“Right Action”
Determining what’s right in Shuijing practice isn’t a straightforward kind of thing.
Well-- it is, sort of.
I mean, if I go and start removing your nails with flaming hot pincers, the Totality as a whole probably isn’t going to notice or care. You probably would, though. (If you don’t care at the start, it’s pretty likely that you will after the third or fourth nail.) It’s not that hurting someone else offends the stars, but, stuff like that tends to cast ripples that can rebound in unpredictable and often increasingly nasty ways. People drown in such ripples.
We call them “consequences.”
Avoiding bad consequence is pretty much a matter of existential courtesy-- to yourself, also, if you care about others being careful of you and those you care for. Complying with this kind of existential courtesy is contextual, though, right down to its foundations. A slaver hound that chooses not to eat meat even though she’s an obligate carnivore might be praised for her restraint by various other creatures (some of them humans, maybe), but her pups might understandably have a different opinion. A state-sponsored assassin (us, often, for instance) might cause the greatest harm by deciding not to kill-- but there are also cases where it might be important not to.
This isn’t a world of laws and rules. It’s a world of consequences. Laws and rules exist to try to provide additional consequences for stuff we don’t want to see done, and to keep those things’ more natural consequences from getting out of control.
They’re a human thing. In other words, they’re something we make for each other, not something that grows out of the cosmos itself.
(Unless, you know, you think of us all as being little walking bits of the Totality, which, we are. But it’s not like every human thought probably reflects some galactic consciousness in any very close way.)
There are a few duties that seem to be pretty common to the state of being “human,” though. To be clear, these are derived duties, not inherent ones, but, what they’re derived from is something we mostly all share.
“Humility,” because in the Totality, we’re none of us great, and arrogance foreseeably leads to harm.
“Compassion,” because we’re all of us figments here together; if you want to find help or mercy when you need it (and most of us will, at some time, and probably have many times before), you should be compassionate to others as well.
“Curiosity,” because the Totality is a wonder to explore. Not much carbon gets to see what you’re seeing, now. It is a rare privilege for a clump of star dust to be alive, to be sapient-- and how will you ever understand, ever really see what you’re doing or where you’re going, if you don’t seek to know?
“Moderation,” because extremity brings disruption; even if you believe you are in the right, and yours is the best course available to you, you should be careful not to do more harm than you must.
These virtues exist in tension with one another. Being extremely, callously, and arrogantly curious isn’t likely to be recognized as a praiseworthy virtue very often. Being humble to the point of helping no one and serving no purpose could be seen as a kind of arrogance, itself.
We live in a complex universe where purity is almost invariably a lie, while ambiguity and compromise are the stuff lives are necessarily built around. That’s not something bad or wrong, and there’s no sin in acknowledging truth. It might be a little rude to say, though. Either way, the truth you acknowledge is likely to be, at most, a part of the story.
Be aware, and navigate this world as best you can. Really that’s the most that can be fairly asked of a figment, anyway.