ZEN and the
Art of Making a Living

by Laurence Boldt

GENERAL PURPOSE
To persuade & uplift

SPECIFIC PURPOSES
To encourage the listeners to buy a copy of this book and keep it handy for inspiration and practical ideas as well.

To give them permission to listen to their own inner voice.

INTRODUCTION
This author gathers together many different inspirational quotations, many from familiar Western authors, as well as his own knowledge, to try and inspire you to find your true calling, the reason that you came to the Earth to be born, a vocation that brings out the best in you, and which nourishes your soul.

The book is almost 600 pages long, so it is not something to read straight thru, like a novel. It has many practical job-hunting templates or recipes to follow, too.

But what leaped out to me from every page I opened, when I first looked at it, was the appeal to my higher Self, to call it forth, and let it speak.

This would be an excellent source for "thoughts for the day", for anyone facing a career change, or who has been laid off, or is otherwise between jobs.

He presents material to guide every level of worker, even those who must "make their own job", and be successfully self-employed.

Why ZEN??

He portrays ZEN variously as

"Choose To", Not "Have To":
Edit Your Self-Talk
My interpretation of his effort is that if you practice your work because you WANT TO, because you CHOOSE TO, as the "Master", instead of doing your work, because you HAVE TO, as the "Slave", then the future that you create, by the thoughts that you dwell on, is on a higher plane of existence----and of yourself---- than what you could be creating by feeling like a slave, who is forced to go to work, because of some negative reason.

To rise above the forces that want to enslave us, and that exert a discouraging negative influence, we must find a way to take a pro-active approach, perhaps by listening to the WANT TO's of our hearts, and by trying to fashion a new Personal Vision or Personal Mission Statement, a mental model knitting together all our unfinished gestalts, our lifetime ToDo list, that will lead us to choose a livelihood that is something that we passionately WANT TO do, something that is a JOY to be involved in, something that will leave us at our highest-level-of- consciousness, a journey upward in understanding.

Heart Wisdom Focus As
The Telephone To Your Soul
I believe, from many other sources, and from my own experience, that the aura of the heart chakra holds the memories of all your most cherished desires, all your unfinished gestalts, all those dreams that would really make you happy, but you have temporarily given up on them. If you listen to your heart wisdom, the deeper Self will speak. Don't expect the answers to come in words. They will probably come in pre-verbal intuitive knowing, in "vibes".

As Deepak Chopra says, listen to the "gap between the thoughts", with the LeftBrain verbal chatter in the OFF position.

The author wants "To get the part of you that knows what you are here to do, to start talking to the part of you that thinks it doesn't know" ....

and he also wants you to view your work as
"your creative expression of love in action".

We are talking here about the unconditional love of the heart, the second chakra, and not the love of the fourth chakra, sexual love. Unconditional love just radiates outward, and is not dependent upon attachment to an object, a significant other.

If more people are tuned into their own heart wisdom, and have their own head-to-heart chakra communication going on, our whole society will benefit.

That is how an inspirational book like "ZEN and the Art of Making a Living" IS LIKE a strong cup of chamomile tea for the whole society, one of the biggest systems of all.

Four Archetypes To Embolden Your
Quest And Release Your Doubt
To help with your quest for finding your life's work, that can help you to be your best, the author presents a system of four archetypes, ready- made role-playing templates, that will change your current mindset focus by tapping into universal energies, in effect, plugging you into your own Higher Self, helping you erase the illusion of separation.

It also gives you a little more perspective on your life, which some say is a dream that we live in, and call it reality.

Using the idea of pretending one of these archetype roles, empowers you to rewrite your life script.

It gives you permission to rewrite it.

And What Do You Do If Your Life Partner Or Your Child
Or Someone Close Is Not Supportive Of This Change In You?
The best idea is not to resist, with LeftBrained tension, and resentment, but just to Love Them, and Forgive Them, and Rise Above It.

Transcend. That will make it easier for them to follow along after you.

Resentment gives it a "stuckness" that holds you back. It makes Doubt too strong.

Another good book that spoke to me this week is
The Tao Of Physics, by Fritjof Capra
Capra is a theoretical physicist comparing Eastern philosophy and Western science. ZEN grew out of the Buddhism of India, that had been carried to China and then to Japan. While this movement was in China, Taoism had an influence, so there are many similarities. From chapter 8:

"Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Taoism is interested in intuitive wisdom, rather than rational knowledge."

"The Taoists saw all changes in nature as manifestations of the dynamic interplay between the polar opposites yin and yang, and thus they came to believe that any pair of opposites constitutes a polar relationship where each of the two poles is dynamically linked to the other.

Yin/Yang as the duality, as the oscillation between polar opposites, what Milan means when he says "Polarities Connect".

Maybe it is the interface between matter and antimatter.

Change as the dynamic interplay of opposites.

Along this line,

"Those who follow the natural order flow in the current of the Tao."

"If one refrains from acting contrary to nature or, as Needham says, from "going against the grain of things," one is in harmony with the Tao and thus one's actions will be successful. This is the meaning of Lao Tzu's seemingly so puzzling words, "By nonaction everything can be done."

Therefore, if you are interested in the ZEN aspects, of this Laurence Boldt book you might enjoy Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics.

IN CONCLUSION
Try and be true to your own inner self, your soul, the spark of the divine that knows what you would be happier doing. It wants to talk to your mind, and tell you what to do.

Boldt says,

"Whatever gets you really turned on, enough to work for with dedication, sacrifice, and excellence, has the quality of this blissful, original [non-verbal] nature in it, and is moving you toward your life's work."

And if we all try to do this, and we all gradually find our "life's work", something that we are in Bliss practicing, that will raise the group consciousness, what I call the "mass unconscious", part of that most important system of all, the Universe, the Kosmos, All That Is, that One Supreme Being that we all are, on higher levels.

[Which is really ..... Non-Being or non-material Being].