Once you realize….
Nisargadatta is new to me, but the short message is inspirational. Responsibility for who we are and the way we live is essential to living. Emmanuel Levinas called it being response-able. We are able to be responsible for living and becoming the person we are.
When we let the world inside shine onto the world outside, we are able to respond to the world more fully. Levinas’ work is often connected to ethics and living a good life. Ethics is about a practical rather than theoretical way of living. It is easy to take the moral high ground. It is not so easy to live the moral high ground. Being able to respond, to be mindfully responsible is essential to living well and fully.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
Teacher as Transformer 
Many people misunderstands “responsibility” as the burden they have to carry.
That will turn life trouble.
but you understand it correctly. Just response-able. it is the ability to response.
The ability to deal with the present and no need to carry anything.
That will be toward the happy lifestyle.
Also, freedom is always with responsibility.
If we can be responsible on being ourselves,
there will be no one directing us.
We can live freely without any guideline.
(You might be interested in this post. It explained the result when we cannot be responsible
http://jadethemystic.com/2014/10/27/awareness-for-subconscious-mind/)
So Glad to read your post.
Jade the Mystic
Thank you for the lovely comment and link. I went back to your post and re-read it.
This is something that Stephen Covey emphasizes in ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.. a worthwhile approach to life.
I read, “I Am That” by Nisargadatta. My favorite thing is when he said, “I am the space which this body and mind occupy.” Of course a paraphrase but that sure pulls the rug out of a lot of past teachings. Really enjoy your posts. 🙂
Thank you for sharing. This was the first time I had read his work.
Sharing this quote!
Thank you.
In living a good life, ethical, maybe even a spiritual one allows us to let go, to then carry happiness in a form with us in daily life.
Being responsible or able becomes easier without judgment or need to explain egotistic desires and behavior.
Intuition is a guide we should develop and apply each breath.
The right path or action arrives when we are present, empty, aware.
Being mindful is not always passive
Being mindful may alert us to take serious action at times.
Being able to take action may take practice.
It does take practice and attention we often do not use well. I agree that when we let go of judging or, as Gadamer suggested become aware of our judging, the path becomes a different one.