Key to understanding why there are eight parts to the long- established Buddhist way and twelve principles to the more recent Permaculture way is this concept of "right doing."
If we are alive, we do some things. But perhaps some of them are thoughtless things. Then it behooves us to think this through. To do well, it may help to have (and keep to) a plan. (If we are uncomfortable calling what we do by the names given here, we may use other names. The important thing is the action.)
The Buddhist way may in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself.
The Permaculture principles are thought to be an expression of three ethics, caring for the earth, caring for people, and fairness -- which is really but one ethic, and may also in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule.
Everything unfolds from the observation that there is one observable reality, regardless of how it may be described, and that therefore in some sense there is no one or nothing from which we can be divided. Care for the earth is people care and is sharing.
So we can try this experimentally. See, feel, say (or refrain from
saying), do, earn, strive, think, and manifest caring and sharing. We
may find that it works, and that our cynicism has been a hindrance.
Why should we ever be bored a single moment in an awakened life dedicated to right doing? It's not really harder than wrong doing.
Being mindful of generosity is a gate to what the Dharma illumines, for due to that we do not expect rewards.
-- Dogen, 108 dharma gates, tr. Nearman