Deep down, nobody wants a job to occupy his or her time. We want a mission that inspires us.

Marcuse wrote: "Perhaps an accident may alter the situation, but unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about the change.".

According to Buddhism, each person is a Buddha who has forgotten their original nature. If we in the pampered West, having grown up with so many advantages, could not claim our own health and our agency, preferring to see ourselves as helpless victims, then who would do it? Who would take responsibility for the world?

I grew up in a very artistic, cultured home, but without any kind of spirituality. My parents were secular materialists, so I saw art as having an alternate value.

I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. Most of the time, thinking is an autonomous process, something that happens outside of our control. This perception of machine-like quality of the self is something many people discover, then try to overcome, through meditation.

Individuals who are really inspirational are always what changes history. Gandhi had a bunch of good ideas, and he led a non - violent revolution that transformed India.

Life as an end is qualitatively different from life as a means.