August 29th ~ Is not discontent essential, not to be smothered away, but to be encouraged, inquired into, probed, so that with the understanding of what is there comes contentment? That contentment is not the contentment that is produced by a system of thought; but it is that contentment which comes with the understanding of what is. That contentment is not the product of the mind–the mind that is disturbed, agitated, incomplete, when it is seeking peace, when it is seeking a way away from what is. And so the mind, through justification, comparison, judgment, tries to alter what is, and thereby hopes to arrive at a state when it will not be disturbed, when it will be peaceful, by social conditions, by poverty, starvation, degradation, by the appalling misery, seeing all that that, it wants to alter it; it gets entangled in the way of altering, in the system of altering. But if the mind is capable of looking at what is without comparison, without judgment, without the desire to alter it into something else, then you will see that there comes a kind of contentment which is not of the mind.
The contentment which is the product of the mind is an escape. It is sterile. It is dead. But there is contentment which is not of the mind, which comes into being when there is the understanding of what is, in which there is profound revolution that affects society and individual relationship.
November 9th, 2019 ~ Being in a relationship, this philosophy of being content with what is as opposed to wanting what all the others in relationships want, is challenging. Most of the others want more. It is about getting “creative” to find more ways to get more. It is so sad, isn’t it. It is pathetic. Aren’t we so lucky to be here? To have a roof over our head, healthy food at our disposal, beautiful weather. A relatively safe environment to live. We want more. We want assurances that we will continue to have this until the day we die.
Being okay with discontent. How would that look in today’s relationship? In today’s workplace? Contracts are signed. There isn’t much room for wiggle space when it comes to discontent. We want reassurances. Not leaving jobs until we find a replacement. Companies luring away employees from other companies. Companies negotiating with each other promising not to hire away other employees. Companies paying astronomical fees to executives (2000 times more than the lowest paid workers in the company), thinking they can’t or won’t survive if they don’t have these employees. This is mentioned in Zen & Creative Management, where more emphasis is paid to a particular person rather that than the role. What I think this means is that a person is harder to replace. A role can be filled by people coming up through the channels of the company. The other factor is that of the three major areas in a business: employees, shareholders and customers, all three have equal importance. In this case, how can you pay executives so much higher salaries when you have customers being as equal in importance? Would you single out a few customers and give them better deals than the other customers? No. You couldn’t do that. So now, people want a piece of that of pie, but we are adjusting ourselves to a broken system. So K recommends we notice this discontent. Simmering. Not necessarily fixing it. Notice how painful it is. How sad it is. How much time we are wasting.
You know how much time we are wasting bringing CEO’s to Capital Hill to testify about the issues of the day? They still are making astronomical fees. They build up their personal wealth so that they can later have non-profits to give it away. While their current employees can’t afford to buy food and extra health care costs. They are wasting their employees time.