Since 22 June 2005, when I was ordained, I have been Satyalila (“she who is true and playful”). I was delighted when I received my name, not least because “lila” is a direct reference to the “play” of the bodhisattva – something which has long fascinated me. Sometimes the spiritual life can seem such a slog (as can work) – but I know it doesn’t have to be like that! In this article I just wanted to say a bit about my work and work as spiritual practice – which I feel quite passionate about.

I manage an Oxfam Bookshop in Bristol. I moved back to Bristol in 2002 after almost 6 years of living and working in Croydon. I lived in a women’s community and worked in a women’s team-based-right-livelihood business, The Wholefood Shop. I was drawn to work in team-based-right-livelihood because it offered a kind of “semi-monastic” way of life – living and working together, focusing on Dharma practice. It was a very strong experience that was simultaneously very beneficial and, at times, difficult. I feel it was a very good “apprenticeship” and am very grateful to the friends who shared the commitment to practise in this way together.

The Bodhisattva Ideal One of the things I love about my current job is they way its purpose is described on my job description: “To make as much money as possible to overcome poverty and suffering”… it immediately made me think of the Bodhisattva Ideal – a very central aspiration for Buddhists. A modern-day paraphrase of the Bodhisattva Ideal is “when the time is ripe and I am ready, I place no limit on what I will do for the sake of all sentient beings”.

Mindfulness and Aesthetic Appreciation On a day to day level there is a definite way in which one can bring mindfulness into one’s work. This can often be difficult when all is hectic and busy, but with a few deep breaths and remembering that one has FEET which are ON THE GROUND, it can be done… Lots has been written about this in all sorts of places (I love Thich Nhat Hahn’s “The Miracle of Mindfulness” and Dogen’s “From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment”, to name but two. Oh. And “Crooked Cucumber” (The life of Shunryu Suzuki) and “Street Zen” (The life of Issan Dorsay).

One particular reflection I wanted to note here is the relationship between mindfulness – taking care and enjoying the process of what one is engaged with, not just going for the result – and aesthetic appreciation. We tend of think of aesthetic appreciation being reserved for Official Art and particular things we put in our homes to look at and admire. But actually there’s so much scope for creating beauty and making things aesthetically pleasing in everything we do. I am thinking here about the shop basement (I often think about the shop basement – our stock room and store room and office and….). When I am in a positive frame of mind, I can work in such a way that I create aesthetic pleasure for myself (and hopefully, others) – taking time to stack the endless numbers of empty vegetable boxes so that they sit with all their corners aligned, not higgledy-piggledy and in danger of falling on anyone who might pass by. Just in tiny things, like how books are piled on the desk, whether our various stationery “implements” are stowed in their correct little drawers… all this can make the experience of work more pleasurable.

Of course there are times when all this goes out of the window – mountains of donations of books coming in and just a need to drop everything and pile through sorting them. But even then… there can be an aesthetic delight in wholeheartedly throwing one’s energy into one specific task, completing it and restoring some sense of order from chaos afterwards…

Metta Bhavana Practice The “Metta Bhavana” is a meditation practice which cultivates one’s capacity for loving kindness towards all beings (including oneself). It is traditionally practiced in 5 stages: the first focuses on oneself and cultivating a sense of positivity towards oneself; the second stage extends this out to a good friend (and it’s often easier to cultivate a sense of positivity for a good friend than for oneself, I’ve found!); in the third stage one brings to mind someone who is traditionally referred to as a “neutral” person – ie someone one has come across but does not know in any depth (eg a customer); the fourth stage is reserved for somebody we find difficult or are in conflict with and in the fifth stage one extends one’s sense of loving-kindness to all the people in the practice and then extends it out more widely into the world. [This is an extremely brief taste of this practice, but hopefully sets the scene].

I knew from The Wholefood Shop that customers bring a living, breathing dimension to Metta Bhavana practice. I eventually got to notice, when certain people walked through the door, which stage of the practice I was going to need! In the Oxfam Bookshop, this practice extends, of course, to the team of 57 volunteers who help to run the shop and my lovely Deputy, Liz. One can practise this meditation very much in the day to day, not just sitting on the cushion and interacting with all the various people in the shop is a great way to do this.

Holding to nothing whatever… I manage the shop and have a target to meet. However, I have no control over the stock comes in for us to sell! All the books and music are donated and, whilst we can reject unsaleable goods, we can’t magic-up more of things we really need. I’ve often thought that it’s a little bit like the monks on their alms-rounds, just accepting what is put into their bowls.

In terms of people, all the volunteers are in the shop because of their own generous impulse to help Oxfam, there is no compulsion, no legal “contract”, no obligation beyond their own decision to commit. So I have virtually no “control” over the team that run the shop either!… The majority of the fantastic team at our shop are very reliable and keep us informed if they can’t work or are planning to leave. But it’s not uncommon for people to suddenly disappear without notice, or suddenly announce they are stopping with immediate effect because their circumstances have unexpectedly changed.

I find the image of sailing a ship helpful here – an image that’s often been used for the spiritual life as a whole and as a way to approach meditation practice. We have to have a clear idea of where we want to head, a vision that we can share and work towards. However, if we try to stick rigidly to a pre-planned course, not allowing for changing conditions, prevailing winds etc, we are pretty soon going to come unstuck. So I find myself approaching my job with a lot of faith. OK, the fiction shelves in the stock room are empty… that will change (it’s surprising how often we do get just the books we need); OK, we’ve no volunteers for Saturday afternoon because the whole Saturday afternoon team wants to go to Ashton Court Festival, people will respond; OK, I’d drawn up a list of 6 important things I was going to do today, but we’ve had in 20 boxes of donations and you can’t move in our basement so I’m spending the day book sorting instead…..

Sometimes, to follow the sailing analogy a bit further, there’s a great gust, a good following wind that provides a huge boost, and that’s a practice, too. How to embrace and go with the flow of such things without getting too caught up and intoxicated by them. My big experience of this was in December 2004 when we found “the Original Bridget Jones Diary” and I wrote a press release for the Evening Post which ended up in all the national papers and on TV, as well as being syndicated around the world by Reuters and the BBC World Service! Rather unexpectedly, I discovered that I rather enjoyed being interviewed on radio and TV – especially being able to genuinely enthuse about something I found interesting and fun. I felt the nagging fear of “getting big headed” but at the same time had lots of encouragement to go for it, because the publicity was so good for Oxfam. The result was very positive for Oxfam – £30,000 profit generated from sales of the printed diary, plus £100,000s worth of publicity through whole page stories in the national press. For me, aside from the fun of it all, I had the strong lesson of being the centre of attention for a couple of weeks and then, after Christmas, realising that it’d all become “old news”… not exactly the worldly winds of fame and infamy, but a teaching all the same!

So much more I could say, but it will have to wait for another time. I just want to end with a quote from Dhardo Rimpoche which I carry in my heart, almost as a mantra…

“If you work hard in the right way, the effect will spread like light”