Over the time I’ve been writing here on this page a few of the women who pose naked for your pleasure on Suicide Girls have written me asking my opinion of whether or not posing for SG constitutes what Buddhists call “Right Livelihood.” There’s even a long running discussion on the subject over in the site’s Buddhist group although they’ve gotten way off topic lately.

For those who don’t know, Buddhists are supposed to follow what’s called the Noble Eightfold Path. The eight noble folds of the path are 1) Right View 2) Right Intention 3) Right Speech 4) Right Action 5) Right Livelihood 6) Right Effort 7) Right Mindfulness and 8) Right Concentration. According to the traditional accounts this list was part of Buddha’s very first talk on the pursuit of the Truth and constitutes a fundamental aspect of his teaching.

This idea of Right Livelihood seems to cause more Buddhists in America more trouble than any of the other seven folds. I think this has a lot to do with Americans and the emerging phenomenon of American Buddhism. Now there’s two things you could call “American Buddhism.” One is Americans who do real Buddhist practice. The other is an emerging consensus among Americans, most of whom will never do so much as five lousy minutes of zazen or any other Buddhist practice in their entire lives, as to what Buddhism is or ought to be. These two American Buddhisms interact and influence each other, of course. But it’s this second kind of American Buddhism I want to talk about here. Leaving what real American Buddhist practitioners actually believe and do more or less out of the picture, I want to address this consensus view of Buddhism as it’s developing in these here United States.

Our culture has been shaped tremendously by the Puritan view of sex and nudity as evil. More than that, it’s been shaped by this very notion of evil itself. Neither of these ideas are present in Buddhism. But as Americans we tend to want to force whatever we hear about Buddhism into categories we understand. So when we think of Right Livelihood, we tend to imagine the opposite of that must be Evil Livelihood. Since sex and nudity are evil, any kind of livelihood that involves sex and/or nudity in any way must, therefore be evil.

A friend of mine said that it seemed to him that in terms of American Buddhism the only two jobs that fit into the category of Right Livelihood were Yoga instructor and therapist. That seems, unfortunately, to be pretty close to the truth. But to understand the real situation you have to be able to get rid of this idea of evil. And we Americans have a very hard time of that.

See, the idea of evil postulates that there is this substance out there in the universe called “evil.” No matter where it goes or what it does, evil is always and forever bad. We even personify evil into a character we call Satan -- who, in addition to being super bad is a very popular and often extremely sexy choice for a Halloween costume, I might add. We tend to think of evil as a thing that exists before any action is taken to embody it.

But Buddhism doesn’t look at the problem like that. There isn't any "evil" out there waiting for us to do something to express it. There is, however, action which is right and action which is not right. Right action accords with the Rule of the Universe, while wrong action attempts to go against it. The Rule of the Universe is almost like a fundamental force in physics except it also applies to morality. In Buddhist philosophy mind and matter are considered to be one and the same. So the same kinds of interaction that occur among physical objects also occur in the realm of the non-physical. The designations "physical" and "non-physical" are meaningless. Moral concerns, then, are subject to laws just like anything in material physyics.

Going against the Rule of the Universe is kind of like trying to challenge gravity. You might be able to jump real high, but gravity always pulls you back down. We all know that our actions have consequences and that actions that go against real morality make us feel like shit. Some of us may be able to numb ourselves to those feelings. But whatever you do always returns to you. I’ve never seen it happen any other way in my own life and I do not accept that there are other people to whom this same rule does not apply. Sorry.

The idea of Right Livelihood doesn’t imply that there are Buddha-approved ways of making a living and Buddha-disapproved ways of making a living. It’s more about how you do what you do. To give you an example, my first Buddhist teacher works part time at a veterinarian’s office where he administers lethal injections to adorable little doggies and fluffy little kitty-cats who never did anything bad in their whole cute little lives. This would seem, on the surface, to be clearly Evil Livelihood, especially since it violates the first Buddhist precept; Do not take life.

But Tim’s view is that these animals will be put to death whether he does it or not. As long as he’s the one doing it, he can do it in a way that is compassionate and causes as little pain as possible. Plus he goes way beyond the call of duty to find homes for pets who are sent to him without any compelling reason for being given a death sentence, even going so far as to take a lot of them into his own home. It’s a smelly place, let me tell you! But very, very friendly.

I see Suicide Girls as something similar, though admittedly not quite as noble. People are gonna want to look at pictures of naked girlies on the Internet. So why not establish a site where at least the women themselves have some control over how they are portrayed? We move incrementally toward a better world.

Tendo Nyojo, the teacher of Dogen, the 12th century Buddhist monk who established the sect of Zen in which I practice, said some stuff about "don't view pornography" and "don't watch dancing women" as pieces of advice to Dogen on his practice. But he also said, "don't watch herds of sheep," "don't stare at the ocean" and "don't view big fish." Plus there’s a Buddhist precept against watching “grotesque mime.” I find all types of mime pretty grotesque myself. What I hear from some American Buddhists regarding matters of sex and nudity kind of reminds me of the church dudes who warn that God condemns homosexuality in the Bible but forget to mention the Bible also says you'll go to Hell if you eat shrimp. If you try to live your life according to a literal interpretation of instructions written in ancient books you’ll go nuts. Which may explain a lot of what’s happening these days…

What Tendo Nyojo as well as Buddha and the writers of the Bible were trying to impart was more a set of examples embodying certain criteria for action. The criteria remain even when the specific examples of how to embody them change. In the 21st century in the USA women who appear naked on the Internet are hardly a major cause of human suffering. It's socially acceptable to enough people that we really don't need to worry much about those to whom it's not. They just better get used to it, I say, cuz it ain’t going away any time soon. There's also certainly nothing inherently wrong with looking at naked people. That's absurd.

It could be that in Dogen's day there was such a stigma at looking at dancing women and porn that people in generally got way over-stimulated by them on the rare occasions when they could look at them. So the core advice may have been more along the lines of don't deliberately view things that will over-stimulate your senses. Most Americans in 2007 wouldn't find the photos on SG over-stimulating, though other kinds of images might be. This, I think, is a good thing. The more we can face the reality we live in without getting over-excited by it, the better.

The examples in the Eightfold Path are deliberately vague because Buddha wanted his students to work them out for themselves according to their own specific situations. That's why he said, "right livelihood" rather than giving a nice checklist of jobs he approved or disapproved of.

It’s not for me, or for that matter any other Buddhist teacher, to say whether posing for SG does or does not constitute Right Livelihood for any particular woman who chooses to submit her pictures. I can’t possibly judge. It’s one of the many poor tendencies of American Buddhism to believe these are things that are meant to be judged by anyone but the people who are actually involved.

I’ve said it before, but I, for one, am not offended by the photos I see on this site. They don’t cause me any suffering at all. So there.

*****

Got gigs in Ohio I should remind you about:

November 7th (Wednesday) at 7PM I'll be at the Akron Public Library downtown.

November 7th (same day) 0DFx (the hardcore band I played bass in in the early 80s) will play the Matinee in Akron after the talk at the library (10 PM-ish, I should think).

November 9th (Friday) my movie Cleveland's Screaming will be shown at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland .There'll also be live performances by 0DFx, CD Truth, Cheap Tragedies and This Moment in Black History.

November 10th (Saturday) 0DFx plays at the Spitfire Saloon in Cleveland.

November 12th (Monday) I'll give a Zen talk at Lambert's Tattooing and Body Piercing (I kid you not) in manly, he-man Mansfield, Ohio at 7PM.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.