{"id":1432,"date":"2026-11-05T13:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/?p=1432"},"modified":"2025-11-11T17:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:00:03","slug":"lesson-208-living-with-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-208-living-with-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 208 \u2013 Living with \u015aiva"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/LwS-Lesson-208.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Recording: Gurudeva&#8217;s cloned voice<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Steps Against Bribery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bribery breeds an educated criminal generation. It blocks the free flow of business. Bribery disrupts positive projects. Bribery diverts creative energies to worries about who, if not paid, will disrupt the progress, cut the phone lines, turn off the electric power or otherwise cause delay after delay after delay. Bribery is devastating to a nation\u2019s economy. No one knows how much anything really costs; and since it is illegal money, black money, the recipients don\u2019t pay taxes on it. Two sets of books have to be kept. Honest companies are put out of business by dishonest competitors who give and accept bribes. <br><br>What can be done about bribery? On the governmental level, there are instructive examples from recent history. Twenty years ago in America, undercover FBI agents approached various politicians and offered them bribes to help a fictitious Arab company gain American business. A few politicians accepted the bribes and quickly found themselves jailed. Every politician got the message. A few years ago, New Orleans hired a new police chief to reform its notoriously corrupt police force. First he demanded and got the officers\u2019 pay doubled. Then he arrested, prosecuted and fired the next sixty-five officers caught taking bribes. The rest, it\u2019s said, no longer risk their now well-paying careers for bribe money. <br><br>Internationally, only the United States has a law preventing its companies from bribing foreign officials. As far as we know, other countries\u2014including all of Europe\u2014have refused to pass similar statutes on the excuse that it would put their business communities at a disadvantage. In fact, the bribes so paid are even tax-deductible. Yet, the same companies\u2019 paying a bribe in their own country can result in prosecution. One organization, Transparency International in Berlin, is attempting to end this global double standard which makes it so difficult for individual countries to root out the scourge of bribery. <br><br>From a psychological point of view, bribery is a criminal consciousness of deceit, cheating, on the darker side of life. Guilt is always involved, secrecy, fear of being caught for extorting funds, fear of what might happen if bribes are not paid and worry over obligations incurred by accepting bribes. Such surreptitious dealings create an erosion of trust in society. <br><br>Bribery is basically stealing through intimidation. The able-bodied beggar demanding alms on the street is no different from the able-bodied businessman who withholds his services. The beggar shirks his legitimate work, and the businessman uses his position to exact payments not due. Both reap bad karma that will reflect on every generation in the future and a few in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S\u016aTRA 208: AGING WITH DIGNITY<br>\u015aiva\u2019s ardent souls grow old gracefully, without fear, knowing that the soul is immortal and the mental body does not age, but becomes stronger and more mature, as do the emotions, if regulated stage by stage. Aum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steps Against Bribery Bribery breeds an educated criminal generation. It blocks the free flow of business. Bribery disrupts positive projects. Bribery diverts creative energies to worries about who, if not paid, will disrupt the progress, cut the phone lines, turn off the electric power or otherwise cause delay after delay after delay. Bribery is devastating <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-208-living-with-siva\/\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-with-siva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4619,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions\/4619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}