Quotes about Right livelihood

Most of my parents' friends and most of my parents' friends' children also have degrees.  This doesn't mean that they've managed to find the kind of work they wanted.  Not at all; they went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree.  And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.

Do what you love and the money will follow.

If something is important enough to you that you feel the urge to donate your money or time to it, I think it’s best to try to express that form of giving through your career, not just as something you do on the side.  If you enjoy your volunteering and charitable activities more than your career, it means your career is in serious need of an upgrade.  In my opinion your career should be your best outlet for giving.

It’s time we stopped putting up with unhappy workplaces and bad bosses. Unhappiness at work is not a minor annoyance. It makes us tired, stressed and negative. Worst case, it makes us sick or kills us.

Being happy at work makes you more energetic, productive, motivated, creative and successful. That is what we need more of. That is how we will work from now on. With happiness.

We are great fools. "He has passed his life in idleness," we say. "I have done nothing today." What! Haven't you lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. "Had I been put in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do." Have you been able to think out and manage your life? You have performed the greatest work of all. In order to show and release her powers, Nature has no need of fortune; she shows herself equally on all levels, and behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, to rule, to lay up treasure, to build, are at most little appendices and props.

Whatever enchants, also guides and protects.  Passionately obsessed by anything we love - sailboats, airplanes, ideas - an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts.

Whatever enchants, also guides and protects.

What is my job on the planet" is one question we might do well ask ourselves over and over again. Otherwise, we may wind up doing somebody else's job and not even know it. And what's more, that somebody else might be a figment of our own imagination and maybe a prisoner of it as well.

Rarely do we question and then contemplate with determination what our hearts are calling us to do and to be. I like to frame such efforts in question form: "What is my job on the planet with a capital J?", or "What do I care about so much that I would pay to do it?" If I ask such a question and I don't come up with an answer, other than, "I don't know", then I just keep asking the question.

You can start asking this question any time, at any age. There is never a time of life when it would not have a profound effect on your view change what you do, but it may mean that you may what to change how you see it or hold it, and perhaps how you do it. Once the universe is your employer, very interesting things start to happen, even if someone else is cutting your paycheck. But you do have to be patient. It takes time to grow this way of being in your life. The place to start of course is right here. The best time? How about now?

You never know what will come of such introspections. Buckminster Fuller, the discoverer/inventor of the geodesic dome, himself was fond of stating that what seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. He liked to point out that for the honey bee, ,t is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others. Things are constantly unfolding on different levels. It's for us to perceive the warp and woof of it all as best we can and learn to follow our own threads through the tapestry of life with authenticity and resolve.

But I don’t see Zaadz as a place with a single motive for its members - I think that we want to enable people of like minds (whether those minds be yogic, Buddhist, self-improvement-oriented) to congregate, communicate and cooperate, to create an atmosphere of wellness, support and abundance for ourselves and our members, and for ourselves - the wizards - to do so in a sustainable way that supports our own livelihoods.

The Real Work
There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do.  If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else, and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.
It's as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do.  So human beings come to this world to do particular work.  That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person.  If you don't do it, it's as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat.  It's a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots.  It's a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.
You say, "But look, I'm using the dagger.  It's not lying idle."
Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds?  For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose.  You say, "But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises.  I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest."  But consider why you do those things.  They are all branches of yourself.
Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord.  Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments.  If you don't, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd.  You'll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

Your work is to discover your work and then, with all your heart, to give yourself to it.