It is vanity to seek riches which shall perish and to trust in them. It is vanity to pursue office and climb high rank. It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh… vanity to wish for long life… vanity to love what passeth away so quickly and not to hasten where abideth joy
.
By
Emmanuel Konde, the Guru
It seems to me, and I write about this with the utmost guarded caution, that most people are corrupt but do not quite know it perhaps because corruption is too often narrowly defined. In Cameroonian circles corruption is associated with the act of thievery involving embezzlement of public funds and bribe-taking in executing the functions for which public servants are paid. Corruption, however, goes beyond thievery. It also includes favoritism, nepotism, tribalism, adultery, dishonesty, rape, lust, hate, envy, etc. Corruption of the mind and heart are just as bad as thievery, if not worse, because thievery proceeds from corruption of the mind. But the myriad “corruptions” are treated differently.
The corruption people see is treated more harshly; that which they do not see is not treated with the same measure of gravity. The court of the latter--mind and heart corruption--is in the firmament on high, far removed from here and, as they tell us, always ready to forgive the corrupt after prayers of repentance. But the court of the former, thievery is right here on earth, in the abode of humankind, within the purview of fellow humans, among whom we find some very merciless beings.
Short of employing the Christian concept of “sin”, which Christians believe all of humankind is somehow afflicted; corruption may be defined in the broadest terms as the conscious and unconscious violation of that which is right. No other religious and/or philosophical tradition captures the antithesis of corruption better than Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama, the fabled founder of Buddhism, articulated the source and remedy of corruption in his”Four Noble Truths” rather eloquently and definitively. Gautama’s Four Noble Truths can be divided into two parts: the first and second Noble Truths define and identify the source of corruption; the third and fourth offer and define how to apply the solution.
Gautama came to these truths after gaining nirvana, that is, spiritual enlightenment--a sudden and profound insight into the nature of reality. Abandoning the princely privileges he enjoyed in the worldly life of sin, Gautama undertook to set forth the Four Noble Truths as follows: (1) life is suffering; (2) suffering arises from desire; (3) the solution to suffering lies in curbing desire; and (4) desire can be curbed if a person follows the “Eightfold Path” of right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation. Many contributors on this forum, some of them false prophets, depraved saints, and defrocked priests who claim attainment higher spiritual knowledge, have not been able to demonstrate the characteristics outlined in the “Eightfold Path.” I wonder what is pulling them down to Earth from their heavenly abode….
Approached from the Christian perspective of sin, however, all of us are corrupt. If our point of departure is Buddhism, however, some of us (me, for example) are untouched by corruption. It is now left for the rest of you to determine your position as either corrupt or free from corruption, especially those who find recourse to political pontification against corruption even as they themselves engage in questionable schemes of internet solicitations of funds in exchange for meaningless abstractions. Indeed, there are those who absconded their jobs and moved to foreign places but continued to draw their salaries year after year. These, too, dishonest and dishonorable men that they are, have found in camnet (social media) the forum to seek therapeutic rehabilitation by venting out nonsense. Well, rehabilitation does not issue from dissemblance; rehabilitation, total rehabilitation, will come only from repayment of the years of illegal salaries extorted from the Cameroon government. The government of Cameroon must initiate an international investigation aimed at identifying the culprits and compelling them to “pay back” to the last franc the trillions of francs CFA to the coffers of the Republic.
This time the state should begin from the bottom and move upwards.
One sure way of determining whether you are corrupt or not corrupt is not through examining your conscience after every deed. The habitual thieves, liars, and adulterers have practically no conscience and are therefore immune from guilt feelings. The one sure measure of “uncorruptness” is poverty, that is, the abandonment of worldly possessions for an ascetic lifestyle in imitation of Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus Christ. Men like St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Kempis, Mother Theresa and countless others believed poverty was central to the moral life. Alas, the juju pharmacist-doctor, who defrauds his unsuspecting impoverished clients, is just as corrupt as the minister who dips his filthy fingers into the Sunday offerings basket of the church.
Is the measure of corruption worldly possessions? And the more one has the more corrupt he is? Is the measure of “uncorruptness” poverty, the eschewing of worldly possessions? Kempis had written this profound statement in The Imitation of Christ (Circa 1418-1427) that should guide professed Christians who aspire to rise above corruption:
It is vanity to seek riches which shall perish and to trust in them. It is vanity to pursue office and climb high rank. It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh… vanity to wish for long life… vanity to love what passeth away so quickly and not to hasten where abideth joy.
Only those who follow Kempis’ admonition not to indulge in things worldly, things that giveth them joy on Earth, those who hope for salvation in the afterlife in Heaven by denying themselves the vanities life in this world, are uncorrupt and incorruptible. All else are corrupt!
"The problem of power is how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public." Robert F. Kennedy
No comments:
Post a Comment