Readers’ Forum: Creating Right Livelihood
Photo by Ganesha.Isis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ganesha_isis/
This week, I want to tap into the collective wisdom of you, my wonderful readers.
One dimension of liberated living that we explore here is how to create work that matters, “right livelihood.” And how to do so in a way that sustains and nourishes us, that doesn’t drain our energy.
One of the most inspiring slideshows I’ve ever seen comes from Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur
I invite you to take a few moments to immerse yourself in the words and music of “My Declaration of Independence,” at the bottom of this post.
And then please share your own thoughts and reflections in the comment section. Let’s help each other out here… I know you all have so much to offer each other!
- What is the biggest challenge that you have in creating right livelihood?
- How have you created right livelihood in your life? What does it look like?
- What resources have you found the most helpful (books, workshops, mentors, etc)?
- What intention would be at the center of your own Declaration of Independence?
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6 Comments
During some trying years of career-building and single-parenting, I had a quote from Lao-Tzu on my wall: “He who knows he has enough is rich.” I think the concept of “enough” is crucial to right livelihood, preventing us from constantly being driven for “more.”
October 27, 2011
Dechen, I love this re-definition of what it means to be rich! thank you!
October 29, 2011
My biggest challenge in creating right livelihhod is that I am a criminal defense attorney and many of my clients are guilty. I also know, though, that most of my clients have either a substance abuse and/or mental health issues. I try to get them the help they need so that they can hopefully turn their lives around. Books are my favorite resources. My intention behind my declaration of independence is to help the world one person at a time.
October 26, 2011
Cat, wow… sounds like that would really be a moral dilemma… how to carry out your job when it sounds like it may not be in alignment with your own values (and knowledge of what is true). It brings up an interesting question… what do we do when we have to operate in a paradigm that isn’t matched with our own values system. It’s wonderful that you are finding ways to get your clients the help that they need — I wonder if you do that through your job or if it’s additional to it.
October 29, 2011
Today, my wife Arun, received the keys to her own shop in the Santa Fe Design Center.
Backstory:
A 12 year old Arun looks up from planting rice in Northern Thailand, seeing the same small by-plane which each day signaled time for a break, she exclaimed, gesturing to the plane, “I WANT TO TOUCH YOU!”
An old man working near her gave a swat to the side of her head with his hat, saying, “You DREAM, awake.”
Throughout her teens she cultivated an apprenticeship in sewing with a local elder lady taking her under her wing. Arun took notice of the lifestyle of that elder, who didn’t work the fields, but rather set her own hours, and attended to people directly in a pleasant social flow of simple service. She chose that way of being, back then.
At seventeen she left the family farm, earned a certificate in sewing… by her mid twenties she was herself a teacher of sewing… at thirty-five she studied the Bangkok dialect (which many northern Thais do not speak) in order to deal more effectively within the garment industry. When she was hired to work in America, brought here on a tourist visa, she didn’t know that she’d be working 90 hour weeks and waiting months at a time to be paid very little. Yet her dreams have always survived her circumstances.
These days she flies back to Thailand every year, each time, recounting with joy the seeds of liberation the sprang from her gaze lifted off the murky paddy of her peer’s routine. A trait she still practices with me, drawing my attention to possibilities I might not otherwise notice.
From her first month in Santa Fe, when she worked on Governor Richardson’s suits, to signing a lease this week with a company whose board he heads, Arun has long practiced the art of living life from the inside out, which, of course, takes strict attention to what potentials arise in conditions.
It’s a real privilege to accompany such an exemplar of right livelihood through her navigations of her ever unfolding capacity to dream, and make that pliant, responsive, adaptive dream work for others as well.
October 26, 2011
Kerry, this is a WONDERFUL story. Thank you for sharing this. One of the things it conveys is the importance of tuning in to our own truth, even when it is completely different of everything we have been conditioned to believe. And the importance of having at least one person who can model an alternative way of being in the world, as that elder lady did for Arun.
Thank you, again.
October 29, 2011