Why Evil is too tough to vanquish by the Good

Why  Evil is too tough to vanquish by the Good ! 

One day, Mara, the Evil One, was going through a village with his attendant when he saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something lying in front of him. Mara’s attendant asked what that was and Mara replied, “A piece of truth.” His attendant thought a while and asked, “Does it not bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?” Unfazed, Mara replied, “No, because right after that, they usually make a religion out of it.”

Sure enough, the man picked up the piece of truth and took it home where he cleaned and polished it till it gleamed more than a diamond. Then he began travelling all over the country preaching about the truth until he had gathered a few close disciples around him and a large following of people who quickly became his devotees and, over time, the movement turned into a religion.

Seeing this, Mara’s attendant grew fearful. “It’s exactly as you had predicted, O Evil One,” he exclaimed. “But what will happen to us now that Good has yet another name and designation?” Mara smiled victoriously. “What will happen now,” he said, “is that they will begin fighting among themselves and splinter into different denominations. Then they will fight against other religions, and as their mutual hatred grows, we will prosper and emerge stronger.”

Then he gave another victory smile and added, “For, you see, Evil has never had any infighting or any denominations. Our singular unity is the main reason we have been around for so long without any Good ever being able to vanquish us.”

Limits of Adaptation Theory

Limits of Adaptation Theory 

In Moral Origins, anthropologist Christopher Boehm charts the history of how humans developed a sense of right and wrong. In particular, he focuses on why being nice to people lacking any blood ties is a matter of everyday practice. Boehm’s theory is that moral virtues evolved according to the principle of natural selection as a by-product of social selection that rewarded impulse control and punished aggressive behaviour. So far so good; it’s the standard evolutionary explanation these days tha .. it’s the standard evolutionary explanation these days that goes down well with mainstream science since it deconstructs things like altruism and empathy to genes and reproductive advantages. 


But then, Boehm runs headlong into a wall when he tries to grapple the issue of internal ethics that govern values and principles that separate moral human beings from amoral apes. His solution is to say that our ancestors were ‘pre-adapted ’ for morality that then worked as the first step towards developing a conscience — something Boehm describes as a ‘Machiavellian risk calculator’. 

There are two problems with this view. The smaller one is that if we think of every conscience-driven act of goodness or decency as a ‘calculated risk’ , then forget theology, even biology has no credible future left. The bigger problem is where this so-called pre-adaptiveness for morality springs from? Surely, not from the ancestors of our ancestors because that would mean they were pre-adapted too, along with their own ancestors — till we get back to the original ancestor of all living things; .. a little one-celled amoeba, pre-adapted for morality. 

Cosmic Uplink ; Mukul Sharma . ET  11 May 2012

Is Enlightenment , a general scam ?

Is Enlightenment , a general scam ?

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Zen Master Xu-Yun was deeply distrustful about monasteries and believed that enlightenment was a scam. Every spring, eager young people would come to him only to end up years later still within the walls, cooking and cleaning when they were not meditating. How many became enlightened and left to found schools of their own? Hardly any. Check the history books, he would say.

By contrast, the academies and institutions where other pupils went to learn more worldly skills had an enviable turnout. How many failures were there among them who didn't become mathematicians, painters or musicians? Less than a handful. Xu-Yun believed there had to be something fundamentally wrong with masters like himself who thought they could show their wards the Way.

Around the same time, thousands of miles away in another part of the world, Mulla Nasruddin was one day walking in the bazaar with a large group of followers. Whatever Nasruddin did, his followers immediately copied. Every few steps, Nasruddin would stop and shake his hands in the air, touch his feet and jump up shouting, "Hu Hu Hu!" The followers would immediately do exactly the same thing.

A merchant asked Nasruddin, "What are you doing? Why are these people imitating you?" Nasruddin replied, "I have become a Sufi Sheikh, and these are spiritual seekers who I am helping to reach enlightenment." The merchant asked, "How do you know when they reach enlightenment?" Nasruddin laughed and said, "That's easy, I keep count. The ones who have left - have reached enlightenment."

Mukul Sharma