The 10 principles you should follow, from the world’s oldest religion

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Ok, whether Hinduism is the world’s oldest surviving religion is debatable. But, like the question of whether Roger Federer is the tennis goat, it’s very much in the conversation.

The Upanishads lists 10 forbearances, essentially principles and activities that should be followed as sources of good karma and signs of virtue. They are:

  1. Ahimsa – don’t do harm to any living being, human or other
  2. Satya – always be truthful
  3. Asteya – don’t covet another’s property
  4. Brahmacharya – remain celibate while single, and stay faithful (broadly defined) in marriage
  5. Daya – be kind, without conditions
  6. Arjava – don’t deceive others
  7. Kshama – always forgive
  8. Dhriti – remain calm and modest in times of great wealth and poverty, whether of yourself or of others
  9. Mitahara – eat, drink, and accumulate (money and belongings) in moderation
  10. Saucha – clean the body and mind through both physical and spiritual actions

The suggestions pretty much boil down to this: think always of the Golden Rule, and apply it to others AND to yourself.

In just about every religion, you’ll see such lists, and you’ll see a LOT of similarities between them: Moses’s Ten Commandments. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Night Journey verses in the Qu’ran. And although I don’t remember such explicit directives in the Dao de Jing, you’ll find similar wisdom in Buddha’s Eightfold Path, in the Analects of Confucius…

Here are more interesting lists of knowledge and wisdom.

“I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons.”

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? – Trainspotting

I’m not saying you should choose heroin. But, to paraphrase the Chris Rock joke about OJ Simpson, I’m not saying I’d do it…but I understand.

To learn more about choice and why too much of it makes you unhappy (if you’re reading this, then you definitely have too much choice in your life :), here’s a great frank talk by Barry Schwartz, who coined “the paradox of choice”.

Weakness corrupts, and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression…Nor can we win the weak by sharing our hope, pride, or even hatred with them. We are too far ahead materially and too different in our historical experience to serve as an object of identification. Our healing gift to the weak is the capacity for self-help. We must learn how to impart to them the technical, social, and political skills which would enable them to get bread, human dignity, freedom, and strength by their own efforts.

Eric Hoffer (he of True Believer) in what he considered his best book, The Ordeal of Change.

The True Believer: how “crazy people” radically change the world (they may be the only ones who do)

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Maybe it’s just the times we live in, but I’ve gotten some terse, simmering emails from readers of my 1-page summary of Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. People are upset about…stuff. Trump. Radical Islam. Other stuff.

True Believer explains how mass movements arise and succeed (or fail). Prompted by the emails and my renewed interest in religion, I began to re-read the book. Boy am I glad I did. Powerful, perceptive, punchy writing.

So I wanted to share again my summary and recommend the original book.

A few of my favorite excerpts:

For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.

The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.

We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves. Thus when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy-laden with suspicion. There is prying and spying, tense watching and a tense awareness of being watched. The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension but to strict conformity.

And I wrote a follow-up essay on how every mass movement requires 3 types of leaders (sometimes embodied in one exceptional person): the Intellectual, the Fanatic, and the Man of Action.

“He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary”

Still one of my favorite quotes:

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

A remarkable man and a remarkable book. Here were my notes (mostly quotes and excerpts).

Another Thoreau anecdote:

The war had barely begun, the summer of 1846, when a writer, Henry David Thoreau, who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, refused to pay his Massachusetts poll tax, denouncing the Mexican war. He was put in jail and spent one night there. […] His friend and fellow writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, agreed, but thought it futile to protest. When Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “What are you doing in there?” it was reported that Thoreau replied, “What are you doing out there?” – Howard Zinn, A People’s History