The Tax of Goodness…
It is not really easy to be a good human being. It is in fact quite difficult. I mean to be a good human being in practice. Not as an idea or ideal in our mind.
That is because to be a good human being we got to fight with our nature. Our DNA. DNA is for hierarchy and followership. DNA—our basic nature—is not for equity, equality or thinking mind with awareness.
The paradox of the “natural”
Awareness and equity are not natural to our hardware. We are running on millions of years of code optimized for tribal survival, not universal compassion. But the fact that we can even recognize this limitation is evidence that we have already transcended it.
A fish does not know it is wet. A human, however, can observe the water and decide to build a boat.
Our DNA gives us the instinct to push others aside to reach the fruit; awareness gives us the ability to plant an orchard for the next generation. That act of planting is “unnatural,” but it is precisely what makes us human.
Religious vs spiritual
Religions were initiated in an effort to make us all into good human beings. If you carefully and hermeneutically decode those scriptures across any tradition, they are all gentle teachings, advice and nudges to align our selfish gene to being good. They span from strict commandments of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, to the precepts of Buddhism, to the teaching through parables and Gitas of Hinduism.
Those who scripted those scriptures might have believed that those who follow would end up as good human beings.
But following is being religious. Religiosity calls for just faith and following to a hierarchy. It is, in a way, deciding not to use our rational brain—not to work the small space between stimulus and response. We surrender our personal agency to something beyond us. Our existence out here is preordained; very little we can do about it. It is very easy to be religious. That explains the milling crowds.
Religion fills our cup with the Shepherd’s process, procedure, worksteps. Soon there is space for nothing else.
Being spiritual means empty that cup quite a bit, so that there is mindspace for the world in general and others in particular. The Zen Master, filling the professor’s overflowing tea cup until it spills, was pointing to this.
Being spiritual is an entirely different ball game. Spirituality accepts and aligns our instincts and nature to the well being of ourselves and others, using our ability to think and decide for ourselves. One got to be really aware of our thoughts, sensations, basic nature and not to identify with it. To choose a way that is good for us and good for others too. But being aware and being an observer is not basic nature of a human being. That is an evolved quality. It takes effort. Often it is taxing.
A small parable:
Religion is like following a shepherd into the valley. You trust the path is laid out. You surrender your agency to the flock.
Spirituality is like planting seeds in wild soil. You decide where to place them. You water them, protect them, wait.
The shepherd gives you belonging. The seed gives you responsibility. Both are paths. But only one asks you to awaken in that small space between stimulus and response.
True spirituality is not about floating above the muck of human nature. It is about wading through it without losing sight of the shore. It is easy to feel enlightened in a quiet room. It is hard to feel enlightened when your nervous system is screaming at you because a toddler is screaming at you.
The battle is real.
The child as mirror
That is why as adults, we can’t really communicate with small children. Have you ever observed how adults communicate with small children who often babble and talk quite incoherently? We do try to listen for some time and then give it up and try to distract the focus of the child to something else.
This is not because we lack love or affection for that child. Basically to be with that child does take energy.
Two areas in human life that receive the most research and advice are leadership and communication. There are terabytes of knowhow on the internet. Especially in community groups of helping professionals such as coaches. On empathy and communication. We pay hefty sums to listen and learn from the fancy sage on the stage.
And yet we often forget: the best teacher of empathetic communication could be the infant child in our own homes. If we could communicate with that infant child, then communicating with anyone else—leave alone humans, even animals, flowers and trees—could be a cakewalk.
The taxing nature of awareness is not a flaw but the very gate of practice. The child’s incoherence is not a barrier but a reminder of the raw ground from which awareness must arise.
Adults often assume communication fails because the child lacks vocabulary. In reality, it fails because the adult lacks presence. To be with a babbling child is to abandon the linear, goal-oriented mind—Where is this conversation going? What is the point?—and enter a state of pure process.
This is energetically expensive because we have been conditioned to value outcomes over encounters.
The child is not incoherent. The child is speaking the language of pure sensation. We find it taxing not because it is difficult, but because we refuse to learn the language.
The dance floor
And when we transform that battle into a dance, that is when we really transcend it—without rejecting our basic nature. Using the energy of instinct as fuel for awareness.
The dance happens the moment we stop saying “I must suppress my irritation” and start saying “Ah, there is irritation. Hello, old friend. I see you want me to shut this child down. I am going to feel you, but I am not going to obey you.”
The energy of the instinct does not vanish; it is transmuted. The heat of frustration becomes the warmth of patience. The sharpness of hierarchy becomes the clarity of boundaries.
Yes, it is taxing. But a muscle only grows when it is torn first.
Is our nature the shadow?
Our nature is shadow when we remain unconscious of it. Our nature is fuel when we bring awareness to it. Our nature is Buddha when we dance with it.
The shadow is not evil—it is unintegrated. When we fight it, it becomes battle. When we dance with it, it becomes energy for awareness.
In Zen, nature is both instinct and Buddha-nature. The paradox is that both are true: our raw DNA is shadow, but our capacity to see it is Buddha-nature. To transcend is not to reject, but to integrate.
The quiet heroism
We often look for goodness in grand gestures. But the space between the impulse and the action—that gap—is where the real work happens.
It is the pause before snapping at a waiter.
It is the breath taken before correcting a child.
It is the choice, despite exhaustion, to listen to one more round of babbling.
This is invisible labour. No one claps for it. The DNA certainly doesn’t reward it.
But this is the architecture of a good human being.
To conclude
It is indeed difficult to be good.
Now one may ask: how do all these connect together? Being spiritual—is it just some navel gazing, mindless, solitary walk on this earth?
No. Being spiritual is to be a completely humane human and live a compassionate and caring life.
If we can’t communicate empathetically to that infant child within us, then we cannot connect with ourselves, leave alone others. That child inside—the one who still babbles, still feels, still reacts from raw sensation—if we cannot listen to that voice with presence, then all our fancy communication techniques are just performance.
And that is the most basic aspect of being a humane human. That is the ground floor of being spiritual.
The fact that you find it difficult—that you feel the weight of the effort—is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that you are actually doing it.
The person who finds goodness easy has likely never questioned whether they are truly good. The person who finds it heavy is the one carrying the water uphill, building the consciousness of the next generation drop by drop.
The child will grow. The babbling will become coherence. And one day, that child will encounter their own toddler, feel the familiar surge of impatience, and remember:
Someone once listened to me long enough for me to learn how to speak.
That child is you. Waiting.
That is the dance. That is the transcendence.
That is the tax well paid.
