I had a funny experience today. Unable to write my post on Wednesday due to a busy day of theater-related stuff, I decided that, after going to bed at 2am I would wake at 6:30 this morning and spend an hour or so writing and musing about Right Speech and Right Livelihood, the subjects of our last Hardcore Dharma class, before heading off to my day job.
I should have known it wouldn’t happen. I sleep like the love child of a teenager and a log, and unless I’ve got a plane to catch it’s darn near impossible for me to do with less then at least 6 but more preferably 8 hours of sleep. (I know, I know – the indulgence!) Anyway, as I should have expected, my screaming alarm clock was merely incorporated into my dreams during the 6:30am hour I set it for, and I awoke, feeling quite refreshed and caressed by the cool autumn breezes, at ….quarter to nine.

I have to be at work at 10, so lateness was not a big issue, but I hadn’t written my post like I wanted to and I didn’t quite know what to do. My job is certainly a day job to support my other endeavors, low pressure and flexible. Right now there’s nothing pressing going on and I’m paid hourly, for the time that I’m there.So, rolling out of bed I opened my laptop started writing a letter to my boss.
Dear Employer,
I will be coming in at noon today because something urgent has –
Hold on there, Tinder. Here I was ready to fib to my boss in order to stay home for a couple hours to write an internet posting about Right Speech and Right Livelihood. I tried rewriting the email in a variety of ways to avoid saying what I was doing but still say that I would be late to the office in a way that wouldn’t seem completely like I didn’t care about my job until I realized I just couldn’t. There was no way for me to write this email truthfully. I guess I could have said:
Dear Employer,
I will be coming in at noon today because I didn’t manage my time well and have to fulfill an obligation that honestly, I deem to be more important then the non-deadline oriented tedium I perform for you four days a week even though if it wasn’t for you I couldn’t pay my rent on my sweet Williamsburg apartment or eat or pay for Dharma classes or my rehearsal space – by the way do you even know when I’m supposed to be working versus not so does it even matter that I’m there? XOXO – J
Somehow I couldn’t press send on that one. So I bustled myself out the door and suffice it to say, I’m writing this at work. So, without further ado:
Hardcore Dharma: September 22, 2008: Subject: Right Speech & Right Livelihood
First a little List Mania:
Okay, In 4 Noble Truths we’ve got the 8 fold path, and in the 8 fold path we’ve got the 3 categories: Wisdom, (which we remember is Right View & Right Intention) Conduct (Right Speech, Right Livelihood, Right Action) and Mediation (Right Effort, Right Mindfullness & Right Concentration . This Saturday we discussed the first two folds of Conduct (Shila), but not before pulling out the 2 general rules or reference points that make up the category of Conduct in general.
1. Do No Harm (If you can’t help ‘em, at least don’t hurt ‘em)
2. Bring Benefit
E then told us about the 10 Wholesome and corroborating unwholesome actions, which are divided by into 3 categories, Body (the physical), Speech (expression) and Mind.
So Right Speech has 4 Unwholesome/Wholesome actions.

All of the unwholesome actions of Right Speech seem, to me, really complex fodder to consider, but as the contemplation for the week is: “What is Lying?” I’m going to stick to that.
I certainly knew that sending a misleading email to my boss would be lying. But right now I’m composing this post on my outlook (making it seem as though I’m doing company-related work). That seems like lying to me too. I had a comedian boyfriend once who had a routine about how women, with their hair-removal and makeup and heels are walking, breathing liars. I wouldn’t go that far, but I think it’s probing to think about the little ways we mislead (“How are you? … Fine!”/ pretending not to see that person you know but don’t want to talk to on the subway/not mentioning you’re in a relationship to the cute boy at the party because you know it makes the harmless flirting more fun) that might be in conflict, perhaps, with Right Speech. What has come up for folks thinking about what lying is? Are we lying all the time in subtle ways? Would we be able to survive if we held ourselves to strict truthfulness?
The second fold of Shila we discussed is Right Livelihood, which is described quite literally in traditional Buddhism as not dealing in arms, slaves, meat, intoxicants or prophecy. Some admirable questions by the admirable interdependent folks that came up in class: Can you decry a profession if you consume it? Are you really following the principles of Right Livelihood if you drink alcohol and therefore create a market for someone to sell or distribute alcohol? Can we blame the butcher or the labor exploiter if we consume their goods? Is it possible to not, in some interdependent way, support these Wrong Livelihoods? Knowing that you’ve got to live your life (even if you don’t eat meat you might patronize restaurants that sell it, even a seltzer brings in revenue at a bar), how does one proceed? Moreover, if I don’t care about my job, even though I don’t think it causes harm, is it Wrong Livelihood for me to be here?
And with that (sigh) back to work.