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Stephen: So we continue with the

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Stephen: the eightfold path we're now on

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Stephen: in the reconfigured version, step 7

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Stephen:  work. But before getting into that I'd just like to sort of take a step back

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Stephen: and consider

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Stephen: the Afol path in terms of the overall teaching of of Gautama of the Buddha.

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Stephen: the eightfold path.

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Stephen: one could fairly say.

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Stephen: is the alpha and the Omega of the Dharma

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Stephen: beginning and the end.

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Stephen: And I mean that quite literally.

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Stephen: the the first words of the first discourse

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Stephen: begin, because I have found a middle way. And what is that middle way? It is the noble eightfold park.

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Stephen: But the very first thing, he says.

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Stephen: and then some 45 years later. But as he's lying on his deathbed between 2

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Stephen: salt trees

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Stephen: in a forest in Kosinara, Koshinagar.

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Stephen: one final disciple shows up.

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Stephen: and Arnander, the attendant, says.

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Stephen: you know he's not. He's he's about to die, you know. Just leave him alone. And Baltimore overhears this, he says, no, send him to him.

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Stephen: and so he receives this fellow.

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Stephen: It was named for the moment I temporarily forget.

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Stephen: and it receives him into the order. and then

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Stephen: this fellow asks a final question before he leaves, and he says, Look, when you're no longer with us.

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Stephen: how will we know whether

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Stephen: teaching is yours or not. I mean what will identify.

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Stephen: How can we trust someone who says, I'm teaching what the Buddha taught?

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Stephen: How will we know. and he said.

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Stephen: as long as that teaching contains the noble afoot path you can consider it as my done.

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Stephen: And then a day or so later, he dies.

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Stephen: So it's the beginning and the end.

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Stephen: And this leads me to make with some confidence the assumption that the terms the 8 words

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Stephen: that he uses to designate the 8 steps of this path

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Stephen: probably go back to the beginning, probably go back to him.

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Stephen: They weren't invented, Leighton modified.

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Stephen: I think we can trust.

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Stephen: These 8 key terms

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Stephen: are foundational.

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Stephen: Now, as we saw

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Stephen: Buddhist tradition doesn't always stick with what the words.

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Stephen: you know, you know, literally made. We saw, for example, how

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Stephen: Sankapa has come to mean for many Buddhists, at least today is something like intention. whereas if you go back to the word itself. you find that it means something more like

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Stephen: imagination. At least I would argue that

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Stephen: another term which is perhaps even more

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Stephen: puzzling

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Stephen: is the word Carmanta

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Stephen: KA. M-a-n-t a Carmanta.

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Stephen: And this is invariably translated as action.

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Stephen: So you get

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Stephen: right? View right? Thought, right speech.

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Stephen: right livelihood, right action.

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Stephen: Now, of course, action is simply in Pali or Sanskrit. Karma.

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Stephen: Karma just means action in all contexts.

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Stephen: I've yet to see a book on Buddhism that queries the fact. The the Buddha doesn't use the word action.

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Stephen: He doesn't talk about Sama Kama. He talks about summer Kamanta.

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Stephen: Different word.

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Stephen: So what does command to mean?

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Stephen: Well. easy way to find out.

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Stephen: Pick up the Pally Text Society Pali to English Dictionary and look.

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Stephen: and it gives 2 in the first meaning it gives for commander is work, employment, business.

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Stephen: and then the second meaning. It says, moral action.

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Stephen: in other words, how it has come to be understood.

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Stephen: But the the primary meaning is work, action, business employment.

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Stephen: So something fishy is going on in my mind.

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Stephen: So let's just try to break down the word, Carmanta.

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Stephen: It's a compound of 2 words comma, which means action. and anter hunter's. One of these words, that is very. very, very common.

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Stephen: very central in Pali and Sanskrit, difficult to translate.

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Stephen: Unter literally means something like a limit or a horizon

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border

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Stephen: or an end.

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Stephen: something that circumscribes or encloses something

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Stephen: it's often used negatively like, for example.

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Stephen: when the Buddha speaks of the middle way. He says it avoids the 2 unta

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Stephen: usually mistranslated as extreme. It actually means something more like a dead end

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Stephen: somewhere that. blocks or

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Stephen: doesn't really. It's a path that doesn't go anywhere.

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Stephen: There's a limit. There's a horizon. There's a boundary.

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Stephen: Kamanta, therefore, means something like the scope of your activity, the extent of your activity, the sphere within which your activity

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is focused.

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Stephen: We might think of it as

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Stephen: the answer to the question you would

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Stephen: often meet on social occasions, I'm sure, when you got to know each other on this retreat, for example, one of the first questions is, what do you do?

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Stephen: Oh, what do you do

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Stephen: now? Of course the question is just about doing action. but the answer you give is not

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Stephen: well. In the morning. I you know I get up and I have a shower, and I brush my teeth. I make my breakfast, and I take the kids to school.

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Stephen: you know. That's strictly, you know. Lit, if you took the word literally. Yeah, that is what you do.

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Stephen: But you make a very clear distinction between those activities which really are a matter of how you get through the day, how you survive.

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Stephen: As we spoke yesterday.

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Stephen: as opposed to what you do.

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Stephen: and when you answer that question, you

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Stephen: I would suggest, at least in in a group like this.

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Stephen: is, you say

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Stephen: I work as a doctor.

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Stephen: I'm a teacher, or I'm a therapist.

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Stephen: or I'm an academic. or I'm a writer.

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Stephen: In other words, you name

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Stephen: what you would otherwise call your work

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Stephen: as opposed to simply your activities.

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Stephen: And if we go back to

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Stephen: a very famous passage

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Stephen: in the in the Pali sootas, it's probably a passage that is very early, because it's it's it's suitably quirky. It's a story I'm sure most of you are familiar with. When the Buddha's recounting something that happened to him when he was a child.

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Stephen: We don't know how old, but I imagine him to be a teenager, maybe. and he says, he says, as I was sitting beneath a rose apple tree.

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Stephen: While my father was at his commander.

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Stephen: was at his work.

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Stephen: I entered into a state of meditation which he then describes as the first John. and this is

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Stephen: understood as his first. So it's sort of awareness that there's another possibility of

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Stephen: other kinds of consciousness, of being in the world that opened up to him in that moment in his childhood. But his father was at his commander

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Stephen: and clearly commander. Here

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Stephen: means work. It doesn't mean, as most Buddhist traditions describe

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Stephen: right action as not killing, not stealing, not

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Stephen: sexually abusing anyone.

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Stephen: It wasn't, though. His father was taking a break from murder, pillage, and rape.

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Stephen: It means his father was doing his job. And again, we don't know what that job was. Usually it's thought of. It was probably in the fields because he was sitting under a tree.

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Stephen: Who knows but the point is, there's plenty

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Stephen: of evidence to show.

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Stephen: The commander doesn't mean just action, as in right action commander means work.

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Stephen: Okay? Why? Why have we lost what appears to be the original meaning of the term. and substitute it with something pretty general and vague.

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Stephen: I would argue as I did argue with other. with the structure of the eightfold path culminating in spiritual activities, mindfulness and samadhi.

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Stephen: The reason why work is not

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Stephen: understood here is because monks don't work.

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Stephen: and monks and nuns are presented

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Stephen: in Buddhist tradition as the as those who exemplify the practice of the Dharma and its totality. If anybody practices the noble eightfold path.

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Stephen: Well. a monk would say. then it's us. We're the model. We're the role. Model.

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Stephen: But unfortunately, one of the things that is characteristic of monastic life is you don't have a job. That's exactly what you leave behind. You don't have a career. You don't have an employment. You don't have a business.

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Stephen: All you have

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Stephen: is a means of survival

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Stephen: which is begging. So Arg. Yes. clearly. survival

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Stephen: monks have their means of survival.

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Stephen: hyper simplicity.

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Stephen: and and

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Stephen: the ability to live that way because others are willing and able to provide you with.

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Stephen: so if we follow this

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Stephen: subversive line of thought.

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Stephen: it gives rise to the idea

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Stephen: that originally, perhaps.

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Stephen: this eightfold path was not

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Stephen: presented as a way of life for renunciate monastics.

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Stephen: but it was presented as a way of life for people who work.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: it's striking also, when when you read the Sutras. the the Buddha gives great respect, and often draws

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Stephen: on as an example for his teaching

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Stephen: the work of artisans.

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Stephen: The sootters are full of metaphors from artisans.

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Stephen: Archer, a

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Stephen: arrow makers, Fletcher's

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Stephen: carpenters, goldsmiths, goldsmiths in particular.

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Stephen: So much so. I wonder whether the Buddha's father might have been a goldsmith? The but Buddha knows an awful lot about gold.

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Stephen: anyway, who knows? And also this also fits rather well with the eightfold path.

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Stephen: being the path that leads to the restoration of a city

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Stephen: rather than the ending of suffering.

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Stephen: It all kind of hangs together.

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Stephen: We also know. And I've written about this in confession of a Buddhist atheist

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Stephen: that after the Buddha died. There was a power struggle

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Stephen: between Cussapa, who was a very grim, ascetic.

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Stephen: somewhat self-important monk. and Armando.

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Stephen: who was the nice guy.

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Stephen: the Buddha's intermediary with the world

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Stephen: and preserved in the Sutras in the Casapa Sanita.

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Stephen: You have the story of what happened

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Stephen: between Arnande and Casper in the time between the Buddha's death.

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Stephen: and the and the convening of the first council which

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Stephen: gossiper controlled. And one of the episodes is that Arnande goes off for a walk

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Stephen: with a number of his followers during this period, and he goes to a place called the Southern Hill.

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Stephen: and while he's at the southern hills. many of his followers, his monk followers returned to the Leila.

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Stephen: Then he comes back to Rajagah.

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Stephen: and Casipper immediately summons him.

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Stephen: and he says, What do you think you're up to? You don't know your measure.

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Stephen: You went off to these hills, and everybody left the monastic order. What's all that about?

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Stephen: He's constantly berating on. And

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Stephen: and then, a few days later. No, not a few days later.

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Stephen: after the end of the first council.

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Stephen: another guy shows up a guy called Purana. who we don't otherwise hear about.

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Stephen: and Purana is described as coming from the same place, the southern hills. We don't know where that is.

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Stephen: the southern hills. and and Purana is told

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Stephen: by the monks. Okay, we've had this council. We've decided what the Buddha said. From now on you must follow that

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Stephen: that body of text. What we have set in stone, as it were. and Purana says. no way. he says, I'll only

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Stephen: practice those teachings. I have heard from the Buddha's mouth himself.

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Stephen: So something was going on. And it's quite remarkable, in a way that these exchanges have been preserved. because, at least from our secular point of view, they don't make.

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Stephen: They don't reveal

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Stephen: cussopper. And these senior monks in a terribly positive light.

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Stephen: So

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Stephen: that's the the basis on which I will interpret action as work.

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Stephen: and again inject

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Stephen: quite a strong element of secularity

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Stephen: into this path.

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Stephen: But there's another consequence, too. in this rereading. because if Commenta is work. then what is argiv survival. Normally, survival

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Stephen: is translated as right livelihood, and it tends to and it's described usually as avoiding certain kinds of work that cause harm.

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Stephen: You mustn't trade in poisons, or trade in slaves.

