[MD] A Place for the Principled Person

[Peter Corteen]

Sorry about misspelling; I meant Odysseus.

Regard

On 04/07/06, Peter Corteen <psigenics at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
>