An Ethical Conundrum

[dr_tectonic]

So apparently, having a mantra on your computer works just like a traditional prayer wheel. (Reputedly okayed by the Dalai Lama hisself!)

So the question is: If somebody wrote a virus that didn't do anything but propagate itself to new computers, but that had the words "om mani padme hum" in its code, would that be a net positive or negative, karmically speaking?

P.S.: Your browser cache is now a prayer wheel!

Comments

Intarweb puns

[bryree.livejournal.com]

Dare I ask if it was intentional? ;-)

I'm gonna go with "net negative."

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thank you!

The link you give links to further pages, one of them says that posting one article to usenet with the mantra showing up just once in the .sig may spin the mantra for over 5 trillion times over the typical one week expiration date for usenet articles.

Wouldn't that piss off a bunch of people who don't like peace if we started posting .sigs like that! ;-)

[saintpookie.livejournal.com]

Hrm. In the overall scheme of things, karmically speaking, since you are not out to cause any type of harm, and are in fact giving out blessings, I would say Positive Karma.

Besides, the author of the website has done something similar already by their own confession: "Right now, your hard drive is serving as a Mani wheel, because there are several copies of the mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" on this page, and they are all stored on your hard drive in the cache for your browser. "