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Stephen: or run brothels,

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Stephen: weapons, all that kind of stuff.

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Stephen: So the 2 get blurred

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Stephen: in the same way. In fact, as Hannah Arendt points out, labour and work get kind of mixed up.

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Stephen: and she teases them apart, too.

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Stephen: So, in other words, she's actually addressing a very similar problem.

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Stephen: the difference between what you do to survive and your work. And if you want to read more about that, read her book. the Human condition.

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Stephen: So

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Stephen: this points out. if I'm correct.

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Stephen: that the Buddha made a distinction between what you do in order to survive

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Stephen: and your work.

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Stephen: Now, of course, ideally.

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Stephen: your work

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Stephen: should be that which also enables you to survive.

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Stephen: And what most of us in the in our kind of societies are.

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Stephen: you know, aim for is to find work that is meaningful. satisfying, fulfilling.

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Stephen: and at the same time we get paid for it. We can pay the bills and send the kids send the kids to college. And so

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Stephen: but of course we know very well, and this is much

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Stephen: understood by artists, for example, and writers.

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Stephen: people who

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Stephen: have a vocation to make art or write novels, but

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Stephen: they can't live from it. They have to go, and.

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Stephen: you know. become, you know, teach English at high school, or whatever it might be.

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Stephen: And I think that's a very, very

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Stephen: important and crucial distinction in our own lives to differentiate between what we do

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Stephen: to survive. And there's a lot of stuff we do to survive that is not meaningful. unfulfilling. Even if we do have a a work that we really love.

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Stephen: There's all sorts of chores and tedious things

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Stephen: that we have to. you know, get on with.

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Stephen: and this by making that distinction we also open up, I think.

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Stephen: a way to start thinking more effectively and meaningfully about

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Stephen: the the work and survival being core elements of our practice.

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Stephen: because every step of the eightfold path is something that is to be

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Stephen: brought into being. It is to be Barva nud.

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Stephen: It's not just meditation, and

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Stephen: so forth, that we cultivate, but we cultivate

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Stephen: ourselves through our work.

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Stephen: and I know in my case, and possibly for many of you. one of the most meaningful and satisfying and important

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Stephen: parts of our life is our work is not not a chore might be sometimes.

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Stephen: but it's actually what we find very fulfilling.

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Stephen: in other words, that the work is not something you do, and then you go and practice the dharma, and you meditate and go on retreats.

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Stephen: Your work is your practice.

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Stephen: so

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Stephen: let's start by looking at how Hannah Areant

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Stephen: defines work as opposed to labour.

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Stephen: Work, she says, is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence. which is not

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Stephen: like labour survival embedded in the species ever-recurring life cycle.

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Stephen: So, in other words, labour. manual labour, unskilled labour is basically

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Stephen: built into the sustaining of life, and that's pretty much all it does. It's embedded in the recurring life cycle, which, although she's probably not aware of it.

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Stephen: evokes for us the idea of, sang San. It's going round and round every day is pretty much the same.

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Stephen: You eat, you work in order to be able to eat enough and support your family. So you have the energy to be able to start work again the next day, and it just goes on and on, and on, round and round and round.

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Stephen: whereas work, she says.

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Stephen: in distinction to labour.

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Stephen: provides an artificial

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Stephen: in inverted commas world of things.

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Stephen: She she then calls this the human artifice.

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Stephen: The human artifice is what human beings make

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Stephen: through their work, not through their labor.

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Stephen: And this artifice, this world, this city, let's say, is distinctly different from all natural surroundings.

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Stephen: and within its borders of this artifice individual life is housed

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Stephen: while this world is meant. while this world, this artifice.

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Stephen: is meant to outlast

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Stephen: and transcend all the individuals who ever live in it.

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Stephen: So, in other words, we, as human beings, we construct civilizations.

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Stephen: And they can be enormously varied, and I don't just mean modern civilizations.

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Stephen:  we know the more that we know about the prehistorical period. People were creating complex societies.

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Stephen: They may not have had skyscrapers and and motorways.

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Stephen: Nonetheless, they created structures

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Stephen: that

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Stephen: survived over generations that were not just

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Stephen: things that had to be done in order to get through the day

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Stephen: something survived, whether they they be the the dreamings of the aboriginals. For example.

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Stephen: these stories, these myths, these metaphors, these ways of life.

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Stephen: And then she says, the human condition of work is worldliness.

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Stephen: and that's why I've chosen to call it the worldly eightfold path.

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Stephen: It's a condition in which we construct a world

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Stephen: and a rent distinguishes then between

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Stephen: what she calls the animal laborans. the laboring animal whose sole asset basically is their body, their physical strength.

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Stephen: and Homo Faber in Latin.

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Stephen: the human being who fabricates things

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Stephen: with his or her hand

269
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Stephen: and brains. And my

270
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Stephen: and again, that resonates very much with the distinction Gautama makes between

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Stephen: agricultural labour

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Stephen: and the skill of the artisan.

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Stephen: the goldsmiths of Fletcher, and so on.

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Stephen: So over time. What happened as I've mentioned is the Buddhist tradition began to blur this distinction between labor and work. The monk renounced both.

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Stephen: and just survive by arms.

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Stephen: but it seems that quite clearly labour or survival and commander or work are 2 separate spheres in the Buddha's mind.

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Stephen: And it's through our work. not just our labour that human beings

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Stephen: construct durable buildings, roads, institutions, technologies, cities

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Stephen: that are able to withstand the entropy of the natural world.

280
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Stephen: And again, I think one of the reasons that we treasure ancient artefacts, be they the the Pyramids, or the the Buddhist caves.

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Stephen: temples in India?  paintings on cave walls.

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Stephen: The reason, I think one of the reasons we value those things is because we admire that human capacity to conceive of and erect

283
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Stephen: edifices.

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works

285
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Stephen: that resist the impermanence inherent in natural processes.

286
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Stephen: and even Buddhists. who. who, constantly

287
00:27:22.170 --> 00:27:26.280
Stephen: hammering on about the impermanence of all conditioned things.

288
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Stephen: nonetheless go to great lengths

289
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Stephen: to build institutions

290
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Stephen: and temples, and so on. that will try not to succumb, to change.

291
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Stephen: Go to a place like Borobudur in Indonesia.

292
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or Uncle Watt, or any of these places.

293
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Stephen: Eventually they start to fall apart.

294
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Stephen: But nowadays Unesco comes along and fixes them.

295
00:27:55.570 --> 00:28:04.870
Stephen: but just because something will be eventually subsumed by the earth from which it came, that's no reason not to build it. In the first place.

296
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Stephen: so the most important part of the human artifice

297
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Stephen: this is, Arent, speaking, is to offer mortals a dwelling place more permanent and stable than themselves.

298
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Stephen: and it's only in such a kind of an enduring space

299
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Stephen: that someone like Gautima or Socrates, or Confucius or Jesus was able to emerge as an exemplar

300
00:28:37.510 --> 00:28:39.090
Stephen: of what a human life

301
00:28:39.760 --> 00:28:40.640
could be.

302
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Stephen: He also extends the idea of work

303
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Stephen: from the the outer world, the creating of A,

304
00:28:55.210 --> 00:28:57.500
Stephen: of artifacts, of buildings and

305
00:28:57.570 --> 00:29:04.890
Stephen: art and culture, and so on, and legal systems. and he uses it as a metaphor

306
00:29:05.110 --> 00:29:07.360
Stephen: for the training of the self.

307
00:29:07.880 --> 00:29:09.370
Stephen: for what

308
00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:12.840
Stephen: goes on inside our souls.

309
00:29:13.940 --> 00:29:18.240
Stephen: I cited that verse yesterday or the day before, where

310
00:29:18.460 --> 00:29:20.799
Stephen: he says that the wise person

311
00:29:20.930 --> 00:29:27.570
Stephen: tames the self, or trains the self in the same way that a Fletcher

312
00:29:27.660 --> 00:29:29.479
Stephen: puts together an arrow

313
00:29:30.040 --> 00:29:30.730
or

314
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Stephen: a carpenter shapes a piece of wood.

315
00:29:36.730 --> 00:29:39.880
Stephen: so he extends the metaphor of work

316
00:29:40.010 --> 00:29:44.199
Stephen: into the work we do on ourselves.

317
00:29:44.770 --> 00:29:47.600
Stephen: and it's no accident. I think, that

318
00:29:48.600 --> 00:29:50.460
Stephen: Psychotherapists.

319
00:29:51.460 --> 00:29:53.270
Stephen: spiritual teachers.

320
00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:56.450
Stephen: shamans

321
00:29:57.450 --> 00:30:02.490
Stephen: quite naturally employ this word work. We work on ourselves.

322
00:30:04.270 --> 00:30:08.369
Stephen: We don't labor on ourselves, we work on ourselves. In other words, we.

323
00:30:09.420 --> 00:30:15.870
Stephen: we construct, we build, we reshape, we, we refine our own inner life.

324
00:30:17.720 --> 00:30:18.970
Stephen: and that's, of course.

325
00:30:20.300 --> 00:30:25.829
Stephen: essentially an ethical process. We are, as it were, sculpting

326
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character

327
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Stephen: of the kind of person we aspire to be. And that's not something you just kind of pay lip service to

328
00:30:34.890 --> 00:30:37.480
Stephen: from a dharmic perspective.

329
00:30:37.490 --> 00:30:41.490
Stephen: It has to do with a conscious training

330
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Stephen: and practice

331
00:30:45.880 --> 00:30:52.890
Stephen: with the raw materials of your own feelings, emotions, mental states, consciousness

332
00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:11.470
Stephen: think. Another point we have to emphasize. Here, too.

333
00:31:13.150 --> 00:31:14.760
Stephen: is that

334
00:31:15.660 --> 00:31:21.509
Stephen: The fourth task, which is that of cultivating the eightfold path

335
00:31:24.060 --> 00:31:28.540
Stephen: extends the very concept of what we mean by

336
00:31:28.780 --> 00:31:29.470
status.

337
00:31:30.380 --> 00:31:36.760
Stephen: And it's here I find that so a term like engaged Buddhism problematic

338
00:31:37.290 --> 00:31:46.410
Stephen: because it seems to make engagement or work. or doing something in the world as a kind of optional extra.

339
00:31:47.510 --> 00:31:50.659
Stephen: The real practice is what you do in your spiritual life.

340
00:31:51.150 --> 00:31:56.239
Stephen: I think what's going on here, and it seems to me quite clear.

341
00:31:57.110 --> 00:31:58.920
Stephen: particularly when we

342
00:31:59.220 --> 00:32:02.209
Stephen: think of the eightfold path as both

343
00:32:02.220 --> 00:32:07.000
Stephen: contemplative life and active live.

344
00:32:08.190 --> 00:32:09.339
Stephen: Is that

345
00:32:09.420 --> 00:32:13.660
Stephen: the practice extends equally to both.

346
00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:27.789
Stephen: So engaged, Buddhism is actually tacitly acknowledging that Buddhism has somehow lost sight of the engagement that was originally there.

347
00:32:29.110 --> 00:32:36.950
Stephen: and turned it into a spiritual religion. largely the preserve of celibate monastics

348
00:32:37.220 --> 00:32:38.150
Stephen: priests.

