The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
Language: English
Published by Penguin Putnam Inc, 2010
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books (was SecondSale)
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Why should we be good? How should we be good? And how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings--splashed across today's headlines--that have not only destroyed individual lives but caused widespread calamity as well, bringing communities, nations, and indeed the global economy to the brink of collapse? In The Difficulty of Being Good, Gurcharan Das seeks answers to these questions in an unlikely source: the 2,000 year-old Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata. A sprawling, witty, ironic, and delightful poem, the Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma--in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero does something wrong in a Greek epic, he wastes little time on self-reflection; when a hero falters in the Mahabharata, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. Each major character in the epic embodies a significant moral failing or virtue, and their struggles mirror with uncanny precision our own familiar emotions of anxiety, courage, despair, remorse, envy, compassion, vengefulness, and duty. Das explores the Mahabharata from many perspectives and compares the successes and failures of the poem's characters to those of contemporary individuals, many of them highly visible players in the world of economics, business, and politics. In every case, he finds striking parallels that carry lessons for everyone faced with ethical and moral dilemmas in today's complex world.Written with the flair and seemingly effortless erudition that have made Gurcharan Das a bestselling author around the world--and enlivened by Das's forthright discussion of his own personal search for a more meaningful life--The Difficulty of Being Good shines the light of an ancient poem on the most challenging moral ambiguities of modern life.…
Seller Inventory # 00109599235
- Title
- The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
- Author
- Gurcharan Das
- Publisher
- Penguin Putnam Inc
- Publication year
- 2010
- Condition
- Fair
- Binding
- Hardback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0670083496
- ISBN 13
- 9780670083497
In his new book, Gurcharan Das turns to the Mahabharata in order to answer the question, 'why be good?', and discovers that the epic's world of moral haziness and uncertainty is closer to our experience as ordinary human beings than the narrow and rigid positions that define most debate in this fundamentalist age of moral certainty.
The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma-in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero falters, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic's characters are flawed, but their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar dilemmas.
Gurcharan Das's best-selling book India Unbound examined the classical aim of artha, material well being. This, his first book in seven years, dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well being. It addresses the central problem of how to live our lives in an examined way-holding a mirror up to us and
forcing us to confront the many ways in which we deceive ourselves and others. What emerges is a doctrine of dharma that we can apply to our business decisions, political strategies and interpersonal relationships-in effect, to life itself.
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World of Books (was SecondSale)
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