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Posted by isabeau
on 4/21/2011, 11:52 am, in reply to "Re: p.s."
207.200.116.x
--Previous Message--
:
:
: --Previous Message--
:
: It occurred to me after posting that, that
: much of what people do is to find their
: identity, value and security. All
: though-based notions.
:
: In the mind-stilled fullness of being fully
: present in the Now, these cease to be of
: issue. Taoist wisdom points directly to
: this, imo.
:
:
:
: You say "that we think entirely too
: much," josef. And yet you posted what
: I consider a useful unpacking of the issue.
: Imo, you thought it over well.
:
: The point is, as you said,
:
: " but do so without any thought or
: intention of "doing good"."
:
: This is exactly what Zhuangzi and Laozi
: spilled so much ink on. I think that all
: that their thinking was useful.
:
: To be free of thinking that I do, at times,
: absolute good, is a wonderful thing, even if
: others think that I am doing good. This
: amorality is the basis of Zhuangzi's
: mysticism.
:
: I think that it was what Jo of the North Sea
: was thinking about when he said there was no
: way to do net good: "Who shall I
: help" he rhetorically asked.
:
: love,
: rat
:
seems to me there's more than one kind of thinking going on...the thinking of the philosopher isn't necessarily the double-checking double-taking 'what will others think of what i do' thinking that seems part and parcel of our culture, and as josef pointed out, seems to take us away from the instinct to act in a way that benefits another in the moment.
maybe another approach is to consider that the proof is in the pudding. what we do is NOT the pudding. the pudding is the situation we create by our actions.
jet li has a quote on his website that i like a lot: 'do your best -- it is good enough.' takes us away from the burden of trying to measure up to an absolute, and lets us accept the results of being present in the moment and letting our natural instinct to benefit others to have play.
of course, sometimes, how we instinctively act to benefit another may not be clear to them to be either beneficial or good, but that perhaps is a topic for a different thread (as in, sometimes...you have to be cruel to be kind -- the cruelty being in the eyes of the recipient, and of course, english being a sloppy language, cruelty can be applied to a wide range of behaviors, some of which could still be considered in the end kind, and some which would be abusive or bullying, which would not be kind).
i agree with josef, it's an existential situation, in that there is no absolute good. there's just contributing to the pudding ;-).
153
"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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