The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma by Gurcharan Das. For starters this is not a religious book, its a philosophical journey through the pages of Mahabharatha. There is no Dalai Lama to create an epidemic of Mahabharatha and that tasks was mostly is left to millions on omnipresent guru's. God-men are at the best an irritation and at the worst well... little needs to be said about that. The curse that started thanks to the Beatles and hippie generation, lingers still in the western minds. For once, it's welcome change to read the epic through the eyes of economist. This happens to be one the best books I have ever read, period. (India needs more writers like him - we have read enough about GDP, slums, imperialism, future super power, blah, blah)
- I was fortunate enough to hear bedtime stories from the Indian epics via my grandmother and to a certain extent from comic books. But I learned more in the past 2 days of reading this book than I did in my last 36 years.
- Going beyond the relativist argument, being good is not only difficult but full of paradoxes. This gives immense space for us humans to rationalize (thanks to our biases) some of our shortcomings which are clearly focused on self-interest (if not narcissistic).
- The current research on morality should spread some light on this front. It's no accident that Jonath Haidt, Sam Harris et al went to India before kicking of their quest on morality.
- This one line sums it all up - "Great king, you weep with all creatures". At the end, Yudhishthira's plea take the stray dog to heaven with him obviously speaks volumes about the importance of being good to all creatures and that circle of morality should be large enough by default. Looks like E.O.Wilson's Biophilia was covered 3000 years ago in Mahabharatha.
- The finale with the dog in the heaven made me wonder if that had an influence on the final scene of Lost.
- I never envisaged the philosophical power behind Mahabaratha; leave alone it's influence on so many western thinkers. This is T.SEliot on Nishkama Karma -
"This is the use of memory
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past"
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