Golden

So I was at a discussion by a wonderful author on Friday night who has written an enlightening book about the intersections of religion and violence, and we got to the question and answer period. The first three questions were interesting, but the fourth was an audience member taking advantage of the microphone to advertise her spiritual organization by requesting the speaker to come teach there. This was a useless waste of time and it was gracefully clear that the author thought so, too, but the moderator saved the day by turning the question into something like: Assuming that you don't have time to teach an ongoing program at this organization, if you actually could go for ten minutes, what would you teach them? And the author said: The Golden Rule. It's as simple as that. You want to reduce violence? You want to reduce the amount of misery in the world? Don't do things to people that you wouldn't want to have done to you.

After that, there isn't much else to say. All the theological and metaphysical books and tenets and diatribes and sermons can't add anything of substance to this.

Beliefs and dogmas? Pfft. Useless.

Compassion is all.