Gita 17.22 We need discrimination to ensure that doing good actually does good

Transcript

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thank you Bhagavad Gita 17.22 Krishna is now talking about knowledge in the mode of ignorance not charity it’s interesting, charity is considered normally to be such a benevolent activity and I think the people who give charity are good people and good people we normally would associate with the mode of goodness but here Bhagavad Gita is warning us that charity can even be in the mode of ignorance and again the Desha Kaalapatra is important one graphic example of charity in the mode of ignorance would be say a person is driving a car drunk and that person passes by another friend and they both stop at a red signal and this person passes on a drunk bottle of alcohol to sip or to drink to a friend who is driving another car and they are caught in a traffic jam and they are both irritated and exasperated now they both want to de-stress themselves from the traffic jam and what do they do? they just one of them gives the other a drink now he may think I am doing the other person a favour that I am giving a free drink to a person drinking itself is unhealthy but drinking while driving is not just unhealthy from the physical point of view it is dangerous for oneself immediately as well as for many others drunk driving can have terrible consequences so despite the situation why do people do like this? because they are maddened by desire they are maddened by the desire for some relief from the boredom or the inanity or the distress of life as well as the hope that they can get some quick pleasure generally in the mode of passion also one is infatuated with pleasure but in the mode of ignorance it is not even the pursuit of pleasure it is more the pursuit of escape that drives people come on let me do this, I want to enjoy this and that attitude can have disastrous consequences so therefore what is important is that we recognize the action alone is not important the situation also is important of course we could say that giving something free to someone is good but no sometimes people who want to sell drugs and get somebody hooked to drugs they may initially give some drug samples free to some kids now is that charity? that is simply a sinister business strategy sinister strategy for trapping and exploiting innocent people so the person takes drugs is given drugs free once, twice, thrice after they are given the drugs what do they do after that? they just go mad they lose their sense of rightness and wrongness and they do anything and everything to get those drugs so that is not a favor at all here of course the charity is done with a sinister motive sometimes the motive may not be sinister it may just be egregiously self-centered wherein they may think that this is what I want to achieve and this is what I am going to achieve no matter what, who does that means they just go crazy trying to get their desires so for the sake of fame one may give charity that would usually be in the mode of passion where one wants to look good in the eyes of the world but sometimes somebody gives charity in a way that doesn’t just make oneself look good that makes the other person look bad not offering any proper respect make people growl and beg to get some charity and then on top of that make them feel like a filthy worm while offering them some tiny favor charity also has to be given to the right person if we give money to a drug addict in many welfare countries where the government pays people who are unemployed if they are addicted they use the money from the government not to get food for their body they use it to get drugs for their addiction so the mind can blind our priorities in such a way that feeding our addiction becomes more important than feeding our body and when people are like this then we may give charity with good intentions but good intentions are not always good enough the road to hell is paved with good intentions that means that we may very well decide to do something with a particular intention but then find that the result is counterproductive and something opposite happens because we are captivated by illusion we are trapped by the mind’s deceptions and by we women we don’t see the other person’s situation if somebody is having diabetes and they are desperately craving for sugar or foods containing sugar to give them that is giving charity to the unfit so their fitness is not seen in a moralistic or legalistic sense it is seen in terms of whether doing good does good so we need discrimination to check whether doing good actually does good giving money to a person who is an alcoholic and a person who does domestic violence at home that person may simply drink alcohol and become more crazy and commit further violence at home so that is terrible so in this way we need to actually take responsibility for our actions even for our good actions so if we look at actions there is the content of the action, there is the intent of the action and there is the consequence of the action so in the mode of ignorance the intent also is not good but even if the intent is good and even if the action is good if the consequence is not good and if we could have had the knowledge to foresee that consequence then we should foresee it and avoid doing that action so this consideration of time, place, circumstance helps us to moderate the actions that we do moderate, not in the sense that we don’t do them in extreme matters but we do them in an intelligent way so that our efforts to do good actually lead to some good Thank you