349
00:32:39.460 --> 00:32:41.560
Stephen: So a secular dumb

350
00:32:42.810 --> 00:32:45.710
Stephen: is one that seeks to restore

351
00:32:46.360 --> 00:32:57.740
Stephen: the practice. The very notion of practice to encompass the whole of our human life. and we don't make a distinction.

352
00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:02.450
Stephen: So when somebody says, What's your practice? Is often

353
00:33:02.660 --> 00:33:05.149
Stephen: happens in Buddhist circles.

354
00:33:06.270 --> 00:33:12.140
Stephen: Nat, you quite naturally find yourself naming some kind of spiritual exercise.

355
00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:23.860
Stephen: I practiced Vipassana I didn't used to. I started out as a Tibetan Buddhist, and we did, Tantra. But now I do, Vipassana, it's really good, and I'm really interested in Zen. That's what the practice is.

356
00:33:24.610 --> 00:33:36.160
Stephen: And I suspect all of us have observed that kind of languaging within ourselves. I've certainly seen it in myself. but I think really the

357
00:33:36.650 --> 00:33:44.730
Stephen: key shift from an orthodox traditional idea of the Dharma

358
00:33:45.030 --> 00:33:51.380
Stephen: to a secular one is to restore the notion of practice to everything we do.

359
00:33:56.260 --> 00:33:58.450
Stephen: But there's a shadow side to this.

360
00:34:00.010 --> 00:34:01.280
Stephen: because in its

361
00:34:01.370 --> 00:34:05.500
Stephen: in constructing an enduring world

362
00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:07.510
Stephen: through our work.

363
00:34:08.860 --> 00:34:11.219
Stephen: civilizations, cultures, and so on.

364
00:34:11.670 --> 00:34:19.309
Stephen: This almost inevitably entails acts of violence against nature.

365
00:34:19.860 --> 00:34:21.159
Stephen: particularly

366
00:34:21.949 --> 00:34:24.359
Stephen: in this in historical time.

367
00:34:24.790 --> 00:34:36.030
Stephen: And that's perhaps a characteristic of history is that our worlds are built from basically ripping the natural world apart

368
00:34:36.190 --> 00:34:47.499
Stephen: to acquire the resources needed to build buildings. we need to smelt ore for iron. We chopped down trees and forests for wood.

369
00:34:47.510 --> 00:34:52.239
Stephen: We burn coal and oil for heat and electricity.

370
00:34:54.780 --> 00:34:58.530
Stephen: So today the Homo Faber, the

371
00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:05.759
Stephen: the fabricating human being is no longer an artisan who turns clay on a wheel.

372
00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:10.110
Stephen: you know, makes beautiful

373
00:35:10.700 --> 00:35:23.329
Stephen: jewelry out of gold. but the homophobia has become the architect who constructs schools and hospitals, the technician who launches satellites into space.

374
00:35:23.870 --> 00:35:25.640
Stephen: the manufacturer

375
00:35:25.850 --> 00:35:29.029
Stephen: who builds container ships and aeroplanes and

376
00:35:29.080 --> 00:35:32.920
Stephen: computers and robots and guns and cruise missiles.

377
00:35:34.510 --> 00:35:45.459
Stephen: And so with the advent of industrial technology and the mechanisation of the labour process. the peasant farmer now becomes basically the factory worker.

378
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:48.449
Stephen: a cog in the machine

379
00:35:48.480 --> 00:35:52.079
Stephen: of producing consumer goods in factories.

380
00:35:53.140 --> 00:35:56.659
Stephen: and the artisan has now evolved to become the engineer.

381
00:35:57.680 --> 00:36:01.549
Stephen: You know who designs and and maintains this complex

382
00:36:01.580 --> 00:36:03.670
Stephen: technological machinery.

383
00:36:07.270 --> 00:36:10.849
Stephen: So in building our world.

384
00:36:11.110 --> 00:36:13.659
Stephen: particularly in the last.

385
00:36:13.860 --> 00:36:16.209
Stephen: since the Industrial Revolution, basically

386
00:36:17.050 --> 00:36:18.840
Stephen:  with

387
00:36:19.240 --> 00:36:20.790
Stephen: wreaked havoc

388
00:36:20.800 --> 00:36:24.179
Stephen: on the natural world. And again, I don't have to tell you that

389
00:36:24.500 --> 00:36:25.550
Stephen: it's self-evident.

390
00:36:26.690 --> 00:36:33.439
Stephen: And as Heidegger and others and her rent have pointed out the technological mindset has

391
00:36:33.550 --> 00:36:38.209
Stephen: the technological thinking or framing of our workers now

392
00:36:38.220 --> 00:36:41.840
Stephen: also extended into our own inner processes.

393
00:36:42.670 --> 00:36:46.350
Stephen: You know, meditation is seen as a technique, too, solving a problem

394
00:36:48.230 --> 00:36:49.240
Stephen: so

395
00:36:50.100 --> 00:36:53.859
Stephen: as much as we admire the artifacts of antiquity.

396
00:36:54.110 --> 00:36:57.549
Stephen: we have to recognise that their successor

397
00:36:58.180 --> 00:37:01.169
Stephen: is modern industrial technology.

398
00:37:01.670 --> 00:37:05.139
Stephen: which is arguably slipping out of our control.

399
00:37:07.650 --> 00:37:10.550
Stephen: And it's in the construction of this world

400
00:37:10.900 --> 00:37:22.879
Stephen: that the accelerating numbers of human beings have come to threaten the survival of numerous non-human species

401
00:37:23.100 --> 00:37:25.140
Stephen: with which we share this planet.

402
00:37:27.980 --> 00:37:34.369
Stephen:  again, I did a bit of reading and research into this. It's estimated that

403
00:37:34.820 --> 00:37:43.829
Stephen: 37,000 species are currently at risk of extinction. As a direct result of human activity.

404
00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:48.740
Stephen: I mean, that is a massive genocidal

405
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:51.350
Stephen: consequence

406
00:37:52.480 --> 00:37:53.829
Stephen: of our work.

407
00:37:54.020 --> 00:37:56.360
Stephen: of our civilizations.

408
00:37:57.080 --> 00:38:00.630
Stephen: and we all enjoy the fruits of that civilization. We're all complicit

409
00:38:02.260 --> 00:38:03.480
Stephen: unavoidably.

410
00:38:04.710 --> 00:38:07.849
Stephen: And even in 1 58,

411
00:38:08.520 --> 00:38:10.550
Stephen: when Arant wrote

412
00:38:10.910 --> 00:38:15.140
Stephen: the human condition. she already feared

413
00:38:15.330 --> 00:38:18.499
Stephen: that within a century she predicted.

414
00:38:18.570 --> 00:38:20.190
Stephen: future man

415
00:38:20.740 --> 00:38:24.519
Stephen: would come to exchange the natural world

416
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:28.320
Stephen: for something he has made himself.

417
00:38:31.040 --> 00:38:35.300
Stephen: And she considered the question as to what kind of future

418
00:38:35.460 --> 00:38:40.079
Stephen: humankind wishes to create on earth to be

419
00:38:41.120 --> 00:38:44.499
Stephen: a political question of the first order.

420
00:38:45.130 --> 00:38:52.120
Stephen: which can hardly quote, be left to the decision of professional scientists.

421
00:38:52.280 --> 00:38:53.390
Professional

422
00:38:53.500 --> 00:38:54.900
Stephen: politicians!

423
00:38:56.140 --> 00:38:57.709
Stephen: Again that echoes what

424
00:38:58.300 --> 00:39:00.519
Stephen: Winton was saying the other day

425
00:39:03.610 --> 00:39:09.179
Stephen: a political question of the first order. I think we recognize that now more and more clearly.

426
00:39:11.970 --> 00:39:15.190
Stephen: So what does this

427
00:39:15.750 --> 00:39:22.389
Stephen: in. How does the Dharma respond to this? What? How would we respond to this from a dharmic perspective

428
00:39:24.080 --> 00:39:27.660
Stephen: if we honor the fundamental?

429
00:39:28.180 --> 00:39:31.040
Stephen: You know, bases of the eightfold path.

430
00:39:31.170 --> 00:39:33.760
Stephen: then. that

431
00:39:35.240 --> 00:39:36.530
Stephen: in a way

432
00:39:37.640 --> 00:39:45.700
Stephen: acknowledges the value of work. To become fully human. to flourish is done

433
00:39:45.940 --> 00:39:49.169
Stephen: through finding meaningful work.

434
00:39:50.980 --> 00:39:55.209
Stephen: That part of our practice is about

435
00:39:55.590 --> 00:39:58.659
Stephen: being able to survive on this earth

436
00:39:59.730 --> 00:40:02.519
Stephen: in a way that does not cause its destruction.

437
00:40:03.540 --> 00:40:15.919
Stephen: And as we saw yesterday, this in terms of survival. This has very much to do with learning to distinguish between our wants and our needs.

438
00:40:16.860 --> 00:40:24.490
Stephen: How can we be content with our housing, our food. our clothing.

439
00:40:24.730 --> 00:40:28.100
Stephen: and other things that we might now consider to be.

440
00:40:28.760 --> 00:40:34.110
Stephen: you know, necessary for a flourishing human life. Education.

441
00:40:34.300 --> 00:40:36.730
Stephen: We've mentioned justice.

442
00:40:37.050 --> 00:40:40.230
Stephen: healthcare. wi-fi.

443
00:40:42.540 --> 00:40:45.510
Stephen: or however we, wherever we draw that line.

444
00:40:46.790 --> 00:40:50.759
Stephen: When we bring work into this equation.

445
00:40:51.620 --> 00:41:01.870
Stephen: this seventh step of the path there we really are concerned with the with the political matches?

446
00:41:01.880 --> 00:41:05.909
Stephen: How do we create and construct a world

447
00:41:06.340 --> 00:41:16.110
Stephen: that does not lead to the mass extinctions of other forms of life? How do we construct a world that is

448
00:41:17.420 --> 00:41:18.680
Stephen: in harmony

449
00:41:18.840 --> 00:41:21.810
Stephen: with the natural processes of

450
00:41:23.070 --> 00:41:26.380
Stephen: of the of the environment. Obviously

451
00:41:26.890 --> 00:41:32.069
Stephen: the seas and the forests. the earth itself, the atmosphere.

452
00:41:33.440 --> 00:41:39.290
Stephen: So I think what we're going through now at our particular moment in history. A

453
00:41:39.780 --> 00:41:43.770
Stephen: is a point at which we, if we do not figure out

454
00:41:44.270 --> 00:41:45.540
Stephen: how to

455
00:41:46.920 --> 00:41:54.909
Stephen: create a human artifice in arrest terms, in other words. a human environment, a human world

456
00:41:55.020 --> 00:41:59.129
Stephen: that allows and respects and honors

457
00:41:59.210 --> 00:42:01.380
Stephen: the needs of other species.

458
00:42:01.540 --> 00:42:06.839
Stephen: the needs of those who are very often reduced to lives of

459
00:42:06.910 --> 00:42:09.459
Stephen: relatively, you know, grinding.

460
00:42:09.540 --> 00:42:11.619
Stephen: often meaningless labour.

461
00:42:12.890 --> 00:42:16.190
Stephen: and all of these touch on the points that Winton's raised

462
00:42:17.340 --> 00:42:24.880
Stephen: ecolod arch, logical degeneration and destruction. increasing injustices.

