two masters...

"No one can serve two masters;

for either he will hate
the one and love the other,

or he will be devoted to
one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and
mammon."

Jesus
_Matthew_ 6:24, also _Luke_ 16:13

["Mammon" is the biblical rendering of _mamonas,
meaning wealth, riches or simply money. It signifies
greed: "The lust for money is the root of all evil."

More broadly, Jesus is saying that one cannot serve
both God and oneself, that is, one's own perceived
self-interest arising as desire for self-gratification
in all its varied forms. Riches are regarded as the
"elixir" for satisfying these desires, and wealth is
not desired for its own sake, but for what it can do
as a panacea for want.

Compare Buddha's Four Noble Truths: 1) There is
suffering. 2) The Cause of suffering is desire. #) The
way to overcome suffering is to terminate desire (by
"roasting" the seeds of desire). The way to terminate
desire by roasting the seeds of desire is the
Eightfold Path. Each element of the Eightfold Path
begins with "right." The essence of righteousness
(_dharma_) is to do what one feels to be right just
because it is right, rather than what one thinks will
make one happy.

For when one performs action with an eye to the
fruits, then the seeds of desire (latent impressions,
sanskaras) are watered. When one performs action
without concern for the fruits, but rather because it
is right so to do, then the seeds of desire are
roasted and eventually no longer sprout in the mind.
And in virtually every religion, to do what is right
because it is right is to serve God as that which is
highest within oneself. In this sense the atheist who
does right just because it is right is more
meritorious than the believer who only does what
"should" be done out of fear of punishment.

The phrase "feels to be right" is chosen here to
indicate that knowledge of what is right is a matter
chiefly of the heart rather than the mind. For it is
the heart that apprehends true values intuitively, and
it is the job of the mind to determine how best to act
on them after they are given by the heart.

Tom Hickey


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