“Hour by hour resolve firmly to do what comes to hand with dignity, and with humanity, independence, and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations. This you can do, if you will approach each action as though it were your last, dismissing the desire to create an impression, the admiration of self, the discontent with your lot."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I've had a hectic week at work this week what with stressed out students facing their exams, dissertations due, events in the library and lots of smaller projects needing tending. Fortunately, that has propelled me back to my meditative practice, which had tailed off a bit of late. Facing stresses I have faced before with a relatively new set of skills and attitudes has prompted me to think a lot about how my exploration of Buddhism has shaped my approach to my profession over the last year.
The title of this post, "Right Livelihood", derives from one of the core tenets of Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path, in which the Buddha prescribed the way to the end of suffering. "Suffering", incidentally, is the most common translation of the Pali word
dukkha, but it is not as extreme as we tend to mean it. For instance, I've also seen
dukkha translated as "unsatisfactoriness". It refers to that feeling most of us have that something is missing, something could be better, or that we're falling short in some way - a pervading dissatisfaction with the way our lives are right now that drives us to work harder, to acquire more
stuff or to escape from it all. The Noble Eightfold path is a way of being in the world that works to root out the desires and aversions that drive
dukkha, and it has echoes in
Epicureanism, Stoicism and many other philosophical and religious practices the world over.
The Noble Eightfold Path is both less of a super-human undertaking than it looks and profoundly more difficult than it seems. It is not a set of commandments for how you must be all the time lest you face some divine retribution, nor is it something to which you can simply pay lip service. Walpola Rahula, a Sri Lankan monk and author, wrote that the facets of the Eightfold Path "are to be developed more or less simultaneously, as far as possible
according to the capacity of each individual. They are all linked together and each helps the cultivation of the others." [The emphasis is mine.] Right livelihood (which can also be translated as "skilful" or "wise" livelihood), like all of the facets of the Eightfold Path, is not clearly and explicitly defined. Generally speaking it is any undertaking that does good rather than harm, which is ethical according to a Buddhist framework (in general Buddhism does not condone killing, lying, slavery or dealing in intoxicants) and which supports rather than hinders the individual's spiritual practice. However, it is up to the circumstances, the capacity and the judgment of the individual what right livelihood looks like in their own lives.
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| The Noble Eightfold Path. Source: beliefnet.com |
Even with such a broad definition, right livelihood seems to generate anxiety in a lot of modern, especially Western Buddhists. Ted Meissner of the
Secular Buddhist podcast has joked that many people seem to think the only right livelihoods available to Buddhists are along the lines of yoga teacher, monk or aquaponic kale farmer. I certainly struggled with this when I first encountered right livelihood, becoming deeply uncomfortable with the feeling that I was reinforcing a system of privilege through my own complicity.
Ajahn Brahm observes, however, that, "It's not what you do but
how you do it that makes all the difference."
This is the point at which the entire system of the Eightfold Path begins to work together: the "how you do it" point. What Buddhism is teaching me is greater
mindfulness of the present moment, detached from old scars and prejudices picked up in the past, removed from perceptions of the future. With greater attentiveness comes greater patience and compassion. This can only be accomplished through good intention and effort. It is the
quality of your work that matters, even if you are washing a dish or reshelving a book. If you are doing something with your mind wandering elsewhere, how well are you actually doing that thing? Right livelihood, then, is not connected to one's job title so much as putting one's entire self into one's work, whatever that work happens to be.
The "how you do it" also includes your relationships to other people; to your co-workers and library users. Think about a time when someone in a customer service role smiled at you or went out of their way to be helpful when you were having a bad day. That one small interaction cost them nothing but it improved your day dramatically. Think of all the people you smiled at or helped in your job today. Even if they didn't see you, even if they never know what you did, did you catalogue something in a way that will help a library user find it? Did you make sure the shelves were organised so they could retrieve it quickly? You form part of a service made up of people for the benefit of people. You facilitate the creation of knowledge, the spark of discovery and the joyous, frightening, silly, satisfying experiences of library users. Did you do it well and wisely? Did you bring compassion to your library's services? In terms of my fears that I was reinforcing privilege through my work, I think that unjust systems cannot be changed by turning our backs on them. If I bring compassion to the corner of the world I inhabit, to every person I meet and to the people I will never meet who use my library's services, I think that's all anyone is called on to do in order to make the world a better place.
