Good People
“Immortality
is to live your life doing good things and leave your mark behind.”
Brandon
Lee
The Bhagavad Gita, holy
text of the Hindus, recommends that we perform actions without
expectation of reward. Pure action, it says, just happens—there is
no doer, no receiver, just the action itself. Theologian Karen
Armstrong reminds us, “Jesus did not spend a lot of time
discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation,
which have preoccupied later Christians. He just went around doing
good and being compassionate.” Our relative goodness is not
measured in individual acts—such as our monetary contribution to
our church, temple or mosque—but in the life we lead every day.
We sometimes seem to
believe we can compartmentalize life. We can spend some of it being
angry and belligerent (for good reasons, of course), and as long as
we espouse the right beliefs, and do our due diligence down at the
homeless shelter, we can count ourselves among the “good people.”
“Good people,”
however, sometimes do good things for the wrong reasons; and
sometimes even do and say things that fall into the category
of “bad actions.” Conversely, some folks who most of the world
considers “bad dudes,” sometimes act out of kindness and
compassion. None of us is purely good or purely bad.
The very best we can do
is live consciously. We can pay attention to our actions, and when we
are wrong about something, admit it and make reparations. We can let
life happen and simply do what comes next without assessing whether or not there's a reward in it for us. Living with an open heart is usually enough to
steer clear of most bad actions. It's impossible to be
open-hearted and hateful at the same time! I hope today, we can all
just go about doing good and being compassionate.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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