Rules Over Wellbeing

Rules over wellbeing:
the maintenance of suffering.

Conformity is a deliberate feature of social control, groupthink and the creation of funds. When a system is designed to be blind to our struggles, it only sees tick boxes that haven’t been ticked. A machine mind has no empathy: if we drop out of a spiritual set-up, no one cares.

When we become cogs in the machine, we tell ourselves, “I don’t make the rules; I just follow them.” Our morality takes a back seat, turning off our conscience to avoid the guilt of acknowledging the harm we’re causing, and compassion goes out of the window.

Procedures/rules are easy to suggest or write, but incredibly hard to stop once they’re initiated. I once asked a lama (in front of all the students), “Do we have to keep prostrating whenever we come into the shrine room?” He said, “No” – but everyone still did. Prostrations are supposed to be an antidote to pride, but they’ve become the source of pride.

This actually causes harm, as everyone feels they have to conform to they know not what.