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In Our Careers 2001 Section: • Answers from the Inside: Q&A with a human resources professional. • Snapshots of the Working World: Profiles of 11 different people and 11 different jobs. • The World's Richest Asians: Billionaires, billionaires, and more billionaires. • Washington Journal: My Life, My Work, My Job • Charts: Top ten lists of the jobs that grew the most, and blew the most. Profiles of real working people: Private Investigator • Teacher • Religious Director • Labor Organizer • Nurse • Robotics Engineer • Forensic Neuro-psychologist • Subagent • Kickboxer • Bioinformatics Specialist • Sex Educator

Viveka: Religious Director

Salary: N/A

Imagine being a baby-sitter for people’s spiritual well-being. Imagine the gravity of your responsibility. You are the gatekeeper, the keystone of their divinity. What a load. And then multiply that by the number of people you are in charge of. This surely can’t be an easy job, not a mere 9-to-5, because when the lights go off in the office, your moral duty toward your clients doesn’t automatically extinguish with it. Religion doesn’t have office hours; it is way of life.

Viveka, going solely by her first name, is the chairwoman of the San Francisco Buddhist Center. Officially, her duty is to “maintain spiritual responsibility and a healthy community — to ensure that people grow and are true to the Buddhist tradition.” Viveka adds that she must “experiment, place Buddhism in a modern context so that it will remain viable.”

She was not born to be religious, as her family was comprised of individuals. Her father was an electrical engineer (in whose footsteps she initially followed), while her mother was in library science. She did not become interested in religion until college, where she took a Chinese philosophy class and physics, which she says is “actually very philosophical — makes you look at reality in a different way.”

Visiting many Buddhist sites in China, she became officially ordained in 1997. After being a Board member of the Center for six years, she was appointed as chairwoman in September of 2000.

She admits that “there is almost no pay — I do this on almost a volunteer basis.” But it is certainly a full-time job. She must coordinate other volunteers, teach meditation classes, lead retreats, and foster leadership among other Board members and people at the center. It is her goal to “empower people at all levels, to convince them that religious service is not just a commodity they can buy, but must be something they can be involved in.”

Some words for other aspiring religious leaders: “You need to ask yourself what you really care about. In the nonprofit world, there is little monetary compensation. You have to have strong motivation — to guard against burnout — and make sure that you aren’t abusing your role.”

In addition, Viveka also works on social justice issues and as a hospice volunteer at a Zen hospice program. “Social activism and religious activism are all the same,” she says. “It’s all about making people live more creatively, and changing the world.”