Seeking Purpose for Life is Dangerous--Just Live: The transcript.

Yogi Sadhguru

Here is the link to my first post after hearing a talk by Yogi Sadhguru on YouTube. 

All around us, those who seek a God-given purpose for their life are maiming and murdering those of us who just want to live. Hamas and their supporters, Christian nationalists spreading hate in Jesus' name, Putin, Hezbollah, and every other hate-filled wretch with believing himself a defender of God.   

Seeking Purpose for Life is Dangerous--Just Live

Isn't it fantastic that if there's no purpose, you have nothing to fulfill, you can just live? No, but you want a purpose? And not a simple purpose. You want a God-given purpose. It's very dangerous. People who think they have a God-given purpose are doing the cruelest things on the planet. Yes or no?

They are doing the most horrible things and they've always been doing the most horrible things because when you have a God-given purpose, life here becomes less important than your purpose. 

What is Life?

My life is important. Life is important. When I say life. I'm not talking about your family, your work, what you do, what you do not do at your party. I'm not talking about that. As life, this is life, isn't it? Life is within you or around you. The ambiance of life. You are mistaking the ambiance of life for life, your home, your family, your workspace, your party. This is all ambience of life. This is not life, isn't it? Yes or no?

The Ambiance of Life is not Life 

You're mistaking the ambiance for the real thing, no? Life is important. Because that's the only thing you know. You don't know anything else. Do you know something else? The rest is all imaginary stuff, isn't it? The only thing is that this is beating and alive and that's all there is. 

You are not Important

So, is this important? It is of paramount importance. Not you as a person. That's not important, but you as a piece of. Life is very important. Because that is the basis of everything. When I say that is the basis of. Everything in the universe exists for you. Only because you are, isn't it? Yes or no?

The world exists for you only because you are, otherwise it won't exist. In your experience. So. In every way. This is important. So, what is the purpose of this? See if you had a purpose and if you fulfilled it after that, what would you do? After that, what would you do? Bored, isn't it? 

Life is Complex

It is just that life is so intricate and so phenomenally intricate. That if you spend 10,000 years looking at it carefully; you still will not know it entirely. If you spend a million years looking at it. With absolute focus still you will not know. It in its entirety. That's how it is. There is. Is there a meaning to it? The greatest thing about. 

Life has no Meaning

Life is that there is no meaning to it. This is the greatest aspect of life that has no meaning to it, and there is no need for it. To have a meaning. It's the pettiness of one's mind. That it is seek a meaning. Because psychologically you will feel. Kind of unconnected with life. If you don't have a purpose. And the meaning. 

We Create Purposes

People are constantly trying to create these false purposes. Now they were quite fine and happy. Suddenly they got married. Now the purpose is. The other person. Then they have children. Now they become miserable with each other. Now the whole purpose that I go through, all this misery is. Because of the children. Like this it goes on. These are things that you are causing and holding as purposes of life. And is there a God-given purpose? What if God does not know you exist? No, I'm just asking by chance. I'm saying in this huge. 

Does God Know You Exist?

Which God is supposed to be the creator and the manager of these 100 billion galaxies, in that this tiny little planet? And you suppose he doesn't know that you exist? What to do? Possible, or no? I'm sorry I'm saying such sacrilegious things. But is it possible, or no? What if he doesn't know that you exist? What if he doesn't have a plan for you? Suppose he doesn't have a plan for an individual plan for you. Don't look for such things. The thing is the creation is made in such a way. That creation and creator cannot be separated. Here you are a piece of creation at the same time, the source of creation is throbbing within you. If you pay little attention to this process of life, you would not need any purpose. It will keep you engaged for a million years. If you want.

Seeking Purpose Comes from Inner Need

There is so much happening. So much means so much unbelievable things are happening right here. If you pay enough attention. A million years of existence, it will keep you busy. Or more. Right now the need for purpose is come because you are trapped in your psychological structure, not in your life process. Your psychological structure functions from the limited data that it's gathered within that it rolls. And right now. Your thought and emotion has become far more important than our life, isn't it? So isn't it so? So because of this you seeking. 

