Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Maybe my work ethic isn't Protestant, after all

I ordered this book An Introduction to Jainism by Bharat Shah, and found in the intro: "it is an Atichara (a transgression), not to do something that needs to be done, even though one is capable of doing it."

Not only does this philosophy guide the majority of the actual work I do (in the sense of for-money and otherwise), but I'd say it's an underlying theme of most of my favorite horror and action-adventure films. Someone needs to fight the Alien, to stop the Terminator, to drive Freddy Krueger away, and the hero is just an ordinary person who's like, "I'm here, it needs to be done, FINE!"

On a side note, I've got to like a religion for which converting people to the religion is against their religion...

1 comment:

Beth Loves Bollywood said...

That's a great notion!

Kinda off-topic, I finally finished Maximum City and was fascinated by the description of...oh, of course I forge the term, but the Jain tradition of giving up everything you own to become a wandering monk.