Page 112 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

These are just physical effects, physical manifestations, but there

is an even greater effect on the mind. The mind may be even
more seriously deformed. The effects may not be easy to see,

but they are there all the same, as in the case of that miraculous
transformation of the picture of Dorian Gray. Every time he
performed a wicked or sinful action his own face was not

affected, but the face of the portrait was, until in the end the
portrait became a veritable picture of evil. Thus all the while our

actions are producing an effect. Little by little, a change is taking
place. Your work, something which you are engaged in every
day, something which you are, as it were, up to your neck in for

days, weeks, months, years, and decades, will have a
tremendous, even a terrible, effect on the mind, very often

without your knowing it. Just think what must be the mental
state of a stockbroker, who is all the time preoccupied with
stocks and shares, and who might have to pick up the telephone

in the middle of the night because of a change in the market. Or
think what must be the mental state of a bookmaker. That too

must be pretty terrible.

Taking an even more extreme example, think what must be the

mental state of a man who works in the slaughterhouse. We
cannot close our eyes to the fact that there are hundreds, if not

thousands, of slaughterhouses in this country and hundreds of
thousands of them all over the world. If we were to be asked,
here and now, to take a knife and cut the throat of a cat, or to

stamp on a rat or a mouse, most of us could not do it. But
suppose you had to do it, and had to do it twenty or thirty times

a day. Suppose you had to cut the throat of a sheep, or to kill
and

112