Escape the Trap

A purpose as an escape from the trap that you have set for yourself. It is a trap set by you. You can easily come out of it. If the trap was set for you by somebody else, difficult to come out because they'll set the trap in such a way that you cannot come out, isn't it? I'm talking about life, not marriage. That's what I'm saying. That's what time is. So this is a trap set by you. This is easy to come. Out, but that is the whole thing. Why it is so difficult is now you're identified with the trap. You like it. You like it because it gives you a certain sense of. Safety and security and protection and individual identity if you. Build a cocoon around yourself. It gives you safety, but it also imprisons you. 

Walls Can Be Prisons

Walls of self preservation or also walls of self imprisonment. When it protects you, you like it. When it restricts you, you do not like it. That is why we have doors. We lack the wall because it's protecting us. But we have doors, so that way we can open it and get out when we want to. It doesn't matter how nice it is, we still want to go out, isn't it? So that is how it. Is with every trap that you set. It doesn't matter how nice it is, you still want to go out. So the psychological wall that you have built which gives you some sense of identity, which gives you some sense of being a person, an individual person, and which gives you security. Beginning to experience it like a trap somewhere, you want to break it. So one way of not breaking it is to find a purpose. 

If You Lack Balance, Don't Climb

Those who find a purpose in their life, they become so conceited. They will live within their own traps forever, thinking that they're doing the most fantastic thing. First thing you need is balance. If you have balance. Then you can try if you don't have balance. It's better you stay underground. It's not safe for somebody who is not balanced to climb high. It's best you stay close to the ground. You should not climb. So first thing is to establish a balance. Then you're losing your psychological structure. Then it's a wonderful thing if you're losing your psychological structure without balance, which lot of people are doing today. See why does somebody want? To drink alcohol or take a drug. Because it loosens your psychological structure. And makes you feel. Liberated for a moment. But without the necessary balance. You have not worked for the balance, but you got freedom. 

Freedom without balance is destruction.

Freedom without balance is destruction. Anarchy, isn't it? So first thing is to work for. Balance an enormous sense of balance. Where even if you dismantle your psychological structure, you can simply live here, dismantling your psychological. Structure is an important. Process because that is your trap. That is your security. That is your stability. At the same time, that's your trap. Because the walls are set, you feel secure, but that's also your trap. If you dismantle your trap. You also dismantle your security, isn't it? You also dismantle your sense of purpose. You also dismantle everything that matters to you. So that will need balance without balance if you dismantle. You will go crazy. But don't look for a purpose because if you look for a purpose. You're seeking madness. If you find one. You are sure mad? If you think you found a purpose in life you you've for sure gone crazy. Because only the insane people have purpose. Are people who have purpose insane in many ways?

Purpose isYour Own Reality

These are things that you create in your mind and believe it's true, isn't it? Right now, fighting for my country is my purpose. Right now, if it's necessary, I will fight knowing fully well it's an. Unnecessary bloody fight. Just then you will fight only to the extent it's necessary. If you think this is your. Purpose you would want to destroy the whole world for. What nonsense you believe in, isn't it? Something is needed. We'll do it. With absolute involvement, there's no other purpose. The purpose of life is to live and to live totally. To live totally does not mean party every night to live totally means before you fall dead before every aspect of life has been explored. Nothing has been left unexplored before you fall. Dead. Even if you do not explore the cosmos, at least this piece of life, you must know it in its entirety. That much you must do to yourself, isn't it? That's living totally. That you experienced the whole of this, all dimensions of what this is. You did not leave anything untouched. You just do that. That will take a long time. That's enough. Good enough purpose for you.

Ukraine Attacks Russian Air Force--Destroys 40 Bombers

 

In a brilliant and daring raid Ukraine destroyed 40 Russian strategic bombers and other high-value aircraft.  Over the past 18months, Ukrainian forces parked semitrailers with hidden drone compartments near Russian air bases.  

With a coded signal, the top of these parked trailers opened and swarms of attack drones flew toward unprotected Russian aircraft.  In minutes, the drones began hitting vulnerable points on the bombers turning them into flaming pyres of wreckage. 

