Buddhism's Lesson: 'what You Give Out, You Get Back'

[sabaijai]

Buddhism's lesson: 'What you give out, you get back'

BETH PEARSON July 07 2006

Confronted with an open-plan office full of Apple Macs, former IT worker Ani Lhamo laughs out loud. "I trained as a computer programmer," she says. "But if you asked me to do something now I wouldn't have a clue. It's changed so much."

So has Lhamo. Ten years into her IT career, in 1989, she left to become a Buddhist nun and hasn't set foot in a conventional office since. Her return has been prompted by a BBC Radio 4 series, Real World, which places monks and nuns from Christian or Buddhist monasteries in ordinary communities and work situations.

Lhamo has left the leafy, rural Kagyu Samye Ling monastery near Lockerbie to spend the day at The Herald offices, at the top of busy Renfield Street in Glasgow city centre. Usually, she only occasionally sees a newspaper and never watches television. Today she is attending news conferences, seeing how pictures are chosen and learning about the newsgathering process and other aspects of The Herald's operation.

"It's good fun," says Lhamo. "It has been very interesting – inspiring, even – to meet intelligent, caring people who are putting their energy into something that they feel is the best they can do. I'll go home today feeling very good."

Of course, one interpretation of Lhamo's placement at a newspaper is that while Buddhists pray for peace and happiness, the press thrives on the bad stuff. Judging by the smile this suggestion raises with some of the production team, it appears there's a degree of truth in it.

"I don't know if I've seen enough to make any sort of moral judgment," says Lhamo, 49. "Everyone has been very courteous and worthwhile, with a lot of integrity. In the future I'll be happy to dispel any myths."

In fact, Lhamo observed similarities between The Herald and the monastery. "Part of my role in the monastery is to help run it, which is just like running any other organisation," she says. "We have teams of people who work together, who have organised ways of doing things – or chaotic ways of doing things – and a little bit of a structure. You have more of a structure than we do but then you have a much more goal-oriented job. We don't have to get things done every day."

There are other significant differences. In the monastery there is no contract of employment, no pay and no period of notice to serve upon resignation. But there is a boss, of sorts, in the abbot, for whom Lhamo works as part of the committee that runs the monastery. Her daily tasks can include organising events and assisting visitors and residents.

"I'm only there because I want to be there, and I don't need to stay a day longer than I want to," she says. "It's a bit late now to get a fantastic job, because it's been so long since I worked that nobody would employ me, but I could leave if I wanted to. So I definitely have to feel motivated to be there."

The working day in the monastery is structured around prayer time. First prayers are at 6am, followed by breakfast at 8am, then an hour of meditation and a period of work. There's an hour and a half of prayer after lunch, then more work, and finally prayers and meditation in the evening – "if there isn't too much work to do".

"If I were working out here in the world I might get to the end of the day and go, 'Ah, that was just dreadful,'" says Lhamo. "But I've got several times during the day when I can break off for a considerable period of time and be in a different space – actually, it's the same space, because inside my mind is the same everywhere I go – but instead of running about, being busy, I spend the time concentrating and praying for peace and happiness for the whole world."

Lhamo, who was brought up near Fort William, had been working in Glasgow for several years when a friend introduced her to Buddhism. She describes her prior interest in spiritual matters thus: "A bit, but not so as you would notice". Once Buddhism became central in her life, however, she became concerned that work was an obstacle to its proper practice.

"Eventually it dawned on me that the work itself was the real opportunity," she says. "I began applying what I'd learned to the work situation. It had a lot of benefits for me. So, for example, before I was a Buddhist, I would think, 'I need more money, I need better conditions,' and feel like I should demand my rights.

"After I became a Buddhist, I decided: anything they asked me to do, I would do. So if they asked me to work all night, I would work all night. If they asked me not to go on my holidays, I wouldn't go. Then, lo and behold, they gave me more money. They said that if I wanted to go on holiday for a month, I could. It taught me a lesson: what you give out, you get back."

The principal Buddhist teaching on work is found in the Noble Eightfold Path, which includes the teaching of Right Livelihood. It means that a Buddhist's occupation mustn't harm others or cause suffering, and must be helpful to others. Other Buddhist attitudes towards work are shaped by an emphasis on the need for mental clarity and a positive outlook.

"Work is essential to human beings," says Lhamo. "We need to be occupied. We all know unemployment is a problem and has the effect of people not having a feeling of accomplishment or having a place in the world, which can lead to quite destructive neurotic wanderings.

"It's very good for the mind to have goals. It's tempting to be as lazy as you can get away with, but

if you do something and do 10 times more than you expected, you find you feel better for it and it's a freeing experience. There are a lot of psychological benefits from work, if you look at it the right way, but not if it becomes something that weighs on your mind."

So can someone be a Buddhist and a journalist? Lhamo thinks so. "You can be a Buddhist and be almost anything," she says. "The kind of Buddhism I have experience of is that the worse a situation is, the better it is. If you are somewhere where there's a lot of negativity and people are trying to coerce you into wrongdoing, that is the place to be. You have to be strong enough to deal with it."

The main obstacle may be that journalism rests on the ideal that there is some degree of objective truth to report – an alien concept within Buddhism.

"I think working as a team is probably the best way of achieving [objectivity], as far as I can see," says Lhamo. "But I don't know if objective truth really exists. In fact, for a Buddhist, it doesn't."

Source: The Herald

[chownah]

Why does the BBC want to place monks and nuns into regular jobs?