Writings

The Book of the Dead weighs your heart against a feather. The Qur'an counts an atom's weight. Rabbi Akiva's shop keeps a ledger, karma plants a seed, and Marcus Aurelius keeps no books at all. Eight traditions on who is collecting your data, what they do with it, and whether anyone ever lets it go.

Plato said it couldn't be declared. Laozi said it couldn't be named. Moses asked for a name and got a riddle. Six traditions on why eyes, words and concepts all come up short, and one that says the looking has been running the other direction all along.

Anger runs from a thought to a feeling to something you said and cannot take back. Aristotle, Proverbs, Ephesians, Marcus Aurelius, the Gita and Patanjali all tell you to break that chain, and every one of them grabs it at a different link.

Marcus Aurelius, the Buddha, Jesus and Deuteronomy all decline revenge, and every one of them declines it for a different reason. Then Confucius disagrees, and works out exactly how much revenge you are owed.

A Chinese philosopher five hundred years before Jesus, a line in Leviticus, and a Buddhist sutta on the far side of the world. Which of these is convergence and which is inheritance?