Page 116 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

involved in helping to manufacture them, and to this extent you

are, from the Buddhist point of view, involved in wrong
livelihood. The point is too obvious to need much elaboration.

The Buddha also expresses, in different places, his strong
disapproval of various other trades which were carried on in the

India of his day, and which are still carried on there. These
include earning money by means of palmistry and fortune-telling.

Astrology and divination are also strongly discouraged. But such
are the chances of history that in all the existing Buddhist
countries most monks, I am sorry to say, do make money in this

way, i.e. by telling fortunes and consulting the stars for their
clients, and by divination. Yet the Buddha clearly discouraged

this, describing it as a wrong mode of livelihood.

It is interesting that the Buddha also disapproved of actors, and I

expect of actresses too. Once an actor-manager called Talaputo
approached him saying that there was a tradition among stage

folk that when they died they went to the Heaven of the
Laughing Gods, because by their acting they made people laugh,
and wanting to know if the tradition was correct. At first the

Buddha refused to answer Talaputo's question, but on being
pressed he eventually did so. Far from going to the Heaven of the

Laughing Gods, he told the actor-manager, actors went to hell
when they died. The reason for this was that, themselves
overcome by greed, hatred and delusion, by their acting they

increased the greed, hatred and delusion of other people.
Degraded themselves, they degraded others. For behaviour such

as this the karmic recompense could not be other than painful.

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