Spoken By Supreme Master Ching Hai, Paris, France, January 24, 1997
(Originally In English And French)

Q: We must work outside spiritually, but we cannot always choose our work and our boss; and sometimes some bosses are not honest and they force us to follow them because we work for them. They exploit us, they want money, and we have to follow. How can we consolidate this with spirituality? Because if I could work twenty-four hours a day for You I would do it, but I have to earn money.

M: You don't have to work twenty-four hours for me. Meditate two and a half hours for yourself and that will be enough. Regarding your question, you don't have to follow the boss, you just work for the boss. You do your duty, you perfect your job, and you earn the money that's assigned to you. Whether the boss is honest or not, you don't care, because you don't really know if the boss is honest or not. If you know and if you feel uncomfortable, you leave, you seek another job. To be a boss is also a very difficult position. As you have the pressure from the boss and the job, he has the pressure from his job, the environment and the connecting aspects with his position and his business. He has to struggle in the world of great competition to survive. Sometimes he's forced to do things that he might not conscientiously like to do. So we do not really know. Just forgive him if he is wrong, and do your best in your job.

To be a boss is very difficult, I can tell you. If you make one mistake, you might lose millions of dollars, the whole company will be closed down, and thousands of people will be out of work. So sometimes the responsibilities and pressures upon the boss are enormous. Maybe we should understand the boss better.

Q: Just to know what You think about the combination of aggressiveness and the fact of being an initiate. I'll explain to You. If you are obliged to be very aggressive in your profession -- for instance if you have to defend other colleagues, if you have to make negotiations with the government and so on, you are obliged to be aggressive to defend the people. After that you sometimes feel very wrong, because you say, "Okay, I am an initiate. All this day I was very aggressive, it was very bad." But I am aggressive for the good things, you know, to defend people. So, is that compatible with the initiate's philosophy?

M: If you have to work in the world, sometimes it's unavoidable in some situations to be more kind of go-getting or you can say aggressive. But we can't help it. Sometimes people do not take sweetness for an answer, do not take a reasonable attitude for a kind of friendship or nobility. They take it as a weakness. So they like to meet people who are more forceful, who are more straight to the point, and are not afraid in anything. So in that case, you have to use the weapon that they demand.

We are spiritual practitioners. Doesn't mean that we always have to use only one kind of weapon or one kind of attitude. It would be like a one way street! The worldly people they need a lot of streets and a lot of ways to go here and there, you can't just use a one way street forever. So aggressiveness or sweetness you have to use accordingly.

Do not blame yourself. Whatever you use for success is alright, as long as you don't harm the opponents by your hatred, by your real vicious intention to damage other people's reputation, wealth or position. You have to do what you do. You have to do what you have to do in order to attain what your job demands, and that is your duty, no problem. Just like when we have children, sometimes the children are bad and we have to use some kinds of authoritative measures to deal with them, in order to put them back into line.