What do I want to do with this life?

We’re focusing on Right Livelihood — sammā-ājīva. The Pāli word ājīva means “that by which one lives.” It refers to sustenance, to the means by which life is maintained.

In Reflective Meditation, we widen the meaning of ājīva beyond the traditional definition of livelihood as “work”. Work, conventionally defined, is purposeful effort directed toward a goal, often financial. But many people’s work is stressful, repetitive, or driven by necessity rather than calling.

Parents work in ways that may not reflect their deeper inclinations. Immigrants often leave behind respected professions and begin again in diminished roles. Economic conditions shape livelihood far more than personal intention alone.

With livelihood we are not referring solely to how we earn money. We are also confronting aging, retirement, global instability, and the pressures of simply continuing. We are asking what sustains us when paid employment changes or ends, and how to remain alive in spirit within economic and social constraints. Privilege, in this context, means that conditions have aligned in such a way that one has some degree of choice.

In early Buddhist teaching, Right Livelihood is the fifth factor of the Eightfold Path. Its emphasis is ethical clarity. In the Vanijja Sutta, five livelihoods are named to avoid: trading in weapons, in living beings, in meat production, in intoxicants, and in poisons.

The point is direct: one’s livelihood should not cause harm. It should not be rooted in greed, exploitation, or destruction. That ethical foundation remains essential. Without it, the path collapses into rationalization.

But applying this teaching in our time is not straightforward. We live within systems shaped by extraction, accumulation, and inequity. Entire economies are structured in ways that distribute harm unevenly, often invisibly. For many, participation in some form of harm is not entirely avoidable. This is where a harm reduction approach becomes necessary.

Harm reduction does not abandon ethics; it works within constraint. It asks: given the conditions I am in, how can I reduce harm rather than increase it? How can I participate without deepening exploitation? Where do I have agency, and where am I limited? These are not abstract questions. They are lived tensions.

Traditional Buddhism emphasizes restraint: do not harm. That remains a guiding principle. But for many people, the question becomes more incremental: how to do less harm in a system that does not easily allow for purity.

Our expanded view includes ethical care, but it also addresses vitality. There is a particular form of suffering that comes from work that crushes one’s soul. We use the word “soul” metaphorically here — not as an enduring essence, but as energy, animation, engagement. Appropriate livelihood sustains that aliveness rather than depleting it entirely.

For much of our lives, we were fortunate to do work that was meaningful, even if not lucrative. That was partly intentional and partly the economic conditions of the time. We chose to spend little so that we could work in ways that felt emotionally and spiritually sustaining. That strategy is not universally available. Conditions matter.

As we age, the polarity between work and retirement becomes less clear. Retirement is often defined as withdrawal from occupation, but in practice we do not stop working. Aging requires effort. Managing health requires effort. Staying connected requires effort.

The word “retirement” comes from the French retirer, meaning to withdraw into seclusion. In that sense, it aligns with contemplative life. Meditation itself is a form of stepping back from constant demand.

Retirement, then, may not be the end of work but a refinement of it — a withdrawal from unnecessary demands and a reorientation toward what is essential. Livelihood becomes less about identity and more about appropriate engagement for this stage of life.

On Aging and Preparing to Die

If ājīva is that by which one lives, it must eventually include how one approaches the end of life. Living long enough means entering the terrain of old age, sickness, and death. Preparation for that terrain is also a form of work. Not in a dramatic or idealized sense, but in practical and relational ways.

Early Buddhist practice included corpse contemplations to develop steadiness in the face of mortality. In our context, preparation may take different forms: advance directives, financial planning, conversations with loved ones, and an honest reckoning with limits. Modern end-of-life care is more structured than in earlier generations, though access remains uneven and often tied to resources. Even here, conditions matter.

Equanimity is important, but so is relational completion — the ability to say goodbye, to express care, to receive it, to leave fewer things unspoken. These, too, are aspects of appropriate livelihood at the end of life.

Early on I heard of a dharma teacher who developed dementia before she died. I remember feeling surprised, even resistant. How could that happen to a dharma teacher? Over time, that reaction softened, more like part of the conditions of being human.

So….

The traditional teaching on Right Livelihood guards against harm. Our expanded understanding includes that, while also acknowledging conditions, constraints, and the full arc of a human life. How we sustain ourselves shapes body and mind. The way we earn, the way we care, the way we withdraw, and the way we prepare — all of it matters.

Right Livelihood, then, is not simply about choosing the right job. It is about participating in a world that is not entirely aligned with our values, without giving up those values altogether. It includes survival within systems shaped by greed and a history of exploitation. It includes whatever degree of choice or limitation we are living within. It includes the ongoing effort to reduce harm where we can, and to remain in contact with our aliveness where possible.

This is not a pure path. It is a negotiated one. And perhaps that is what ājīva asks of us now: not perfection, but participation with awareness — sustaining life as ethically and honestly as we can within the conditions we did not entirely choose.