16 Mar 2020
Shri PVNM Sharma asked: Swami! Sometimes You say that it is better to leave everything to God and sometimes You say that we should fight against injustice, as a part of God’s work. Can you please clarify our confusion?
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! The ultimate truth, which is the highest understanding of spiritual knowledge, is that God will certainly address every bit of action in this world. He will do it in His own way and not in our hasty way. Before punishing sinners for their sins, God gives them some time, which is an opportunity for reformation. If a sinner gets reformed, all the sinner’s punishments for that particular type of sin are cancelled by the grace of God. If the sinner who committed injustice against you gets reformed in this manner, then along with excusing the sinner’s punishment, God also compensates you for your loss in a big way. It does not matter to you, whether or not the sinner got punished since you do not get any compensation, when your enemy is punished. But if you are patient and you maintain full confidence in God, God will reward you with a very big compensation for your excellent patience and marvelous confidence in Him. You will be compensated, whether your enemy is reformed, punished or let free without punishment, in spite of not being reformed. Indeed sometimes, your enemy is let free without punishment, even though the enemy has not yet reformed. This happens in the case of a retaliatory sin. This means that you had harmed the person in the past, in this birth or in the previous birth and the person has only harmed you in return. But if your enemy harms you for the first time, he or she will be given a chance to reform. If the person does not reform, then the person will be punished suitably by God.
Punishment is also a means to reformation, but reformation through punishment is only a temporary reformation. So, when you wish for God to punish your enemy, you are wishing your enemy well since you are wishing for the person’s immediate temporary reformation. With this understanding, you can pray to God to punish your enemy, if, based on a proper analysis, the enemy is found to have done some injustice. You should not pray to God to punish your enemy with an attitude of revenge. If you seek revenge, you too will be punished like Draupadi, who always prayed to Krishna to destroy the Kauravas for the sake of her revenge. Krishna had decided already to punish the Kauravas, even if Draupadi had not prayed to Him. It would have been a black mark on His divine administration, if the Kauravas had not been punished. So, the Kauravas were destroyed in the war, as per the will of Krishna. But due to Draupadi’s deep attitude of revenge, all her five sons got killed too.
Sages have followed the procedure of punishing sinners for their temporary reformation and hence, they are considered to be the most sacred in the whole of humanity. They have the power of knowing the whole internal biodata of any soul, through their divine vision. They need not depend on God like us. We do not have such divine vision and we do not know whether the case is that of a fresh sin or a sin in return for a previous sin. Hence, we should leave everything to God. Sages immediately come to know whether the case is fresh or not. If it is a fresh case, they immediately curse the sinner. By punishing the sinner through their curse, they carry out God’s task of reforming the sinful soul. It is a form of divine service. We cannot do such divine service since we lack that divine vision as well as the power to curse someone. But a human being can also find out whether the case is fresh or not, through observation. If God punishes the sinner sometime later, it means that the case was fresh and the sinner did not get reformed during the time given by God. If the sinner does not get punished by God, in spite of not being reformed, we can conclude that it was the case of a sin committed in return for a previous sin. But we must be patient and observe the person over a long time, especially when the sinner has committed a sin against us. If the sinner gets punished, we need not punish the sinner again because one crime cannot have two punishments, as per the divine law. Moreover, God is omniscient and the sage also has divine vision. So, when any of them punish a person, they always punish in the correct measure, in proportion to the sin. When we are capable of punishing the sinner and we punish based on our limited knowledge, there is a risk of error. If the sinner has committed a sin in return, actually no punishment is due. Even if it is a fresh case of sin, we might not give the punishment that is exactly suitable to the extent of the sin. Our analysis and judgment especially go wrong in our personal case, i.e. when we have been harmed.
