What Is The Basis for My Values / Morality?

 This was a creative exercise that I recently did, a way to think through some things and where my focus and attention is best centered.

• Cause and effect, that is, every action and deed produces fruit
• I am a social animal, and there is a basis for living peacefully and skillfully in my social interactions with others

• Things in and of themselves have no intrinsic existence in themselves, but their identity is relational to everything else around it (hence the need for being able to exist peacefully with others and the environment.

• Understanding things as they are - that we are all subject to suffering and that my actions should alleviate suffering in myself and others.
• Right intention - that is - commitment to ethics and mental self-improvement.
• Right speech, to abstain from deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully.

• Refrain from slanderous speech and not to speak maliciously of others

  Don't speak to cause discord

  Speak the truth, especially when there is an injustice

  Truthfulness spoken in humility (this is a struggle for me)

• To not harm others (and other sentient beings) intentionally or deliquently.

• Don't kill (don't take another's life), life is precious

• To respect other's belongings (don't steal, don't take what is not freely given, don't be fraudulent, don't be deceitful
• Allow people to be who they are, "meet" them where they are at,  not where I want them to be.
• Cultivate the awareness that I too an am animal and dependent on the web of nature
• Earn my living in a skillful way, that is, legally and peacefully (don't do work that harms others or contributes to the harming of others).

• this includes the environment

  don't invest in businesses that deprives others of the chance to live and to thrive 

• Don't be quick to anger (it's a trap)
• Don't force others to adopt my views.
• Don't close my eyes to conditions of suffering in others and myself. 
• Live a live of purpose and service to others.
• Be generous when I can, my life is not about the accumulation of things.
• Be good to my body, treat it with respect.
• Forgiveness for others and myself.
• Compassion for others and myself.