The Paradox of Happiness

This talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre in 2011

I want to begin with a few quotations from different periods in history. The first is from an 8th century Indian poet called Shantideva. He says: "All those who suffer in this world do so because they seek their own happiness. All those happy in this world are so because they seek the happiness of others." (Bodhicaryavatra, 8.129, trans. Crosby&Stilton,p.99) Then from the 18th century we have the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who is seen as the father of the European enlightenment. He says: "The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation"

And influenced by Bentham we have Thomas Jefferson with the American Declaration of Independence, which states: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organizing it's powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Then coming right up to date here is quote from Professor Richard Layard. He says:

"Most people want more income and strive for it. Yet as Western societies have got richer, their people have become no happier. This is no old wives tale. It is a fact proven by many pieces of scientific research. We have good ways to measure how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people are no happier today than people were fifty years ago. This paradox is equally true for the United States and Britain and Japan" (Happiness, Layard,p.3)

The first quote sees happiness as a profound paradox. The second and third quotes see happiness as a right and the last quote says happiness is much more elusive than is generally suspected. It points to another seeming paradox; more wealth does not equate with greater happiness. And perhaps hidden in there is another paradox: even though most of us may have no difficulty in believing that greater wealth does not equal greater happiness we still want greater wealth.

The American Declaration of Independence was mainly written by Thomas Jefferson who visited Paris around the time he was working on it and had contact with the revolutionaries there. The French revolution's declaration of human rights was influenced by Jefferson and that in turn has had a huge influence worldwide that continues to this day. The American Declaration of Independence was written in 1776 and it states that the pursuit of happiness is a God-given right. It also infers that government that is not effective in helping people to be happy is not an effective government.

What has it meant for the modern world that the pursuit of happiness is seen as a right and that governments are to some extent judged by their ability to effect the happiness of the citizens? Governments can only do so much and the way in which they can affect the well-being of the citizen has often been seen in material and financial terms. Happiness has come to be associated almost exclusively with material prosperity. Partly this is because this is what governments can help to bring about but also it is because the evidence shows that when people are lifted out of poverty their level of happiness and well-being increases. It is also one of the easiest things to measure. However as with many things in the affairs of human beings we have taken something that brings positive results and assumed that if we multiply it indefinitely we will continue to get more and more positive results. The evidence shows this to be untrue.

This is where the economist Richard Layard comes in. In his book 'Happiness', he quotes many experiments which have shown that beyond certain levels extra income does not give rise to more happiness and in fact can have the opposite effect because of disappointed expectations. In the same vein Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Action at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, has shown that increasing choice can enhance life up to a certain level but when choices continue to multiply they can have an adverse affect on well-being. His book is called The Paradox of Choice. I think these two books, Happiness by Richard Layard and The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz are quite important contributions to any debate about consumerism, ecology and well-being.

We live in an age of consumerism which is to some extent an experiment in social engineering. During the 19th and into the early 20th century there was a strong culture of frugality, however in the 1920's the US the economy was changing rapidly and this had far-reaching consequences. To quote from America: a Narrative History by Tindall and Shi "Dramatic changes in efficiency meant that the marketplace was flooded with new consumer delights. Goods once available only to the wealthy were now accessible to the general public. Middle-class consumers could own cameras, wristwatches, cigarette lighters, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines. But those enticing new goods would produce economic havoc if people did not abandon their traditional notions of frugality and go on a buying spree. Hence, business leaders, salesperson's, and public relations experts began a concerted effort to eradicate what was left of the original Protestant ethic's emphasis on plain living. The public had to be taught the joys of carefree consumerism, and a new industry of mass advertising obliged. By portraying impulse buying as a therapeutic measure to bolster self-esteem, advertisers shrewdly helped undermine notions of frugality." (p.760)

However the Depression of the 1930's and the world war of the 1940's reinforced habits of frugality, such as, saving rather than spending, repairing rather than replacing and valuing what lasted over the new. This meant that the US economy faced the same problem of over supply in the 1950's. To quote from America: a Narrative History again:

"To perpetuate the post war prosperity, economists repeated the basic marketing strategy of the 1920s: the public must be taught to consume more and expect more. Economists knew that Americans had more money than ever before. The average adult had twice as much real income in 1955 as in the rosy days of the late 1920s before the crash. Still, many people who had undergone the severities of the Depression and the rationing required for the war effort had to be weaned from a decade and a half of imposed frugality in order to nourish the growing consumer culture.

Advertising became a more crucial component of the consumer culture than ever before. Expenditures for TV ads increased 1000% during the 1950s. Such startling growth rates led the president of NBC to declare in 1956 that the primary reason for the post-war economic boom was that "advertising has created an American frame of mind that makes people want more things, better things and newer things.". Paying for such "things" was no problem; the age of the credit card had arrived. Between 1945 and 1957 consumer credit soared 800%. Whereas families in other industrialised nations were typically saving 10 to 20% of their income, American families, by the 1960s were saving only 5%." (p.902)

While in the Soviet Union and it's sphere of influence there was a Marxist/Leninist social engineering experiment, in the US and it's sphere of influence there was what we could call a consumerist social engineering experiment. The Soviet experiment has more or less come to an end, however the consumerist experiment continues.

And now with the wide acceptance of concerns about the earths ecology and the continuous population growth, some prescient voices are beginning to question whether this consumerist social engineering experiment can continue unabated. Apart from the questions about ecology and population growth, there is the simple question of whether consumerism works as a way to give human beings a better quality of life.

The answer to this question seems to be no - at least according to the research quoted by Richard Layard and Barry Schwartz. No, having more and more choice or having more and more money does not improve quality of life or increase happiness. The reason for this is what is known in the field of psychology as adaptation.

Adaptation simply means that we human beings quickly adapt to new conditions and circumstances. We get used to things so that they quickly cease to give us greater satisfaction. If you buy a new TV or computer you may have eagerly anticipated its arrival and excitedly set it up, but within a very short time it is just another thing in your life and your level of happiness and satisfaction is back to where it was before you got it.

However, the research also shows that there are some things we never fully adapt to: some pleasant ,for instance, intimate relationships and friendships and some less pleasant, for instance, bereavement or a serious illness of someone close to us. Also, those things which give us a sense of life as meaningful, such as spiritual understanding and practice within a community of like-minded people. The secret of happiness according to Richard Layard is "to seek out those good things that you can never fully adapt to." (p.49)

What we get used to most easily is material possessions, and to quote Layard again. "If we do not foresee that we get used to our material possessions, we shall over invest in acquiring them, at the expense of our leisure. People tend to underestimate this process of habituation. As a result, our life can get distorted towards working and making money, and away from other pursuits." (p.49) We could say that the problem for contemporary Western societies is that while material prosperity has multiplied many many times, the general level of happiness and well-being has either stayed at the same or declined for the vast majority of people. The big question is - is it important to be happy? If so what's the best way of going about it individually and communally? What are the implications for our daily lives? Can Buddhism help?

Happiness is about how much one likes the life one lives. There are two components, firstly, how well we feel most of the time, and secondly to what degree we get what we want from life. To be happy means that, broadly speaking, you like the life that you live, you feel good most of the time and to a large degree, you get what you want from life. Being happy in this sense has advantages, for instance, research shows that happy people are healthier and have a greater life expectancy than those who are unhappy.

This is a mundane level of happiness and from a Buddhist perspective is just a stage on the way to complete liberation of the mind which is the supreme happiness. Although happiness is quite subjective, it is important that we don't think that our happiness is totally divorced from that of others. If each one of us pursues our own happiness in an individual and selfish way, then our happiness would contribute to the misery of others, which in turn would come back to bite us one day. And in fact, Jeremy Bentham was quite clear about this, our own happiness is intimately tied up with the happiness of others especially those we are in close contact with. He wrote in a birthday letter to a friends young daughter:

"Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul." (quoted in Happiness, Layard, p.235.)

This echoes what the Indian Buddhist poet Shantideva said in the eighth century: "All those who suffer in this world do so because they seek their own happiness. All those happy in this world are so because because they seek the happiness of others." And Shantideva goes on to give a Buddhist analysis of why this is the case. " the calamities which happen in the world, the sufferings and the fears, many as they are, they all result from clinging on to the notion of self, so, what good is this clinging of mine?" (chapter 8, verse 134.) He is saying that the root of human suffering is clinging to a sense of self. Or to put it in more contemporary terms; the degree to which we protect and defend our ego identity determines the degree of our happiness or unhappiness.

What does it mean to cling to the notion of self? The first thing to note here is that Shantideva talks about a notion of self, rather than a self. From the Buddhist perspective, the self is an idea, a construction, a notion. It is not a reality. What does this mean? It seems to contradict our experience. I experience myself, you experience you. The notion of self that Shantideva is referring to is the idea of a fixed, unchanging, separate self, rather than the empirical self. As Bhante Sangharakshita puts it: “we do have a self as the sum total of our activities, our thinking, our feeling, our willing and our imagining. The anatman (no-self) doctrine simply warns us not to abstract an entity apart from and somehow activating these processes.” (Complete Works, Vol.14, p.461)

To put it rather paradoxically, you could say that the Buddhist perspective is that there is a self but that it is constantly changing and has no boundaries. It is not fixed in time or space or anywhere else. What we experience when we experience ourselves is constantly changing, physically, emotionally and mentally. Nothing ever stands still. We are not things, we are processes. We are not nouns we are verbs. Each one of us is a dynamic process of changing thoughts, changing emotions, changing volitions and even physical change. This perspective grows out of the more fundamental Buddhist view that everything changes always.

