23 Aug 2021
[Dr. JSR Prasad asked:- Sashtanga pranamas Swami. In the Sanskrit academia, scholars often quote a verse (paropakāraḥ puṇyāya, pāpāya parapīḍnam) that means - helping others who are in need is considered to be the merit and inflicting pain to others is considered to be the sin. Scholars portray this as the essence of Mahabharata authored by sage Vyasa. As it is understood from Your discourses, one should discriminate (pātratā) while rendering any sort of help to 'others'. So, does the word 'para' in the verse has any other connotation with regard to its meaning? Kindly enlighten me. At your divine lotus feet.]
Swami Replied:- God Krishna said in the Gita that helping good people and harming bad people is the justisce (Paritrāṇāya sādhūnām, vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām, dharma saṃsthāpanārthāya...). God Krishna did not say that helping any other soul is justice and harming any other soul is sin. Both these verses contradict each other. God Krishna and sage Vyaasa are incarnations of God Vishnu, who is full of Sattvam or spiritual knowledge. How to remove this contradiction because same God Vishnu tells two contradicting concepts! Hence, the co-relation between these two verses is essential, which is done by God Datta. The word ‘Para’ has two meanings: - 1) Somebody else and 2) The good person (Para means Shreshtha or Good person). Here, if we take the second meaning for the word Para two verses get co-related. If you take the first meaning for Para, the two verses contradict with each other.
1) Para means somebody else:- Help any other person and don’t harm any other person.
2) Para means a good person:- Help any good person and don’t harm any good person.
Now, you can easily see that in view of the second meaning both verses mean the same. Helping and harming are two different qualities. Every body thinks that helping is totally a good quality and harming is totally a bad quality. This concept that one quality is totally good and another quality is totally bad is wrong. Every quality has both good and bad sides. If you turn any quality to its good side, it becomes a good quality and if you turn any quality to its bad side, it is a bad quality. God created every quality to be used in its good side and this means that God never created any bad quality to trap the souls to do sins attracted by bad qualities as sadist. It is the soul, who turns every quality to bad side and stamp it a bad quality blaming God as the creator of bad qualities in order to make the souls commit sins due to the influence of the bad qualities. Hence, helping has both good and bad sides. Helping good people is the good side and helping bad people is the bad side. Similarly, harming also has both good and bad sides. Harming bad people is good side and harming good people is the bad side. What sage Vyaasa told was clearly explained by God Krishna and the total clarification is given by God Guru Datta.
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