Right Acting: What I Do

The Buddha was a cultural revolutionary: he taught that moral worth rests in one’s intentions and their actual consequences. My every intentional action on something or someone is intrinsically and at once an action on myself. If ‘karma’ has any meaning at all then it is that and only that. There is a vivid saying in the Dhamma teachings that getting angry with a person is like picking up a burning coal with one’s bare hand to throw at that person. When I am directing anger towards you I am suffering anger. This chapter also discusses basic non-dogmatic guidance on refraining from killing and physical harm, from stealing and taking what is not given, from sexual misconduct, from lying and deceiving, and from intoxicants and drug abuse.