Don't Do Unto Others

                      The Fireplace Records, Chapter 33

Don't Do Unto Others

An acquaintance of mine, a devout Catholic, ends all his email letters with "Love, Arthur."

He has frequently mentioned the Biblical verse "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Matthew 22: 38)  Love and loving phrases pepper his conversations. 

My underlying feeling was that these references to "love" were rather insincere and somewhat ungrounded, since I could not understand how two people with radically different opinions about life, religion, and politics could actually "love" one another; socialize and tolerate maybe, but "love," unlikely.  

In my teenage years, I questioned how this verse would apply to people who don't like themselves, hate themself, are ashamed of themself, denigrate themself, or don't love themselves in the slightest, etc. They would seem quite handicapped or incapable of loving their neighbor, insofar as they don't love themselves. On the opposite side, self-respect and self-love has some positive connotations, and can lead to loving others; however, carried to excess it becomes flawed and appears as egotism and narcissism.

I grew up in East Los Angeles, in the Bandini Barrio, for 20 years. It was a low income suburban LA neighborhood. I had a few friends and some good neighbors. However, as with most suburban neighborhoods, I did not know or have any relationships with 96% of my neighbors. I did not love them, nor did I have any opinion or emotion regarding them other than live and let live, let's stay at peace, and mind your own business. "Loving" them was not my concern; and, I had no ill will towards people I did not know. 

I also read, "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you." (Matthew 7:12) If I wanted hard drugs, does this mean I should give or sell hard drugs to others? If I thought I should be severely punished if I chose not to follow Catholic doctrines, does this give me license to severely punish non-believers? If someone liked perverted sexual play, should they being doing these acts with others? Knowing that others have cheated me, should I cheat others? This moral maxim had some good applications; and, some bad/evil/wrong/destructive applications.  

In high school in 1961, I read Confucian texts.  I came across the Confucian maxim "Don't do to others what you don't want done to you." (Analects, V. 12, VI. 30, 500 BCE)  This ethical/moral/behavioral advice seemed to resonate with me more than the Christian advice. I thought I could apply this maxim more effectively in my daily life with the many people I encountered but did not know, or love. It was a way of caring for others by not harming them. I have tied to follow this practical maxim for six decades.

Comments, Sources, Observations

Gold is malleable, soft, valued, and long lasting; but, limited in other ways.
Rather than a ruler of gold, a flexible cloth tape is more practical.
Rules are useful if properly and intelligently applied.
Acknowledging exceptions to rules is a good rule to apply sometimes. 
The disadvantages loving yourself to excess are numerous.
"Love" is often just another boring cliche, a charming metaphor.
A church sign says "God is Love!" The Devil also loves his work.
Liking, preferring, and loving are cousins, sometimes distant cousins.
Yes, gold is valuable; but of what value is this value?

"Love" is rarely mentioned in Zen Koans; maybe 6 times out of 1,975 Koans. Egoistic-restraint, kindness without reciprocity, control of desires, patience, gentleness, helpfulness, asceticism, toughening, and wisdom are emphasized more.  

Golden Rule - Wikipedia

Ten Reasons Why Self-Love is Bad

Refer to my Cloud Hands Blog Posts on the topic of Koans/Stories. 

Subject Index to 1,975 Zen Buddhist Koans

Zen Buddhist Koans: Indexes, Bibliography, Commentary, Information

The Daodejing by Laozi

Pulling Onions  Over 1,043 One-line Sayings by Mike Garofalo

Chinese Chan Buddhist and Taoist Stories and Koans

The Fireplace Records  By Michael P. Garofalo

Actions and Deeds

"The shortest answer is doing."
-  George Herbert

"No one is wise by birth.  Wisdom results from one's own efforts."
-  Krishnamacharya    

"Will is character in action."
-  William McDougall 

"Willpower is the art of replacing one habit for another."
-  Michael Garofalo  

"It is really vain to express the nature of something.  We notice effects, and a complete account of these effects would perhaps comprise the nature of this thing.  We attempt in vain to describe the character of a man; but a description of his actions and his deeds will create for us a picture of his character."
-  Goethe, The Theory of Colors

Will Power: Quotes, Sayings

Virtue Ethics

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise and Respected Persons

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones.  By James Clear.  Avery, 2018, 320 pages.  A excellent best seller. 
Clear writing style, positive, informative, practical, and inspiring. VSCL. 

Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About it Now.  By Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen.  25th Anniversary Edition.  De Capo Lifelong, 2008, index, 322 pages.  VSCL. 

Ways to Nurture Resilience

Ten Ways to Nurture Resilience

"1. Boost your physical vitality, with exercise, nourishment, and rest.

2. Boost your mental vitality with quiet time, adequate sleep, and time in nature.

3. Practice coping with small things so you can better cope with the big things.

4. Set yourself a series of small goals and work toward them.

5. Grow something. Pay attention to the difference your care makes.

6. Make regular notes of the things you do well, to remind you how capable you are.

7. Seek out community and build a support network.

8. Seek our resilience role models and learn from them.

9. Support yourself with inspiring quotes.

10. Look for reasons to be positive every day.

- Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi, 2018

Backyard Details

All photographs, from yesterday and today,
were taken by Karen Garofalo in 2021
at our home in Vancouver, Washington.

