expectation. Monks are not at the beckon call of society for the purpose of gaining some material reward. Supposedly they’d left home to concentrate on practice. Otherwise they could have kept their jobs and their old lives. Monks also shouldn’t engage in fortune telling and divination. There has been Buddhist “magic” from beginning of the tradition, and the prohibition also goes all the way back to the Buddha. He said these things are debased arts and are not based on actually seeing reality, and he himself would never do them. The Pali canon has pages and pages of the kinds of divination, charms and spells we’re not supposed to engage in, but throughout history it’s happened anyway. In a way, it was means of building a relationship with the local laity. Monks offered these services as a way of meeting people’s need to predict and control their environment, and of course they often got some contribution for it. However, Buddha, Nagarjuna and Dogen say that’s not a wholesome way of supporting yourself. (If you’re chanting a dharani for preventing disaster as part of your practice and you’re not getting any payment or food offering or something for it, that’s different.) If you’re doing it for money, you’re also encouraging people to rely on your special powers rather than on their own practice of seeing reality clearly for themselves. Lastly, the admonition against farming comes from original Indian teachings. Monks were supposed to live only on alms and not do any work like this themselves. By the time Zen moved through China and into Japan, work practice including farming was really important and monks were fairly self-sufficient. Dogen seems to be OK with accurately quoting the commentary even though that’s not how people were actually living by then. The important question here is: are you doing whatever you do for a living mainly in order to get as much wealth as possible for yourself? Even if the work itself isn’t unwholesome, are you carrying it out in an unwholesome way by cheating your customers, underpaying your employees, engaging in illegal business practices or doing other unethical stuff? Going back to the Buddha’s time, right livelihood also includes household management, considering not only how you made your money but how you’re handling it now. The teachings about this vary a little between householders and monks who’ve left home and live in the temple. Buddha says a householder knowing his income and expenses leads a balanced life, neither extravagant nor miserly, knowing that thus his income will stand in excess of his expenses, but not his expenses in excess of his income. However, Uchiyama Roshi says: Sawaki Roshi often said that losing is enlightenment and gaining is delusion, In the ordinary world, the principle is that if expenditures keep increasing, we’ll eventually go bankrupt. In Buddhadharma, we have to become comfortable with the attitude that even if we are bankrupt and live in poverty, we should keep increasing expenditures. Unless we really accept such an attitude, we’ll never live a truly wealthy life. In other words, if you wish to be rich, first of all be poor. In human life, it is very difficult to lower our standard of living once we have enjoyed a materially rich life. So, we should not try to raise our standard of living; rather we should try to train ourselves to settle in poverty. This is the wealthiest way of life. (1) Uchiyama Roshi often said that he’d never been gainfully employed for more than a few months in his life. He felt it was really important to his practice that he be a poor monk, to accept that situation and live within it. If you have a home and family, you can’t live that way, but you can still practice letting go of greed, anger and ignorance and try to live in a sustainable way that doesn’t harm other beings or yourself and isn’t based on grasping and clinging. All of the elements of the eightfold path are connected, so right livelihood doesn’t exist by itself. It’s part of the section on ethics or sila, which also includes right speech and right action, the last two gates we’ve considered, but it’s also connected to the rest of the wheel. Buddha says it all starts with right view: “And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong livelihood as wrong livelihood, and right livelihood as right livelihood. And what is wrong livelihood? Scheming, persuading, hinting, belittling, & pursuing gain with gain. This is wrong livelihood... “One tries to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter into right livelihood: This is one’s right effort. One is mindful to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter & remain in right livelihood: This is one’s right mindfulness. Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right livelihood.” First we’ve got to be able to look at what we’re doing with the eyes of Buddha, or with prajna, and see clearly our motivation and whether what we’re doing is wholesome, helpful and skillful or not. Then we’ve got to actually do something about it. We might have to change our business practices, or we might even have to find new careers, and that might not be easy. It takes courage and commitment, and some real effort, to make sure that we’re living in an ethical way now, and that we don’t backslide when things get tough. That’s why we practice the entire eightfold path, not just the elements that we pick and choose. Now we need to look at the other half of the gate statement, the “evil ways,” or three unfortunate paths or destinies. These are the the three lower realms of the rokudo, or six realms on the wheel of samsara: animals, hungry ghosts, and existence in hell. (The three higher realms are heavenly beings, humans and fighting gods.) The concept of the rokudo goes back to pre-Buddhist India. It’s part of the beliefs about transmigration or rebirth, that what you do in this life determines the circumstances of your next life, and that this happens over and over again. Buddhism picks up this idea and teaches that all living beings are born into one of these six realms of samsara or states of existence. We’re all trapped on this wheel of life, going around and around until we can liberate ourselves from desire and suffering. Each rebirth in samsara, and which realm we end up in, depends on our actions in this life. The animal realm is characterized by stupidity and servitude. It includes livestock, animals driven by impulse or instinct, and those that prey on each other. Hungry ghosts experience eternal craving and starvation. Sometimes they’re said not to have a body, and sometimes have very small mouths but very large stomachs. Somehow they’re always extremely thirsty and hungry. You get there because of your greed and grasping in this life. There’s some difference of opinion about which is worse, the hungry ghost realm or the animal realm, but in any case, you don’t want to be in either one! Beings in hell are in the lowest realm and worst possible situation. They experience constant torture and agression. You get there because of behavior like lying, stealing, or adultery. There isn’t just one big hell -- there are many, many different hells, and each one has a specific kind of intense suffering, like heat, cold, or being eaten alive. In the Mahayana, and for us today, these six realms tend to be taken as mindstates rather than actual places of rebirth. You don’t end up in one of these places for eternity; when you’ve used up your evil karma, you’re reborn somewhere else on the wheel and you