463
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:28.690
Stephen: increasing division between the rich and the poor.

464
00:42:29.100 --> 00:42:36.780
Stephen: All of these elements come into this reflection into this consideration

465
00:42:40.350 --> 00:42:45.970
Stephen: so hopefully, therefore. by recovering

466
00:42:46.430 --> 00:42:57.799
Stephen: what seem to me to be core elements of the Dharma, we get a much more robust framework of practice that can

467
00:42:58.100 --> 00:43:04.270
Stephen: that could go beyond the division between my spiritual life and my engaged life.

468
00:43:04.520 --> 00:43:09.959
Stephen: It all becomes part of a single practice

469
00:43:10.090 --> 00:43:13.360
Stephen: of what we call the eightfold path.

470
00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:16.900
Stephen: the alpha and the omega

471
00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:18.850
Stephen: of the Dharma itself.

472
00:43:22.060 --> 00:43:23.670
Stephen: So I'll stop there.

473
00:43:24.470 --> 00:43:27.919
Stephen: Let's have a 5 min break, and we'll

474
00:43:31.900 --> 00:43:38.870
Stephen: So we now have about 50 min for reflection, discussion comments

475
00:43:41.180 --> 00:43:47.369
Stephen: and on screen, obviously as well. I where do we begin?

476
00:43:50.340 --> 00:43:54.619
Stephen: someone else decide the sequence. Guy, who put their hand up first.

477
00:43:55.950 --> 00:44:02.399
Stephen:  okay, Margaret. what about Margaret?

478
00:44:03.760 --> 00:44:05.250
Stephen: Margaret? Okay.

479
00:44:06.160 --> 00:44:07.500
Audience.

480
00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:12.680
thank you. Everyone.

481
00:44:19.660 --> 00:44:21.100
Stephen: Yeah.

482
00:44:21.690 --> 00:44:30.600
Stephen: Stephen. I wonder if you would tease out for us a bit the meaning and translation of

483
00:44:30.710 --> 00:44:31.770
Stephen: because

484
00:44:32.010 --> 00:44:37.280
Stephen: it qualifies everything and the traditional

485
00:44:37.480 --> 00:44:38.680
Stephen: right.

486
00:44:39.540 --> 00:44:50.590
Stephen: Everything kind of presupposes an authority to decide what's right and wrong for me. So that's number one.

487
00:44:50.660 --> 00:44:54.449
Stephen: I think the summer question is a red herring.

488
00:44:56.670 --> 00:45:06.090
Stephen: It goes without saying in the context of these values that we're concerned with how to do these things in a way that's in accordance with our values and

489
00:45:06.140 --> 00:45:07.720
Stephen: with the rest of the dharma.

490
00:45:08.100 --> 00:45:14.300
Stephen: We don't have to belabor this with this summer, and the fact that summer appears under everyone.

491
00:45:14.480 --> 00:45:19.079
Stephen: You know some of this, some of that. and the fact that this is translated as right.

492
00:45:20.430 --> 00:45:22.350
 that

493
00:45:22.960 --> 00:45:29.609
Stephen: the word doesn't. I mean the word can mean right if you wish, but literally the word Samar means complete

494
00:45:30.730 --> 00:45:34.990
Stephen: like they use this expression, Samasam Buddha.

495
00:45:35.460 --> 00:45:46.830
Stephen: a completely awakened one. not a rightly awakened one. It it has to do somehow has to do with a with wholeness.

496
00:45:47.350 --> 00:45:49.550
Stephen: But my hunch

497
00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:51.650
Stephen: is that

498
00:45:51.860 --> 00:45:56.630
Stephen: originally the word summer might have been used with regard to the first

499
00:45:57.150 --> 00:46:01.680
Stephen: perspective. right view usually mistranslated

500
00:46:01.840 --> 00:46:05.860
Stephen: a complete perspective online. And

501
00:46:05.930 --> 00:46:07.120
Stephen: the

502
00:46:08.960 --> 00:46:12.840
Stephen: what's interesting if you look at through the Suttas. There's only

503
00:46:13.420 --> 00:46:19.330
Stephen: there is a discourse called the Summer Ditty Suta, which I referred to earlier.

504
00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:27.469
Stephen: There's no other discourse called the Summer Sunkapa, or the summer voucher, or the summer Kuranta.

505
00:46:27.740 --> 00:46:31.789
Stephen: So it looks to me as though summer was just kind of added on

506
00:46:32.280 --> 00:46:41.930
Stephen: to sort of flag. The fact that this is the right kind of summer, the right kind of this, but that's very much in the interest of an orthodoxy. Who wants to impose a particular view.

507
00:46:42.530 --> 00:46:46.130
Stephen:  it's also striking that.

508
00:46:46.660 --> 00:46:48.200
Stephen: apart from

509
00:46:48.370 --> 00:46:53.099
Stephen: perspective or view and mindfulness or subtit.

510
00:46:53.130 --> 00:46:55.990
Stephen: you do not have. You do not find

511
00:46:56.160 --> 00:47:03.320
Stephen: Sutter's discourses that are dedicated to the other 6 elements of the path. There's no discourse on.

512
00:47:03.570 --> 00:47:08.739
Stephen: Write speech, for example, or write intention, or write, or however you translate it.

513
00:47:09.680 --> 00:47:11.880
Stephen: so it looks as though

514
00:47:12.200 --> 00:47:21.959
Stephen: the elements of of view which has became effectively. You know, doctrine, orthodoxy, and sati mindfulness which became

515
00:47:21.980 --> 00:47:24.170
Stephen: the basic meditation practice.

516
00:47:24.510 --> 00:47:28.500
Stephen:  there may have been earlier on. We don't know

517
00:47:28.750 --> 00:47:32.230
Stephen: discourses that address each of these areas.

518
00:47:33.440 --> 00:47:45.490
Stephen:  but I would leave, as you've noticed in my configuration. I don't bother with the word summer. I take that for Grant that we're not interested in how to do these things badly.

519
00:47:46.120 --> 00:47:56.969
Stephen: That seems beside the point. You also get a problem like summer samadhi. Right? So what would if if there's a right concentration, what's wrong concentration?

520
00:47:57.780 --> 00:48:05.780
Stephen: It doesn't really make a lot of sense. And there's very. There's virtually no discussion of the the opposites of the the wrong versions thereof.

521
00:48:06.580 --> 00:48:15.699
Stephen: So again, I think a lot of this this secularizing approach is about clearing away the dead matter.

522
00:48:15.930 --> 00:48:22.739
Stephen: the dross that's built up over the centuries just getting back to the core ideas and starting afresh

523
00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:25.500
Stephen: next question. huh?

524
00:48:25.950 --> 00:48:30.760
Stephen: I wonder why Sealer's not here on the list?

525
00:48:31.430 --> 00:48:40.509
Stephen: Mean? I know you included moral action in work. But why is Silla Celer not here? Given that

526
00:48:40.610 --> 00:48:42.620
Stephen: Essex is so important.

527
00:48:42.930 --> 00:48:46.720
Stephen: Well, Celera, I think, means really morality.

528
00:48:47.030 --> 00:48:48.360
Stephen: not ethics.

529
00:48:48.540 --> 00:48:57.799
Stephen: although it's often translated as ethics. Because, again, there's this general blurring of the difference between morality and ethics in English.

530
00:48:58.910 --> 00:49:04.350
Stephen: The other thing is that sealer is not always framed positively.

531
00:49:04.920 --> 00:49:06.730
Stephen: if you

532
00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:14.300
Stephen:  the person who enters the eightfold path is known as a stream enterer.

533
00:49:14.460 --> 00:49:23.679
Stephen: In one of the classic definitions of a stream enter, 3 things fall away. 3 fetters are lost.

534
00:49:23.990 --> 00:49:30.530
Stephen: The first one is basically something like narcissism. self view.

535
00:49:31.940 --> 00:49:40.490
Stephen: It doesn't actually use the word self. It's sakaya ditty. It's difficult to translate. It means the view of the entire body literally

536
00:49:40.640 --> 00:49:43.349
Stephen: so a kind of, I think, an obsession with

537
00:49:43.460 --> 00:49:47.670
Stephen: with self. What Lenoris speaks about is cell thing if you wish.

538
00:49:48.990 --> 00:49:54.339
Stephen: The next one is usually translated as attachment to rites and rituals.

539
00:49:55.690 --> 00:50:04.330
Stephen: But that's not what the text says, either. The text says, Sila, butter paramasa sila bata celer

540
00:50:05.420 --> 00:50:08.210
Stephen: right. and butter

541
00:50:08.510 --> 00:50:13.330
Stephen: is an ancient Indian word. That means like rules regulations.

542
00:50:13.940 --> 00:50:25.360
Stephen: and I understand that to mean moral rules. and you could either interpret it. And again, the texts, they get different versions in the early discourses.

543
00:50:25.670 --> 00:50:32.330
Stephen: But what falls away when you enter the stream is attachment to moral rules.

544
00:50:32.380 --> 00:50:37.560
Stephen: we might even say attachment to morality as opposed to ethics.

545
00:50:39.830 --> 00:50:46.750
Stephen: and even Bickubodey, who's pretty conservative. He translates sealer as virtues and vows.

546
00:50:47.660 --> 00:50:53.060
Stephen: which is, I wouldn't quite agree with that, but he recognizes that it's not ethics

547
00:50:53.240 --> 00:50:56.240
Stephen: or morale. Yeah, it's not ethics, really.

548
00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:00.810
Stephen: but in some of the early texts they don't even say, attachment to

549
00:51:02.040 --> 00:51:10.159
Stephen: is sila butter. Moral rules fall away, and this is in accordance with another phrase

550
00:51:10.270 --> 00:51:22.090
Stephen: that the Buddha uses to describe a person who has entered the stream, and that is, that the person becomes ha parapachaya, independent of others

551
00:51:22.770 --> 00:51:26.529
Stephen: in the practice, in other words, entering the stream.

552
00:51:26.770 --> 00:51:34.630
Stephen: entering the eightfold path is The moment at which you acquire

553
00:51:36.330 --> 00:51:39.080
Stephen: autonomy in your practice.

554
00:51:39.320 --> 00:51:52.739
Stephen: You're no longer dependent upon others to tell you what to do. You've found the guiding principles you've internalized them, and now you engage with the world effectively in the light of your own

555
00:51:52.970 --> 00:51:54.200
Stephen: compassion

556
00:51:54.350 --> 00:51:56.489
Stephen: and love and wisdom.

557
00:51:56.940 --> 00:52:00.639
Stephen: and you steer your own course through life. You become

558
00:52:00.700 --> 00:52:09.949
Stephen: independent in that way, and that also breaks down the idea that you are beholden to following a certain moral regime

559
00:52:10.580 --> 00:52:15.939
Stephen: in a strict of precepts and rules. You know they are broad guidelines, perhaps.

560
00:52:16.070 --> 00:52:19.009
Stephen: but they're not sort of set in stone.

561
00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:27.479
Stephen: You negotiate your way through the world in terms of what the situation calls for, not what the rule book says.

562
00:52:30.970 --> 00:52:31.930
Stephen: Thank you.

563
00:52:35.670 --> 00:52:38.149
Stephen: Okay. Libby at the back there?

