The Beginner's Guide to Walking the Buddha's Eightfold Path by Jean Smith

Author:Jean Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307421814
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

IN PRACTICE Work: “I Am What I Do” vs. “I Do What I Do”

Is there a comma after your name and a “job title”? Homemaker. Vice President. Sales Manager. Programmer. Parent. Engineer. Teacher. Just how tied to that title are you? How much of your identity comes from what you do? If you have ever been downsized— laid off or fired—or have retired, you probably can answer that question. Otherwise you may not even notice that when someone asks how you are, you answer, “Well, the project is running a little behind schedule,” as I once did.

When we live by a comma and a tag line, we consciously or unconsciously embrace values that cause us dissatisfaction. We experience a sense of Self and Other: There are others above us who, we think, must be better than us because their title is bigger—or we become resentful because we are better but they have the title. Those below us must not be as good—or maybe they are and have a resentment or may catch up and pass us. Dancing with our position becomes an overriding preoccupation as far as our sense of self-worth is concerned and inevitably affects how we interact with people around us. Life becomes a competitive sport, not a cooperative one, and even infants are pushed into the struggle to line up years ahead for the right kindergarten so they’ll be on the right track for that right title when they grow up.

In addition to creating an isolated self and building ourselves up at others’ expense, the “I am what I do” attitude has some other negative fallout as well. If you go back far enough in history, you find that our early ancestors “worked” to find or produce what they required to survive. But today very few of us work to produce what we ourselves need. We work to earn money to buy the things we want as well as the things we need, so we tend to equate the value of what we do with what we earn. But there is no absolute value to anything. If there were, would the price of gold rise and fall? Would airlines have fare wars? Would people who clean metropolitan subways earn more than teachers? Would the price of ever-more-powerful computers continue to drop? So often a thing’s monetary value is in the hands of unions, agents, and a supply-and-demand economy, nothing more. When we find out what others around us earn, it is hard not to feel smugness or resentment—again, separateness. And as we are bombarded by images of the material accouterments we are “supposed” to have, many of us fall into the trap of acquiring the car or house or outfit that gives us the appearance of earning more than we actually do.

When we look back over our lives, most of us can find examples of how the equation do = am has led us to make choices that hurt us. We have taken jobs we did not really want, because of the salary or the title.

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