"We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice, or kindness in general.  Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, and unique."
-  Benjamin Jowett

"Science and psychoanalysis apart, the most profound development in thought since Nietzsche, as far as we are concerned, is the phenomenological approach to the world.  Mallarmé sought "words without wrinkles," Baudelaire cherished his minutes heureuses and Valéry his "small worlds of order," as we have seen: Checkhov concentrated on the "concrete individual" and preferred "small scale and practical answers," Gide though the "systematizing is denaturing, distorting and impoverishing."  For Oliver Wendell Holmes, "all the pleasure of life is in general ideas, but all the use of life is in specific solutions."  Wallace Stevens considered that we are "better satisfied in particulars."  Thomas Nagel put it in this way: "Particulars things can have a noncompetitive completeness which is transparent to all aspects of the self.  This also helps to explain what the experience of great beauty tends to unify the self: the object engages us immediately and totally in a way that makes distinctions among points of view irrelevant."  Or, as Robert Nozick, who counseled us to make ourselves "vehicles" for beauty, said: "this is what poets and artists bring us―the immense and unsuspected reality of a small thing.  Everything has its own patient entityhood."  George Levine call for "a profound attention to the details of this world."  
-  Peter Watson, "The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God," p.536

"The idea of one overbearing truth is exhausted."  
- Thomas Mann, translated by James Wood  

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
-  Albert Einstein

"To study the self is to forget the self.  To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."
-  Zen Master Dogen

"The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God."
-  Benedict De Spinoza

"God is in the details."
-  Mies Van Der Rohe

"After appreciating and understanding thousands of the details, a common variety God is really superfluous."
-  Mike Garofalo

"Caress the detail, the divine detail." 
-  Vladimir Nabokov

"Details are all there are."
-  Maezumi Roshi

"We think in generalities, but we live in details."
-  W.H. Auden

Gardening and Spirituality

Gardening and Religion

A Philosopher's Notebooks

Character in Action

"The shortest answer is doing."
-  George Herbert

"No one is wise by birth.  Wisdom results from one's own efforts."
-  Krishnamacharya    

"Will is character in action."
-  William McDougall 

"Willpower is the art of replacing one habit for another."
-  Michael Garofalo  

"It is really vain to express the nature of something.  We notice effects, and a complete account of these effects would perhaps comprise the nature of this thing.  We attempt in vain to describe the character of a man; but a description of his actions and his deeds will create for us a picture of his character."
-  Goethe, The Theory of Colors


Will Power: Quotes, Sayings

Virtue Ethics

How to Live a Good Life 

Paddle Your Own Canoe

"Know many, trust a few, and always paddle your own canoe."
-  An unknown Zen Master

Set your course and take constructive action to get to your goal.  You are the one that needs to work, to change, to become, to transform yourself.  Others may be a source for good advice, and a few people are great aids to our progress, but we must work ourselves to accomplish the tasks at hand.

Willpower

Talent is a Species of Vigor

"The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action.  It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny."
-   Pierre Joseph Proudhon   

“They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.”
-  Eric Hoffer

Lifestyle Advice from Wise Persons 

The Good Life 

Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality

"1.  Moving with Attention, Wake Up to Life, Mindful Movements
2.  The Learning Switch, Bring in the New, Lifelong learning, Retraining
3.  Subtlety, Experience the Power of Gentleness
4.  Variation, Enjoy Abundant Possibilities
5.  Taking Your Time, Slowing Down, Not Rushing, Luxuriate in the Richness of Feeling 
6.  Enthusiasm, Turn the Small into the Great
7.  Flexible Goals, Make the Impossible Possible  
8.  Imagination and Dreams, Create Your Life
9.  Awareness, Cultivating Mindfulness, Thrive with True Knowledge"

Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality  By Anat Baniel.  New York, Harmony Books, 2009.  Index, bibliography, 306 pages.  ISBN: 9780307395290.  VSCL.  

 

 

Easy Going and Strenuous Paths

    "Well, a vast number of our moral perceptions also are certainly of this secondary and brain‑born kind. They deal with directly felt fitnesses between things, and often fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of utility. The moment you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's Almanacs, you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common‑sense are fantastic and overstrained. The sense for abstract justice which some persons have is as eccentric a variation, from the natural-history point of view, as is the passion for music or for the higher philosophical consistencies which consumes the soul of others. The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness, etc‑-are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the more ideal attitude for its own pure sake. The nobler thing tastes better, and that is all that we can say. “Experience” of consequences may truly teach us what things are wicked, but what have consequences to do with what is mean and vulgar?"  ....