564
00:52:39.100 --> 00:52:39.830
Hmm.

565
00:52:44.960 --> 00:52:53.600
Stephen: yes, thank you. One of the things that's really troubled me since I first read your your book after Buddhism.

566
00:52:53.660 --> 00:53:03.820
Stephen: and which you also mentioned again this morning, is that the Buddha, at the time of his death, was was totally or virtually alone, except for Ananda.

567
00:53:04.050 --> 00:53:11.879
Stephen: And I'm just sort of flabbergasted that a man who's kind of spent his life teaching compassion and

568
00:53:12.220 --> 00:53:14.929
you know, giving so much to his community.

569
00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:18.530
Stephen: You're so alone at the end, and I just wonder what you make of that.

570
00:53:19.720 --> 00:53:30.399
Stephen: Well, it it seems to go with the territory. You think of Socrates, you think of Jesus. They all end up basically being killed.

571
00:53:31.470 --> 00:53:33.340
Stephen: And

572
00:53:33.490 --> 00:53:46.339
Stephen: the problem with someone like Gautima or someone like Socrates, or someone like Jesus is, that is that they basically are perceived as a threat to establish structures of power.

573
00:53:48.120 --> 00:53:51.809
Stephen: They're not. They're not comfortable kind of people.

574
00:53:53.180 --> 00:54:06.410
Stephen: and you know they they buck the trend. they tread their own path. And in in the case of of Gautima. and I think again, the discourses are very clear on this. I mean.

575
00:54:06.610 --> 00:54:08.239
Stephen: we tent in the

576
00:54:08.800 --> 00:54:20.140
Stephen: Buddhism prefers. The kind of legend of Prince Sidata. you know, is is, but that's really. you know, it's a beautiful myth. It has its role.

577
00:54:20.380 --> 00:54:25.159
Stephen: but it's got nothing to do with the historical reality, as we can now understand, and

578
00:54:25.330 --> 00:54:28.770
Stephen: the discourses that have come down to us.

579
00:54:29.780 --> 00:54:33.810
Stephen: Lay out in in quite, you know, quite detail. You have to

580
00:54:34.110 --> 00:54:40.620
Stephen: find the data scattered through lots of text, which is what I spent a fair amount of time doing.

581
00:54:41.260 --> 00:54:54.540
Stephen: But, you get a fairly clear picture of the last year or so of his life as I recount him after Buddhism, but also in confession of a Buddhist atheist. And there you get effectively an account of

582
00:54:55.060 --> 00:55:07.430
Stephen: what I think you can call the passio the Passion of the Buddha a bit like the last. you know, last year of Christ's life. or what you get in the

583
00:55:08.410 --> 00:55:17.260
Stephen: in the in the first 4 books of Plato. You know the the, the the last year or so of Socrates's life.

584
00:55:17.320 --> 00:55:21.040
Stephen: which starts the whole works of Plato, starts with

585
00:55:21.240 --> 00:55:22.880
Stephen: with Socrates

586
00:55:22.910 --> 00:55:25.170
Stephen: being summoned to court.

587
00:55:25.520 --> 00:55:29.669
Stephen: then accused and then tried and then killed.

588
00:55:31.250 --> 00:55:44.010
Stephen: and the Mahab Para, Nibana Suter. the the great discourse on the passing Diganika. 16 recounts in quite some detail

589
00:55:44.230 --> 00:55:55.430
Stephen: the Buddha's last journey. And it's a journey of a person who's basically been being abandoned by his sponsors who either died

590
00:55:55.790 --> 00:55:57.760
Stephen: or turned against him

591
00:55:59.500 --> 00:56:08.029
Stephen:  But in terms of these other great paradigmatic figures. This seems to be what happens

592
00:56:08.490 --> 00:56:12.290
Stephen: that the world in reality finds it difficult to accept

593
00:56:12.770 --> 00:56:16.370
Stephen: what essentially are counterintuitive

594
00:56:17.140 --> 00:56:19.930
Stephen:  teachings and practices.

595
00:56:24.330 --> 00:56:43.800
Stephen: And my second question is that I'm really concerned about the agricultural workers or the laborers. Does this model mean that they become kind of second-class Buddhist, because they don't actually work. Well, that's a good question. I don't think so. No.

596
00:56:44.040 --> 00:56:51.189
Stephen: clearly not. And I think also, you know, you can find a dignity in labor.

597
00:56:52.630 --> 00:57:06.649
Stephen: I think of a lot of people migrant refugees who who leave behind their homelands and go to places like America and Australia, and often the first generation spend their time just working, you know, unskilled labor.

598
00:57:06.920 --> 00:57:15.870
Stephen: but they're doing it so that they can afford their children and education they can contribute to, you know, their

599
00:57:16.180 --> 00:57:18.959
Stephen: descendants having a better life.

600
00:57:19.550 --> 00:57:27.320
Stephen: And again, I think it would be too much of a caricature to say that this is all drudgery and grind, and so forth, and so on. But

601
00:57:28.500 --> 00:57:30.940
Stephen: one of the experiences that formed me

602
00:57:31.720 --> 00:57:34.640
Stephen: was after I left grammar school.

603
00:57:35.370 --> 00:57:40.850
Stephen: And all I really wanted to do was get out of England as far away as possible.

604
00:57:41.250 --> 00:57:47.290
Stephen: Was. I went to work in an asbestos factory for 6 months as a cleaner.

605
00:57:49.790 --> 00:57:53.550
Stephen: Now they knew it was dangerous, and so they paid you rather well.

606
00:57:53.810 --> 00:57:57.190
Stephen: And but they, you know, you have to wear masks and stuff. But

607
00:57:58.020 --> 00:58:08.349
Stephen: this really opened my eyes to what factory labour was about. And you know I was really, you know, shocked

608
00:58:08.640 --> 00:58:09.720
to me.

609
00:58:10.060 --> 00:58:12.479
Stephen: People perfectly good, nice people

610
00:58:12.490 --> 00:58:22.569
Stephen: who'd spent their whole lives in this factory making asbestos, doing the same repetitive tasks, you know, day after day, month after month, year after year.

611
00:58:23.330 --> 00:58:31.189
Stephen: There's something deadening about all of that. and really no time to really do much else either.

612
00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:39.750
Stephen: Of course there are examples of people who. you know who who work under these conditions and rise above those conditions clearly.

613
00:58:40.230 --> 00:58:52.230
Stephen: and I think you know labor reform, and so forth. That occurs during the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century trade unions are trying to improve the conditions under which this work is done.

614
00:58:52.720 --> 00:58:58.810
Stephen: But I can't. You know I certainly don't want to romanticize it.

615
00:58:59.130 --> 00:59:08.910
Stephen:  working, I mean. Hannah Arendt also struggles with this. and she acknowledges that you, you know a life lived in.

616
00:59:09.140 --> 00:59:17.439
Stephen: let's say, farming. doing daily toil day after day could be. She actually says it can be a life of bliss

617
00:59:18.330 --> 00:59:30.169
Stephen: that you you somehow become part of the natural cycle of like life itself. And it's something very, very rewarding and fulfilling. But it's kind of an end in itself.

618
00:59:31.480 --> 00:59:34.269
Stephen: But I think that's a very good question.

619
00:59:34.880 --> 00:59:37.359
Stephen: It's also occurred to me that

620
00:59:37.380 --> 00:59:41.070
Stephen: the this kind of work is the sort of work

621
00:59:41.220 --> 00:59:42.110
Stephen: that

622
00:59:42.800 --> 00:59:51.319
Stephen: could well be in our in the next decades or so replaced by automation.

623
00:59:52.430 --> 01:00:01.410
Stephen: AI robots a lot of this kind of repetitive work. It doesn't need to be done by human beings

624
01:00:01.520 --> 01:00:14.040
Stephen: less and less. and that might be from some respects, one of the one of the positive sides of these technological developments. It can free people up

625
01:00:14.450 --> 01:00:16.060
Stephen: from doing such work

626
01:00:16.650 --> 01:00:22.429
Stephen: because they haven't any choice very often, that's all that's available to them. Not that they like it

627
01:00:22.910 --> 01:00:29.130
Stephen: to enable them to have lives that are not tied to these

628
01:00:29.460 --> 01:00:31.450
Stephen: repetitive activities.

629
01:00:36.710 --> 01:00:43.950
Stephen: We also have someone online. So and Jeff here.

630
01:00:43.970 --> 01:00:47.260
Stephen: if I could just comment on on the last.

631
01:00:47.870 --> 01:00:53.349
Stephen: if we look at some of the research in the health data.

632
01:00:54.080 --> 01:00:58.029
Stephen: it's probably not so much

633
01:00:58.300 --> 01:01:04.189
Stephen: the type of activity that people are involved with is not whether you're a farmer or whatever.

634
01:01:04.280 --> 01:01:06.229
Stephen: But the level of autonomy

635
01:01:06.920 --> 01:01:11.429
Stephen: and responsibility that one can carry

636
01:01:11.540 --> 01:01:16.600
Stephen: in those tasks in the scope. One has 4,

637
01:01:16.780 --> 01:01:17.960
Stephen: and.

638
01:01:18.050 --> 01:01:29.280
Stephen: you know, bringing something to it rather than just kind of carrying out something that's been imposed on you. That's simply a comment. There.

639
01:01:29.510 --> 01:01:32.409
Stephen: no, thank you. I think that's that's a good point.

640
01:01:33.780 --> 01:01:45.090
Stephen: Yeah, I think what I'm what what struck me when I worked in that factory was that these people didn't really have a choice. They were kind of. you know, this was all that they could do to earn

641
01:01:45.420 --> 01:01:48.599
Stephen: the amount of money they needed to feed their family, etc. Etc.

642
01:01:49.750 --> 01:01:59.309
Stephen: And and some of these men I got to know again saw this work as something that kind of, and enable their children to get an education that's very often is that

643
01:01:59.650 --> 01:02:01.369
Stephen: their rationale for it.

644
01:02:02.130 --> 01:02:10.710
Stephen: and they would go to church. Perhaps they would have you know, they have moral values. They weren't just sort of animal laborands, as Hannah Arang calls it.

645
01:02:10.930 --> 01:02:12.369
Stephen: You know they were good people.

646
01:02:13.120 --> 01:02:19.450
Stephen: and but they weren't probably even by their own admission, maybe leading very fulfilling lives.

647
01:02:23.170 --> 01:02:29.060
Stephen: We have someone in the house of 6, the house of 6. If you can say your name first. You're on now.

648
01:02:29.130 --> 01:02:39.909
Meg: Jan. Jan. Hello! Thank you very much, Stephen. That was very it. It felt very important to make that differentiation between, as you say, work and labor

649
01:02:40.090 --> 01:02:46.950
Meg: and I'm I may be extrapolating, but I would be interested on in your comments.

650
01:02:47.040 --> 01:02:50.870
Meg: and that extrapolation is that work, as you define.

651
01:02:51.040 --> 01:02:55.039
Meg: is effectively culture building or city building.

652
01:02:55.140 --> 01:02:56.710
Meg: because it takes

653
01:02:57.030 --> 01:03:00.059
Meg: what is to something new.

