The beauty of the soul

Mr Sơn raised his hand in greeting:

• Mr Bảy, please sit down and have a cup of coffee.
  Mr Bảy happily shook Mr Sơn's hand, sat down and ordered coffee. Mr Sơn said:
• Mr Bảy, I really admire your way of life, but I also wonder. All year round you busy yourself with good deeds: picking up rubbish, repairing roads, helping the poor, visiting the elderly... all sorts of things. It looks admirable, but what for? In this life, rich or poor we all die, good or evil we all die, so why not enjoy the pleasures for ourselves?
  Mr Bảy cleared his throat and said:
• I hear you own a very unusual twelve-stringed zither?
• Oh yes, it's a rare antique instrument. Every evening I bathe and put on nice clothes, and when the surroundings are quiet I light incense, and only then do I play. I play both to enjoy it and to show respect to the people of the past. If my wife and children want to listen they too have to be solemn and neatly dressed.
• Why do you devote so much of your mind to the zither?
• You wouldn't understand. Music is the beauty of life and the beauty of the soul. I love beauty and live for beauty, so I devote a great deal of my mind and time to the zither.
• I'm just like you, I love the beauty of life and of the soul. I look for beauty in charity work and in ethics. People say I help others, but really it's others who help me. If I had no one to treat kindly I would be miserable. Whenever I do something to make someone happier, my heart grows happier along with them. If you made me stop doing good, I would probably jump off a bridge together with the football gamblers... ⛹️‍♀️

Some people do good because they believe the fair law of cause and effect will bring a fitting reward. Some do good because they believe it will please the divine beings above. Some do good to win favour with superiors, to win favour with everyone, to advertise themselves... There are many motives. But there is a kind of person who does good because they love the beauty of goodness in life.

This life is still worth living because goodness still exists between people. A place worth living in is not a luxurious residential estate, not a five-star resort, but a place where kind people love one another. Each good deed we sow into life is a fresh and lovely flower adorning it. Each act of kindness we release into life is a beautiful picture, a beautiful piece of music that makes this life more worth living.

But the good that we show outwardly must originate in the ethics within the soul. The ethics within the soul is itself the beauty of the soul. The beauty of the soul is invisible and hard to see; only those with wisdom and ethics can perceive it. A wise person chooses an ethical way of life because they cannot live otherwise, because they cannot make their own soul ugly.

A moment of selfishness arising makes the mind a little uglier. A little bit of competitiveness arising makes the soul lose a little beauty. A little bit of arrogance arising makes the soul a little dirtier. Seeing this clearly, a wise person takes great care to keep their soul in holy ethics. Because the beauty of the soul is in itself an infatuation, in itself a happiness.