More than a billion dollars in irreplaceable aircraft were destroyed by about a million dollars worth of cheap drones.  

The owner of the house I stayed in during the past year in Panama followed the War in Ukraine on video every day.  He is a former rocket engineer who knows the technology.  I called him today to share all the happiness and excitement of watching Ukraine kick ass.  

We both had watched Russia's recent attacks on civilians in Ukraine with increasing alarm and sadness.  It was wonderful to see Ukraine strike so effectively. 

Слава Україні

Glory to Ukraine! 

The Bureaucrat of Death: Adolf Eichmann and the Machinery of the Holocaust

(This post is edited and improved by ChatGPT. The original version is here.) 

In 1932, Adolf Eichmann was an unemployed Austrian drifting through a country in political and economic chaos. Desperate for work, he crossed into Germany and joined the rising Nazi Party—more out of need than ideology.

Eichmann soon found employment in the Nazi campaign to make Germany Judenrein—free of Jews. Between 1933, when Hitler rose to power, and the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the regime's goal was deportation, not yet mass murder. During this period, the Nazis expelled Jews from the Reich, often forcing them to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucracy that made escape painfully slow.

Eichmann, however, had a talent for logistics. He centralized the deportation process by bringing all necessary agencies under one roof. What once took months now took days. But the streamlining came at a cost: Jews were stripped of their assets and left with barely enough to reach their destinations. Many ended up in British-controlled Palestine, Spain, or other countries the Nazis never conquered. Though they lost everything, they escaped the coming catastrophe.

Once the war began, deportations largely halted. For over two years, Eichmann and others involved in Jewish expulsion waited as the Nazi leadership decided on a new direction. In the meantime, local massacres claimed the lives of millions of Jews, carried out near their homes by bullets rather than gas.

Then came January 1942. At the infamous Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime formally adopted the “Final Solution”—the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews. Eichmann’s organizational prowess, once used to deport Jews out of the Reich, was now repurposed for industrial-scale murder. He managed the transportation of victims to Auschwitz and other death camps with cold precision.

By 1944, his methods were devastatingly efficient. In Budapest, working with the cooperation of certain Jewish leaders, Eichmann deported nearly half a million Hungarian Jews to their deaths in just three months.

Eichmann was no mastermind of evil in the comic book sense. He was a functionary—a man of forms, files, and timetables. When the orders were to deport, he deported. When the orders were to kill, he ensured the trains ran on time. He was an amoral bureaucrat who helped send over three million Jews to their deaths, not out of personal hatred, but out of dutiful obedience.

After the war, Eichmann disappeared. He hid in Austria before escaping to Argentina through the infamous “Rat Line” — a network assisted by Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal. At the time, Pope Pius XII, whose papacy has been heavily criticized for its silence during the Holocaust, remained in power. In Argentina, Eichmann lived under an alias but eventually bragged about his role in the genocide.

In 1960, Israeli agents captured him and brought him to trial in Jerusalem. He was convicted and executed in 1962.

I've read and reread Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt’s account of his trial. Her concept of the “banality of evil”—that horrific crimes can be committed by ordinary people who simply follow orders—remains controversial. Many critics of her work, both then and now, have not actually read it.

I strongly recommend all of Arendt's works, several of which I've summarized briefly in other posts. Among them, The Origins of Totalitarianism stands out as the most essential for understanding the ideological and structural roots of the Holocaust.

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Recommended Works by Hannah Arendt:

• 📘 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Modern Classics)

• 📗 The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harvest/Harcourt)

• 📕 The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press)

• 📙 Between Past and Future (Penguin)

• 📒 On Revolution (Penguin)

• 📓 Responsibility and Judgment (Schocken)

These books provide not only a window into Arendt’s profound political thought but also a vital lens on totalitarianism, moral responsibility, and the capacity of ordinary people to commit extraordinary crimes.

First Car Purchase in Twenty Years (And a ChatGPT experiment)

 

A New Prius and a Lifetime of Vehicles

Today, my wife and I bought a 2017 Toyota Prius. It replaces our old 2001 Prius, which we donated to a local high school auto shop before moving to Panama in August 2024.

