Question: Why is having a Right Livelihood (正命) on the Noble Eightfold Path (八正道) important? Is a job not just a job for survival’s sake?
Answer: A job is never merely a job. For example, in the extreme case, if you are killing to make a living, it means you are willing to insensitively and ongoingly justify the creating of the greatest suffering for sentient beings just for selfish profiteering.
It also means you are willing to betray your basic morality for greed, thus ‘selling’ your goodness for perpetuating evil apathetically. This surely creates immense evil karmas, which will result in great personal suffering sooner or later.
Also, if an ill full-time job is taken up, you will be creating evil karmas full-time, which can result in ‘full-time’ suffering eventually. Thus, Evil Livelihoods (邪命), which are jobs that inflict suffering upon others directly or indirectly should never be done.
