For Goodness' Sake

     It's not so easy to get a glimpse of what real 'good' is like, in my opinion. As one of the study group practitioners had mentioned in tonight's Buddhist discussion group, we sometimes naturally end up experiencing goodness without necessarily striving to be good. I think the closest approximation to what is 'good' is something to do with interconnection and the analogy of the human body. As a totality, cells in the body never work in isolation but work in tandem to meet the needs of the whole.
       This view of interconnection and harmony is the closest I have ever understood to what good is about. But beyond that, there isn't much that can be said about an absolute good. For instance, even if I am convinced that my view is correct, my being convinced is bound to change the circumstances around me and make me perhaps less tolerant of what others consider as good. So another aspect of goodness is a kind of openness to not being drawn into thoughts. Thoughts are just thoughts. We needn't take them to be so real that we would die for those thoughts. And not only this, but thoughts are subject to change constantly over time.
     It's a paradox of sorts to contemplate that perhaps there isn't a solid, grounded 'idea' of good that somehow exists in a pristine form, as Plato had sometimes intimated in his philosophy. But does that commit a person to a life of relativism, or never knowing what is truly good? I believe that even if there are no absolute good and bad, there is still a direction of mind that is favorable and conducive to benefitting others. These directions are not hard and true absolutes of good and bad, but are rather general guidelines on how to maintain an open space for new ideas and new personalities. If we didn't have this direction, we would have stopped trying to harmonize many centuries ago. But with this mental space come the space of love and wisdom. It's a paradoxical space where things may not be what they appear, and they certainly aren't how I see them from one moment to the next.
       But by suspending my judgment on the nature of things and not categorizing them, I begin to see that things are already in harmony in their deepest sense. The reason it is hard to see this is that so often, we place our ideas of 'good and bad' in front of what is actually happening. As a result, the categories we use to separate beings into good, bad, neutral etc. end up imprisoning ourselves. The more habitual my reaction to things are in daily life, the less I am able to really emerge from emotional reactions to things. If I accept fully what is happening before me and around me, I wouldn't be so caught in my ideas of good, and this would make me more likely able to harmonize with a wide range  of experiences. For this reason, I think that goodness begins with opening a mental space to allow different perspectives to be entertained.