654
01:03:00.140 --> 01:03:05.159
Stephen: whereas labor, as you described by by its by its definition, is

655
01:03:05.250 --> 01:03:10.819
Meg: repetitive, you know, is repetitive. And II just would make a comment that

656
01:03:11.040 --> 01:03:17.809
Meg: I also think that there's there's a big differentiation between labour and

657
01:03:18.020 --> 01:03:24.450
Meg: and and most have. I mean, I'm sure many of us have worked at labor jobs. and

658
01:03:24.460 --> 01:03:31.219
Meg: there many of them are not without their creative sides, and many of them are not without their skills.

659
01:03:31.570 --> 01:03:37.739
Meg: And there's a I can't remember, there's a feminist book, a woman who worked for $5 a day in the States, and

660
01:03:37.770 --> 01:03:52.790
Meg: you know she worked as a cleaner, and decided that it was exceedingly hard, and she needed to be exceedingly on task in order to to achieve it. So it's, you know, in a way it's not. That's A, that's aside. My real thing is comments about

661
01:03:53.170 --> 01:03:58.610
Meg: work as building culture and even maybe building the city.

662
01:04:01.570 --> 01:04:02.530
Stephen: Thank you.

663
01:04:03.910 --> 01:04:07.690
Stephen: Thank you. Yeah. Kate has got a hand.

664
01:04:09.900 --> 01:04:15.269
Stephen: Thank you. Just following on from that. The other thing about

665
01:04:15.440 --> 01:04:27.840
Stephen: about work is that there's satisfaction in being connected connected in the workplace. So having

666
01:04:27.920 --> 01:04:30.090
Stephen: some jobs.

667
01:04:31.220 --> 01:04:33.660
Stephen: Disappear.

668
01:04:34.100 --> 01:04:42.380
Stephen: A lot of people who are liberated from work are not necessarily fulfilled because of their missing connection.

669
01:04:42.550 --> 01:04:57.270
Stephen: From labor. Sorry? Yeah. So it doesn't necessarily translate into having a rich and fulfilling life. There are many other causes and conditions that permit the flourishing.

670
01:04:58.850 --> 01:05:14.710
Stephen: No, that's true. And I remember, in the Thatcher years following the miners strike. and there was a part of me that thought, why are these people fighting to be able to spend their time underground, digging out coal.

671
01:05:15.280 --> 01:05:24.810
Stephen: But it became quite clear, when I listened to their point of view. that what that work gave them was a profound sense of community.

672
01:05:25.600 --> 01:05:35.899
Stephen: a sense that you know that they were working together under hardship, but in doing so, somehow transcending that hardship

673
01:05:36.230 --> 01:05:58.019
Stephen: through their labor, if you wish, so I don't. I think it's dangerous, and I think Irene perhaps slips into this too a bit. Is that you make somewhat too much of a binary distinction between the 2. And again, we need to recollect that survival. Let's say, labor is also part of the eightfold path.

674
01:05:58.710 --> 01:06:03.360
Stephen: It's not as though that's to be sort of eliminated. I think the fact that

675
01:06:04.070 --> 01:06:10.979
Stephen: Buddha listed it on a par with the way we see. You know both our perspective, imagination

676
01:06:11.820 --> 01:06:20.909
Stephen: work and so on. Survival is part of it. It is an integral part of the path. and that I perhaps did not

677
01:06:20.990 --> 01:06:23.100
Stephen: emphasize enough. But

678
01:06:23.130 --> 01:06:30.489
Stephen: I think what I was trying to share in this talk was really about restoring an understanding of work

679
01:06:30.690 --> 01:06:38.919
Stephen: which simply doesn't exist in traditional Buddhism. And that might have because I contrasted that, following a rent

680
01:06:38.930 --> 01:06:43.809
Stephen: with labour. I probably presented an overly negative picture of labour.

681
01:06:44.370 --> 01:06:51.080
Stephen: But but yeah, I agree. I think we do need also to recover.

682
01:06:51.950 --> 01:07:09.999
Stephen: you know, a much more complex sense of these different human activities, all of which can be meaningful and valuable and and given people's, you know inclinations and proclivities they will find themselves in, you know, drawn to maybe the simplicity of that kind of work.

683
01:07:10.250 --> 01:07:20.059
Stephen:  but yeah, I struggle with it a bit, and I can't imagine there's anybody here who is an unskilled laborer

684
01:07:22.350 --> 01:07:23.590
or would want to be.

685
01:07:24.160 --> 01:07:28.070
Stephen: Am I right wrong? Suspect we all have.

686
01:07:28.580 --> 01:07:34.190
Stephen:  if you had, yeah, if we had to be, we would, of course.

687
01:07:36.620 --> 01:07:39.930
Stephen: Okay, I just here

688
01:07:40.250 --> 01:07:42.489
Stephen: Ola here. So

689
01:07:43.350 --> 01:07:54.650
Stephen: I'm struggling a bit with the concept of survival versus work, because the way I understand it, and hopefully you can help me clarify. This

690
01:07:54.760 --> 01:07:55.969
Stephen: is that

691
01:07:56.150 --> 01:08:02.169
Stephen: is actually work, which is your chapter starts with. It's in

692
01:08:02.440 --> 01:08:10.950
Stephen:  unnatural to humans and existence. Sorry, unnatural, yeah, to human existence.

693
01:08:11.130 --> 01:08:22.819
Stephen: Ultimately it is work that causes to the destruction of this planet. So if we were all in a state of survival and just producing

694
01:08:22.939 --> 01:08:26.689
Stephen: exactly what we need to survive to the next day.

695
01:08:26.700 --> 01:08:41.400
Stephen: We wouldn't be here debating about the problem how the world is distracted. Right? Yeah. So at the same time as human beings as we're evolving, we want to do something meaningful and satisfactory.

696
01:08:41.899 --> 01:08:49.209
Stephen: So why is this balance weighs this middle way when we're still engaged in something that

697
01:08:49.960 --> 01:08:55.950
Stephen: you know lets us flourish, and at the same time we don't contribute to the destruction of the world

698
01:08:56.130 --> 01:09:00.770
Stephen: if it makes sense. Yes, that that is precisely the nub of the question. Yeah.

699
01:09:01.140 --> 01:09:08.389
Stephen: but it's also part of the eightfold path work. Yeah, but work and survival. And this is what's

700
01:09:08.550 --> 01:09:11.229
Stephen: see. This is what I'm grappling with

701
01:09:11.439 --> 01:09:14.120
Stephen: the fact that they're both there.

702
01:09:14.859 --> 01:09:21.290
Stephen: And whereas traditionally, Buddhism is just treated. Ardiva livelihood.

703
01:09:22.189 --> 01:09:27.259
Stephen: you know it has. It is. It doesn't acknowledge that distinction.

704
01:09:28.170 --> 01:09:46.249
Stephen:  a very interesting book I've read recently is called A New dawn of everything by 2 writers, David Graeber and David Wainrow. One is an economist, the other is an archaeology, an anthropologist.

705
01:09:46.490 --> 01:10:04.309
Stephen: and it revisits through. It goes back to look at pre-modern prehistorical cultures through by basically archaeological evidence. And you know the the work that's being done by anthropologists to reconstruct the kind of societies that these prehistoric cultures

706
01:10:04.430 --> 01:10:10.360
Stephen: lived. and they turn out to be a lot more complex. And I'm sure this is also the

707
01:10:10.500 --> 01:10:12.820
Stephen: true. What you would

708
01:10:12.870 --> 01:10:30.850
Stephen: now understand the life of the aborigines also to mean it wasn't just, you know, people running around grunt, grunting and scraping and eating termites and stuff which is the sort of colonial caricature of these things, but the colonial mindset, and also, I think.

709
01:10:31.170 --> 01:10:44.719
Stephen: the the mindset of of the whole. Yeah, from the whole beginning of the colonial period is to dismiss people who lived in pre-modern times or prehistorical times, as basically brutal savages.

710
01:10:44.830 --> 01:10:48.010
Stephen: But go and look at the paintings on the walls of Laska.

711
01:10:49.060 --> 01:10:54.940
Stephen: These are not done by moodle savages. These are extraordinarily accomplished works of art.

712
01:10:55.080 --> 01:10:58.300
Stephen: and so, even 40,000 years ago.

713
01:10:58.590 --> 01:11:03.640
Stephen: human beings were living clearly in in sophisticated communities.

714
01:11:03.650 --> 01:11:18.990
Stephen: They were engaging in high degrees of artistic work. We don't know what they were talking about. We don't. There's no record. And if we you know, the problem is a very, this is almost a cliche.

715
01:11:19.070 --> 01:11:33.010
Stephen: The the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Just because you don't have any evidence for what the painters at last go were doing in their spare time. That doesn't mean that they were just doing nothing.

716
01:11:33.680 --> 01:11:36.310
Stephen: just lying around twiddling their thumbs.

717
01:11:36.840 --> 01:11:41.159
Stephen: and the book by graver and Wengra

718
01:11:41.800 --> 01:11:44.790
Stephen: explores a number of archaeological

719
01:11:44.820 --> 01:11:52.440
Stephen: excavations in the Americas in Central Middle East different parts of the world that reveal that the

720
01:11:52.490 --> 01:12:09.370
Stephen: there was a high degree of differentiation between these different communities, even those which were neighboring each other. They had very different arrangements, very different artifacts there was high, you know, people have. The reality is. And when I look at these caves at Lascaux.

721
01:12:09.590 --> 01:12:17.390
Stephen: in France, near where I live. You recognise in these works that these were people just like you and me.

722
01:12:17.460 --> 01:12:34.969
Stephen: They weren't more stupid. They weren't less imaginative. They were just as sensitive as we are. and it's very difficult being conditioned by the colonial mindset to allow those kinds of perceptions to come in.

723
01:12:35.430 --> 01:12:38.580
Stephen: So I think the difference between work and label

724
01:12:38.870 --> 01:12:45.780
Stephen: as something that would go right back to those times, too. there were cultures. There were civilizations

725
01:12:46.670 --> 01:12:52.300
Stephen: that came and went, came and went, came and went, and we've lost all track of them.

726
01:12:53.570 --> 01:12:57.489
Stephen: So yeah, if you're interested. And I. So I was recommended

727
01:12:58.090 --> 01:13:02.670
Stephen: a couple of books, a book called Dark emu, which maybe some of you have read. I

728
01:13:02.700 --> 01:13:06.080
Stephen: haven't read it, but it seems that that's another study that

729
01:13:06.270 --> 01:13:13.059
Stephen: brings out the you know the you know, the the sophistication, the sensitivity.

730
01:13:13.100 --> 01:13:17.020
Stephen: the complexity of these prehistoric cultures.

731
01:13:19.710 --> 01:13:22.739
Stephen: It's called a new dawn of everything.

732
01:13:24.160 --> 01:13:27.939
Stephen: a new dawn of everything it's available in paperback. Now

733
01:13:29.840 --> 01:13:43.799
Stephen: can we check? Who wants to share in the room? Because we have 4 online who want to do that as well? Can we have a show of hand of who actually wants to share or ask a question? 1, 2, 3 people. We have some online. Which way do you want to go? Stephen?

734
01:13:43.970 --> 01:13:47.489
Stephen: Item, and let's go online. Okay, Leanne, you're you're on.

