--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "ruthsimplicity"
> <ruthsimplicity@> wrote:
> >
> > > > What we do has consequences and we should not limit our focus
> > to self realization or enlightenment, but to doing good.
>
> <snip> The criteria for "doing good" are
> first "Do no harm," or at the very least *try*
> to "do no harm," and second, try to do things
> that have the instantaneous karmic effect of
> elevating your own state of attention. IMO
> *that* is one of the only indicators we have
> that we are "doing good."
>
> What I couldn't agree with less is his sugges-
> tion that the enlightened can do "anything they
> want" and actually be enlightened. In my book
> the enlightened still produce karma, and thus
> still can create negative karma and suffer the
> results of it if they perform negative actions.
>
> Being able to do "anything they want" is lazy
> philosophy, and the top of a very slippery slide
> into Hell.
Ruth, "doing good", in my book, comes from a place of arrogance. It
implies that one knows what is "good" in the first place, and then
one executes the correct performance flawlessly. You are probably
using the words differently than I am, but whenever I see the
phrase "doing good" in this context, my neckhairs bristle and I check
to make sure my weapons are handy.
I strongly resonate with the quote by C.S. Lewis,
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent
moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his
cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for
our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the
approval of their own conscience."
So I pursue the route, like Turq pointed out, of first "doing no
harm".
Years ago I went through a turning point during which I committed
what I thought was a series of The Most Regrettable Actions of My
Life. These actions were taken, by the way, fully in the quest
of "doing good" for my then-boyfriend. It was after realizing my
folly that I decided to take the very humble and modest approach of
doing only no harm (in my judgment, which I was severely questioning
at the time), and very carefully take notice at several checkpoints
how things turned out, so that I could change direction as soon as I
noticed any problems developing. I'm giving all this background to
stress that the important thing is that I was paying very close
attention to motives, actions and results.
What I noticed was that when my motive was to benefit myself, things
kind of muddled along. When my motive was to benefit my children,
things went better for all of us. Sometimes a course of action
would, by coincidence, benefit EVERYONE it touched -- self, children,
friends, and even my opponents or enemies. THESE courses of action,
I learned, were the best of all. These actions benefitted me the
most and my children the most. And they didn't harm anyone, even
people I really disliked (not that I was too worried about them, but
as I'm counting the tallies, there's the data).
So I decided to more consciously seek these actions, the ones that
benefitted everyone, not because I was altruistic, but because
everything just worked out so much better ("left better lies", to put
it in billiards terms) when I found "the middle way", the way lying
above the other choices which seemed to benefit one at the expense of
another.
Putting this into a nutshell, I pursue actions which seem, to my
limited perception, to resonate with the Force and to align with the
Flow.
I'm not picking on you, Ruth. Go ahead and call it "doing good" if
that's what it means to you.