As I logged the new car into the spreadsheet where I track all my vehicles (yes, I’m that person), I realized something surprising: this is the first car I’ve bought since 2006, when I picked up a white 2002 Chevy Malibu. Coincidentally, this Prius is white too.

Since I got my driver’s license in 1969, I’ve owned—or had long-term use of—41 cars, trucks, and motorcycles. With this latest addition, the total I’ve spent on vehicles has officially crossed $100,000. That works out to about $2,500 per vehicle, though like most averages, that number doesn’t really tell the whole story.

The last five vehicles alone cost over $70,000. Once you subtract nine company cars and long-term loaners, that means the remaining 27 vehicles set me back just $30,300—an average of a little over $1,100 each. Safe to say, I bought a lot of cheap cars in the ’70s and ’80s.

To put it in perspective:

• Between 1969 and 1979, I bought 21 vehicles.

• In the 1980s, I added 12 more—six cars and six motorcycles.

• The 1990s? Just one car and one motorcycle.

• Since 2000, I’ve only picked up three cars and a 15-passenger van.

What changed? Somewhere in the late ’80s, I became increasingly obsessed with bicycle riding and racing. That shift gradually replaced my interest in cars—and it shows in the numbers.

Now, with our new Prius parked in front of the house, I’m reflecting not just on the car itself, but on the whole journey—decades of vehicles, roads, and shifting passions. Funny how something as simple as a new car can open the door to a little time travel.

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The essay above was edited by ChatGPT. AI also added the Headline at the top ofthe text. 

The essay below is the original.

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Today my wife and I bought a 2017 Toyota Prius.  It replaces the 2001 Prius we donated to a local auto shop class when we left for Panama in August of 2024. 

When I added the car to the spreadsheet of motor vehicles I keep, I realized this is the first car bought since 2006 when I bought a 2002 Chevy Malibu. Also white.  

In the years since I got my drivers license in 1969 I have owned or had long-term use of 41 cars, trucks and motorcycles. Buying this Prius finally pushed the total I spent on vehicles over $100,000.  That's an average price of $2,500 per vehicle, but as with most averages, the number is meaningless.

The last five vehicles cost just over $70,000.  Removing the nine company cars and long-term loaners, that means the other 27 cars cost $30,300 or just over $1,100 on average.  I bought a lot of very cheap cars in the 1970s and 1980s.

In fact, I bought 21 vehicles between 1969 and 1979.  I bought 12 between 1980 and 1989: six cars and six motorcycles.  I bought just one car and one motorcycle in the 1990s.  Then three cars and a 15-passenger van in this century.     

The difference in my buying habits was my growing obsession with bicycle riding and racing beginning in the late 1980s. 

Ten Countries I Want to Visit

 

Mount Fuji, Japan

My travel is mostly guided by opportunities.  For instance, in the fall, I plan to meet two friends in Europe and travel to several Nazi Death Camps in Poland.  A soldier friend of mine is deployed to Poland for a year and can get a weekend pass. So we can travel together. 

Many of the places I have traveled have been last-minute changes in plan or just following a whim.  But another friend recently reminded me I am older than dirt and if I have places I want to go, I better make plans.  So I made a list:

1. Japan: I have been fascinated with Japanese history and culture for most of my life, but never traveled to this beautiful country.  Top of my list. 
2. Chile: I was there for two weeks in March this year, but only in the north.  I want to go back and see Tierra del Fuego, the Andes and Patagonia.
3. Finland: In 2014, I wanted to ride from Odessa to Finland along the 2000-kilometer route my grandfather walked in 1914 to escape the Russian army. I would like to see the border areas and Helsinki maybe also the arctic circle in Finland. 
4. Ukraine: I want to go to Kiev and Odessa. More than anything, I want victory for Ukraine.
5. Israel: I visited Israel in 2017, 2019 and 2020.  I was planning to goback with my friend Cliff and clear rubble in the north. The trip did not work out this year.  Maybe next year. 
6. Thailand: I was almost assigned there in 1973 in the US Air Force, but the war in Vietnam ended and fewer troops went to Southeast Asia.
7.  Rwanda: I had tickets to go there and ride the first week in March 2020. I  was in Europe and decided not to go to Africa with Covid spreading fast. 
8.  Poland: I rode across southern Poland in 2017. I would like to see Warsaw, Gdansk, and the Baltic coast.
9. South Africa: So much naval history around this huge country when all trade to east Asia had to pass around the southern end of this huge continent.
10. Nepal: I have never been to south Asia, anywhere between the Persian Gulf and Malaysia. I want to visit Katmandu and the lower Himalayas. 

