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Happy Hour: Metta and Wise Livelihood

All right, a warm welcome to all of you wherever you are in this moment. May you be safe and happy and well. For happy hour today, we're going to continue with the theme we have been exploring the past few meetings. We started to explore the relationship between metta[^1]—cultivating kindness, good will, friendliness for ourselves and others—with relation to the factors of the Eightfold Path[^2]. Today we have made it to the fifth factor, which is wise livelihood.

Wise livelihood is another very important one. Just to quickly review the triad, which this is the third one of: wise speech, wise action, wise livelihood. They're very external. Of course, a wise action could be considered actions of the mind, but this triad in the Eightfold Path is very external: how we show up in the world with our speech, with our actions, with our livelihood, how we earn our living, support ourselves, and support others.

So this is a very important factor for all lay people. Whether you work or you're retired, this is still relevant. So if you're not working right now, if you're retired, please don't tune out. There are aspects of this—aspects of how you share your gifts, your resources, your energy in the world—which is still relevant. Please still consider the ways in which you show up in the world. If you have volunteer work or the way you spend your time, it's still a way that you are spending your precious resource, which is your time, your energy, your resource.

I'll say a couple of words about this relationship and then we'll get into the guided meditation, which will be 30 minutes, and as you know, there will be some time for reflections and speaking in groups afterwards.

Wise livelihood: there's so much I can say, but I'll keep it really pithy and brief. The Buddha basically says there are five livelihoods that are not wise, and those are: dealing in weapons, dealing in human beings, meat, intoxicants, and poisons. Anything that's not those, by definition, can be considered wise livelihood.

This is an ancient teaching, 2600 years ago, and people didn't have so much choice, of course, in their livelihood, their families, and their caste, etc. But now we can actually have a higher bar if we wanted to with this teaching. So I'd like to invite you to consider any wholesome way that is not harmful. Any wholesome way that is not harming you and is not harming others, and is helping you support yourself, feed yourself, have a roof over your head, and to support others who depend on you, whom you support—to consider that to be wise livelihood. It's right livelihood to support yourself, to take care of yourself, this dear being, as long as you're not harming in those ways that I mentioned. Perhaps we can also take the same definition really in this way. There's more to be said about it, but let's just take this as one approach to wise livelihood.

Now with respect to metta. Metta can be expressed, as we've explored, as an expression of good will, care, and friendliness for yourself and for others. It is part of the fabric of making a livelihood in the world, supporting yourself and others. By expressing your care, your friendliness in the world, through your work, or actually through working, through taking care of yourself and others, you are expressing your care, your friendliness, and metta for yourself. You're taking care of this being. So on some very, very basic level, we can see the relationship between the two. We'll explore it more in the guided meditation; we'll see what comes up in this territory.

I will speak no more and instead I would like to invite you right now to transition to whatever posture is most supportive for you in your meditation right now. Whether you need to transition to lie down, if you need to transition to sit up straighter, with more sense of integrity in your chair or your cushion, whether you need to relax and soften.