The Man Who Is Awake

"Do what is right. Be pure. At the end of the way is freedom. Until then, patience."

Sounds simple, right? Just do what is right and wait. Well, sometimes doing what is right is hard. You might even say that often it is hard. Like you know that yelling at your dog/child/spouse isn't actually going to help, but you're so frustrated that you do it anyway.  Sometimes we confuse what is easy for what is right. Sometimes we just do what is easy and don't even think about whether it is the right action.  The dharmaspoon guy, for example, normally is very good about recycling. After the holidays, it's a different story and sometimes in the overload of packaging, it all goes in the trash.  Sometimes we try to do right and things don't work out the way we'd like them to. Think about the times you tried to give someone what you thought was useful feedback, only to have it taken as an insult.  Other times, we do right and do not notice it. Maybe we bought the first bag of coffee we ran across and it happens to be fairly traded, but you could care less.  So there's intention to do right and then right action. Take the situation in Haiti. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the suffering there and to know what the right thing to do us. You can react in at least five ways:
1. You can try to ignore it.
2. You can want to do something to help but feel helpless to do anything.
3. You can want to do something, say text money to the Red Cross (see my last post), and not act.
4. You can want to do something, say text money to the Red Cross (see my last post), and do so. It's only $10. Seriously. Do it now.
5. You can try to ignore it, drop $10 on the ground, and someone else gives the money to the Red cross.

Doing good involves the intersection of intention and action.

Doing good also involves a certain level of mindfulness, less we undo one good task with subsequent not-so-good task. It's called not being a self-righteous ass about it and posting about it on your blog ;-) . It's also called not acting as if what you did is so good that you think you have self-righteousness credits that allow you to be thoughtless somewhere else. You know, like the Prius owner who flicks their cigarette butt out the window while cursing at the ambulance driver because those ambulances get like 2 MPG.

Finally, doing good now might not bring about any immediate effects for you. That's where the patience comes in. Now, go do good and don't be a prick about it!