What's the best advice you've ever been given by a leader or mentor in your life? - roundup

Bert de Vries, resource economist, systems scientist at the Netherlands National Institute for Health and the Environment: Be sincere to your own truth, it is the only truth.

--Indian master Osho Rajneesh

Dr. Alan Kapuler, biological conservationist, founder of Deep Diversity Seed Catalogue, Seeds of Change seedsman:

Don't follow leaders/watch the parking meters.

--Bob Dylan

Jim Page, musician, songwriter: Learn from your own experience and find your own voice. --anon.

Reverend Chumley, spiritual Leader of the Morally Indigent: "Up against the wall," from a series of US presidents and other authority figures.

Tom Noddy, aka the BubbLe Guy, author of Bubble Magic: Early on, when I started performing, a guy told me: "When you go on stage to perform, never leave cash backstage."

Dennis Peron, activist, Medical Use of Cannabis Legalization: founder of Cannabis Buyers Club, Son Francisco:

In 1965, I heard a speech by Robert Kennedy who talked about poor people being hungry and how this country wasn't living up to its dreams. Bobby challenged us to change this country that we loved.

Libba Pinchot, writer, co-author of The Rise of Intelligent Organization:

Margaret Mead sat down next to me in the front row of an auditorium where E.F. Schumacher was about to speak, and in minutes she had fallen asleep. She was a small woman (this was the last year of her life) dressed in a navy-blue coat that covered her body in the chair so that as she slept, only the short gray hair on top of her head suggested a human.

Schumacher was making a lot of sense and was very appealing. During the question-and-answer period, Margaret continued to sleep, but I began to get agitated by the stupidity of a debunking question asked by an elegant woman in Gucci jeans and high-heeled boots. She was saying that ecological agriculture was unworkable, a laughably naive approach to food production. She acted like an authority, the harsh voice of reason. I wanted to speak up to her, but didn't dare. You have to picture me -- I was in my fifth year of residence on an ecological agriculture commune, and looked the part, with long hair, clothes from India, not Italy, and hard-muscled. I felt out of place in this crowd of grown-ups in the Tarrytown Conference Center housed in the Mary Biddle Duke estate overlooking the Hudson River. I couldn't talk in front of strangers.

As Margaret slept on, the woman argued with Schumacher, and I must have finally gotten angry enough to mutter something hostile under my breath. From the dark-cloaked lump sleeping next to me an elbow shot out into my ribs, hitting hard, and Margaret Mead hissed in my ear: "Stand up and make yourself heard!" I did, as best I could. I couldn't have done otherwise. I like to remember that elbow in my ribs. I still need it today.

Barbara Pyle, vice-president and director of environmental policy. Turner Broadcasting Systems:

When I left home at eighteen to go to college, my father, Charles Y. Pyle of Paul Valley, Oklahoma, advised me: "Always carve away from yourself"

Ram Dass, author, lecturer, spiritual teacher:

Honor your guru, deepen your emptiness, and deepen your compassion. That's all you have to do this lifetime.

When I asked my guru how I could know God, he said, "Feed people." And when I asked him how I could get enlightened he said, "Serve people."

Hazel Henderson, author, columnist, International consultant on alternative development:

Listen to your highest self. I tap into that by the simple Buddhist meditation: "Big Mind -- Little Mind." My "mentor," my highest self, is my Big Mind -- my universe-conscious sell Little Mind is my locally-expressed, physi-cal/mental/emotional/cultural/social/environmental and spiritual sell The exercise is to keep both of these aspects balanced and integrated into my awareness as much of the time as possible.

Mark Dowie, investigative reporter, post publisher and editor of Mother Jones:

The relationship of the editor to the writer is the relationship of the knife to the throat

--Paul Jacobs

Tell the truth and run.

--George Seldes

Ken Kesey, bus driver, author:

Cassady often said, "If you want to be loved, be lovely."

Dave Lippman, folk singer, troubadour, comedian, activist: Be yourself. --anon.

Artis the Spoonman, voudeville performer. poet, author of Aspirations to Manifestations from the Womb to the Void:

Albert Schweitzer said -- in response to a question about his thoughts about humanity and its relationship to itself and the world -- he said he was "optimistic about the possibilities and pessimistic about the probabilities."

Sara Felder, solo theater artist, playwright, juggler:

If you don't change direction, you will probably end up where you are heading.

Alan Gussow, artist, an activist, gardener:

I knew and briefly worked for Robert Kennedy. What he modeled for me was redemption, the capacity for authentic, personal change. He was not a very appealing person in his early days -- working for Senator Joseph McCarthy, chasing Jimmy Hoffa relentlessly. Yet in his final years he became a public person with a towering moral sense. Although he never said it to me directly, his advice through his actions was "It is possible to change, to release the best that is in you, to really stand for something and act on it." "Satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment. Full effort is full victory." "We have nothing to lose except everything. So let's go ahead. If we are to fail, it is better, in any case, to have stood on the side of those who choose life than on the side of those who are destroying."

Paul Winter. musician, activist:

Beware of becoming too good at anything too trivial too soon. --Bergen Evans, my literature professor at Northwestern University. Over the three decades since then, those words have helped me appreciate the blessings of the challenge, and to realize that failure is life's way of making you go deeper.

Randy Hayes, environmentalist, director of Rainforest Action Network:

Upon starting RAN ten years ago, Herb Chao Gunther, director of the Public Media Center in San Francisco, told me to do three things:

* Launch an aggressive national media campaign to popularize the rainforest issue in all walks of life

* Jump into the mail both feet first and build a strong activist oriented membership that would support campaigns and keep RAN from being overly dependent on foundation money

* Build a hard-hitting grassroots army nationwide to fight the fight.

* A decade later, we have accomplished those three tasks, defeated a few foundations, saved many forest areas, and are stepping up the campaign to fight and win more fights.

Stephanie Mills, author of In Service of the Wild, bioregionalist:

Don't try too hard (to be good).--Grandmother Watch where you're going.--Daddy You've got to learn to choose your shots.--Natalie Roberts/Winkler Endorse Yourself!--Longshoreman-philosopher Frank Brennan

Sally Fox, entomologist, cotton breeder, eco-entrepreneur, owner of Fox Fibre: In your life you might find something that's your life work. When you find it you'll know it. Stick with it. Don't allow anyone to talk you out of it. Shut out those negative people who would try to talk you out of it or stand in your way.

--Ray Bradbury

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