Saturday, May 9, 2020

Kevin Kelly's 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

As I am growing older, this one piece of timeless advice had become self-evident and Kevin Kelly's backs it:

Trust me: There is no “them”.

Do what you can do in your lifetime and don't outsource your passions, values, and the right things to do in life thinking someone else will act on it. As long as I am breathing the onus is me and only me to do it.

In other words, there is no "Manhattan" project going on for moral progress.

The Sanskrit word "Karma: literally means action.  Reams and reams on "action" has been written in Buddism. The famous lines from Mahabartha (and Bhagwat Gita):
Yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bharata
Abhythanamadharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham
Paritranaya sadhunang vinashay cha dushkritam
Dharmasangsthapanarthay sambhabami yuge yuge
Vivekananda's English translation of above lines goes something along these lines:
Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails, I manifest Myself. To establish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good I come from one age to another.
We are not Gods but the "I" in above lines are you and I. The onus is on us to act against evil. There is enough evil we humans create every nanosecond - we have more than enough opportunities to act on it.

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