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Posted by josef on 4/10/2011, 8:15 am, in reply to "Can I be sure I am doing good, on balance?"
24.32.223.x
--Previous Message--
: 然貴於道邪？
: Rán guì yú dào xié
:
:
: The text that follows is difficult to
: translate, but it looks like Jo is saying
: that the dao can free you from your
: existential angst, worries about the
: unfairness of life, etc. But it cannot tell
: you how to do “good” or avoid “bad.”
:
:
: If this is valid, as I think it is, it is a
: great relief to know that you have no reason
: to worry about doing net good. You can help
: others or not, with a little or a lot, doing
: whichever you enjoy.
Rat, had to give this some consideration, as the question never occurred to me, "worrying about doing net good". It seems the worrying-about might be the voice of societal, familial or religio teaching, sctipting, i.e. conditioning.
Yet we often instinctively do respond in what the conditioning would consider "good"; reaching to help someone dropping something, reassuring or helping a frightened child, rescuing a trapped animal, but do so without any thought or intention of "doing good". Studies showed even a one-year old child will often hand a dropped item to the one who dropped it, and other socially helpful responses.
It seems to me that the modern dilemma is turning more and more to thought for answers, impeding trust in simple instinctive responses.
Then there's the question of what is "good", and that's a whole 'nother ball of wax...
My own (yes, we don't agree on this) take is that we think entirely too much, that it is a tangled mess of conflicting thought that messes up our simple natures which are intrinsically social, responsive, and essentially "good" by all measures we know.
Just my little piece to add to the discussion,
josef
188
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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