The most fundamental teaching of Buddhism is what is referred to as conditioned co-production (translating the Pali paticca samutpada). What this says, in a nutshell, is that everything in the entire universe, material and non-material, arises in dependence upon conditions. In other words, there is no chance or randomness. There is an ordered universe in which all phenomena occur because of preceding conditions. This is relatively easy to understand intellectually. But the aim of Buddhism is not simply to have an intellectual understanding of this teaching. Rather it is to have a full and profound realisation of all its implications, so that our lives are permeated by its significance to such a degree that our actions, our words, our thoughts, our emotions, the totality of our being, functions on the basis of this realisation. There are many implications of conditioned co-production, but for the purposes of this talk I want to focus on the implications for the self, the notion of self, which dictates so much of our thoughts and actions.

Because everything arises in dependence upon conditions -- everything that we are, everything that we experience also arises in dependence upon conditions. The implication for us is that everything that we do, say and think is a condition in dependence upon which future experience will arise. Not only are we a process, an ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, actions and words, we are also participating in the creation of this process. To put it another way, the self that we are is a self that we are constantly creating. This fluidity of self and self-creation confronts us with a huge opportunity; the opportunity to create the best of all possible selves; the possibility of actively intervening in the evolution, the creation of our consciousness; the possibility of expanding our consciousness, or, more rightly, of becoming aware of the expansive nature of consciousness. And the implication of conditioned co-production, everything arising in dependence upon conditions, is that we are part of the conditions that give rise to the rest of the world, to the social, ecological, political, economic environments, we find ourselves in. We are part of the conditions that create and mould the consciousness of a whole society, a whole community.

A further unfolding of the Buddhist teaching of conditioned co arising is spoken of as the law of karma. Karma means action. The law of karma applies conditioned co-arising to the ethical dimension of life. When we act, we and others experience consequences. An action can be by body, speech or mind. Thoughts and ideas are actions that can have powerful consequences. Words are extremely potent forces for good or ill, and of course deeds can easily be seen to have consequences that ripple out in all directions. The law of karma simply states that skilful or positive actions of body, speech and mind will have positive consequences for ourselves and others and unskilful or negative actions will have negative consequences for ourselves and others. It is not just an ordered universe but, you could even say, a benign universe.

To come back to the topic of happiness, from a Buddhist perspective, the happiness of an individual is a condition for a deeper insight into the nature of reality and the nature of self and it is also a result of any such Insight. When one sees deeply into the profound and far reaching implications of patticca samutpada, when one realises in the depths of ones being that our self is a flow of conditions, many of which we create, and that we are connected to all other selves by an intricate web of interweaving and interpenetrating conditions, then out of this realisation there grows a compassionate imperative.

The imaginary isolated cocoon of the self that we had previously believed in and operated from gives way to a fluid sense of a changing and connected flow of self, which requires no egotistical defending or protecting. With this realisation we function more freely and fearlessly in the world, with a cosmic perspective and a natural kindness that requires no effort. And happiness is never far away, because the conditions that give rise to happiness are never far away. We could say that happiness is important because it helps us to focus our minds in such a way as to lead to a realisation of something much greater than happiness - liberation. Happiness is not an end in itself and not something that can be acquired for oneself in the way you can acquire a new coat or a new television or mobile phone. From a Buddhist perspective, what is really important and really worth giving time and energy to are the conditions that give rise to liberation of the mind, of which happiness is one.CWhat gives rise to happiness? I’ll have a look at this first of all from the perspectives of Barry Schwartz and Richard Layard and then see what Buddhism has to say.

In his book, 'The Paradox of Choice', Barry Schwartz comes to a number of conclusions about how to avoid the dissatisfaction brought about by having too much choice. Some of these conclusions are relevant to the topic of how to create the conditions for more happiness. For instance, he suggests that it is better not to take up every opportunity to make a choice that presents itself to us. Some choices are not worth making. The time and energy expended is likely to cause more dissatisfaction than it's worth. A silly example would be if you were to spend an hour in the supermarket trying to choose which packet of biscuits to buy from the three hundred choices that are usually available. Happiness and satisfaction are subjective feelings and the more objective we try to be about our choices the less likely we are to be satisfied. Another suggestion he makes is to deliberately restrict our choices. If you are buying a coat or shoes just go to two shops, rather than five or six.

He also suggests that it is far better for your own well-being to just accept what is good enough rather than always wanting the best. Another way to achieve greater satisfaction is to make our choices or decisions irreversible. He gives the example of marriage. He says: " finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and trading up. The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, 'I'm simply not going there. I've made my decision about a life partner, so this person's empathy or that person's looks really have nothing to do with me. I am not in the market -- end of story'. Agonising over whether your love is the real thing or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you've made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have, rather than constantly second-guessing it." (p.229) The point he is making is that accepting what is good enough and making a commitment to that is better for happiness. Even in the Buddhist community we often encounter people who seem incapable of committing to a particular course of practice or a particular school of Buddhism. This is no doubt the influence of our consumer culture of unlimited choice.

Another suggestion Barry Schwartz makes is to practise an "attitude of gratitude" by giving attention to what is good and satisfying and pleasing in your life. Even quite small things or things we normally take for granted, like being able to see, walk or hear. The idea is to help yourself to feel better about your life as it is and less driven to find all the supposedly new and improved products, activities, and people that will somehow enhance it. In Buddhism we have the Katannuta Bhavana, which literally translates as development of gratitude. This gratitude meditation has the effect of making us happier and more content with our lives.

Another important point made by Barry Schwartz is that we should anticipate a tendency to adapt to the new quite quickly. He says: "as the number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice. Routine decisions take so much time and attention that it becomes difficult to get through the day. In circumstances like this, we should learn to view limits on the possibilities we face as liberating not constraining. Society provides rules, standards, and norms for making choices, and individual experience creates habits. By deciding to follow a rule (for example, always wear a seat belt: never drink more than two glasses of wine in one evening), we avoid having to make a deliberate decision again and again. This kind of rule following frees up time and attention that can be devoted to thinking about choices and decisions to which rules don't apply." (p.235) This is what is behind much of the monastic tradition. It is the counter intuitive wisdom that freedom is found through discipline and restraint of appetites rather than through unlimited choice and unlimited individualism.

I think the message of Barry Schwartz's book is an important one for our time in history and an interesting contribution to the debate about the efficacy of the consumerist social engineering experiment which we have all been taking part in for the past few generations. Richard Layard, who is an economist, writes about the sources of happiness in terms of externals, public policy and the organisation of society. However, he is also keenly aware of the internal dimension to happiness and recommends Buddhist meditation among other things.

Many studies have shown that human relationships are what make people happiest -- friendship, marriage, and family. In Britain and the United States in particular, economic policies that have encouraged mobility have been very effective in generating more wealth, but have also had the unfortunate effect of destroying communities and dispersing families, thus undermining one of the primary sources of happiness. Many of the things which are lauded as beneficial to us, such as choice, flexibility and change, are actually not that helpful in creating a stable society where people trust each other. When the level of trust drops in a society, the level of happiness and well-being also drops and this is what has happened in Britain and the United States. The percentage of adults who think most people can be trusted is half that of sixty years ago. The upshot of this is that for the general well-being of society there are huge advantages to inflexibility and predictability, in short stability. Richard Layard also makes some interesting points about the role of taxation in creating a happy society, but I won’t go into that here.

Turning to the inner dimension of happiness, he thinks that it should be a major goal of education to develop an inner strength of character, which allows people to accept themselves better, and to feel more for others. He goes on to say " for adults there is a range of spiritual practices that help to bring peace of mind from Buddhist meditation to positive psychology. For those who are struggling, cognitive therapy has a good record of success. For those in the extremes of misery, psychiatric drugs and cognitive therapy have probably helped more than any other changes in the last fifty years, and we can expect further major advances." (p.230)

His recommendations for a happier society could be summarised as follows:

• monitor the development of happiness

• re-think our attitudes to taxation

• re-think our attitudes to performance related pay and bonuses

• re-think our attitudes to mobility

• spend more on helping the poor, especially in Third World countries

• Spend more on tackling the problem of mental illness

• introduce more family friendly practices at work

• eliminate high unemployment

• in schools teach the principles of morality as established truths, rather than as interesting points for discussion

• prohibit commercial advertising to children, as in Sweden

I found this last point interesting. I had not given it any thought before, probably because I don't have children, but thinking about it I could see his point very clearly. We are conditioning children from an early age to be consumers. I suspect that in one hundred and fifty years time people will look back at the practice of advertising junk food etc., to children in the same way that we now look back to one hundred and fifty years ago at the practice of sending small children up chimneys. They may very well wonder why we considered it okay to abuse the minds of young children with advertising in this way. Those are some of the thoughts of Professor Layard on the happiness of society and whether we agree with him and not, his arguments are well worth considering and discussing.

What about the Buddhist perspective on the conditions for happiness? Not long before his death, the Buddha spoke to his followers about the conditions for the stability of society and the conditions for the stability of the community of his followers. This is in the Parinibbana Sutta of the Digha Nikaya. The Buddha outlined seven conditions for the stability of society and seven conditions for the stability of the spiritual community. The first four are the same for both.

The first condition for a stable society and a stable spiritual community according to the Buddha is that the people meet together in assemblies regularly and frequently. This is acknowledging that a society or community is based on relationships of trust and meeting together is a way to build those relationships and foster that trust.

The second condition is that people meet in harmony. The text says "meet in harmony, break-up in harmony and carry on their business in harmony." I take harmony here to mean that there is genuine communication, listening to the views and opinions of others as well as proffering our own.

The third condition for the stability of society and the spiritual community is respect for tradition or not introducing change just for the sake of change.

The fourth condition is the honouring of the elders. The text says honour, respect, revere and salute the elders and consider them worth listening to. This is of course quite the opposite to the cult of youth that often pervades our society. The elders are repositories of the values and the story of society and therefore worth listening to.

