[MD] A Place for the Principled Person

[Peter Corteen]

Hi Platt, you said to Marsha:

You know in your heart when you are being courageous and when you run away
or avoid a
situation out of fear. A large death-defying act would certainly be an
indication of
a person's courage. So would a life of many small unobserved courageous
acts,
observed only by oneself.

So, after the event, I find I ran away and reflect that I was cowardly; I
then resolve to be more courageous next time. Next time comes and again I
act out of fear; now I feel a failure on top of a coward. I think that
attachment to these intellectualised moral principles of human behaviour can
lead to inner conflict, and offer verse 2 of Witter Bynner's Tao Te Ching
translation as relief:

*People through finding something beautiful *
 * Think something else unbeautiful,*
 * Through finding one man fit *
 * Judge another unfit.*
 * Life and death, though stemming from each other, seem to conflict as
stages of change,*
 * Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,*
 * Long and short as measures of contrast,*
 * High and low as degrees of relation;*
 * But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice*
 * And what is is the was of what shall be,*
 * The sanest man*
 * Sets up no deed,*
 * Lays down no law,*
 * Takes everything that happens as it comes,*
 * As something to animate, not to appropriate,*
 * To earn, not to own,*
 * To accept naturally without self-importance:*
 * If you never assume importance*
 * You never lose it.*

Odyseus was a doer and acted spontaneously without self-consiousness.

Regard

Peter