Dharma and Telos & First Impressions of Hinduism
Is it just me, or are the Indian concept of dharma and the ancient Greek concept of telos virtually indistinguishable? Both seem functionally equivalent to a combination of 'essence', 'nature', and 'function'.

Here is a really nice story about Dharma I read today.

I was reading a translation of the Bhagavad Gita today, a really horrible translation (by Eknath Easwaran) which made the Gita into slave morality. For instance, one of the chapters was retitled "selfless service", Krishna was saying the problem with life is selfishness and so on. It almost made me nauseous. I really hope slave morality isn't that prevalent in Hinduism, and that that translator (who is Christian) was just inserting that evil into the work through word selection.

I found that the Gita (and I expect the Mahabharata and Ramayana as a whole) relies in prior knowledge of the Upanishads, so I think I'm going to read some of those before those two epic poems that I intend to review.

Reincarnation, as an afterlife concept, is an incredibly sophisticated and powerful illusion; moreso than the whole heaven/hell thing.

Karma and dharma are great concepts, and can be taken wholey secularly. Maya and moksha too.

The three gunas (tamas, rajas, sattva) are interesting but I'm not sure I grasp their full theory yet, so I'll withhold judgement.

I like the idea that Yoga is "skill in action" -- yoga means more than just the postures/exercise, it's much broader in meaning in India, more akin to Buddhist meditation than to yoga exercise. To quote my translation's introduction:

"He tells Arjuna that if he can establish himself in yoga he will be more effective in the realm of action. His judgement will be better and his vision clear if he is not emotionally entangled in the outcome of what he does. [...] Yoga is "skill in action" because this kind of detachment is required if one is to act in freedom, rather than merely react to events according to his conditioning."

Also I noticed a major simularity between Atlas Shrugged and the Mahabarata -- both are very long and have highly complex "speeches" near the end which embody the theme of the work (the Bhagavad Gita is the "speech" of Krishna, about 150 pages long, John Galt's speech is about 100 pages long).