Exploring the Path - Pāli Course

The succinct Vaṇijjāsutta depicts the five trades that should be shunned completely by any follower of the Buddha’s path. Although some of these trades often result in substantial profit, it is also these very trades that produce the most direct or indirect suffering to beings.

In the Kandarakasutta¹ the Buddha gives an example of someone following such a profession and uses the expression: paraparitāpanānuyogamanuyutto² – ‘being involved in the practice of torturing others’.

Katamo ca, bhikkhave, puggalo parantapo³ paraparitāpanānuyogamanuyutto?

And how, Bhikkhus, does someone qualify himself as a person who tortures others and is involved in the practice of torturing others?

Idha, bhikkhave, ekacco puggalo orabbhiko⁴ hoti sūkariko sākuṇiko⁵ māgaviko⁶ luddo macchaghātako⁷ coro coraghātako goghātako⁸ bandhanāgāriko⁹ ye vā panaññepi keci kurūrakammantā.¹⁰ Ayaṃ vuccati, bhikkhave, puggalo parantapo paraparitāpanānuyogamanuyutto.

Here, Bhikkhus, a certain person is either a butcher of sheep or of pigs, a fowler, a trapper, a huntsman, a fisherman, a thief, an executioner, a prison warden, or anyone who follows such a kind of cruel occupation. This is called someone who qualifies himself as a person who tortures others and is involved in the practice of torturing others.

In today's complex economy, the obvious forms of wrong livelihood—such as dealing in weapons, drugs, poisons, running slaughterhouses, or human trafficking—don't pose a practical problem for most people, as few are directly involved in these literal trades. But the real challenge lies in the hidden, interwoven nature of the modern economy. It's difficult for people with seemingly ethical jobs to ensure they aren't indirectly supporting harmful industries. It isn’t easy to know as a software developer if one’s product may be implemented by defence contractors, or that components aren’t used in weapon production, or investments that may hold shares in arms manufacturers, industrial animal farming, breeding for slaughter, meat processing corporations, breweries, wineries or distilleries. Are the products one is manufacturing being used for chemical companies producing dangerous industrial waste or pesticides that are environmentally destructive?

This overwhelming and continuous list makes the practical effort of maintaining an ethical, meritorious lifestyle extremely difficult in today's world.

But a constant vigilant check of one’s volition, one’s intention to avoid obvious involvement with unwholesome dealings or transactions can still make a healthy base even under difficult circumstances.¹¹ A later treatise written by a Singhalese monk by the name of Ānanda, called the Upāsakajanālaṅkāra¹² provides the following solace:

•  Male and female lay followers who have thus gone for refuge, should establish themselves in morality,

•  purify it by undertaking serious practices,

•  abandon the five (forbidden) trades to make a livelihood proper and just;

•  and try to attain the state of a ‘lotus’ lay follower, by fulfilling regularly ten bases of pure actions¹³ which abandon the faults that impede mundane and further achievements.