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I believe a lot can be said of a person's likelihood to succeed by watching them play Scrabble. If the person, like me, is always waiting for the perfect opportunity to use their Zs, Qs and Js and if they pass up on opportunities to place them on the board for moderate points in the hope that a currently missing tile may arrive and give them a triple letter triple word score taking them way beyond the others, then that person may like major steps in their career. They are likely to either make spectacular successes in their life (of which there is a slim chance) or they are likely to end up losers with points being deducted for missed opportunities which have turned into adversities instead.

On the other hand, if the person is willing to make the most of the current situation, living in the present, not saving up their Zs and Qs, but instead using them to inch their score up every time, then they might only be moderately successful, but successful nevertheless. Even if they fall back, they won't be far behind other moderately successful people.

Idealists turn out to be either mega successes or failures. They either make it big or don't make it at all. I'm not saying that the world is no place for idealists. I'm only saying that idealists stake out too much; their gamble is too big and their risks are too great. Chance could play a major part in their lives.

Was it not Marx who said "If you are not an idealist by age 20 you have no heart; if you are still an idealist by age 40, then you have no brain."

Sankara's monism is a form of Hindu philosophy. In fact, it is one of the most popular ones. It emerges in the Hindu Scriptures and was developed by the Hindu philosopher and theologian Sankara in the 8th century. Sankara, it has been argued, made the theory cogent and intelligible, consistent with other scriptural claims and even used it as a tool in an attempt to try and convert recalcitrant Buddhists.

Briefly, Sankara's monism, or Advaita as it is called, says that there is no distinction between mind and body, and besides, that there is only one mind in the universe. This non-dual mind is identified with our Self, which is our thinking soul, and also with god. Everything else, including your and my individuality, is an illusion, called Maya, in this mind due to its intrinsic ignorance about the nature of things. There need be no cause for ignorance, Sankara argues, as it occurs naturally. Only wisdom needs to be explained. Thus there is no need to posit any further entities to back this ontological thesis.

Now, post-vedic Hindu scriptures contain ample references also to the doctrine of karmic rebirth.¹ That is, every being is caught in an unending cycle of births and deaths. As you sow, so you shall reap. Thus, our "sins"² will eventually catch up with us causing us (our souls) to be reborn in our next lives and eventually (after an infinite time) experience exactly what it is we did to other creatures in this and our previous lives. This has been proposed by some as the Hindu solution to the problem of evil. A very simplistic interpretation of this doctrine (folk-rendition) says that if you kill a butterfly in this life, then you will be reborn as a butterfly in one of your future lives during which this butterfly will be born as a human who will kill you, thus evening things out in the final reckoning.

As a young boy in India walking to his school, I used to wonder how drivers could tell if they were on a one-way street. It was ok for vehicles trying to enter the street from the wrong end --- A no-entry sign will prevent them from getting in. But that is not enough, of course. Vehicles coming in from the other side need to be told that they are entering a one-way street too. What if a vehicle on a one-way street suddenly wanted to turn around and go back? But in the city where I come from, the transport department must have wisely decided to save money by relying on people's observational skills. There were no signs at the entrances to one-way streets. There were only ``No-entry'' signs at their exits. I guess it makes sense because the traffic was usually so dense that you can tell one-way streets by just looking at them. There was no chance of traffic ever making it an inch ahead in the wrong direction. However, there is a fine line between impossible and illegal and that is precisely what I set out to exploit. I decided to expose the loophole in the legal system by showing that I couldn't be prosecuted by law although I had done something obviously illegal.