Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [119]
RIGHT LIVELIHOOD IS DOING WHAT
NEEDS TO BE DONE
There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough.
—MOTHER TERESA
Not that long ago, I was in a Manhattan restaurant having dinner with a friend. We were sitting at a table next to a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a busy avenue. On the street, we could see an unkempt homeless man pushing a large shopping cart filled with boxes and trash bags. Pieces of clothing and odds and ends stuck out of the cart every which way. Suddenly a New York City bus swerved and almost hit a small passenger car, which grazed the front end of the man’s shopping cart, knocking it over on its side. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of empty soda cans rolled to the ground, spilling absolutely everything along the street. Seeing this sad sight, I felt helpless at the totality of this man’s predicament—homeless, collecting soda cans in order to gather together a few dollars. I barely had time to register these emotions when I noticed that another diner, a well-dressed man wearing a business suit and tie, had stepped out to the sidewalk. Quickly and efficiently he set to work chasing down the cans rolling along the gutter and placing them back in the cart. With the two men working together, it was only a matter of minutes before the man was again rattling down the street with his shopping cart, and the diner was slipping back into his restaurant seat.
All “good work” means is finding a way to act upon your bodhicitta intentions and doing what has to be done. This isn’t complex; it simply means taking care of business—in the present moment. I remember once when I stumbled into the doorway of Kalu Rinpoche’s room. He was sitting on the floor with two young monks, surrounded by cut-up pieces of maroon cloth. One of the boys was measuring thread, and Kalu Rinpoche had a large old-fashioned pair of scissors in his hand. Kalu Rinpoche was an expert tailor and was very involved with making robes for members of his monastery. Spirituality does not contradict practicality; the two might even complement each other.
The present head of my own Nyingmapa school, Penor Rinpoche, is known as the best plumber in his refugee village in southern India. When no one else could fix the broken septic system, we’ve seen him go down waist deep into the reeking pool of sewage and unstop the pipes with hand tools while his monks looked on with awe saying, “Rinpoche is a true master.”
A lovely example of Right Livelihood that every schoolchild knows is found in the work of John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, who during the early nineteenth century traveled throughout the Midwest sowing apple seeds and caring for the young trees. When Chapman planted those seeds he knew that someday there would be apples, even if he never saw them. What a wonderful gift he left behind. In Tibet, everybody knows the story of Thang-Tong Gyalpo, a wandering fifteenth-century yogi and master who wasn’t allowed to cross a river on a ferryboat because he seemed insane to the ferryman. After this incident, Thang-Tong experienced visions in which the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas themselves gave him a work assignment: Help others by constructing bridges—strong iron bridges—the first in the Himalayas! And with the help of disciples and students, that’s what he did, developing techniques for finding and refining iron ore in the process. Some of the nearly sixty chain-link bridges he built are still in use.
Right Livelihood is about “earning your keep” on this fragile