Right Livelihood, when we're thinking of Right Livelihood we're also thinking of the Noble Eightfold Path in which Right Livelihood is one of the factors. One of the main things behind any type of right livelihood is that it's non-harming, that it also is not something that we're doing just to get, get, get... in that sense. Now somebody could be a normal council person, working on a road gang as you've heard me say I've done before. It's a job in which a lot of men in particular will work to do service for the community. And yes, they get a pay cheque, but there's a two-way thing going on, it's not just one person getting and no one getting something else back. So most of Right Livelihoods, if you look across the whole spectrum of jobs that are non-harming, they're also jobs that actually do help people.
This is an interesting aspect to look at. In particular, some jobs that are involved in making weapons, making poisons, selling weapons, selling poisons, selling human beings, slavery and things like that, it's very clear these are what the Buddha termed wrong livelihood. When you think of gambling - gambling is a wrong livelihood because again it does not fit that statement I said at the beginning about doing something with other people benefiting. When people gamble they usually want to win for themselves. It's certainly a selfish motivation. So a lot of occupations you need to figure out for yourself - is this a right or wrong livelihood? Take a look deeper at it and say, "Well, are you only wanting something back or is this a sharing in which you're giving and other people are receiving as well?" As we stress here, the compassionate motivation, compassionate intention is behind everything you want to do. Now as long as you're working on increasing your compassionate intention generally your livelihood will take care of itself, because you won't be able to have a livelihood that's going to be wrong, a selfish type of livelihood.