I hope you don't mind my chipping in Publias.
I find myself agreeing entirely with daniel_m on the issues raised in this thread.
However, should I learn any profound and meaningful insights from understanding his reasoning, I wouldn't follow him nor would I go on to subscribe to any group or faiths he may or may not belong to.
If I ever learned or understood anything from Bhagavad-Gita it would never be the next rational step for me to follow it with the followers.
This infantile requirement to prop up ones fear of existence or search for a truth by embracing one cult or another, or indeed any fixed way of understanding, is what I consider holds back humanity.
You don't do it when you trade Publias, why do it elsewhere?
I bet you don't think the holy grail of trading is TA. Why should the holy grail to seeking truth of oneself be in Gita?
To use such "teachings" as a guide where it helps you, or where it may help you to help others is fine, but I submit that a humane approach to nature and fellow human beings does all that any doctrine faiths can ever achieve.
No eastern or western beliefs should substitue humanity's never ending desire to question everything and accept nothing as a given.
One's ego can be an inflated pride or more usefully, the awareness of your own identity. It can be both or either. The result of all our actions stem from our consciousness. We are meant to exist. We are meant to use our ego if that's what you want to call it. It is perfectly feasible that in the long picture we are supposed to act the way we do. It may be that it's what nature intends.
Being truely unafraid of being alive and not knowing any of the real answers may be the beginning or the end. It may not. But to see patterns where they don't exist nor work, is a sure way to miss the point of life and perhaps more importantly, trading.
That type of philosophy may just be a step nearer. Then again it may not.
Don't mind my rant..... I don't mean to sound aggressive
