Renouncing Victory & Defeat

Victory produces hatred; he that is defeated is afflicted with

            suffering;

He that has renounced both victory and defeat lives in tranquility

 and happiness.

Dhammapada 201

&

This idea of ceasing to fighting anything and anyone… even alcohol, was a revolutionary attitude idea at the time AA was founded. The whole idea of it was that, after a sufficient spiritual renewal, the temptation to drink simply no longer occurs to us. If I resist the temptation by hating it, I am still in its grip. How many times have we seen preachers who rant and rave against perceived sexual improprieties; prostitution, homosexuality and so on, become so obsessed that they eventually get caught using escorts or are found to be closeted homosexuals themselves? I am equally frustrated by the so called war on drugs. How much more suffering does the futility of prohibition evoke by creating an opportunity for drug lords and mobsters to profit? All that the war on drugs seems to have accomplished is the creation of an underground market just as viscous as Prohibition did in the twenties. When seen as a mental health problem, with a prognosis and treatment, instead of a criminal or moral problem to be punished, the prisons could possibly empty out of over a third of their inmates. I’m not so naïve to believe that it completely solves the problem but the consequences of abuse have a chance to become manageable.

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