The fifth condition for a stable society is that there should be no abduction of women. I think we could broaden this out and say that the exploitation of people for sexual purposes, whether women, men or children, causes great distress and undermines the stability and happiness of society.

The sixth condition is to honour, respect and revere shrines at home and abroad and continue to give proper support to them. This is a call to respect the diversity of religious belief.

And the last condition for the stability of society is to support those who are trying to live a spiritual life full-time. Support here means material support, guaranteeing their safety and allowing them to establish temples or other appropriate buildings.

These are the seven conditions for the stability of society, according to the Buddha and of course that stability is the condition that gives rise to both prosperity and well-being. Some of these overlap with Richard Layard's suggestions about the sources of happiness in a society. For instance, promoting community life and having established moral principles.

Turning now to the individual: what does Buddhism have to say about the conditions that give rise to the happiness and well-being of the individual? In a sense the whole of Buddhism is about the happiness and well-being of the individual, because individuals are the building blocks of community, of society, of a nation or world. To have a happy society, we need happy individuals. What Buddhism says is quite simple really. All our suffering is caused by clinging on to the idea of a self, a fixed and separate self, and it is only by letting go of that idea of a fixed and separate self that true happiness and liberation are found. To use more psychological language, ego or ego identity is the problem. Going beyond the limitations of ego is the solution or rather realising that ego is only a constructed idea and not a reality is the solution to the problem.

We don't just have ego-identity or self-centredness as individuals but also as groups. For example, nationalism in relation to a nation state is a kind of group egotism, a limiting and separating idea. A nation state is an abstract idea that we give reality to by a complex system of symbols and rules. An individual ego-identity is an abstract idea that we give reality to by a complex system of desires and habits.

Although what Buddhism has to say about happiness, liberation and suffering is quite simple, nevertheless, it is difficult to achieve this state of egolessness. It is easy to think it, but not to live by it or from it. And so the whole of Buddhism is essentially a pragmatic system of practices that help us go beyond the habitual, narrow, limited state of consciousness. Buddhist practices, such as meditation, ethics, reflection and ritual, aim to help us to integrate our personalities, so that we can focus our energies and develop positive emotions -- gradually transforming greed into generosity, hatred into love and delusion into wisdom. This process of practising meditation, ethics, reflection and ritual leads us to the stage of what we might call positive egotism, having a notion of self, but a healthy positive self, imbued with the aspiration to expand beyond the narrow confines of family or national conditioning, the confines of habit and assumptions. This is the level of what we could call mundane happiness. From here the practices are all about what is often referred to as spiritual death, followed by spiritual rebirth.

Spiritual death refers to the experience of egolessness, letting go of the notion of a fixed, separate self. It manifests in a total lack of selfishness, of self-centredness, and in a spontaneous response of goodwill towards all living things, spontaneous compassion. This spontaneous flow of energy towards others is the spiritual rebirth.

I have been a Buddhist for many years and I'd like to talk a bit about what that has done for me. It's always a tricky thing to talk about oneself in a way that is objective and observational rather than subjective and either inflated of deflated, but I'll have a go and I'm sure you'll make allowances for any lapses into bad taste. I grew up within the world of Irish Catholicism in the 1960s, and what I gained from that was a non-materialist outlook, an emphasis on the importance of the spiritual dimension of life. I'm not sure if that is what I was meant to get from it but I did. I left home at eighteen and went to London where I drifted into a career in accountancy. There a combination of what I observed in the people around me and what I felt in myself led me to a sense of meaninglessness; a sense that I was living a meaningless life. Sometimes I felt quite despairing and wondered whether there was any point to being alive or was it all just a cruel joke. When I was twenty two, this came to such a pitch for me that it led me to give up my career before completing my training. I decided that I must discover the meaning of life. I just couldn't bear to live for the sake of money, possessions, family and a cosy retirement. For whatever reason, none of these conventional life purposes satisfied the yearning in my heart.

For the next six years, I did odd jobs and spent a lot of time undertaking symbolic journeys, either on foot in the British Isles or by bicycle around continental Europe. I just travelled around, camping out in the woods, because it was the cheapest way to live and all the time I had in my mind that really my travelling was symbolic of an inner journey. But I didn't really have any idea of what I was looking for. Eventually, in January 1981, I settled in West Berlin. I had many adventures, and it was there I discovered Buddhism or perhaps Buddhism found me. I met a monk from Sri Lanka, who taught me the meditation for developing loving kindness and told me about the five ethical precepts of Buddhism. This was a big turning point in my life. I knew immediately that I had found what I was looking for and that I was a Buddhist. I felt very happy, even ecstatic. That was in August 1983. I have been a Buddhist ever since, but I didn't remain happy. Happiness was not so easily attained. Happiness proved very elusive.

My first task as a Buddhist was to change my ethical practice, which I found fairly easy. I was already a vegetarian, and I had given up alcohol too. I just had to stop some activities that contravened the second precept. Meditation proved to be much more difficult for me. I was a very restless and active young man and I found sitting still for more than ten minutes very difficult. Sometimes I would prepare my place to sit, light incense and sit down with great anticipation of the wonderful experience about to unfold and then ten minutes later I was in the kitchen making toast and I had no recollection of getting up and going to the kitchen. It was as if I lived in a restless daydream.

In spite of the difficulties I had with meditation it did begin to have an effect on me, and as I became more aware I discovered that my personality was quite dispersed and even in conflict. This is quite common. When people take up meditation and gain greater awareness it can seem to them that they are experiencing more difficulties than before. This is because what we first become aware of is the aspects of our psyche which were previously unconscious. When what was unconscious comes into consciousness, it can seem as if our sense of who we are is disintegrating. This was my experience. But gradually through communication with people more experienced than myself, through meditation and reflection, I began to integrate all the seemingly disparate parts of my psyche into something more coherent. This probably sounds simpler and more straightforward than it was. The actual experience for me was painful and messy, sometimes leading me into despair and depression and was characterised by almost violent internal conflict. It was a period of great unhappiness in my life. But the most intense part of this experience only lasted for about one year.

However, there was still further to go before I could be happy. There are habits of thought and emotion which are deeply ingrained. We are conditioned by our families and our societies; by school, religion and even politics, and this conditioning can leave a residue of patterns in our mind which dictates how we think and feel, how we perceive and experience life around us. In my case, I regularly fell into a sense of isolation and loneliness, and I rationalised this to myself as being to do with other people not caring about me. I tried to explain my experience of myself in terms of the imagined thoughts and actions of others. This is another surprisingly common phenomenon. Eventually after another couple of years, I saw through this. I realised that what I was experiencing had nothing to do with others and was a habitual reflex of my own mind,which led me to dislike myself and project that dislike onto others.

It was through communication with a good friend over many months, and intensive reflection by writing, that I broke through into greater awareness and freed myself from some destructive mental and emotional habits. Sometimes I used a stream of consciousness style of writing which seemed to enable me to objectify some intensely subjective states.

When I broke through this habit of feeling very isolated and lonely I started to experience a genuine happiness for the first time. I can even date that to April 1989. I mean, I experienced very positive emotions without an undertow of worry and anxiety that they were about to disappear. And the consequence of this was that I felt able to consider the needs of others in a clearer and cleaner way than before. I had always been helpful and wanted to help others, but I now realised that often that had had an unconscious motivation of wanting to feel good about myself or even of wanting to feel superior to others. Now, it felt different. After about five years as a Buddhist, I had finally reached a point of happiness, but from a Buddhist perspective, this was just the beginning. I won't go into what has happened for me in the intervening years, except to say that I'm deeply contented.

The point I am making here and perhaps the main point I want to make in this talk is that happiness is important, and for some people like me, it is quite an achievement, but nevertheless it is not an end in itself. There is much more to life, there is much more to being human. Meaning is beyond happiness, not just a means to happiness. And what we ought to be aiming at is complete liberation from all delusion of self, so that the fountains of compassion can flow freely. The higher evolution of consciousness beyond happiness, beyond psychological integration, to the heights represented by the Buddha, the perfection of Wisdom and Compassion ;this is what makes life worth living. We should not settle for less.

There are levels of happiness. From the fleeting happiness we experience when we buy something new, to the deep happiness found in friendship and other personal relationships, to the happiness of a healthy and integrated psyche. All these levels of happiness prepare the ground for the possibility of something even greater. The happiness of liberation from the confines and limitations of ego-centredness, even from subtle ego-identity. This liberation, this awakening from the delusion of self, leads to an awareness of the expansive nature of consciousness and a spontaneous response of loving kindness to all other living beings. This is what is hinted at by Shantideva in that quote with which I began this talk and which seems as good a place as any to end: "all those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others."

Listening: the essence of communication

This talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre in May 2011.

All of us here are part of the Mahasangha of Buddhist practitioners worldwide and we are also, I assume, part of the Triratna Sangha. The Triratna Community is the community or sangha of all those who choose to live and practise the Dharma in accordance with the elucidation and recommendations of Bhante Sangharakshita. Those of us who make this choice – the choice to live and practice the Dharma according to the elucidation and recommendations of Bhante – we collectively make up the Triratna Community. The Triratna Order is at the heart of this community and is made up of all those who have made a specific commitment to observe the ten precepts and go for refuge in the context of Bhante’s teaching.

We are the Triratna Community. Community implies communication. Communication is what creates and maintains community. Mutually supportive communication is the essence of Sangha. There can be no communication without listening. Occasionally I have done mediation work for people who have come into conflict and it is very noticeable in those situations that the missing ingredient is listening. Because one or both people are not listening there is no communication and when the ingredient of listening is brought back into the mix very often the problems diminish quite quickly. Ironically the only time when I’ve seen this fail completely was when one of the parties was someone who spent a lot of their time facilitating communication workshops!