735
01:13:49.170 --> 01:14:01.670
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Hello again. Yes, very interesting conversation. First, a number of points have arisen with regards to everyone's contribution.

736
01:14:01.840 --> 01:14:12.550
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So you mentioned the other day, Stephen, about the type of right of passage or apprenticeship

737
01:14:12.700 --> 01:14:19.870
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that you would like young people to be involved with, remember about monastic life. So

738
01:14:19.910 --> 01:14:21.179
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I see that

739
01:14:21.590 --> 01:14:26.640
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): doing that those sort of what you've classified as laborious type

740
01:14:26.800 --> 01:14:37.490
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): activities could be part of that apprenticeship. I myself am an Allied health professional. So I've I've been in and out of the system for 40 years.

741
01:14:37.640 --> 01:14:43.779
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I sort of to this day still think that doctors should start off by emptying bedpans.

742
01:14:43.900 --> 01:15:01.800
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And with regards to the Japanese culture, I read somewhere. It was very interesting that the the architects in in in Japan start off their apprenticeship with regards to being in the forest and relating to the elements, and then

743
01:15:01.830 --> 01:15:13.529
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): are getting a feel for the the, for the wood, for for instance, and then starting to shape, and the wood like that. Many of the metaphors that are used in in the Buddha's discourses.

744
01:15:13.670 --> 01:15:15.059
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So

745
01:15:15.720 --> 01:15:18.420
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I also. What's arisen

746
01:15:18.910 --> 01:15:21.939
is that I don't see such a strict

747
01:15:21.990 --> 01:15:29.100
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): a distinction between what you're calling work and labor or work and survival.

748
01:15:29.180 --> 01:15:45.310
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I see that work is a type of perhaps your calling in life, and it's involved with or it's related to finding one's voice and that authenticity. But in the meantime, yes, as you've said, we all need to survive.

749
01:15:45.610 --> 01:15:56.849
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I had a little giggle when someone in the the room sort of said, we're talking about food. It's like, Well, who do you think is going to produce all the food for you, lot out there?

750
01:15:57.130 --> 01:16:10.019
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): You know it's what a privilege not to be able to have to toil the land. But you can go to your market or your supermarket, or your co-OP, or wherever you're purchasing food, and it's all there ready for you. So

751
01:16:10.250 --> 01:16:22.680
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I think once again, like you, you gave the example of working in the asbestos factory as a young man. Perhaps throughout life we can see that all of these different

752
01:16:22.740 --> 01:16:29.079
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): tasks and activities that are involved in us being able to live.

753
01:16:29.100 --> 01:16:36.409
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): The the responsibility of all, and at different times in our life we can experience those things.

754
01:16:36.460 --> 01:16:41.349
and then, especially when we're young and we have the energy and the strength and the enthusiasm.

755
01:16:41.380 --> 01:16:45.069
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): With regards to that, the use of our bodies

756
01:16:45.110 --> 01:16:53.160
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that we can engage in those activities, and then, of course, move on as the younger generations come through to to

757
01:16:53.210 --> 01:16:54.620
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): to replace that

758
01:16:54.660 --> 01:17:03.020
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): also. When you said about the mechanical, you know, developing robots. You know the artificial intelligence?

759
01:17:03.280 --> 01:17:25.069
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yeah, I think we have to see the balance in all of that as well. And and you know, what type of farming are we doing? Is it organic, biodynamic, regenerative farming which is very different to agribusiness, as most of us are aware of, which, of course, is utilising a lot of those things that you've suggested.

760
01:17:25.080 --> 01:17:28.250
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): could replace the the labor.

761
01:17:28.340 --> 01:17:31.630
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): whereas the former

762
01:17:32.030 --> 01:17:33.560
requires

763
01:17:33.700 --> 01:17:42.370
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): different forms of labor. I do a lot of weeding. I don't see it as laborious. I see it as an incredible practice of presence.

764
01:17:42.410 --> 01:17:51.100
Of awareness of doing some yoga, some chigum in a functional way which is actually achieving something. So thanks for all of that.

765
01:17:52.130 --> 01:17:55.020
Stephen: Thank you, Leanne. Now I think I hear a lot of

766
01:17:55.140 --> 01:18:02.120
Stephen: echoes of agreement in in in this room here with with that, and it's true. I I mean, I've

767
01:18:03.670 --> 01:18:06.960
Stephen: I trained in a monastery in Korea

768
01:18:07.400 --> 01:18:15.730
Stephen: and in Zen Buddhism. The monks work. We, I mean, not as much as they might have. We didn't have to do as much as perhaps

769
01:18:16.020 --> 01:18:17.230
Stephen: labour. Yeah.

770
01:18:21.120 --> 01:18:42.650
Stephen: Well, whatever the we had to. You know we had to go out into the field, you know, in the middle of you know, we had to go out to the fields. We had to weed the soybean crops. We had to make the kimchi if if the river was! We had a heavy storm, and the river got silted up. We had to make chain gangs with buckets to enter the river.

771
01:18:42.760 --> 01:18:46.030
Stephen: and these are an integral part of the practice. Absolutely.

772
01:18:46.190 --> 01:18:53.779
Stephen: They weren't exactly fun, but I didn't dislike them. In fact, sometimes it was rather nice getting out of the meditation hall and

773
01:18:53.800 --> 01:18:55.950
Stephen: and scrabbling around in the dirt.

774
01:18:56.080 --> 01:19:01.920
Stephen: and there's a famous citation from Baijan. It says, A day without

775
01:19:02.250 --> 01:19:05.809
Stephen: work. Slash labour is a day without food.

776
01:19:05.950 --> 01:19:19.689
Stephen: In other words, you must be acutely conscious that every grain of rice you eat is the result of someone's labor, and there's a strict rule in the monastery that you cannot leave a single grain of rice uneaten in your bowl.

777
01:19:20.720 --> 01:19:24.599
Stephen: And that's some practice. Martin and I followed to this day.

778
01:19:24.870 --> 01:19:34.110
Stephen: So yeah, I agree with you. I think that that sort of training. And this hypothetical monastic university that I'm dreaming up.

779
01:19:34.230 --> 01:19:36.910
Stephen: it would include that

780
01:19:37.150 --> 01:19:41.510
Stephen: would include definitely getting your hands dirty.

781
01:19:41.610 --> 01:19:54.510
Stephen: getting in touch with the soil. because that's also a part of our going back to what you were saying, Andy, about reconnecting with the earth as well. But there is a big difference, as you say, between agribusiness, which is just machinery.

782
01:19:54.860 --> 01:20:06.610
Stephen: and the sort of gardening and farm farm work that many of my friends participate in, which is permaculture, and and so forth. And so, which is which is a very different

783
01:20:06.630 --> 01:20:11.429
Stephen: kind of activity. It's it's more like work than labor, really.

784
01:20:11.460 --> 01:20:26.440
Stephen: there's a highly. There's a clear understanding of your relationship with the crops and exactly how you can best produce them. It's a skill. It's a highly refined skill. It's based on a scientific understanding of how we enter. You know how the plants grow and

785
01:20:26.570 --> 01:20:29.400
Stephen: can flourish, and so forth, and so on. At that point.

786
01:20:29.690 --> 01:20:39.800
Stephen: you know, it ceases to become mindless labour. It's not mindless labour at all. And it's also interesting. In the metaphor, in the parable, the metaphor the Buddha uses about.

787
01:20:40.370 --> 01:20:45.270
Stephen: Cultivating himself, he says, like a farmer irrigating the field

788
01:20:46.060 --> 01:20:52.069
Stephen: right? He doesn't exclude the farm like an Fletcher fashioning an arrow like a carpenter

789
01:20:52.560 --> 01:20:55.240
Stephen: shaping a piece of wood, so farming is included.

790
01:20:55.590 --> 01:20:57.430
Stephen: He's not dismissing.

791
01:20:57.680 --> 01:21:06.609
Stephen: He's recognizing it, too, as a skill in the transformation of the soil and the land. and the you know the

792
01:21:07.870 --> 01:21:14.249
Stephen: understanding of of growing crops in a skillful, healthy, sustainable way.

793
01:21:15.060 --> 01:21:16.510
Stephen: So yeah, we remind you.

794
01:21:16.620 --> 01:21:17.290
Stephen: Hello.

795
01:21:18.020 --> 01:21:20.140
Stephen: Oh, sorry. I'm just gonna

796
01:21:20.350 --> 01:21:25.260
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I was gonna say, just one last comment at with regards to autonomy

797
01:21:25.280 --> 01:21:34.389
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that someone in your your room there brought up. Yes, it's so. That is such a deciding factor in all of this.

798
01:21:34.440 --> 01:21:48.160
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and you know, during the course of my vocation I have worked in workplace rehabilitation, and one of the a lot of the research in the early days when, before this big transition in that area

799
01:21:48.250 --> 01:21:49.580
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): was a

800
01:21:49.590 --> 01:22:01.089
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): with regards to powerlessness in the work place, and they were able to clearly show that if someone didn't, did feel that sense of powerlessness and they had no autonomy.

801
01:22:01.420 --> 01:22:02.660
Then

802
01:22:02.910 --> 01:22:09.720
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): their workplace injury, recovery was doomed. Really

803
01:22:09.750 --> 01:22:19.710
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): to be quite frank. So yes, I think that's a really magic ingredient. Is this thing of autonomy rather than feeling like a slave?

804
01:22:19.960 --> 01:22:22.929
Stephen: Exactly. No, I think that's a very important point.

805
01:22:24.210 --> 01:22:34.000
Stephen: So how about we go to Gowan on on here? And then Suzanne online after that. thank you. And this picks up a little bit on that that last comment.

806
01:22:34.760 --> 01:22:55.489
Stephen: think this is a really difficult area, and there's a couple of things which make it difficult. One is we don't actually know how people feel about their work on the whole. So it's great for us to talk about what it's like being a farmer or someone in a factory, or whatever we need far greater understanding, and they need to be speaking for themselves about what is what

807
01:22:56.620 --> 01:23:10.320
Stephen: you might think that the criterion should be what leads to human flourishing, because, after all, that's our foundation. And it seems to me there's I mean, from what we know and what people are trying to do with workplace design.

808
01:23:10.390 --> 01:23:20.979
Stephen: Some of the things that relate to flourishing are the nature of the task, so is it sweeping up asbestos, or is it painting? On a vase or something like that?

809
01:23:21.140 --> 01:23:23.649
Second, the way the work is organized.

810
01:23:23.710 --> 01:23:24.830
Stephen: and

811
01:23:25.170 --> 01:23:36.830
Stephen: a lot of the problems that arise at the moment is that work is organized around the needs of the machine, not the needs of the people. The third one is

812
01:23:37.670 --> 01:23:43.990
Stephen: the sociality in the workplace for a lot of people. In fact, work is

813
01:23:44.230 --> 01:24:06.260
Stephen: a place where they grow, have their society. The people they work with are perhaps people they're closest to. And so that's another important thing. And the last one is the sense of making a contribution. What we do matters. And I remember hearing about workers in a particular atomic bomb factory in America, being very proud because they made the best atomic bombs in America.

814
01:24:06.740 --> 01:24:15.999
Stephen: So I would suggest that it's much less about the type of work we're doing, the sort of thing we're doing. It's very much more about the organization of it.

