Another way to build contentment, for example, is to simply reflect on how fortunate one is to have work, how there are many people unable to get any kind of work. You can think there are other good things in my life and I still have it better compared to many. This is always the reality.

Sometimes we forget that. We get spoiled. So for example, in America there are many opportunities for employment. And there is also a large degree of freedom, and one’s personal initiative can make a difference. With personal initiative one can advance. But at the same time there is still a lot of discontent and dissatisfaction with one’s job. In other countries and parts of the world like India and China, there are less opportunities open for employment. So under such circumstances many individuals can’t get jobs. But I’ve noticed that there the sense of satisfaction they derive from their job is much stronger and also they are more committed. In the same way, one can reflect on how much more difficult previous generations had it, going through world wars and so on. Sometimes we tend to forget these things but if we think about it this can increase our feeling of gratitude and contentment.

True work is acting practically, relating to the earth directly. You could be working in the garden, in the house, washing dishes or doing whatever demands your attention. If you do not feel the relationship between the earth and your self, then the situation is going to turn chaotic. If you do not feel that ever step, every situation reflects your state of mind and therefore has spiritual significance, then the pattern of your life becomes full of problems and you begin to wonder where these problems came from. They seem to spring from nowhere because you refuse to see the subtlety of life. Somehow you cannot cheat, you cannot pretend to pour a cup of tea beautifully, you cannot act it. You must actually feel it, feel the earth and your relationship to it.

To exchange is to purify. We may feel that if we have paid for something with money, we don’t owe anything else. But something is missing in that idea. Even though we have paid for the labor, there is something we cannot pay for. We cannot pay the true value of what has been given to us by the Buddha. Only when we pay with respect for the things that are given us, or for the result of someone’s labor, can we purify our life within the activities of exchange. Without this, after we pay for the items we have, we still owe something. That is why we must have great respect for things - for money and labor. This is Dogen Zenji’s idea for everyday life, Our money is not ours. It belongs to society.

Because we think the money is ours, we sometimes think money is dirty. But it is our understanding that is dirty. Money purifies our world. It is important that we take care of it and respect it. It is only when we don’t respect money it becomes dirty. It doesn’t matter how much you have. Even if you have very little money, you should respect it and make the best use of it. The best use of it, I think, is to help our society.

Some people are too attached to money. But to accumulate some money can be allowable, for example, to be ready and enter the hospital or prepare for death. A funeral can cost $5,000 or $10,000.

Right livelihood has ceased to be purely personal matter. It is our collective karma. Suppose I am a schoolteacher and I believe that nurturing love and understanding in children is a beautiful occupation. I would object if someone were to ask me to stop teaching and become, for example, a butcher. But when I meditate on the interrelatedness of all things, I can see that the butcher is not the only person responsible for killing animals. He does his work for all of us who eat meat. We are co-responsible for his act of killing. We may think the butcher’s livelihood is wrong and ours is right, but if we didn’t eat meat, he wouldn’t have to kill or he would have to kill less. Right livelihood is a collective matter. The livelihood of each person affects us all and vice versa. The butcher’s children may benefit from my teaching, while my children, because they eat meat, share some responsibility for the butcher’s livelihood.

Any look at right livelihood entails more than just examining the situation in which we earn our paycheck. Our whole life and our whole society are intimately involved. Everything we do contributes to our effort to practice right livelihood, and we can never succeed one hundred percent. But we can resolve to go in the direction of compassion, in the direction of reducing suffering. And we can resolve to work for society in which there is more right livelihood and less wrong livelihood.

In Buddhism, recognizing our Authenticity that can not be confirmed or denied is a very practical matter, it is not wishful thinking. It is not something that we can make up or manufacture. Discovering our sense of well-being is not simply a first-rate notion that we “ought” to be Authentic. If that were the case, Buddhism would, in the end, be plain old idealism. Nor is it something that can be collected by going to etiquette classes or courses in being a good citizen. Being polite and civilized are worthy and decent pursuits. But, if being Authentic was simply that, a mere set of rules would suffice. In Buddhism, recognizing our Authenticity is a very practical, powerful and immediate experience.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Authenticity as what makes something fully and genuinely what it is. Something is authentic because it can draw on an Original Authority to make it unquestionably what it is - not a fake or imitation. If we were to purchase a Rembrandt or a thoroughbred Irish horse, for example, it would be a very practical and worthy matter to determine if we were buying an authentic item. We may have an art historian examine our painting to see if it were the real thing. Maybe she would test the paint or inspect the brush strokes to see if she could recognize the Original Authority within the very painting - that the painting originated with Rembrandt. Or, we may visit the stud farm where our champion horse was reared to examine health records and pedigree papers and consider the horse’s noble lineage. We would then examine our horse’s conformation - the height if its withers, the thickness of its chest and girth. We may even review x rays to inspect lung capacity for endurance. We would look to see if we can recognize the Original Authority within the very horse. We may actually see in our horse the great champion from which she descended - an original Kentucky derby winner!

In the same way, Buddhism considers the search for our Human Authenticity a practical and worthy matter where we experience directly the Original Authority from which we arise. The Buddhist path seeks to discover an origin, to determine first hand the Original Authority within our very person that empowers us with unshakeable well-being and gives us the confidence that we are exactly who we are where we are with no need of outside confirmation. In the Buddhist tradition, the primary way we inspect our pedigree and discover directly our Authenticity is through sitting meditation which is exactly what the Buddha did at the base of the Bodhi tree.

Listen to an Interview with the author on “Awake at Work” on Embracing the Journey with Karen Humphries Sallick.

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Mindfulness or sitting meditation is a friendly gesture towards ourselves where we take time to simply be and the mindfulness developed in the practice naturally unfolds on the job guiding us to Be Authentic, precise and decent. Sitting down and being still is at the heart of being awake at work. Yet, such meditation can not be rushed or forced, so we need not hurry; we can be flexible with ourselves and our life circumstances as we learn this practice.

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Studies have shown that real or perceived stress - e.g. panic attacks, chronic worrying, and depression - has increased by 45% over the last 30 years among Americans.