There is no Communication without listening. There is no listening without interest. You have to be interested in the other person, in their life, in their point of view,if you are going to listen to them. If you are not interested in them or if your primary interest is in yourself and getting your opinion heard, then you won’t be able to listen.
Listening requires interest. There is no interest without awareness. In order to be interested in a person or in anything you have to be aware of that person or that thing. If you are not aware you can’t be interested and therefore can’t listen and therefore will not be in communication.

There is no awareness without silence. Silence, stillness, solitude, and reflection are what we need from time to time in order to allow our awareness to grow and expand and deepen. As Bhante Sangharakshita says in Crossing the Stream: “As music is born of silence, and derives its significance therefrom; and as a painting is born of empty space, and derives its significance therefrom; so are our lives born of silence, of stillness, of quietude of spirit, and derive their significance, their distinctive flavour and individual quality, therefrom. The deeper and more frequent are those moments of interior silence and stillness, the more rich in significance, the more truly meaningful, will our lives be. It is the pauses which make beautiful the music of our lives. It is the empty spaces which give richness and significance to them. And it is stillness which makes them truly useful.” (p.95)

Sometimes people think of meditation in terms of getting into blissful states of mind, but what is really important about meditation is that it enables awareness to grow and expand and deepen. Regardless of whether we are able to get into the dhyanas or not, meditation is important because it allows us to sit still, be silent and experience the solitude of our own minds at least for a short time. And it is also important because it creates the conditions that allow us to reflect more deeply and continuously. Communication, paradoxically enough, is dependant on silence. You have to develop the ability to be silent if you want to communicate. If you can be silent you can become aware of yourself and of others, if you become aware you can become interested, if you become interested you can listen and if you can listen you can communicate.

As well as being able to listen you have to learn to reflect. Reflecting on your experience in the light of the Dharma means being able to ask yourself questions and give frank, honest answers. It means seeing clearly how egotism operates in your thoughts and emotions, how it gets expressed in your words and actions. If you can see clearly how egotism operates in you and how you give expression to it, then you have greater self-knowledge. Greater self-knowledge opens up the possibility of greater empathy with others and therefore the possibility of deeper and more satisfying communication. In this context then, meditating means taking the listening and the reflecting deeper so that you get more and more glimpses of the freedom that comes from going beyond ego-identity and self-concern.

I have been talking about community and communication in terms of listening, reflecting and meditating. When through our reflections and meditation we experience letting go of the burden of self-centredness, when we experience laying down the burden of ego, even for a moment, there is a sense of relief, a sense of freedom and a feeling of release from confinement.

From silence we can learn awareness, from awareness interest can grow; from interest we find listening becomes easier. When we listen we gain food for reflection and our reflections can lead us deeper into contemplations that loosen our attachment to self-defending. This improves communication enormously and creates and develops sangha. Spiritual community can be experienced on different levels, all of which are important and essential. There are the four levels of social interaction, personal friendship, kalyana mitrata and the third order of consciousness.

Social interaction is a very important foundation and building block for spiritual community. In social interaction we experience the delights of human communication and the clash of egos and temperaments. The Buddha recommended that any society or sangha should come together frequently and in large numbers. There is something about seeing people, hearing them, touching them and being in the same physical space that cannot be in any way replicated by telephone, emails,zoom, skype, facebook or online forums. If we don’t come into contact with people in this way we can only relate to the image of them we carry in our minds and that image can never adequately represent the person in all their complexity and changeability. This first level of social interaction is very important in creating any community.

The next level is the level of personal friendships. We sometimes define the Order as a network of friendships and I think it is a very good definition. It is the personal friendships that give depth and life to our community. It is also personal friendships that make the spiritual life such a rich and pleasant experience. Nowadays there are many people in the Order who have close friendships, which have lasted for thirty years or more. The health of our community depends on this tradition of deep personal friendships continuing and growing. When we develop a friendship we are doing something that is crucial to the effectiveness of our individual spiritual practice and also something that is crucial to the vitality and strength of the community as a whole.

The third level of spiritual community is kalyana mitrata or spiritual friendship. This obviously overlaps with personal friendship, but it is not the same thing. For instance I do not have a personal friendship with Bhante, but I have very much experienced him being a kalyana mitra to me. Usually, but not always, kalyana mitrata is about those who are more experienced on the spiritual path sharing that experience with those who are less experienced and those who are less experienced being receptive to what is being communicated. You do not have to have a personal friendship with someone in order to benefit from their experience or to share your experience with them. Kalayana mitrata has been spoken of as a flow, something that flows through the sangha. It flows down through the generations and it flows within a particular spiritual community. In order for it to flow it needs the receptivity of those who wish to learn and the generosity of those who have something to impart.

The ultimate source from which all kalyana mitrata flows is the Buddha and his experience of Awakening, which he communicated to others as soon as he could. Kondanna was the first to understand. Kondanna’s receptivity to the Buddha’s message is in a sense the first instance of effective kalyana mitrata in the wider Buddhist community. (Gautama, Vishavapani Blomfield, p.116) That example of kalyana mitrata and the communication that flowed between them was the beginning of the river of spiritual friendship that has continued to flow ever since and continues to flow today within our own Triratna Community.

The fourth level of spiritual community is what Bhante has called the ‘third order of consciousness’. The third order of consciousness is what happens when there is what is called a ‘coincidence of wills’ between those who are spiritually developed. This coincidence of wills leads to a very great harmony and fellowship within the spiritual community. It is this great harmony and fellowship which is the third order of consciousness. This is the level of communication you would expect of the Aryasangha – the noble sangha of Stream Entrants and beyond. This is an aspiration and sometimes a reality for our own Triratna Community.

I have talked about communication being essential to spiritual community and I have looked at some of the elements that go to make for good communication; saying that in the end silence and reflection were essential for communication and therefore for the creation and development of Spiritual Community. I have talked about four levels of spiritual community each of which is important and essential. For our Triratna Community to be a truly spiritual community it needs to embody all four levels of Sangha, gathering together in large numbers, a network of personal friendships, the constant flow of kalyana mitrata, and the deep and satisfying harmony of the ‘third order of consciousness’. I believe our Triratna community does embody all of these to some degree.

But all of this originates with the Buddha’s Awakening and his communication of his insight to others who in turn had their own experience of insight into the nature of Reality which they communicated and so on down to the present day. This phenomenon of communication giving rise to spiritual experience and spiritual experience being communicated is the flow of kalyana mitrata and is central to the Buddha’s experience of Awakening and his subsequent teaching. Within a very short time he was telling his disciples that they should go forth and wander and teach for the good of the many, for the welfare of the many. This is the essential activity of sangha, this is the flow of kalyana mitrata at work and this is what animates the whole Buddhist tradition and what has led to the creation of the Triratna Community and what will lead to it’s continuation as a Sangha and an important spiritual tradition in the modern world.

If we continue to meet in friendly social gatherings, if we create among us deep and lasting friendships, if we have a flow of spiritual friendship and a deep and harmonious meeting of minds then we will thrive as a community. For that to happen we need to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our awareness of others through reflection, solitude and silence, we need to develop interest in others and listen to them. If we do this we will have Sangha, we will have Spiritual Community and we will be following the footsteps of the Buddha and Kondanna. Because the Buddha communicated his insight and because Kondanna listened the whole of Buddhism was possible. We will always benefit if, as well as trying to be Buddhists, we also do our best to be Kondannists.

The Five Principles of a Buddhist Business (Windhorse:Evolution)

I gave this talk to the teams at Windhorse:Evolution in Cambridge in 2006 and the five principles outlined in it were referred to when recruiting new people or training people in the ethos of the business. 

Ever since I was a teenager I have been motivated by idealism. One of the reasons I left Ireland when I was seventeen was because I was worried that my idealism might lead me into extremist politics, which in that time and place would have been very dangerous. That idealism led me to search for meaning in life and eventually to taking up Buddhist practice. That idealism has also led me to join Windhorse:Evolution. I am very keen to give my energy to trying to create a business with heart, a business that definitely makes money. But a business that makes money not to provide personal wealth, not to pay big salaries or give a big fortune to shareholders but rather a business that makes money to give away. The idealism of working for the purpose of generosity appeals very much to me, in fact it gives me a sense of purpose and meaning that I never could get from an ordinary career. I think I may be something of an extremist in this regard and I don’t really expect many people to share my passion for an idealistic life. If a few people share it, that’s enough for me. So is Windhorse:Evolution (W:E) satisfying my need for idealistic work? 

I have been here at W:E for just over one year now and sometimes when people ask me what I do here, what my role is, it is quite difficult to tell them clearly. This is because I have been learning as I proceed and my role has evolved over the year. Initially I came here at the request of the Management Forum (MF) to help them reduce the level of stress they were under. There were all sorts of reasons why the senior managers felt burdened – recruitment issues, changes in the ethos of the business, inadequate structures to allow for delegation, inadequate provision of training, a difficult trading environment and of course a shortage of time to give attention to any of these issues. One of the first things I did was to take on chairing the Management Forum meetings to help make the meetings more effective. I also began reviewing the business to try to discover what people working here felt about the business; what they valued and what they wanted to change. In the course of that review I met about 150 people, which is a good percentage of the total workforce. I am still engaged in following through the findings from that review. One of the more immediate things I did was to enlist the help of Tejasvini and Dhiramitra to produce a magazine – because that was one obvious need that could be met relatively easily. Then at the request of the managers I instituted a review of training in the business. That review, which involved several other people doing quite a bit of work, took six months and the report and recommendations that came out of it will be discussed by the MF soon. The MF also asked me to look into how to develop a new management structure for the business. I spent time looking into this and creating models which looked good on paper – but in the end I concluded that it was going to have to be an organic process and a new structure would emerge out of the present structure if we could enable more people to take responsibility and free up some of the senior managers to have a more strategic overview rather than being involved so much in the day to day details. So with the help of Shakyakumara we have been enabling more delegation of responsibility. I have organised some of those who are taking up new responsibility to meet together to share experience and get a sense of the business beyond their own area. I help by chairing these meetings. I have also organised and facilitated some strategy meetings to begin to formulate a longer-term strategy for both the wholesale and retail sides of the businesses. This whole area of management structure and delegation is very much work in progress and has some way to go. 

