What morality means

Morality is the foundation on which a community exists. People who have it form bonds that last. With morality comes trust, and with trust people can settle into life: they can work, study, strive, dream and cultivate themselves with peace of mind. They can also cooperate to build a better life together.

Without morality, people do nothing but wait for a chance to hurt each other. They dare not cooperate, so they cannot live and build together, and a society like that withers and dies.

Two opposite tendencies live in every person: good and evil. Good is compassion for people and animals, the wish that every living being be safe and happy. Evil is the reverse: wanting your own share whatever the pain it causes someone else.

Each of us is born with a measure of both, carried over from a previous life. In this life, environment and education decide how they change. Some people have favorable conditions, so the good in them grows and their morality deepens. Others are unlucky enough to fall into a bad environment, where the evil in them flourishes, and they become people with no morals, condemned by society and the law.

Every one of us has a duty, and it is not optional, to improve our own character step by step, so that our presence is a source of joy, reassurance and safety to the people around us. If we do not, we become a burden, a worry, a threat and a danger to them.

Do not say that moral cultivation is merely a voluntary matter. It is a real obligation, owed so that our existence does not become a danger to others.

We will return to the methods of moral cultivation and the rewards it brings in later articles.