The most difficult part of mindfulness for me has been cultivating better self-awareness, including an awareness of my own flaws. It can be very uncomfortable to look at your professional and personal shortcomings, but it is ultimately an incredibly useful exercise. Not only can you learn to work through them or at least to work around them, but if you can look with compassion at the parts of yourself that you dislike the most you can certainly treat others with the same degree of compassion. Acknowledging my own egocentrism and my need for recognition was the most important step toward letting it go. Obviously it's still a work in progress but the minute I stopped shying away from it I was able to shift my perspective on my work and what I wanted to get out of it. It isn't about self-abnegation so much as the recognition that "myself" is no more than a useful construct for interacting with the world that can be let go.
"The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion.When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless." - Shunryu Suzuki
Beginner's mind, or "don't-know mind" is an important approach to life in Buddhism, especially in the various Zen traditions, that is very connected to the idea of letting go of self. Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." As librarians we often need to market ourselves as experts in particular skills and competences in order to more effectively integrate our services into the teaching activities at our institutions. But while it is important to showcase our professional expertise, it is equally important to cultivate in our own minds a sense of curiosity and openness.
Kristen Mastel and Genevieve Innes, two librarians writing about Mindfulness for librarians, argue:
"The benefit of a beginner’s mind, if
one can cultivate and achieve it, is that one will then look at the world with fresh eyes, and can
rediscover the joy of learning something new, of finding just the right article or book, the deep
satisfaction of having a question or curiosity answered, a curiosity sated--experiences which
excited one and first drew him into the profession. In beginner’s mind, we understand what it is
like to be in new situation, to feel uncertain, to feel vulnerable. In the beginner’s mind, one
realizes how important it is to demonstrate patience and understanding with ourselves and others."
Beginner's mind, then, is important to cultivating compassion for our users as well as finding joy in our careers. It can be frightening for information professionals to embrace something like "don't-know mind", but I think that if we are to develop a partnership with library users rather than an expert/novice or gatekeeper/seeker relationship it is important that we learn how not to be experts, to learn how to not know. Our users are the true experts on their needs and goals and approaching them with an open mind ensures that we have the best chance of understanding them.
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| Source: http://www.buddhistelibrary.org |
In a previous post,
reflecting on where I am at professionally, I mentioned a shift in focus from self-oriented goals to service-oriented goals. I said that I was no longer focusing on where I wanted to be in my career but what I wanted the library to be like. While searching for other librarians' musings on right livelihood I came across a wonderful article by a recently qualified librarian that I think sums it up perfectly:
We new librarians need not be enlightened Buddhists to learn something from these teachings about the connection between ego and burnout. We bring high ideals to our work, as we should, but are doomed to burnout if we tie our egos to achieving those goals. We are never going to teach all of our patrons to be critical about their information sources. We will never have the funding to provide all of the information sources our patrons need. We will never convince all of our leaders that information needs to be free. Certainly, we can make progress toward these goals, perhaps tremendous progress, but there will always be more new technologies to master, more information to organize, more information needs to meet. Perhaps we will be able to face this constant onslaught without burnout if our goal is service, not personal accomplishment. - Roberta M. Richards
This resonated with me very profoundly. I was heading for just such a burnout when I began engaging with Buddhism because my ego was tied to goals. I was clinging to what I thought I ought to be, what my library ought to be, and that neither of us were there was a sign of deep personal failure. But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (so says Lao-tzu). There's a Zen proverb I really like that goes as follows:
A young but earnest Zen student approached his teacher and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen?"
The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years."
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast. How long then?"
Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years."
"But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student.
"Thirty years," replied the Master.
"But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student, "Each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?"
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."
In all of our lives there is work that is right in front of us. It's probably not glamorous or prestigious. We may not earn any recognition or praise for it. But it's there and waiting for our attention. This also means knowing when to set your professional work aside because the work that is in front of you is the crucial work of self-care, of getting enough sleep, of spending time with your friends or hobbies. Right livelihood to me is about doing the work that is in front of you, as Marcus Aurelius said, with humanity, with compassion and with energy. That is where I have found happiness and satisfaction in my work: doing what is in my capacity to do, giving everything I have in that moment, with compassion for myself and others.
And, fortunately, the work is never finished.
I know that this is not everyone's cup of tea so I thank you for bearing with me if you've read this entire post. I hope it's given you something to think about. None of the things I have discussed is really inherently or exclusively Buddhist: they're ideas that can be explored by people of any - or no - belief system. That I am engaging with them through Buddhism is merely a reflection of my own personal resonances and proclivities, but it has been through dedicated engagement with these ideas that I am at the point I am now: both having travelled a great distance and having so much more ground to cover.