get another chance. The place you want to end up in is the human realm, because that’s the only place where you can practice and wake up and become free from the wheel of samsara. Clearly, the three unfortunate destinies are manifestations of the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance. If you’re greedy, you go to the realm of hungry ghosts. If you’re angry, you go to a hell realm. If you’re ignorant, you go to the animal realm. Now, what does this have to do with right livelihood? Right livelihood requires us to take some kind of action. If that action and our motivation are based on one of the three poisons, we end up with an unfortunate destiny. It really reinforces that it’s not just what we’re doing but why that’s important. In the Pali canon there’s a story of a monk who became quite good at medicine and treating the sick. It sounds like a good thing, and a way to relieve suffering, but one day a grateful patient gave him a really elegant and expensive food item, some kind of delicacy, and the monk got all excited about it. He ran to his friend Shariputra to show him, and he offered to share his food with Shariputra, but Shariputra just looked at him and walked away. He was disgusted that the monk was caught up in this kind of greed, even though the action that was being rewarded was healing suffering. We start by choosing a lifelihood that brings wholesomeness and skillful action into the world rather than the opposite. This takes some discernment, and we don’t just do that discernment one time. We do it again and again as part of our practice. How do we consider what livelihood we should take up? We can think about our karmic circumstances, which includes what we’re good at and what we like to do. It’s probably no good to aspire to do something wonderful for which we’re really not suited. My father is a doctor and would have been happy if I’d turned out to be a doctor too, but I’m not much good at chemistry. I was much better suited to a career in communications. Even within a career, there are different ways to participate in a particular field. If you’re a doctor, are you better suited to research or to direct patient care? Are you a diagnostician, a surgeon, a pathologist? Each set of five skandhas is unique and that’s fine. We’re going to be more skilled at some things than others. So how do we make sure that that livelihood is bodhisattva activity? We can consider our bodhisattva vows, our practice of the eightfold path, and the precepts. How well does what we’re doing fit with these teachings and guidelines? What’s our real motivation for taking it up? Maybe we’re motivated by greed; either we choose the career because it’s lucrative, or we do whatever job we have in such a way that we get everything we can for ourselves. Greed might be for money, but it might be for power, fame or other things, like the biggest office or the most recognition or the best promotion—whatever we’re grasping and clinging to related to our livelihood. It can be pretty difficult to distinguish the desire to do the best job we can from the desire to get something for ourselves. That’s where we have to do a lot of really honest discernment, and the result is often mixed. In order to do the best job I can, I need more staff, but also having more staff makes me feel more important. Are we in it for money even though we hate the job or career? We’re not talking about doing something that isn’t your dream job because you need to feed your family or pay for your education. We’re talking about craving and greed for a luxurous lifestyle, expensive things, or social status, actions that feed the ego and encourage clinging. The bottom line is: are we harming others in order to get what we want? Are we perpetuating suffering for our own gain? This kind of honesty with ourselves is really hard sometimes, but making mistakes about this sends us to the realm of hungry ghosts. And how about anger? Probably, no one takes a job out of anger, but we could argue that some jobs perpetuate violence in various ways. Buddha says don’t be a soldier, but I know practitioners who are or were in the military and there are Buddhist chaplains in the military today, so this is an unfolding story without clear answers. Buddha also says don’t be an arms dealer, because weopons are about killing or harming. You could extend that to selling recreational fishing equipment or even insecticide, but what if farmers using the insecticide grow more food to feed hungry people? Again, there are no clear answers and that discussion could go on forever. Mistakes about livelihood based on anger or violence send us to one of the hell realms Then there’s ignorance. A livelihood based on ignorance encourages people to take action based on their baser insticts. For animals, including humans, that means survival and reproduction. Animals want to avoid death and to pass on their genes, so it’s survival of the individual and survival of the species. Those things aren’t bad; goodness knows we wouldn’t be here without them, but what happens when we harm others in order to survive and pass on our genes? I make sure I have all the food, clothing and shelter I think I need regardless of whether or not you have enough. I don’t understand where suffering comes from, so I elbow you out of the way to make sure I’m OK. There’s a real element of self-involvement and selfishness that goes with ignorance. There are a lot of ways to be selfish in the workplace, even if the job or career is otherwise wholesome. When we make mistakes based on ignorance, we end up in the animal realm. As we can see, this whole livelihood thing and its relationship to precepts and the three poisons is pretty complicated. There will probably always be some element of self clinging even in a job that does good in the world. Our motivations can be mixed, and we have to make decisions and take responsibility for the outcomes. It’s not as easy as saying that if we just choose the right livelihood, we’re guaranteed to stay out of the three unfortunate destinies, but because we spend so much of our time, energy, attention and ego being in the workplace, it’s a huge place of practice. If we’re not taking our practice to work, we’ve somehow missed the connection between practice and rest of our lives. Where are there more chances for becoming annoyed, or trying to get ahead, or feeling satisfaction when we’ve helped someone else? The whole daily human experience is right there on the job. Do I feel good about what I’m doing to support myself? Do I feel good about the way I’m doing that work, and the circumstances in which I work? If not, what can I do about it? Are there teachngs I can remember when I start to get carried away by delusion and unskillful actions of body, speech and mind? How can I bring both wisdom and compassion to work and see what’s really going on with me and others? We don’t have to wear our rakusus to work and evangelize for Buddha at the copy machine. We can bring our practice to work quietly. It’s the ground of our own life and activity, but in my experience, if we move through the world as quiet, steady bodhisattvas, we provide a refuge and an oasis for others, even if they don’t know why. That’s when we can do the right job and we can do the job right. Notes: (1) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 51-52. Questions for reflection and discussion:
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
June 2025
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