What is Goodness?

[Lori Anne]

What is Goodness?
by Rabindranath Tagore


The question will be asked, "What is goodness?  What does our moral nature mean?"  My answer is that when a man begins to have an extended vision of his self, when he realizes that he is much more than at present he seems to be, he begins to get conscious of his moral nature.  Then he grows aware of that which he is yet to be, and the state not yet experienced by him becomes more real than that under his direct experience.

Necessarily, his perspective of life changes, and his will takes the place of his wishes.  For will is the supreme wish of the larger life, the life whose greater portion is out of our present reach, most of whose objects are not before our sight.

Then comes the conflict of our lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes with our will, of the desire for things affecting our sense with the purpose that is within our heart.  Then we begin to distinguish between what we immediately desire and what is good.  For good is that which is desirable for our greater self.  Thus, the sense of goodness comes out of a truer view of our life, which is connected view of the wholeness of the field of life, and which takes into account not only what is present before us but what is not, and perhaps never humanly can be.

--Rabindranath Tagore, in Sadhana

[lavender orchid]

unfortunately, this excerpt of tagore's insight does not include how he arrived at it, and with time increasing distance to him, one could even suspect he only repeats an appeal to morals and ethics by adding another voice to universal truth.
it seems, to me, all our relations provide only teachers and detachment.
and, as a probably unrecognized side-effect, a prolonged and increased heartache: after all, these teachers did not drive their audiences into total and absolute non-existence.

[mayflow]

unfortunately, this excerpt of tagore's insight does not include how he arrived at it, and with time increasing distance to him, one could even suspect he only repeats an appeal to morals and ethics by adding another voice to universal truth.
it seems, to me, all our relations provide only teachers and detachment.
and, as a probably unrecognized side-effect, a prolonged and increased heartache: after all, these teachers did not drive their audiences into total and absolute non-existence.

teaching 1 is morality (Karma) teaching 2 is non-attachment without losing realizations. Teaching 3 is paragate which is self and all realization. With this realization, self and other become more like self and more self.  Then suffering has been conquested ultimately, but understood to be part of the games the mind plays, in order explore itself... as was quoted of Jesus Christ "These things too shall pass..."
(of course meaning the limited understandings we sometimes take for ultimate realities, but are nonetheless just limited activities of the mind, rather than the mind itself)

[lavender orchid]

panta rei.

damage control now?