To Be a Better Person

With palms together,Good Morning everyone,

Today brings a new day. Fresh with possibility to make ourselves better people in each moment. What is a "better" person? One who is good? What's that? One who cares about others? What's that? Terms like these beg the question of right living. We say better but only understand it dualistically: better than I was, perhaps, or better than others perhaps, or better as opposed to worse, meaning what? More good than bad? What does that mean? These are all references to relative standards. Usually relative to some Absolute we imagine or read about or are taught.

Some say we just need look at the Torah or Bible to find the good, the rules of conduct that will bring us closer to God. These are the "deontologists" of the world who see right in following a set standards of rules. Yet, opponents of this ethical point of view will quickly point out the difficulties of rule based ethics: they are typically relative to a particular culture, they are often difficult if not impossible to apply fairly in given situations, but worst of all, they reify good. That is to say, they make good a rigidly defined thing in an extremely fluid world.

So, when we look deeply into the nature of things we see no absolute standard, save change. Everything changes. In this context, what would it mean to make oneself a "better" person? Oh those pesky koans!

Be well.
PS, Going around the cycle of good and bad with Qwest. Maybe we'll have a telephone and Internet sometime in my lifetime :)