The Importance of Right Livelihood in Buddhism : หน้า 168/263

The Buddha said that a person who earns their living by Wrong Livelihood is like someone who intentionally advises a traveller to take a dangerous road, saying that it is safe, but when travelling themselves, will always take another (safer) route. As for Right Livelihood, there is a good example illustrated in the Seriva Jataka (J.3). During that lifetime, the bodhisatva was born as a merchant called Seriva from the town of Seriva. Once, in the company of a greedy merchant of the same name, he crossed the Nlampaḥa River and entered Andhapura. In that city was a family who had fallen on hard times, the sole survivors being a girl and her grandmother. The greedy merchant went to their house with his wares. The girl begged her grandmother to buy a trinket, and suggested that they should give the hawker the golden bowl from which they ate. The bowl was a valuable heirloom, but it had lost its lustre and the woman didn’t know its value. The hawker was called in and shown the bowl. He scratched it with a needle and knew it was gold and worth about $1,000, but wishing to have it for nothing, said it was not worth half a farthing — so he threw it away and left. Later, the bodhisatva came to the same street and was offered the same bowl. He told them the truth, gave them all the money he had and his stock, leaving only eight pieces of money for himself. These he gave to the boatman and boarded the boat to cross the river. Meanwhile, the greedy merchant went again to the old woman’s house, hoping to get the bowl in exchange for a few trinkets. When he heard what had happened, he lost control of himself, and throwing down everything on his yoke, he took the bar of the yoke as a weapon and ran down to the river to find the bodhisatva’s boat in mid-stream. He shouted to the boatman to return,