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Saturday, March 18, 2023

Your first Dharma

Under all circumstances, your first Dharma is self-preservation. You are duty bound to protect your all-round wellbeing, be it physical, financial, or mental. 

What this means is that you have an imperative to understand fully well the functioning of your body, and the role played by anything that nourishes it, or harms it, or as in the case of most objects, both (too much of a good thing can be poison, too). I would also strongly urge you to learn and master self-defense - a practical tool like Boxing, Brazilian Jiujitsu, or Krav Maga. However, always remember that violence is the last (and usually the worst) option, and the best fights are the ones avoided. To that extent, even the ability to outrun the aggressor is a superpower worth having!

Curiosity killed the cat, goes a popular English proverb. This could not be more true in the Indian context, what with most public places being death traps for hapless citizens. This means you never fiddle with "public infrastructure" like exposed wires, man holes, barbed wire fences, and all other sorts of stuff, and be extremely wary every time you're on the road - since "everything can kill" is an axiom in India, as is "nobody is responsible for your death". Government parks are known have live wires hidden among the grass, flooded roads hide crater-sized potholes and open drains, and everything the government takes claim for "building" can come down crashing 10 times faster than it took to erect in the first place

For preserving Artha (or, financial self-preservation), you must acquaint yourself with all sorts of illegal/unethical schemes (Ex: multi-level marketing, phishing etc.) run by all sorts of people (especially banks) and protect your assets at all costs. Remember that for building long term wealth, avoiding a downside is more effective than chasing upside. It is also important to understand tax laws, applicable not only to your present condition, but to other conditions you could potentially navigate to (ex: 1 person company, LLP, Hindu undivided family etc.) to aggressively reduce your tax outlay and save your wealth from state-sponsored extortion