I appear to be the only female that realizes this. I chose to use less machinery and do my tasks by hand, allowing myself the time and peace in which to meditate and progress Dharmically. The crowd still runs in the direction that the government and mass media tells it to. Knowing that to be wrong, I continue to do my laundry by hand, slice, dice and sauté my food, plant potatoes and beans, sweep my floor prayerfully, and choose to use the natural feet that I was provided with instead of an expensive mechanical lump.
The ability to live and learn correctly is fading. The Dharma has no time to be realized. People today take their Buddhism an hour a day, or on weekend retreats, instead of as a main part of their life. I fear this death much more than that of my own flesh-body. People do not seem to notice what is happening. They feel stressed, but do not see the plain facts of why. They get diseases and disorders, but cannot open their eyes and view the cause. They whine about life's lack of purpose, not seeing that the lifestyle they lead prohibits them from obtaining reason.
As even more are turned to face the wrongful direction, joining in the race without questioning, running in search of reason on the road they are told is right without challenging it or looking to make sure - I cannot see anyone else standing back and observing. With nobody else trying to point in the correct direction and head that way instead, I feel so alone.
This leads me to seek to take the Bodhisattva vow. I know that if I am the only one left that can see straight, I will not turn wrong, give up, or stop trying to help other people to see the truth. Something within me holds my compass needle fixed, firmly pointing towards the truth. However impossible it may seem, I have no option but to continue to try to explain until my very last breath is gone.
With such a strength within me, jumping ship to save only myself is not an option. Arahantcy would be far easier. I would be rid of this wretched and impossible life far sooner. Yet, the thought of increasingly fewer people seeing reality, and that I am one of those left seeing it without any intention to budge, leads me to stay and try to help. My stubbornness turns into perseverance and determination, my failure becomes my forte.
It would be "nice" to perfect myself then leave this dreadful mess behind me, but it would be "right" to remain one of those able to see and to try to find a way to guide the blind, as more and more lose their sight. Nice and right - that is a choice that I can make. If those were the two options, I would take the one labeled right.
I wait at the T-junction. I am a female, not a male. I cannot build the road that goes in the correct direction, only follow one that is already laid. I neither opt to become a nun nor a member of a wrongful lifestyle. I can take neither side road. I let the cars beep and pass me, all turning en masse in the wrong direction that they are instructed to go.
Were I a man, I would become a signpost. I would stand in the middle of the junction and point in the correct direction, until more people took the correct path. Were I a Buddha, I would lay down that road that we all need and maybe also demolish the side options.
I am a female, and all I can do is stand and wait, facing the right way, hopefully able to give directions to anybody missing the signpost of society or actually seeking the road of reality. Maybe that will be enough to save a few others, if not myself.
Personally, I wouldn\'t be interested in \'having it all\' again. In fact, I\'d be looking for a job that didn\'t involve multi-tasking, looking gorgeous AND being a wonderful wife. No, definitely not. Women have been \'flattered\' into taking high powered jobs, they\'ve been told \'they can do it, they can be as efficient as any man\'. So what\'s happened? They\'ve simply taken on yet ANOTHER load off man\'s plate. Get wise women - don\'t be flattered into taking on MORE than is healthy for you.
What most people DON\'T see in this wonderful offer of \'having it all\' is the fact that by enticing women out and into the workplace, she bears MANY additional roles and pressures which drain her energy AND her husband\'s and ultimately their children\'s too. This practice has allowed employers and governments to get more than their money\'s worth out of men and women whilst the government then creates a future generation of what are essentially \'parentless children\'. Children whose parents must put their jobs first in order to survive. These children then become accustomed to the state nursery idea and believe it to be the norm. They don\'t then have the reservations that our generation had about leaving our children in the care of strangers every day while we sit in some office pushing the meaningless bits of paper created by a hierarchical system to keep us ALL TOO BUSY TO STOP AND THINK about WHY we\'re doing it, and WHO is profiting from keeping the majority of society with their heads down and SEPARATED as families. Families were by their very nature designed to SPEND A GREAT DEAL OF TIME TOGETHER - this is what creates a stable society and community. But our children are being ROBBED far too early in life, of that initial FAMILY called Mum and Dad. Without the experience of being INDIVIDUALLY cared for and nurtured by our parents, mother in particular, how are we meant to cope in the WIDER FAMILY situation? I\'m now 55 and didn\'t leave my children until they were school age firstly because I WANTED to spend lots of time with them, secondly because I actually ENJOYED having them around me and thirdly because although money was tight and we were by no means wealthy, we had enough. Like yourself I found running a home to a good standard, and all the chores that go with that to be time consuming enough and satisfying enough for me. And I was by no means a \'lady of leisure\' as we were condescendingly called by certain \'career women\', neither was I ever a drudge. I was mistress of my own domain, I was an excellent manager and my family were well adjusted. However, it was my own mother who encouraged me to go out to work once the children were at school and I regret to this day ever having listened to her, because it was from that time onwards that I became a DRUDGE as I tried to balance work with home commitments and in those days we were pressured subtly about not taking time off for childcare etc - we were expected to have \'support measures in place\' despite the measly wages we were paid and the fact we couldn\'t afford to pay anyone to care for our children in our absence.
And of course feminism fell for the whole shabang of equality and today we have a generation of 20 and 30 somethings who believe all strangers a generation above them are to be \'blanked out\' because they may be molesters/murderers/robbers. We have young people without any social skills whatsoever because they\'ve been thrown far to early into \'the community care\' system for their own and their parent\'s comfort - and it shows later on when they are in NORMAL situations in the workplace etc and they are so fearful of making even a simple conversation with other people and don\'t have the skills to do so. Then the government has a convenient label for this \'syndrome\' no doubt, together with a pill to cure it.
Our children and grandchildren don\'t need pills - they need parents, common sense, time spent at home being loved, cherished and taught the basics of family life BEFORE they\'re thrown out there to get on with it. The DON\'T need governments coming up with weird and wonderful ideas to experiment upon whole generations with and subtly socially engineering our future parents of children to accept without complain, what is NOT in their best interests.
Grandmothers unite! We\'ve been here long enough to have experienced where we were led down the garden path, and we\'ve plenty of advice to give the next generation if they can stand still for long enough to bother to listen.