Another task I was requested to carry out was to look into the issues that gave rise to some people leaving the business unhappily in the past. I gathered together some people to help me with this and I met up with some of those who had left unhappily. I have now produced a report with some recommendations, which are either being implemented or discussed further. More recently I have been supporting Beth in carrying out a review of the personnel function in the business. Beth did all the work really and produced a report and recommendations, which has led to some changes in the Personnel work. The main change is that a definite distinction has been drawn between Staff Welfare work and Personnel work, with Saddharaja now managing Staff Welfare and Dharmasiddhi managing Personnel. I have also been taking a closer look at the accounts of the business and the Trust to familiarise myself with more of the financial details. The main thing I am involved with now is working even more closely with Vajraketu and taking some of the weight off his shoulders so that he can concentrate more of his time and energy on buying and selling. 

But to come back to where I began – with idealism. Underlying and underpinning everything here is our values as a business inspired by the Buddhist vision of life. This is of primary importance to me and I know to many others here. Being here connects me with what is most important to me and I would very much like that to be the case for most people. It seems to me that if we can connect to what is most important to us in terms of values when we are at work then our lives will be greatly enriched. I would like all of us to experience a real sense of community, of friendliness and mutual care. I would very much like this to be a business where like-minded people work together to create a really excellent working environment and an efficient and profitable business. I would like to see all our efforts resulting in something we could be proud of – something special as a workplace and as a business. This is a kind of dream – a dream of working with people who want to work together for the benefit of others as well as themselves; a dream of a business that exists to give away money rather than accumulate wealth for shareholders or directors or workers; a dream of a community of like-minded people willing to work hard to achieve something greater than any one individual could achieve. I would like to work in an environment where the spirit of generosity is pervasive – generosity towards each other and the generosity of generating profits to give away. I would like to work in an environment where we treat each other with care and kindness and where we treat our suppliers and customers and anybody else we encounter, with kindness and care too. However, I am well aware that none of us is perfect and that whatever ideals or values we have we will often fall short. I am also well aware that not everyone is able to respond to ideals in the same way or to the same degree. 

We will always have a diversity of responses to deal with but I guess the minimum we can expect of each other is that no one will be actively undermining what the business is about. I see my current role here as one of trying to provide a focus for the values that underpin the business as an altruistic project and at the same time helping where I can to bring more efficiency and strategic thinking to bear on the money making aspect of what we do. Currently we are looking into formulating strategies for retail and wholesale to meet the challenges of a more competitive market and shrinking profits. This also entails a lot of detailed work and research so that decisions are based on the strongest possible foundations. It is very clear that in future everybody in the business will have to have a clearer sense of how they are contributing to profitability and the impact of their teams’ activity on sales and profits. Alongside this we are looking very closely at the way we have put our values into practice in the past and considering whether some definite changes need to be made. 

We are looking at the issue of support and wages and considering whether the principles that underpin the business are being served by the current practices. We are also looking at recruitment policy and Right livelihood training. This kind of review entails going back to first principles and seeing what is needed to serve the ethical and spiritual values of the business. Here is how I would outline the first principles or fundamental principles of the business as a business and as a Buddhist organisation. 

1. Being a business is the context in which we operate and therefore as a business our first principle has to be to make money. This may seem obvious but I have encountered people who feel we should not focus on making money. However there is a difference between being a charity and being a business and although this business is owned by a charity it is not itself a charity. A charity can raise funds from donations, but a business has to create wealth. A business is in business to make money and if it doesn’t make money it will not survive for long. So making money has to be a fundamental principle of this business. This puts the customer at the centre of the business. Everything else depends upon the customer. When you have plenty of customers and they are buying in sufficient quantities then you make money and then you can do other things. We have to remember in our daily work that the customer is central to what we do, to our existence and survival as a business and we need to be aware of our customers and treat them well. We need to serve our customers. Anyone in business who feels that the customer is a nuisance or can be ignored is really deluding themselves. If we are a mandala, to use a Buddhist image, then the customer is in the centre and everything else is in relationship to the customer. The fundamental need to make money also implies that we need to give due appreciation to those who are directly involved in selling. We need to appreciate fully the sales teams. They are at the front line communicating with customers, selling products and conveying the ethos of our business – so they are really the most important people in the business. Appreciating them means understanding what a key role they play in business and supporting them fully. What they need to do their work effectively should take priority over things. Perhaps each team should have a brief update on the profitability of the business every couple of months, if you don’t already have one, as a way of staying in touch with this fundamental principle. 

 2. Now we come on to the second fundamental principle of Windhorse. What distinguishes us from most other businesses is what we do with our profits. We make money in order to give it away. This is what the business was established for and this continues to be one of its main reasons for existing. This principle is very much in line with the Buddhist values that permeate the company. We do not want to make any individual rich. We are not capitalist in the strict sense of providing dividends to shareholders in return for the provision of capital. We are not in business to provide large salaries for directors or to enable anyone to grow rich. Primarily we are in business to generate wealth in order to give it away. So generosity is our second fundamental principle. It has to be second because you cannot give away what you don’t have. As I said before we need to make money before we can give it away. I am emphasising this because some very good idealistic people really love generosity as a practice and love the fact that we help people in Kenya and Guatemala but sometimes feel that making money or even wanting to make money is somehow a bit dirty – not pure enough. But we need to be equally wholehearted about making money and generosity or we become a bicycle with only one wheel – going nowhere. 

3. The third fundamental principle of Windhorse is ethics. We want a strong ethical practice to be part of our business ethos and also to pervade the working environment. Ethical practice generates an atmosphere of trust, which is something we want to foster. Put simply, the main elements of ethical practice for us are kindness, honesty and awareness. I’ll just say something briefly about each of these. Kindness here means trying to develop and maintain an attitude of goodwill and care towards each other in the workplace and also towards our customers, suppliers and anyone we encounter in the course of the working day. Kindness is an attitude that recognises and empathises with the humanity of others. This is the kind of atmosphere we want to create – one of recognising and empathising with the humanity of others. Honesty is crucial to developing trust, both between ourselves and in relation to our customers and suppliers. This is honesty in the sense of not stealing or taking things without permission and also honesty in the sense of telling the truth. As a business we should try not to tell lies for the sake of advantage or profit and as individuals the same applies. What we say and how we speak to each other plays a large part in creating our working atmosphere. An atmosphere of trust needs honesty and truthful speech. Awareness as an ethical principle is concerned with being aware of other people. If we are to be kind or honest in relation to others we need to be aware of them. This means being aware of them as a person with feelings and thoughts, needs and qualities. This kind of awareness of people as fellow human beings is actually not so common in the world as you notice if you pay any attention to the news media. But even those of us who are relatively polite and well mannered are sometimes only aware of others to the extent that they either help or hinder us. In other words we often relate to other people as objects that to some degree cause us either pleasure or pain. As an ethical principle, awareness means going beyond that kind of relating to others and trying to glimpse the humanity beyond our own likes and dislikes. If we can do this we create an atmosphere of trust and care which makes our working lives a pleasure. Another aspect of ethics is our relation to the natural world and this is also an area that we as a business should pay attention to.  

4. The fourth fundamental principle is personal development. From a Buddhist perspective the whole purpose of life is to develop and grow from a state of relative egotism and separateness to a state of egolessness and compassion. This idea that people can change and grow and unfold their potential is one of our underlying principles. We can unfold our potential in all sorts of ways. For instance by developing skills we gain confidence and as we gain confidence we become more secure and happy to be who we are, which means there is less of a tendency to be self-centred. Developing new skills could mean just developing the ability to speak up in a group, or the ability to articulate our thoughts clearly. Or it might mean developing the ability to listen carefully – or the ability to make presentations – or simply the ability to engage with our work. For some it might mean learning leadership skills or management skills. Personal development also means knowing ourselves and knowing how we limit ourselves through habitual ways of thinking and habitual ways of acting and speaking. The more we come to know ourselves in detail the more we can change ourselves for the better and become bigger people. Meditation is one of the methods for learning to know ourselves. This is quite widely recognised these days and is being used in business more and more. The author and business consultant Danah Zohar recommends meditation to top executives, for instance. A friend of mine is just beginning to teach meditation to the employees of a large pharmaceutical company in the south of England and another friend used to teach meditation to staff at the London headquarters of Marks and Spencer. Perhaps as a business inspired by Buddhism we should give more attention to meditation too. How about each team beginning or ending the working day with fifteen minutes of quiet time? Personal development from the basic level of developing new skills right up to the spiritual heights of embodying Wisdom and Compassion is the fourth fundamental principle of Windhorse:Evolution. 

5. The fifth and last principle I want to outline is the principle of collectivity and community. You could say this is the spirit in which all the other principles are carried out. The first stage of this collectivity is working in a team – co-operating and collaborating with others as creatively as we can to achieve the goals of the team. We enhance the ability to work collectively by creating a sense of community between us and we create a sense of community by getting to know each other better and developing empathy and care between us. The first building block of a collective endeavour is to get to know our fellow team members and develop trust and kindness in the team. This is what some of our team meetings are about. Beyond that we can get a sense of the larger collective effort by reading the magazine and by interacting with people from other teams either formally through meetings or informally over lunch or at social gatherings. This is obviously more difficult for the shop teams. I think Arthasiddhi’s singing workshops are very good in this respect and we could do with many more social events and opportunities for spending time together outside the working environment. Perhaps we should initiate an annual one-day festival for everybody from here and the shops and perhaps even some of our customers, as a way of building a stronger sense of community. I think this is an area that is wide open for anyone to take initiative and there is a theatre available as a venue, which we could easily make more use of. However we go about it the principle we want to give life to is that of collectivity and community – a sense that we are doing something worthwhile together and that we are part of a community of like-minded people supporting and encouraging each other in our personal development, ethical practice and so on. 