When others have been harmed, we generally do not get involved because we feel that it is an unnecessary waste of our time. In fact, we should avoid getting involved in our personal cases. We should leave the judgment and punishment to God since there is high probability of error due to our biased analysis. But we should get involved in others’ cases, where there is a high probability that our analysis might be correct since we do not have any selfish interest in it. We should not leave others’ cases to God. By siding with justice in others’ cases, we are trying to serve God. God always works to establish justice and destroy injustice. Sometimes, you have sufficient strength to protect justice and punish sin, but you do not have sufficient strength in analyzing the case and differentiating between justice and injustice. In that case, you must take the help of a Satguru or guru in the analysis. If you are capable of analysis, but not capable of protecting justice and punishing injustice, you should take the help of a strong person who is capable of doing so. If you are capable of doing both, you can do both, but it is better to take the help of a second person, in order to avoid any possible error.
Arjuna wanted to fight against the Kauravas because they had taken his rightful share of the kingdom and were refusing to return it. It was a personal case of Arjuna, where he had been harmed by the sinful Kauravas. If the Kauravas had simply stood against him in battle, there would have been no confusion in fighting against them. But good people like Bhīṣma and Droṇa also stood against Arjuna, in support of the Kauravas. Both Bhīṣma and Droṇa were his preachers since childhood. So, Arjuna must have felt that they were more capable of analyzing which side was justice and which side was injustice. This created confusion in Arjuna’s mind and he proposed to leave the war. But Arjuna took the help of the Satguru, God Krishna, in analyzing this case, which was his personal case.
God Krishna analyzed the case wonderfully and answered all the questions of Arjuna. Bhīṣma and Droṇa might have been great in all other aspects, but, in this context, both were wrong in supporting the unjust Kauravas. Hence, the most important task is carrying out an unbiased analysis to find the truth. Once this is done, the actual corrective action takes very very little time. Even if some corrective actions take a longer time, it is not a major loss. It will take some time, but in the end, justice will be protected and injustice will be condemned. An ordinary human being should only follow the right means in order to achieve good ends. Only a Human Incarnation of God is capable of achieving good ends even through wrong means. Human beings should not try to behave like the Human Incarnation in following the wrong means to punish their enemies.
Let us take the two cases of Sugrīva and God Rāma. Sugrīva was unjustly expelled from his kingdom by his elder brother Vāli, who misunderstood his brother Sugrīva. Sugrīva was not strong enough to oppose Vāli and so, he left the kingdom. Since it was the personal case of Sugrīva, his analysis might have gone wrong under the influence of his own selfishness. But when Sugrīva explained his case to God Rāma, Rāma decided that justice was on the side of Sugrīva and that Vāli had been unjust. God Rāma was the Human Incarnation of God and hence, was the perfect Satguru. When one is incapable of punishing the sinner in one’s personal case, one should first analyze the case with the help of the Satguru and find out which side justice lies. Then, the incapable victim should wait for the action of God to punish the sinner. This is one context in which I have said that one should leave the punishment of the sinner to God. This approach strictly belongs to this context alone.
Now, take the case of Rāma, who was capable of carrying out an unbiased analysis of justice and injustice in His own case, as well as in others’ cases. Getting justice for Sugrīva was another’s case for Rāma, while punishing Rāvaṇa and freeing His captured wife from him was His personal case. In the former case, Rāma decided that Vāli was a sinner and punished him. Rāma was God and was not only capable of analysis, but also of punishing sin. Vāli blamed Rāma that Rāma had shot the fatal arrow at Vāli since Sugrīva had promised to help Rāma in getting Sītā back. So, Vāli claimed that Rāma’s judgment was biased and that He had a selfish interest in siding with Sugrīva and punishing Vāli. It was a totally false claim since God Rāma alone was fully capable and did not actually require anyone’s help in solving His own case. He immediately got involved in the case of bringing justice to Sugrīva and killed Vāli because He was omniscient and knew which side justice lay. He was totally impartial in His analysis. He was also omnipotent to punish anybody in creation. If one is like Rāma, capable of impartial analysis to determine the side of justice and also capable of punishing the sinner, one can act immediately, whether it is a personal case or the case of another person. This approach of immediately punishing the sinners in one’s personal case or in another’s case, is related only to this specific context. The approach and context are like the front and back sides of a coin. The coin is the action taken for the sake of the establishment of justice and the destruction of injustice. You should never apply one approach to the other context.
Keywords: | Shri Dattaswami | Raama Rama Vaali Sugriva Sugriiva Bhishma Drona
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