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" The greatest book in the world, the Mahabharata, tells us we all have to live and die by our karmic cycle. Thus works the perfect reward-and-punishment, cause-and-effect, code of the universe. We live out in our present life what we wrote out in our last. But the great moral thriller also orders us to rage against karma and its despotic dictates. It teaches us to subvert it. To change it. It tells us we also write out our next lives as we live out our present.
The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction.
It is much greater. It is a work of art.
It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral.
It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men.
Not animals, not gods.
It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. It encourages the noblest of men - Yudhishtra, Arjuna, Lord Krishna himself - to lie, so that a greater truth may be served.
It understands the world is powered by desire. And that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress.
But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing. And the only reason for all doing.
And doing is life. Doing is karma.
Thus it forgives even those who desire intemperately. It forgives Duryodhana. The man who desires without pause. The man who precipitates the war to end all wars. It grants him paradise and the admiration of the gods. In the desiring and the doing this most reviled of men fulfils the mandate of man.
You must know the world before you are done with it. You must act on desire before you renounce it. There can be no merit in forgoing the not known.
The greatest book in the world rescues volition from religion and gives it back to man.
Religion is the disciplinarian fantasy of a schoolmaster.
The Mahabharata is the joyous song of life of a maestro.
In its tales within tales it takes religion for a spin and skins it inside out. Leaves it puzzling over its own poisoned follicles.
It gives men the chance to be splendid. Doubt-ridden architects of some small part of their lives. Duryodhanas who can win even as they lose. "
― Tarun J. Tejpal , The Alchemy of Desire
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" Katherine gave in to the wonder of the moment, imagining herself in the astronauts' place. What emotions welled up from the depths of their hearts as they regarded their watery blue home from the void of space? How did it feel to be separated by a nearly unimaginable gulf from the rest of humanity yet carry the hopes, dreams, and fears of their entire species there with them in their tiny, vulnerable craft? Most people she knew wouldn't have traded places with the astronauts for all of the gold in Fort Knox. The men existed all alone out their in the void of space, connected so tenuously to Earth, with the real possibility that something could go wrong. But given the chance to throw her lot in with the astronauts, Katherine Johnson would have packed her bags immediately. Even without the pressure of the space race, even without the mandate to beat the enemy. For Katherine Johnson, curiosity always bested fear. "
― , Hidden Figures
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" [P]eople only make decisions based on what they know. You can have everyone in the country vote freely and democratically and still come up with the wrong answer - if the information they base that decision on is wrong.
People don't want the truth [when] it is complicated. They don't want to spend years debating an issue. They want it homogenized, sanitized, and above all, simplified into terms they can understand...Governments are often criticized for moving slowly, but that deliberateness, it turns out, is their strength. They take time to think through complex problems before they act. People, however, are different. People react first from the gut and then from the head...give that knee-jerk reflex real power to make its overwhelming will known as a national mandate instantly and you can cause a political riot.
Combine these sins - simplification of information and instant, visceral democratic mandates - and you lose the ability to cool down. There is no longer deliberation time between events that may or may not be true and our reaction to them. Policy becomes instinct rather than thought. "
― Tracy Hickman , The Immortals
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" Each and every one of us was created to carry out justice, judgment, truth and equity on the earth. It could be in different spheres of life, in various professions or in diverse gifting. But the mandate is clear, his nature must be reflected on the earth. If he is a God of justice, people must see his justice on earth. If he is a God of sound judgment, that sound mind must be revealed in people who identify themselves with him on daily basis. If God is truth, that truth must reign supreme on the earth even as he reigns over the universe. If fairness, impartiality, equity, are his essence, that should become dominant in any society "
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