These in brief are the five fundamental principles of Windhorse: making money, generosity, ethics, personal development and community. We are already putting them all into practice to some degree – some more than others – and there is always more we can do. There is also room for creativity and innovation in how we put these principles into practice. I have spoken about our fundamental principles. This is the foundation on which the whole organisation rests. From these principles we can build up something that we can all be proud of. What I hope we can build is a successful business – with a heart, a successful business whose purpose is to be helpful, a business where we are all motivated to give our best and co-operate with each other in order to make money which we can give away and where we are motivated to create working environments that are pervaded by trust, kindness and awareness and where it is a pleasure to work in a collective spirit with our fellow team members.

Postscript: The worldwide economic crisis of 2008 had a big adverse effect on Windhorse:Evolution and sadly the business closed in 2015. I am leaving this talk on the principles behind the business here for the benefit of others who may in the future develop another Buddhist business.

Another Look At Right Livelihood

This talk was given at Madhymaloka in Birmingham, April 2010

Right Livelihood and the Noble Eightfold Path

A question that often arises for people when they study the Noble Eightfold Path is - why did the Buddha, or whoever compiled the list, include right livelihood. Surely all the considerations of ethics with regard to livelihood are already covered in the other sections of the eightfold path -- such as right speech and right action. Why does livelihood need its own stage? One answer to this is that it was a particular issue at the time of the Buddha - trade was expanding and this brought with it particular challenges. Another answer is that it was the only aspect of social life that needed to be addressed -- because citizenship was not meaningful then and domestic life was well regulated. Another possible explanation, one that I find very plausible indeed, is that the Buddha wanted to criticise the caste system. One of the things determined by caste is one's livelihood, but the Buddha is saying no - it is not caste but ethics that should determine your livelihood.

What strikes me about Right Livelihood as a stage of the Eightfold Path is that it is concerned primarily with activity and secondarily with mental states, whereas all the other seven stages seem to me to be primarily concerned with mental states and secondarily with activity. The implication of this for me is that from the beginning there was an ethics of intention and an ethics of consequences. In other words, it is important what mental state you are in before you act and what is skilful or unskillful is determined by that mental state. Greed, hatred and delusion give rise to unskilfullness and generosity, love and wisdom give rise to skillfulness. This is the ethics of intention, the mental state determines whether an action is skilful or not.

However there are certain actions which are always unskillful. This is what the stage of right livelihood is saying. This is ethics determined by consequences. In other words, some actions have such disastrous consequences that it doesn't matter what the mental state of the perpetrator is -- they are just unskillful or to put it another way, some actions imply negative mental states. Under the heading of right livelihood the Buddha mentions trading in living beings, trading in poisons, trading in meat, intoxicants and weapons. These are to be avoided. And further to that, monks are to refrain from using divination and fortune-telling as a means of livelihood. So the implication here is that all of these activities are wrong in themselves. They are harmful to living beings and there is no way to perform these activities from a positive mental state. They can never be an expression of Metta or generosity or wisdom.

This is important because sometimes Buddhists are in danger of elevating the subjective and ignoring the objective. Sometimes we can talk and act as if meditation or mindfulness is the whole of Buddhism. But this limb of the eightfold path is reminding us that however mindful we are, however much bliss and rapture we experience in meditation, there are some things which are just plain wrong and cannot be purified from the inside out, so to speak.

The Noble Eightfold Path is a specific application of the more fundamental principle of pratitya samutpada (variously translated as dependent arising, conditioned co-production, the law of conditionality) - everything arises in dependence upon conditions. The Eightfold Path is pointing to the conditions which give rise to Insight and the mental states and ways of life which give expression to Insight, when it has arisen. The mundane Eightfold Path is indicating the conditions that give rise to knowledge and vision of things as they really are (yathabhutajnanadarshan) and the transcendental Eightfold Path gives expression to that Knowledge and Vision.

Broadening the definition of Right Livelihood

So right livelihood is part of the conditions for making spiritual progress. I think we could make the definition of right livelihood very wide indeed. The division that we take for granted between work as an activity separate from other activities is an artificial division that has grown up in money-based economies. We have come to see some of our activities as concerned with acquiring money and other activities as concerned with the leisure etc. This division is not inherent in the nature of reality -- it is socially conditioned.

The notion that we have an economic life or a work life that is somehow separate from the rest of our life is a delusion. Just as the notion that we have a spiritual life is a delusion. Everything we do in our life has economic implications. When we have a shower in the morning - the shower gel, the shampoo, the water, the shower hose, all have economic implications. The toothpaste, the toothbrush, the towel, the hair dryer, the light bulb, the electricity - all of these are being consumed by us and produced and delivered by others. This web of activity has vast implications - economic, as well as environmental, political, spiritual, domestic and so on. Our livelihood involves us in earning and consuming.

Work came to be seen as separate from the rest of life when some members of a society were able to gather a surplus of requisites for themselves and force others to work on their behalf. In primitive societies the main concern was with survival and everything was geared towards that, including religious ritual, the sculpting of fertility figures or the painting of animal images in caves. Interestingly when some of the first European settlers encountered the Native Americans they thought they were very idle because all they did was hunt and fish. "While Indian women generally gathered plants and tilled fields, native men "for the most part live idly, they do nothing but hunt and fish," observed one New England minister. William Byrd II, the scion of a wealthy Virginia family, added that Indian men "are quite idle or at most employ'd only in the Gentlemanly Diversions of Hunting and Fishing." As these quotes suggest, in England hunting and fishing were considered recreational and were generally reserved for members of the gentry. They were vital, however, to the subsistence of native peoples. (Taken from Internet article)

The ancient Hebrews viewed work as a "curse devised by God explicitly to punish the disobedience and ingratitude of Adam and Eve" (Rose, 1985, p. 28) The ancient Greeks considered all work with contempt and saw it as a hindrance to the cultivation of the mind. The Greek word for work was 'ponos' which comes from the same root as 'pain'. The Romans carried on the attitudes of the Greeks and this was also an influence on early Christian monasticism. It wasn't until Martin Luther and the Reformation that attitudes to work began to change. Calvinism brought about the greatest change and gave birth to what has come to be known as the 'Protestant work ethic'. The Calvinists believed that only a select few - the Elect - were destined to be saved and one of the few ways of telling who was favoured by God was to note who was prosperous. If you were prosperous it was because God favoured you and therefore you were probably one of the Elect. To become prosperous you had to work hard.

By the 20th century work had become a commodity under the influence of industrialisation. There were some, from the 18th century onwards, who hearkened back to some Golden age when there was no separation between work and leisure and sought to recreate their fantasy of a primitive paradise. The majority had to head for the factories, mills and mines. Nowadays we are likely to hear people talk about the importance of the work/life balance. Work is one thing, life is another and the two must be balanced. This is an idea which seems to undermine itself.

I think we as Buddhists need to take a more holistic approach than the ancient Greeks and Romans with their dependence on slaves or the modern work/life balance gurus with their dependence on a dichotomy which is strengthened by any attempts to balance it.

Work is an activity that constitutes part of the economic aspect of life and no part of life is without an economic aspect. Whether we are earning or consuming, economics is involved. Economics is basically about energy. We are either expending our energy, saving our energy or using other people’s energy and all of that has a value, a monetary value.

For instance if I visit an Art Gallery here in Birmingham, it doesn't cost me anything. No monetary transaction takes place. But it would be foolish to think that my visit to the gallery somehow falls outside the economic realm. It all costs a lot of money, a huge expenditure of energy and it is my presence there that justifies that expenditure. Or, to take another example, if I sit down to meditate - the place where I am sitting, the cushions and mats I am sitting on, the shrine, the candles, the heating and so on, all represent a vast expenditure of energy. The fact that I am not too hungry or sick to meditate also has huge economic implications.

Our life is an economic activity from cradle to grave, from morning to night and indeed all through the night. And it has always been so. The Buddha and his followers were not engaged in earning, but they did consume and were dependent on others for their subsistence. Their lives were not divorced from economics because economics is about energy and every life involves the expenditure and consumption of energy in one form or other.

Coming back to livelihood and Right livelihood. Livelihood focuses on the expenditure of energy in the production and delivery of goods and services. Right Livelihood is a use of energy in this way that causes no harm to oneself or others. But, of course, the production and delivery of goods and services cannot be divorced from the consumption of goods and services. So, I would like to extend the meaning of Right Livelihood to cover both sides of this equation - production and delivery on one side and consumption on the other. So Right Livelihood then becomes the production, delivery and consumption of goods and services in such a manner that no harm is caused to oneself or others. The Pali term for Right Livelihood is Samyak Ajiva. The dictionary translates ajiva as 'livelihood' and also as 'mode of living'. So Samyak ajiva could be translated as Right Mode of Living or perhaps even Right Lifestyle. One could take this further and say that Right Livelihood as a stage of the Noble Eightfold Path represents all altruistic activity or at least the attempt to make all activity altruistic and as such it is the beginnings of the Bodhisattva ideal. This is why I think Right Livelihood is part of the Eightfold Path. It is there because the Dharma is inherently compassionate and that compassion extends into all areas of life. Right Livelihood makes explicit the need for compassion in all our dealings with others and especially in this area of life that involves the production, delivery and consumption of goods and services. This area of life isn't really an area at all. It permeates into every detail of every moment of our lives. As we sit here we are consuming and therefore creating a demand for production. We are affecting the lives of people all over the world - the people who make our clothes, or the dye in those clothes, the washing powder we use, people who service buildings, work on oil platforms, in carpet factories and furniture factories and so on.

