Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Secular Buddhism podcast.

This is episode number 211. I am your host, Noah Rusjeda.

And today I'm going to share the audio of a Dharma talk I gave

several weeks ago on the topic of right livelihood. I hope you enjoy this episode. Remember, as always,

you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you

learn to simply be a better whatever you already are.

Thank you for listening.

Okay, so before I left, we were slowly going through the various parts of the eightfold

path.

And that's kind of where I left off in my notes, just jumping into the very next one, which

is right livelihood.

And, you know, let's just start with there. I think for me, right livelihood is one of those

teachings that seems pretty straightforward on paper. And I think the more you sit with it,

the more it invites you to have some deep reflection about it.

I know most of the times that I've encountered it in my initial studies,

it just felt like maybe the least relevant part of the Eightfold path for me. It's like, it's just like a checklist, right? It's like, okay, well, I'm not selling weapons. I'm not dealing in poisons. I'm not trafficking humans. Okay, we're all good to go. Check. Let's move on to the next one. And I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about it.

And I think for most of us, that's probably how it feels, right? It's like, okay, we've got that one covered because we're not really dealing in any of those things.

But I do think that we may be missing something if we only look at it as a box to check

because the question of how we make a living and what that

does to us or for us might actually be one of the more significant questions that we can ask

in terms of being on a spiritual path.

So a few years ago, I had a friend, we'll call him Mark, who worked in a corporate setting, and he was really good at what he did.

...