Student: I’ve been struggling a lot recently, and I would appreciate your pointing finger. I’ve been struggling with the kind of life I live. Every day I go to work for a big corporation, and every day I hear over and over how we need to make more money and push people to buy more, and do what’s best for the company. It’s especially sensitive because it feels deeply..unbalanced.. that so much of the need to push people regardless of what’s right for them is.

And it’s not just with my company. I know that’s true everywhere. I’m part of a relationship with this society where we support not being enough, where we need to consume and be different and make more money.

I don’t know how things should or shouldn’t be, but all of this feels deeply deeply unbalanced to me. It feels very hard to live clearly and authentically in a way that doesn’t support this cycle.

I know, that in original nature there is the typing of the keyboard and the glare of the computer screen. But coming back to that in the rest of my life, there is still a deep sense of “this way is not balanced.”

I don’t know what to do. I’ve never known what to do. I just want to cry for how I feel like we’ve trapped ourselves in a cycle of delusions and suffering.

Zen Master Jok Um: Your Buddhist name is Bright Nature. That’s the best place to start. You lend your deep talents to an organization that markets education in the pursuit of profit. Being there heightens your sensibilities about how this unfolds, its roots and its effects. Your discomfort is the heart of the heart of wisdom. Bow to your teachers. You begin a new way by deeply seeing the current way.