I am saying all this to make it obvious why Livelihood has to be included in spiritual practice and also to indicate that it is perhaps not as simple as it could at first seem from a glance at the Pali canon. A spiritual practice that ignores livelihood is like a mathematician ignoring equations.

The Buddha and his followers didn't work in the ordinary sense of the word. They expended their energy in meditation, Dharma discussion and teaching and they kept their needs to a minimum. They were valued by the society around them and given support to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing and medicine. In 1968 when Bhante Sangharakshita gave his lectures on the Eightfold Path, he encouraged his disciples to work as little as possible and to live simple lives with few needs. This was in keeping with the Buddhist tradition. It is worth noting that the consumption side of the equation was not ignored by the Buddha or Bhante. Having few needs or living a simple life means consuming less and this is an intrinsic part of any discussion about Right Livelihood.

Team Based Right Livelihood 

Fourteen years later in 1982, Bhante Sangharakshita said he would encourage those working in Team Based Right Livelihood situations to ‘work as much as possible or at least ‘as well as possible’. This is because with the development of co-ops, which later became Team Based Right Livelihood businesses, what was being developed was a new way of putting Buddhism into practice very fully, on a daily and hourly basis, in our western context. This was part of a new vision of what it meant to be a full time practitioner of the Dharma, which superseded the traditional Bhikkhu / laity split, which in much of the Buddhist world was no longer of much genuine spiritual benefit to either the Bhikkhus or the laity. It was also a development that gave women an equal opportunity to practice fully and engage in creating the conditions for the spiritual development of as many people as possible.

Team Based Right Livelihood businesses were to be ‘Right’ in the traditional sense of avoiding activities that caused harm. They were to be ‘businesses’ so that they could generate a surplus which was then used to make the Dharma available. They were to be ‘Team Based’ in the sense that the people in them would see themselves co-operating on a common project for the benefit of themselves and others.

So in principle a Team Based Right Livelihood venture was seen as a practice of exemplifying Metta, generosity and spiritual community. Each of these could be taken further. The ethics of Right Livelihood could be looked into more thoroughly and updated for our modern age. The aspect of generosity could be furthered by individuals deciding to take only enough money to meet their basic needs, leaving the rest to be given away. The spiritual community aspect, which is encompassed by the phrase ‘Team Based’, could be taken further through practices such as spiritual friendship, confession, telling life stories, taking on personal precepts, rejoicing in each other's merits and endeavouring to co-operate. In a sense their is no limit to the practice, because if taken seriously it continuously confronts egotism and encourages self-transcendence and selfless activity. Team Based Right Livelihood has the potential to bring about the transformation of the individual practitioner and, by a process of exemplification and influence, to contribute to the transformation of the wider society.

That is the vision and the theory. What about the practice? What has happened in our Triratna Community? Team Based Right Livelihood is referred to as one of the six distinctive emphases of the Triratna. How have we got on with it? Do we practice it?

Over the years since the late 1970’s many businesses have come into existence, but unfortunately most of them have gone out of existence again so that there are currently not very many team based right livelihood businesses in our Buddhist Movement. It has certainly not been a case of steady growth as it has been with urban Buddhist Centres and Retreat Centres. A lot of money has been raised, which has enabled a number of institutions to survive and develop. Windhorse:Evolution alone has given well in excess of £5 million to Dharma projects and many thousands of pounds to social projects. Many people who are now Order Members did part of their preparation for ordination in a team based right livelihood situation. Many people have had experience of the simple semi-monastic life – living in a single-sex community, and being supported on a ‘give what you can, take what you need basis’.

Currently, only a small percentage of those preparing for ordination and being ordained are having this experience. Even in Windhorse:Evolution and at some Buddhist Centres the system of Support is not fully operated, with more people now wanting a wage or salary. And of those who are engaged in team-based right livelihood, fewer are living in single-sex communities than was the case in the past.

What does all this mean? At first glance it would seem to indicate that we can only conclude that this ‘distinctive emphasis’ , is being distinctly under-emphasised! But perhaps the situation is more complex than that. Perhaps Triratna is going through a phase in it’s history when the type of right livelihood enterprise that suited an earlier (younger) generation is going to be gradually replaced by something more appropriate to the type of people who now make up the mainstream of our Movement. Or perhaps other kinds of semi-monastic lifestyle may emerge in other countries. Or perhaps another phase will emerge when younger people will revive the pioneering spirit and idealism of earlier (ad)ventures. We are a very young Movement and it would be a brave prophet who would predict how this aspect of our practice will unfold.

I sincerely hope that it does unfold, and grows richer in every sense as the years pass, because I believe it is of crucial importance to the embedding of the Dharma in our Western industrialised cultures, as well as being a very effective context in which individuals can progress spiritually.

Some years ago Subhuti gave a talk entitled Bodhisattvas in the Market Place, in which he takes a very thorough look at the whole topic of Right Livelihood. That talk was published in 2003 in a booklet entitled Roads to Freedom. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this topic. In his talk Subhuti, very skillfully and clearly draws out six different ways of practising Right Livelihood, from simply engaging in ethical work at one end of the spectrum to the Team Based Right Livelihood enterprise at the other end. I think Subhuti’s approach is very helpful and I hope many more people will read and study his lecture, which shines a light on this important area of practice.

Problems that have arisen

I would like to make a different distinction here, a distinction between two different kinds of Team Based Right Livelihood. That is the distinction between a profit making enterprise and a non- profit making enterprise, or more simply the distinction between a business and a charity. I think we have sometimes failed to be clear about this distinction in Triratna – or at least some people have been unclear about it. I have heard of the twin absurdities of some people thinking that a business should not be trying to make a profit and others thinking that a charity should be trying to make a profit. This kind of unclarity can only be detrimental. It can lead to confusion about the nature of the practice and how to practice. If you don’t have a commonly held view of what you are trying to achieve, then it is not possible to co-operate in achieving it.

This is just one issue that has been problematic in our attempts to practice Team Based Right Livelihood. There are I think a number of other issues which I will just touch on, before finishing with a few thoughts about what I think will need to happen if the practice of Team Based Right Livelihood business is to be rescued and developed in our Movement.

Another issue that comes to mind is to do with what I consider to be a certain amount of confusion about what a team is and how it should function. This confusion may stem from some things Bhante has said over the years about co-ops and co-operation. Here is an example from a Question and Answer session in Baker St., Buddhist centre in 1983.

“When you are working in a co-operative you are working together. As for ‘working’ everybody knows what that is, but ‘together’ is not me telling you what to do or you telling me what to do: in a co-operative you are all working together. To do anything together is very difficult indeed. Usually one person is the ‘leader’, the other the ‘follower’. One person takes the initiative and the other person allows them to take the initiative. One person is ‘active’, the other ‘passive’ – with or without unconscious, or semi-conscious or semi-unconscious, resentment or resistance. Whether between two people. Or three, four or a larger number of people, this is the usual situation. You very rarely get actual co-operation.

Co-operation means you all put your cards on the table. You consider what is to be done, and what is the best way of doing it. You consider this person’s suggestion and that person’s suggestion, and having discussed the matter in this way and agreed on a certain line of action you all pool your energies and your ideas, your abilities and your skills and, because you have a common objective, you all work together. No-one is trying to order anyone around. No-one is shirking his or her share of responsibility. No-one is having to take more responsibility than they really should. This is a co-operative situation. In such a situation you are very aware of other people. You make no attempt to impose yourself upon them. There is no question of ‘power’. A co-operative of any kind functions entirely in accordance with the love mode – and that isn’t easy. In a genuine co-op situation you abdicate the power mode absolutely. Only the love mode is ‘allowed’ to operate, or to have effect. If you are working in this way, or relating to others in this way, there is a sort of abnegation of your individualism, your egoism. “

This seems to me to be a strong statement of the ideal at which we are aiming, with everybody equally committed and continuously effectively Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels. It’s a statement about the self-transcendence that can come from confronting egotism and co-operating to achieve an objective goal. I don’t take it to be a statement about business management techniques or the best way to distribute responsibility and tasks.

However this kind of statement from Bhante Sangharakshita has sometimes been taken to mean that everybody must be involved in making every decision and in discussing every aspect of the business. It has sometimes been taken to mean that no-one should manage the business. At it’s worst this can lead to endless discussions about trivialities and the stultifying of initiative or entrepreneurial flair. It’s a recipe for failure in the world of business, which is pretty unforgiving of inefficiency. I have seen some of our businesses limp from week to week under this kind of levelling ideology.

Another misunderstanding that has arisen over the years arises from one of the aims of Team Based Right Livelihood being described as “ to provide a situation within which the workers can experience spiritual friendship in a way that will conduce to their spiritual growth” or Team Based Right Livelihood being spoken of as a “supportive context” for spiritual practice. Some people have interpreted this to mean that they will and should receive a certain amount of spiritual friendship, in the way that the chick in the nest receives food from it’s mother. In other words a certain amount of passivity entered into Team Based right Livelihood businesses with some people joining in the expectation that something spiritual would be given to them, provided for them, without them having to do anything. This often led to the phenomenon of someone not pulling their weight and being shocked and disappointed when it became clear that others had expectations of them. I have even heard of cases where people were surprised that they were expected to turn up on time and do a days work. If others were really ‘supportive’ how could they possibly expect so much from them !!