"The deepest difference, practically, in the moral life of man is the difference between the easy-going and the strenuous mood.  When in the easy-going mood the shrinking from present ill is our ruling consideration.  The strenuous mood, on the contrary, makes us quite indifferent to present ill, if only the greater ideal be attained.  The capacity for the strenuous mood probably lies slumbering in every man, but it has more difficulty in some than in others in waking up.  It needs the wilder passions to arouse it, the big fears, loves, and indignations; or else the deeply penetrating appeal of some one of the higher fidelities, like justice, truth or freedom.  Strong relief is a necessity of its vision; and a world where all the mountains are brought down and all the valleys are exalted is no congenial place for its habitation.  This is why in a solitary thinker this mood might slumber on forever without waking.  His various ideals, known to him to be mere preferences of his own, are too nearly of the same denominational value; he can play fast and loose with them at will.  This too is why, in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power.  Life, to be sure, is even in such a world a genuinely ethical symphony; but it is played in the compass of a couple of poor octaves, and the infinite scale of values fails to open up.  Many of us, indeed--like Sir James Stephen in those eloquent Essays by a Barrister--would openly laugh at the very idea of the strenuous mood being awakened in us by those claims of remote posterity which constitute the last appeal of the religion of humanity.  We do not love these men of the future keenly enough; and we love them perhaps the less the more we hear of their evolutionized perfection, their high average longevity and education, their freedom from war and crime, their relative immunity from pain and zymotic disease, and all their other negative superiorities.  This is all too finite, we say; we see too well the vacuum beyond.  It lacks the note of infinitude and mystery, and may all be dealt with in the don't-care mood.  No need of agonizing ourselves or making others agonize for these good creatures just at present.

 

When, however, we believe that a God is there, and that he is one of the claimants, the infinite perspective opens out.  The scale of the more imperative ideals now begin to speak with an altogether new objectivity and significance, and to utter the penetrating, shattering, tragically challenging note of appeal.  They ring out like the call of Victory Hugo's alpine eagle, "qui parle au précipice et que le gouffre entend," and the strenuous mood awakens at the sound.  It saith among the trumpets, ha, hat! it smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting.  Its blood is up; and cruelty to the lesser claims, so far from being a deterrent element, does but add to the stern joy with which it leaps to answer to the greater.  All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the don't care temper, we see the antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods, and the contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious obligation from on high, and those of prudence and the satisfaction of merely finite need.

 

The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest.  Our attitude towards concrete evils is entirely different in a world where we believe there are none but finite demanders, from what it is in one where we joyously face tragedy for an infinite demanders' sake.  Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.  For this reason the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall.

 

It would seem, too--and this is my final conclusion--that the stable and systematic moral universe for which the ethical philosopher asks is fully possible only in a world where there is a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands.  If such a thinker existed, his way of subordinating the demands to one another would be the finally valid casuistic scale; his claims would be the most appealing; his ideal universe would be the most inclusive realizable whole.  If he now exist, then actualized in his thought already must be that ethical philosophy which we seek as the pattern which our own must evermore approach.  In the  interest of our own ideal of systematically unified moral truth, therefore, we, as would-be philosophers, must postulate a divine thinker, and pray for the victory of the religious cause.  Meanwhile, exactly what the thought of the infinite thinker may be is hidden from us even were we sure of his existence; so that our postulation of him after all serves only to let loose in us the strenuous mood.  But this is what it does in all men, even those who have interest in philosophy.  The ethical philosopher, therefore, whenever he ventures to say which course of action is the best, is on no essentially different level from the common man.  "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; therefore choose life that thou and thy seed may live"--when this challenge comes to us, it is simply our total character and personal genius that are on trial; and if we invoke any so-called philosophy, our choice and use of that also are but revelations of our personal aptitude or incapacity for moral life.  From this unsparing practical ordeal no professor's lectures and no array of books can save us.  The solving word, for the learned and the unlearned man alike, lies in the last resort in the dumb willingnesses and unwillingnesses of their interior characters, and nowhere else.  It is not in heaven, neither is it beyond the sea; but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy hear, that thou mayest do it."
-  William James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, 1891

The Taliban jihadists are a more strenuous sort of men, determined to bring everyone under Allah's Thumb of Saria Law― whether others want to or not; just like the utopian communistic atheists under Lord Stalin's brutal thumb, or the Khmer Rouge liberators under Pot Pol in Cambodia, or the Maoist purists with their Red Book in hand.  Strenuous idealists too often yell a lot, and place their finger on a rifle's trigger.  

We philosophical Daoists, women and men, are more often the tender-minded and easy-going sorts of fellows.  We have a taste for dealing more peacefully, quietly, constructively, gently, and stoically with the ills of life.   

Strive Wisely

"It is exercise alone that supports the spirit, and keeps the mind in vigor."
-  Cicero, 65 BCE

"So many older people, they just sit around all day long and they don't get any exercise. Their muscles atrophy, and they lose their strength, their energy and vitality by inactivity."
-  Jack LaLanne

"Vigor (viriya) is the state of a hero (vira). Its characteristic is exertion. Its function is to support or consolidate related mental qualities. It is manifested as non-collapse. Because of the saying, "Stirred, one strives wisely," its proximate cause is what stirs the heart. When initiated properly, it should be seen as the root of all attainments."
-  Visuddhimagga XIV, 137, A Buddhist Scripture 

"The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action.  It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny."
-   Pierre Joseph Proudhon  

Vitality 

Strength Training for Persons Over 50 

Walking