815
01:24:16.240 --> 01:24:23.880
Stephen: And that's something which shifts very, very quickly and has shifted very quickly since you or I were in a factory. Yeah.

816
01:24:24.030 --> 01:24:29.970
Stephen: if you or I were working in Amazon now, it would be a very, very different experience.

817
01:24:30.420 --> 01:24:39.210
Stephen: So what I would suggest with this is not getting so caught up about the distinction, but thinking that the root is

818
01:24:39.220 --> 01:24:47.919
Stephen: what leads to the flourishing of this human being. We've got a fair understanding of some of the things that contribute to that flourishing through work.

819
01:24:48.330 --> 01:25:00.720
Stephen: and it's much less about moving from blue collar to white collar, and much more about having work that is built around the needs and aspirations of people who are doing it

820
01:25:01.410 --> 01:25:06.240
Stephen: as well as the economic needs of whatever entity they are working within.

821
01:25:06.480 --> 01:25:13.190
Stephen: So that was just, I'm completely on message. With all of that it's very helpful.

822
01:25:13.560 --> 01:25:27.459
Stephen: It's very helpful. II hope Winton this afternoon will will also shed some further light on this and of course you know II speak from very little experience, and an old experience, too. We don't have asbestos factories anymore.

823
01:25:27.510 --> 01:25:30.010
Stephen: for example, that that doesn't exist.

824
01:25:30.320 --> 01:25:45.199
Stephen:  so yeah, I agree with you. I don't think it is about making those rather crude distinctions between blue collar, white collar, and I don't think I was really trying to say that, but I do think it's helpful to make a differentiation between even

825
01:25:45.490 --> 01:25:59.220
Stephen: in our own. You know our lives, my life, for example, I can differentiate between things I have to do that I don't really want to do, but have to do to survive. There's all kinds of tedious things that we all have to get done.

826
01:25:59.350 --> 01:26:06.909
Stephen: and I try to do that with a degree of of mindfulness and awareness, and not getting stressed about it and all the other skills. And

827
01:26:08.050 --> 01:26:10.899
Stephen: and sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't.

828
01:26:11.010 --> 01:26:18.360
Stephen: And so it might be helpful to also to think of that in terms of each of us we have things

829
01:26:18.410 --> 01:26:21.549
Stephen: we have to labour to do certain things, and

830
01:26:21.710 --> 01:26:28.950
Stephen: we also cherish very much what we consider to be our real vocation. And and and and you know, work

831
01:26:28.960 --> 01:26:32.589
Stephen: that is fulfilling and meaningful for us. And I can see that in myself.

832
01:26:33.280 --> 01:26:46.239
Stephen:  what was I gonna say? Yeah. And I agree with you. I think the key is flourishing. I think that's the key. And so yeah, of course, there'll be people who flourish in

833
01:26:46.580 --> 01:26:53.389
Stephen: very what I would consider to be a you know. Not particularly interesting thing to do. But that's not.

834
01:26:53.530 --> 01:26:54.870
Stephen: That's my problem.

835
01:26:55.240 --> 01:27:00.420
Stephen: Not that clearly, you know. I know people. I lived on a farm in England

836
01:27:00.580 --> 01:27:03.370
Stephen: for some years, when we came back from Asia.

837
01:27:03.510 --> 01:27:14.269
Stephen: and got to know some of the farmers with the cows, and with the so forth, and so on, and and they they led lives that were very fulfilling and meaningful for them.

838
01:27:14.950 --> 01:27:22.450
Stephen: Often they had some kind of philosophy as well. 1 one iron was, and a follower of biodynamic, steiner-based farming.

839
01:27:22.820 --> 01:27:33.550
Stephen: And so his farming was deeply built into a whole spiritual sense of you know his, his, his understanding of the world. So thank you.

840
01:27:35.050 --> 01:27:43.260
Stephen: Okay, shall we go? We've got 3 people in house and 3 online. So maybe we just alternate till the time runs out. We go to Suzanne. You're on now.

841
01:27:45.730 --> 01:27:56.910
Meg: Thank you. And I love that. I want to say. I love that. There's such an emphasis.  in your

842
01:27:57.020 --> 01:28:06.270
Meg: interpretation reading of the eightfold Path. There's such an emphasis on on work because it I think it's very often

843
01:28:06.330 --> 01:28:10.320
Meg: sort of left left by the side of the

844
01:28:10.600 --> 01:28:13.789
Meg: of the of the bathroom, and lots of

845
01:28:13.830 --> 01:28:29.600
Meg: a areas of activities or social movements, let alone ways of seeing the world. 2 things, Steven. One was that when I earlier first version, I'll heard you give of this

846
01:28:29.770 --> 01:28:44.179
Meg: sequence of the I eightfold path when you came to survival what I heard. Anyway, I have misheard. But was that you were emphasizing survival in a more a global way?

847
01:28:44.220 --> 01:29:06.830
Meg: As you know, as a way of, in a sense reaching to the questions of all the environmental issues of all the big big issues that we've been touching on throughout, and that we use the term we use that facet survival in order to reference all of those issues.

848
01:29:06.830 --> 01:29:14.260
Meg: So there, there's that. And II would love to hear. Why, how you shifted to this other version.

849
01:29:14.330 --> 01:29:33.060
Meg: or seems to me, anyway, and secondly, when we speak of work, there's there's that huge area of work that large proportion of women particularly, are involved in. And sometimes it's called domestic work.

850
01:29:33.140 --> 01:29:36.229
Meg: and sometimes it's called domestic labor

851
01:29:36.260 --> 01:29:49.170
Meg: and it's and it's it's an interesting mix it feels to me of the the 2 in interpretations you've been giving this morning of labor and work

852
01:29:49.210 --> 01:29:59.629
Meg: a lot. A lot of house work. Is is laborious. A lot of it is creative.

853
01:29:59.770 --> 01:30:14.909
Meg: And I wanted to say, too, to add to all of that there is a huge amount of research and knowledge, even though often not pay attention to in certain quarters. But there's a huge amount of research and and knowledge and understanding

854
01:30:14.920 --> 01:30:24.609
Meg: on the people's experience of work, history of work, practices of work and labor. And

855
01:30:24.880 --> 01:30:38.460
Meg: one of the important things about that is that also those organizations involved, such as trade unions have got both, you know, global knowledge as well as immediate

856
01:30:38.710 --> 01:30:43.290
Meg: indirect knowledge, direct, sorry, direct, experiential knowledge

857
01:30:43.310 --> 01:30:55.010
Meg: that is not dated either. So it's worth sort of just remembering that those are. Those are available to us. We don't have to only rely on our own

858
01:30:55.020 --> 01:31:16.650
Meg: Quite singular experiences to get a group on on meaning of work. But I'd love to hear how your response to the notion of survival is that larger issue and and also to keep on the table the notion of the domestic as I size of

859
01:31:16.770 --> 01:31:18.260
Meg: labor and work.

860
01:31:18.430 --> 01:31:21.310
Stephen: Thanks. Thank you very much.

861
01:31:21.590 --> 01:31:25.909
Stephen: What you're referring to is a course I gave.

862
01:31:26.760 --> 01:31:30.149
Stephen: I can't remember now, probably a couple of years ago, when I was still

863
01:31:30.190 --> 01:31:36.369
Stephen: work muddling through this stuff, and for a long time on my chart.

864
01:31:36.940 --> 01:31:41.629
Stephen: my cartography of care. as you correctly remember.

865
01:31:42.630 --> 01:31:44.970
Stephen: I put survival as the eighth, Steph.

866
01:31:46.410 --> 01:31:47.670
Stephen: not the

867
01:31:49.320 --> 01:31:50.380
Stephen: sixth.

868
01:31:51.640 --> 01:32:01.510
Stephen: I put it at the end of the of the of the list. In other words, I was thinking very much in terms of survival in terms of the survival of life on earth

869
01:32:02.220 --> 01:32:03.419
Stephen: in that big

870
01:32:03.590 --> 01:32:05.920
Stephen: right. That's true.

871
01:32:06.580 --> 01:32:09.020
Stephen: I think the reason I changed that

872
01:32:09.270 --> 01:32:15.900
Stephen: is twofold one. I was influenced by the thinking of Hannah Arendt.

873
01:32:16.110 --> 01:32:25.119
Stephen: and as I've acknowledged, it's her basic her book, the human condition that has set the template for this sequencing.

874
01:32:25.330 --> 01:32:28.690
Stephen: and. as we'll see tomorrow.

875
01:32:29.160 --> 01:32:43.150
Stephen: wanted to end really on this idea of voice which Hannah Arendt calls action. It's a bit strange, she calls it action, and then she says, Well, actually, what I mean by that is

876
01:32:43.190 --> 01:32:54.309
Stephen: is almost invariably saying something. as we'll see tomorrow. And that then Rec. Made me recognize that voice is really what

877
01:32:54.880 --> 01:32:57.759
Stephen: for me, in a way, is

878
01:32:58.060 --> 01:33:04.410
Stephen: kind of culmination of everything I do is what I say in the broadest sense how I desp

879
01:33:04.640 --> 01:33:10.109
Stephen: display myself in the world. The message I put out that's kind of

880
01:33:10.200 --> 01:33:13.100
Stephen: in terms of my practice, what

881
01:33:13.630 --> 01:33:22.130
Stephen: it comes down to. But I think we also need to go back to the metaphor of the chicken and the eggs. There is no fixed sequence in the end.

882
01:33:22.960 --> 01:33:31.359
Stephen: It's it's for all of us to somehow balance this out in a way where we're getting an we're getting equal warmth, and

883
01:33:31.970 --> 01:33:34.500
Stephen: we're not excluding some to the

884
01:33:34.620 --> 01:33:37.940
Stephen: cost of others, that all the eggs can hatch

885
01:33:38.480 --> 01:33:40.309
Stephen: roughly around the same time.

886
01:33:40.690 --> 01:33:45.909
Stephen: so any sequencing will be to some extent arbitrary.

887
01:33:46.650 --> 01:33:54.590
Stephen: But at the same time I want a sequencing that will somehow speak to the condition of our times. That's what I'm struggling to.

888
01:33:54.910 --> 01:33:55.880
Stephen: But she

889
01:33:56.070 --> 01:33:58.910
Stephen: and who knows? After this discussion.

890
01:33:59.110 --> 01:34:06.070
Stephen: this retreat, I might change it all again. I don't know. I don't think so. but There's no reason why not.

891
01:34:07.320 --> 01:34:09.389
Stephen: so don't see this as set in stone.

892
01:34:12.130 --> 01:34:17.550
Stephen: It's actually past the half hour, so maybe we could bring it to a close here.

893
01:34:18.690 --> 01:34:20.360
Stephen: Thank you very much for your

894
01:34:20.870 --> 01:34:23.009
reflections. It's been very, very helpful.

895
01:34:23.530 --> 01:34:29.590
Stephen: This is not my area of expertise. as you can probably see. And

896
01:34:29.680 --> 01:34:32.580
Stephen: you know, this has given me a lot of food for thought.

897
01:34:32.760 --> 01:34:36.430
Stephen: and it'll probably find its way into into the book.

898
01:34:38.100 --> 01:34:40.540
Stephen: That doesn't mean you get royalties around.

899
01:34:43.760 --> 01:34:47.169
Stephen:  a lot of her names.