Another issue that has arisen over the years is that people have been recruited into Team Based Right Livelihood on the basis that they identified themselves as Buddhists regardless of whether they had any aptitude or ability for the work. This was identified as an issue by Bhante back in 1980. Here is a quote from a seminar he did with some women on the Ethics and manners section of the Jewel Ornament of Liberation :

“One of the biggest lessons of the last year or so is that, in order to establish the New Society, though you cannot do it without individuals, you cannot do it simply with individuals who are lacking in competence in certain areas. That is, in a way, quite a sobering thought. Individuality is indispensible: that is the foundation of the whole thing; but, by itself, in certain respects in isn’t enough. It is enough to take a meditation class. It’s enough for the sake of your own spiritual practice. But it’s not enough when it comes to setting up something which must function objectively and successfully in the world. You have got to have, then, in addition to individuality, know how, and practical experience, and certain abilities and capacities. This has become more evident to us than it was before.” (Mitrata, The Noble Eightfold Path, Perfect Livelihood, p.32) However, although this was evident to Bhante and others thirty years ago, for various reasons it wasn’t possible to fully act on it. I think it was only around 2005 that this problem was fully recognised in Windhorse:evolution and I think it probably hasn’t been recognised yet in some situations. This led to many unfortunate situations, with some people taking on more responsibility than they were capable of and becoming very stressed as a result, and some teams becoming very dysfunctional.

Related to this is another issue, also probably the result of a misunderstanding – a misunderstanding of Metta and compassion. This is the issue of allowing untenable situations to carry on for far too long. Asking someone to leave a situation would be seen as unkind or exercising the power mode or risking conflict. I have known of communities where everybody else left rather than ask the difficult person to go.

Another problem that has sometimes arisen in Team Based Right Livelihood is a tension between work relationships and spiritual relationships. A Kalyana Mitra might feel the need to say something as Kalyana Mitra which might have a detrimental effect on a working relationship or they might feel the need to say something as a work colleague that might have a bad effect on the friendship. This kind of issue can be amplified when a management structure is in place.

Another issue that has dogged Team Based Right Livelihood businesses over the years is a lack of entrepreneurial spirit or business sense – sometimes leading to lacklustre businesses or poor decision making and an inability to look outwards to see trends and opportunities.

Then there has been the issue of not enough Order Members engaging with the practice of Team Based right Livelihood, with the result that too much was expected of relatively new people. The complete practice of Team Based Right Livelihood and community living – give what you can take what you need, co-operation, idealism etc., demands high levels of inspiration and commitment.

Another drawback has been that people would frequently have a positive response to working with other Buddhists but no feeling of interest in the particular business. Allied to this is the perennial difficulty of staying in touch with the bigger vision and the spiritual aspirations that are the motivating force.

And sometimes the semi-monastic lifestyle was given a bad reputation by a certain harshness and regimentation that crept into some situations.

The phrase ‘give what you can, take what what you need’, has also been very problematic at times. The little word ‘need’ can cause all sorts of difficulties and be interpreted in wide variety of ways.

Given all these issues and problems ( and there may be others I haven’t thought of) it is a wonder that we have managed to create any Team Based Right Livelihood enterprises at all. The reason I have mentioned all of these difficulties is not because I want to put anyone off Team Based Right Livelihood. Far from it, I am a champion of Team Based Right Livelihood and have myself benefited enormously from the practice. The reason I mention all of these things is to try to help future generations and keep them from making the same mistakes as the pioneers.

I think we have been more successful with the non-profit making enterprises such as Buddhist Centres and Retreat Centres, than with businesses. Three reasons for this that come to mind are: In running a Buddhist Centre it is probably easier to stay in touch with the spiritual aspiration and spiritual vision that motivates the work. Secondly, Order Members and especially senior and experienced Order Members are more likely to be involved in Centres and thirdly, you can probably get by with less business acumen – indeed, business acumen might even be a hindrance at times.

What needs to happen

It could be, then, that the future of Team Based Right Livelihood is more likely to evolve in non-profit making enterprises; Buddhist Centres, Retreat Centres and other charities. The main problem that I see with this is that it would be in danger of perpetuating the traditional split between full-timers who can’t make a living without the financial support of a wider community and that wider community who rely on the full-timers to do too much on their behalf. Team Based Right Livelihood businesses overcome that split because Buddhists are both practising together and generating wealth.

If we are to rescue and develop the practice of Team Based Right Livelihood businesses, then I think we have a lot of work to do as a Buddhist Movement. Here is what I think needs to happen:

Firstly, Many more Order Members, who are effectively Going for Refuge, would need to be motivated to practice within the semi-monastic framework recommended by Bhante, i.e. working in Team Based Right Livelihood on a ‘give what you can, take what you need’ basis, living a simple life in terms of comsumption of resources and living in single-sex communities. This is the bedrock on which the practice of team Based Right Livelihood rests. There is of course plenty of room for others to live alone or with partners or families, but the foundation of the semi-monastic lifestyle is essential.

Secondly, the practices of semi-monasticism and Team Based Right Livelihood would need to be valued within the Order and Movement as a valid Insight practice. They would need to be valued in the same way that other practices are valued – such as Dharma teaching, going on retreat, meditating, studying or doing rituals. As Bhante puts it “ Insight can arise if you are working in the right sort of way. If you function, patiently and persistently, in accordance with the love mode, - if you refuse to invoke the power mode- if you are continually transcending your narrow individualism - if you really are co-operating, - if you’re sensitive to the other person’s needs and abilities, - if you really have a common aim, - if you really see through your individualistic narrowness.” (Mitrata, The Noble Eightfold Path, Perfect Livelihood, p.31)

Thirdly, I think it needs to be widely recognised that the quality of our Order is dependent on the quality of relationships between people. The depth of those relationships is influenced by how much time people spend together and how many different situations they experience each other in. If our knowledge of each other comes from a weekly meeting for a chat that will lead to a particular experience. If we always meet someone on retreat that will lead to another very particular experience of them. If we generally meet someone at an evening event at the Buddhist Centre that is another very defined experience. If we live with someone we see much more of them and we see them at their best and their worst – we get a fuller picture of them and they get a fuller picture of us.

If we not only live with someone but also work with them, we get an even more complete view of them. We experience not only how they relate to us but also how they relate to others. We experience not only their conversation but also their actions. My experience is that working with others is a more intense and demanding practice than community living and consequently, for those who engage with it fully a very rewarding practice. It is my view that at least some experience of the semi-monastic life should be part of everyone’s preparation for ordination and part of everyone’s Order life, in the same way that going on retreat is. Even it was only for a few months or a year.

Fourthly, I believe that the practice of Team Based Right Livelihood business needs to be elucidated in more detail by those with the ability to communicate. One issue here is that often those doing it don’t have the time to talk about it. There is a body of knowledge and practice that is not being fully shared. In recent years we have had some very articulate expositions of the practices of meditation and mindfulness coming out of the Order. We need an equally lucid and attractive exposition of the semi-monastic life and of team Based Right Livelihood in particular. Some of the areas that need more detailed elucidation are: what is meant by a team in this context? What is the role of leadership? What is the place of consensus decision making? How does a Team Based Right Livelihood business interact with legal and commercial requirements? What does ‘give what you can, take what you need’ really mean in practice? and so on. I tried to address some of these issues myself in a talk I gave in 1998, entitled The Spiritual Significance of Team Based Right Livelihood, which was published in a booklet and which is now available on the Internet (http://ratnaghosha.blogspot.com/ )

Conclusion

In his book Living Ethically, Bhante Sangharakshita says Right Livelihood is “work you would do regardless of how much or how little you were paid for it”. (p. 56) This is to set a very high standard. It is a standard that has been seriously challenged as people in the Order have grown older and become more concerned about issues of financial security and well-being. It has also been seriously challenged by the consumerist values of the wider society, which are so all pervasive and so persuasive. However the Order is still in it’s infancy, historically speaking, and there will inevitably be major changes in the wider society over the coming century, which may make the the practice of semi-monasticism – communal living and ethical working – seem much more normal and sensible and obvious than is currently the case.

Our Movement is unique in it’s teachings on the New Society. As Robert Bluck says in his book British Buddhism “No other [British Buddhist] tradition, has developed such a distinctive social organisation, with its single-sex communities, Right Livelihood businesses and a new Buddhist Order which is neither monastic nor lay”. I believe the practice of semi-monasticism and Team Based Right Livelihood is of obvious benefit to individuals and to society. I believe these practices do constitute a sensible norm and other more conventional frameworks are deeply flawed. I believe that the practice of Team Based Right livelihood in the context of a business is particularly helpful in avoiding any split between full-time and part-time Buddhists and in embedding the Dharma in industrialised cultures. It is because I believe this that I have willingly dedicated my life to this vision.

I have talked about Right livelihood in a general way and said that Samyak Ajiva could be seen to include both the production and consumption of goods and services. This could be supported by the secondary translation of samyak ajiva as ‘mode of living’. I outlined what I think have been various issues and problems for Team Based Right Livelihood businesses and I have mentioned four things I think will need to be in place if the practice of Team Based Right Livelihood in business is to be rescued and developed.

I would like to give the last word to Bhante Sangharakshita whose teaching I value very highly. This is a section from an interview, which was published in 2009 under the title “What is the Western Buddhist Order”:

“Question: Some people are wondering whether or not you have changed your views on the value and importance of living in single-sex communities and working in Team-based Right Livelihood.

Sangharakshita: No, I definitely have not and I feel the need to emphasise them more than ever. Team-based Right Livelihood was a development of the general principle of Right Livelihood, found in the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path, and I continue to see it as essential. It's not enough for us to practise Right Livelihood as best we can out there in the world. The ideal work situation is Team-based Right Livelihood, where dana is generated and spiritual friendship can be developed more intensively.

I also still believe in the single-sex communities and other single-sex activities. The fact that they are less popular with some people than they used to be does not mean there has been any change in my thinking. In other words, they weren't just an adaptation to the circumstances of the sixties and seventies. They are of permanent value.”