A daily dose of dharma
linchpin
“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
BreakDown
“The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.”
― Theodore J. Kaczynski, The Industrial Society and It’s Future
The Ship Was SInking…
“The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats.”
Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”
The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”
The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won't matter a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!”
But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”
Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”
The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats.”
The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”
The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”
― Daniel Quinn
Self ConsCious
“Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…
Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.”
― Osho
CREATE CULTURE
“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow.
The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking.
That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears.
And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna
The Truth
“it seems a shame to have to sneak to get to the truth. To make the truth such a dirty old nasty thing. You gotta sneak to get to the truth, the truth is condemned.
The truth is in the gas chamber. The truth has been in your stockyards. Your slaughterhouses. The truth has been in your reservations, building your railroads, emptying your garbage. The truth is in your ghettos. In your jails.In your young love, not in your courts or congress where the old set judgement on the young.
What the hell do the old know about the young? They put a picture of old George on the dollar and tell you that he's your father, worship him. Look at the madness that goes on, you can't prove anything that happened yesterday.
Now is the only thing that's real. Everyday, every reality is a new reality. Every new reality is a new horizon,a brand new experience of living.
I got a note last night from a friend of mine. He writes in this note that he's afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his reality, as I save mine. You can't prove anything. There's nothing to prove.
Every man judges himself. He knows what he is. You know what you are, as i know what i am, we all know what we are.
Nobody can stand in judgement, they can play like they're standing in judgement. They can play like they stand in judgement and take you off and control the masses, with your human body. They can lock you up in penitentiaries and cages and put you in crosses like they did in the past, but it doesn't amount to anything.
What they're doing is, they're only persecuting a reflection of themselves. They're persecuting what they can't stand to look at in themselves,the truth.”
― Charles Manson
“The spiritual journey…”
“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
― Ram Dass
“Look down at me…”
“Look down at me and you see a fool,
Look up at me and you see a god,
Look straight at me and you see yourself.”
― Charles Manson
“How do geese know…”
“How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
apotheoses
/əˌpäTHēˈōsəs/
the highest point in the development of something; culmination or climax.
“Imagine pushing yourself to your apotheoses. What would it require you do? What would you need to work on? How would it feel to get there?”