I could add a lot more. Likely I will go other places as I have opportunities. I love travel. 

Flying to the USA Today--With an Unusual Travel Accessory (for me)

Today the nine-month sojourn in Panama ends with two flights back to the USA.  Because the trip was really a temporary move, I had a very unusual travel accessory for me--a suitcase! With all the travel I have had in the last decade, the last time I can remember having a suitcase was a 2017 trip to Europe. I brought a bicycle on that trip--so I definitely had luggage. 

I also shipped the bike I bought here last August back to the USA.  So really two pieces of luggage.  I was going to leave the bike here but it is an aluminum-frame Giant road bike that would be a good travel bike for the future.  There is a possibility we could live in Chile for a month or two in 2026 or 2027. If so, I will take the bike there and leave it when the trip is over.  

 The bike survived here so it should be good for travel anywhere else.  And if Chile doesn't happen, it could go somewhere else.

USA late Today!!!

The Nazi Apprentice: Eichmann Sent Thousands of Jews to Palestine Before He Sent Millions to Death Camps

Adolf Eichmann on Trial in Jerusalem

In 1932, Adolf Eichmann was an unemployed Austrian who went to Germany to join the Nazi Party. He needed a job. 

He eventually found work in the Nazi effort to make Germany Judenrein, free of Jews. From the time Hitler took power in 1933 until he started World War II, the Nazis deported Jews from the Reich, mass murder was still in the future of the Nazi program. 

Eichmann had a gift for logistics, for organizing.  The Nazi effort to deport Jews in the 1930s was slow because those who wanted to get out had to get authorizations from many agencies.  Eichmann brought all of the organizations necessary into one large building and processed Jews for deportation in days instead of months.  

In that process, Eichmann took the property of the Jews: emptied their bank accounts and left them with just enough to get to their destination.  Thousands of those Eichmann processed got to British Palestine, some got to Spain and to other countries the Nazis never conquered.  Although they lost all of their possessions, the Jews Eichmann deported got away from the Holocaust. 

When the war began, deportation stopped.  For more than two years, Eichmann and his fellow Nazis who were deporting Jews waited for a decision about the fate of the Jews and their next mission. During this period millions of Jews were murdered singly and en masse by shooting, but the killings were mostly done where the Jews lived. No need for transportation.

In January 1942, the Nazis decided to kill all Jews within their territories.  The skills Eichmann had sharpened in organizing the deporting of Jews outside the Reich were used to transport Jews to Auschwitz and other death camps.   

Eichmann refined his methods until in 1944 in Budapest, with the cooperation of Jewish leaders, he deported nearly half a million Jews to their death in just three months.  

Eichmann was not a supervillain. He was a skilled organizer of transport and paperwork with years of experience.  When the Nazi policy was deportation, Eichmann got Jews out of Germany.  When the policy was mass murder, Eichmann filled train cars with victims. He was an amoral functionary who obeyed orders to the point of transporting three million Jews to Death Camps.  

When the war ended with Nazi defeat, Eichmann hid in Austria until the Rat Line organized by Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal got Eichmann to Argentina. The pro-Nazi Pope Pius XII was still in power as Nazis slid to South America. In Argentina, Eichmann bragged about his crimes. He was kidnapped by Israeli agents and put on trial on Jerusalem. 

Eichmann was executed for his crimes in Israel. 

I have read and reread Hannah Arendt's report on the Eichmann trial. She had many critics ofher work during her lifetime and still does fifty years later.  then as now, most ofher critics have not actually read her book.

I can recommend all of Hannah Arendt's books, which I did  in brief summaries here. Her book The Origins of Totalitarianism is the most important of her books in understanding the horror of the Holocaust.