It’s an interesting challenge.

Meditation teaches us to take emotions and thoughts as they pass by without judging them. There is nothing good or bad about them. They come and go.

When things happen to us, when we experience things, the same approach is most useful. Why burden ourselves with the sense that it is good or bad? Whatever happens, we have to deal with it. Expecting it to be good or bad essentially only costs energy in trying to move towards the good and avoiding the bad.

However, this approach does not work for whatever we act upon. Whenever we have to decide what to do, we also have to decide what we see as good and what we see as bad. It guides our actions. Values and ethics support us in this as we’ll perceive what is within our values and what corresponds to our ethics as good. It doesn’t necessarily mean that what isn’t within our values or what is beyond our ethics will be bad, but it can. There is no such automatism as quite often these will simply be details that have not yet been thought through.

But that’s usually not how humans are wired. They’ll judge what they do according to their intention and whatever happens to them will be assessed through the presence of comfort or discomfort. However, all of this is within our control. Our intentions, how we act, and how we assess a situation are our choices. But it requires practice and awareness to accept the presence of choice.