The search for goodness began early in my life—perhaps it’s always been part of me. One of my inspirations was a book I read in the 6th grade, called ‘The Superlative Horse’, by Jean Merrill. The story, based on a Taoist tale from c. 350 B.C.E., is about a young boy who is asked to choose a horse for Duke Mu, a keen lover of horses. This quote sums up the outcome of the boy’s search: “The excellence of a horse does not reside in its color or sex or breed or build. Excellence is a matter of the heart and spirit of a horse.”
It is this same “excellence” that I have come to call “goodness”, and that has become, for good or ill, what I think of as most important in navigating my life.
It was my daughter who first suggested I write a blog, and my son who constructed the basic form of this web page for me. (All clumsiness of design and format are my own.) At first I thought I’d write of my many complaints, mostly about the lack of genuine beauty, goodness, realness in modern day culture. But, remembering the training adage, “Ignore behavior you don’t want to see repeated”, perhaps it’s better to write about what I do enjoy, or at least have enjoyed, what I do feel goodness in, what I do find restorative. For instance, the unmatched flavor of Blenheim apricots, which used to be everywhere when I was growing up, and now are so scarce. Climbing a mountain, early in the morning, with a very good friend. The peace and serenity of the bathroom at my favorite temple in Koyasan. The deep blue green color that the moss in the Okunoin cemetery there has, and that I also sometimes see in broccoli. The joy of putting on a really deep, dark indigo-dyed shirt. Being by the ocean! Walking among redwood forests! All things that one can’t really know the goodness of without directly experiencing them. Goodness, for me, is discovered through experience, and is something one’s heart knows when it is present.
Which is not to say that there will never be any complaints in this blog—I make no promises!
I don’t claim to have discovered a formula for instant goodness, either—I just want to explore it, as I have been doing now for 71 years, without ever coming to an end.
If anyone happens to read these words, I wish them all blessings, and if there are trolls about, I remind them to beware of billy goats!
