3) Harmonious Lifestyle (sammā-ājīva)
Here we are referring to our lifestyle, more than the jobs we do to earn a living, or our occupation. The harmonious life style is the unselfish, friendly, honest, compassionate, and tolerant way of living that is helpful but not harmful to anyone in the world. This is the automatic consequence of the harmonious disposition. It is possible to speak good words or do good actions occasionally but have a bad life style, where one gets angry and greedy often, and even being hated by others for one’s behaviour. If one has a good life style one will always be good, honest and helpful, and will be loved by everyone.
When a person has successfully completed the practice up to this point, he has become a stream entrant (sotâ panna). A stream entrant is one who has entered the stream. The stream is the Sublime Eightfold Way. This is the stream that ultimately falls into the ocean – Nirvana. To become a stream entrant one has to break three, out of the ten bonds that bind one to existence or being (bhava). These three bonds are:
• Personality perspective (sakkaya ditthi)
• Cognitive dissonance (vicikicca)
• Heteronomous morality (silabbata paramasa)
The personality perspective is broken when one has understood the Fourfold Sublime Reality, which is the understanding of the insecurity of life, its cause, its end, and the way to its end. When this has been understood in the proper way, the “notion of self” is intellectually discarded, because the Buddha pointed out that the insecurity, in short, consists of the five personalized gatherings (panca-upâdânakkhanda): images, feelings, sensations, constructions, and perceptions. The five gatherings are intellectually depersonalized at this point. Yet the emotional “sense of self” still remains. Though one understands that it is wrong, the “feeling of self” still remains.
The cognitive dissonance is due to the emotions and reason being at loggerheads: reasoning indicates that there is no “self,” but emotion feels the “self.” This dissonance is experienced even in the behaviour. One intellectually accepts the five precepts as good behaviour and even sets out to practice it, but when overcome by anger or lust one breaks the virtuosity.
Heteronomous morality is when one behaves morally only to please others or because others or the law wants one to be moral. Even morality based on obedience to God is not free from this allegation. The stream entrant is the only one who is free from this error because he has understood the need for morality, which is to establish peace and happiness within oneself as well in the world outside.