November/December 2007

Following the success of Sentient City's first edition, we're kicking off this second edition with the theme, Right Livelihood/Right Intention. The second precept of the Eightfold Path is Right Intention, whose main facets are generosity, wisdom, and equanimity in both thought and deed. The fifth precept is Right Livelihood, or, earning one's living in a way that does not harm other beings. Works in this edition address different aspects of, or concerns about, the two precepts.

    The other night, I went to the Zen Studies Society and heard Seigan Ed Glassing speak. He talked about how he had a friend in college who had gone on to become a performance artist. Before that, she'd been a painter who created multidimensional images on canvass. If you looked up close, you'd find one layer of images descending into another and then another, on down.

    Seigan then described how she was recently involved in a performance art piece that also sent off whirlpools of meaning. In this piece, the performers congregated in various centers of Manhattan that had experienced trauma—muggings, sexual assaults, murders and even terrorist attacks. These included Union Square, the Lower East Side, Harlem, Museum Mile and, of course, the World Trade Center. While gathered, one performer would embrace another, sometimes for as long as several minutes. That's all the performers did, just hugged each other. The usual pedestrian traffic sped by and wove around them. How many New Yorkers would stop to watch this scene? But Seigan described these simple demonstrations of kindness as “medicine,” agents of healing, for those stricken environments that could be felt all around.

    I've witnessed similar moments of medicine in hostile work environments. Two directors of a department where I used to work refused to train staff or inform us of programmatic or organizational developments. They then delighted in ravaging us for not being in the know and held frequent closed-door meetings just to instill fear. Add to this that these directors were workaholics, who never passed up a chance to inform us that they were going to do all the work themselves since they were the only ones competent enough to do it. The turnover rate was appalling. People often cried, quit, raged or developed stress-related illnesses.

    At the same time, we had a coworker named Eadie, who stood on rock amid all the squall and furor. She didn't bitch or mudsling or create more hostility and agression. Instead, she offered an ear, a shoulder, and a gentle voice to anyone who had been harmed—along with the sage advice to file a grievance with HR. On the simplest and most profound level, Eadie demonstrated Right Intention and, by taking a bodhisattva stance in a viper pit, Right Livelihood. Regardless of her job description (notice, I left that out), she made an honorable living and an important contribution to many people's lives.

    But this is just one example of Right Livelihood and Right Intention. When contemplating these precepts, many thorny questions arise: How are we supposed to conduct ourselves if we do not yet know what our true vocation is? When we do receive our calling and/or our fortune, how can we stay humble and maintain a principled existence? And, then, how do the concepts of Right Livelihood and Right Intention play out on the world stage, where there are grand-scale corporate abuses and environmental destruction? This edition ponders all those questions, from the workplace to the world at large.

In a lecture on Right Livelihood, Krishnamurti said:

Is it not necessary for each to know for oneself what is the right means of livelihood? If we are avaricious, envious, seeking power, then our means of livelihood will correspond to our inward demands and so produce a world of competition, ruthlessness, oppression, ultimately ending in war.

Please keep this jewel of wisdom in mind as you enter and after you leave Sentient City.

Gasho,

Kyle Thomas Smith
Editor-in-Chief

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sentient City would like to extend extra special thanks to the following people: Laura Varacchi for revamping our whole look and feel; Ross Chapman for his excellence in programming and for installing our systems upgrade; Mike Levine for his generosity and musical/technical prowess; Juan-Carlos Castro and Ellen Scordato for their design counsel; and Ethan Nichtern for creating this community and green-lighting this publication. Thanks to everyone who has supported and contributed to Sentient City and The Interdependence Project.