How Good Intentions Can Lead to Misery: Lessons from a Buddhist Sutta

A Buddhist sutta urges us all to check in with our successes and failures. I'll look at how this advice pertained to the Buddha's evil cousin Devadatta, as well as how it might pertain to contemporary cryptocurrency kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried. We'll see how even good intentions can go awry if we aren't mindful.

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✅ Book mentioned:
Zeke Faux, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall — https://amzn.to/3O4UJpN

✅ Videos recommended:
Controversies Over Clothing and Food —    • Controversies Over Clothing and Food  
Four Kinds of Karma —    • Four Kinds of Karma  
The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions —    • The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good I...  

✅ Suttas mentioned:
https://suttacentral.net/an8.7/en/sujato (Devadatta’s Failure)
https://suttacentral.net/an8.8/en/sujato (Uttara on Failure)
https://suttacentral.net/an8.5/en/sujato (Worldly conditions)

✅ Other resource:
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/... (Bhikkhu Sujato on the lateness of AN 8.7-8).

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Thumbnail images courtesy kanhaiskan and Momentmal from Pixabay and Cointelegraph from Wikimedia, CC by 3.0.

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00:00 Intro
00:42 Devadatta’s story
05:37 Sam Bankman-Fried’s story
08:38 Intentions, success, and failure
10:39 Contemporary society and the need for gain

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