[BasDirks]

I don't like his proposed end goal. His happiness sounds like a mere absense of pain, but other methods will get you there more reliably. I like the first items on his list: go into the world and mess around, but then he begins to prescribe mental cleanliness: finish your plate, associate only with good people, don't cling to material possessions. It's like he's picking arbitrary chapters from Hesse's Siddhartha. I feel in an uncanny valley of dogma.

[gonehome]

He was dying as he wrote this (Pieter Hintjens died from cancer in 2016). I’m happy to see his blog here again, but I suspect what he was going through at the time influenced his writing.

[uneoneuno]

So many of those themes are found outside the Gita, often they can be uncovered thru a good life. But the cohesion is missing - it does feel like the author cut out small bits of Dogma from many 'religions' as they were uncovered or found relevant, informed by their experience. The main point I find interesting is that each of us does this 'pick and choose'.