When good people do bad things 1-Analyzing their motives London 14.7.24

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Transcript

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Thank you for coming today and I will give you a broad outline first of what we are going to do in the three sessions and then we will dive into the first session. So the topic we are going to discuss is broadly about human behavior, specifically about two aspects of human behavior, morality and motivation. Now why do people do what they do? What is the thinking that people go through when they do something right or something wrong? And of course, when you say human, there is not just people out there, it’s we ourselves.
So why do sometimes good people do bad things, why might we ourselves do some things which we regret? So the three sessions which we are going to have are going to involve, the first is we understand the individual motivation. Now primarily when we are going to talk about this, we are going to focus on say somebody does something that hurts us, they disappoint us, they betray us, so somebody hurts us. We will also talk within that, like we ourselves might do something which hurt others, but our focus is not going to be on the self-destructive tendency within us.
So when people do bad things, why do they do those things, that’s the first thing which we will look at. Then the second part we will be talking about God’s role in human actions, that if we are trying to become spiritual, if we are trying to become devotional, then when somebody does something hurtful, should we see that God wanted this to happen and that I should just accept it? How do we see God’s role in those situations? And the third is, we will discuss about our response, when we are hurt, basically how should we respond? So to put this visually or diagrammatically, we could say, when somebody hurts us, so they do something which hurt us, that could be something small, something big, something catastrophic, whatever it is. So at that time the first is, what is our vision of that person? Then the second is, what is our vision of God? Our conception of what is God doing in that situation? And the third will be our response.
So this is what we will try to understand over the three sessions. So let’s begin. And throughout the session at any time if you have any questions, feel free to raise your hands and ask.
We will at the end of each session also have some time to specifically discuss questions. During the session we will focus on, if there is any point which is not clear immediately, which has just been spoken in the context, then we can ask that, but if there are some broader questions about the topic under discussion, then we can discuss it at the end of the session. So how many of you have been hurt by someone? If you have never been hurt by anyone, every two possibilities are there.
My possibility is that we have become so transcendental that we don’t feel any hurt. Or we have become so ignorant that some people they become dead into pain and they don’t feel any pain. That’s what I just said.
Only two kinds of people in this world are free from hurt. Those who are completely transcendent and those who are completely ignorant. Most of us live in between and we are hurt by others.
Now the topic that’s good or bad, that’s our topic today. So there are always going to be broadly two kinds of human beings. The Bhagavad Gita talks about this in the 16th chapter.
There are two kinds of human nature. Some people are wise and some are otherwise. So there are people who are of the divine nature, the Godly, good people.
And there are people who are of the demoniac nature. Now we are not really talking here about people who are outright terrible. And we will talk a little bit about them later.
But what we are talking about is the majority of humanity. They are normally good but they do some bad things. Now are there bad people who do bad things? Yes, there are.
And maybe in the last session we will talk a little bit about how to deal with them. But we are talking here about in our normal relationships. We may have a family member, a friend, a partner.
Maybe when we are in practice of spirituality, it could be a fellow spiritualist. Somebody who we want to be close to or we were close to. And that person does something which hurts us.
And not only hurts us. You can say hurt us is something subjective. But sometimes people just do objectively terrible things.
Somebody becomes physically violent. Somebody may do financial malpractice. Somebody may be sexually immoral.
People do bad things also. So one is just hurtful in terms of what we individually subjectively feel hurt. But the other is that there are objectively wrong things which people do at times.
So at such times how do we respond? How do we see that person? At what point? So we are talking about now when we are hurt. There is a subjective component to it. Where we feel hurt.
But there is also an objective component to it. There are subjective emotions that we feel hurt. And there are objective actions that they have done are hurtful.
Whenever there is some hurt. So if we can’t look into people’s minds. When people hurt us.
Somebody who is close to us. Somebody whom we trusted. Somebody whom we respected.
Somebody whom we cared for. That person hurts us by doing something bad. So what do we feel at that time? What are our emotions? What are our thoughts? What are the kind of things that go on inside us? What do you think? So when we are hurt.
What are the emotions or thoughts? Anger. Shock. Sad.
You feel sad. You feel distress. You feel sad.
If we care for that person. We feel what is going to happen to this person. Yes.
Anything else? Frustration. Frustration. Yes.
Especially say if that person had said they would not do something like that. Or they had promised. We had thought they were changing.
And they didn’t change. Then that’s when frustration comes up. Yes.
Sorry? Blame. Blame. Blame.
Okay. We feel sorry for that person. The person who hurt us.
We love that person. We feel sorry for that person. We feel sorrow for that person.
Yes. Detachment. I don’t want to know what’s possible.
I think detachment is a charitable way of describing it. So we could almost say it’s aversion. So detachment is basically having no emotion at all.
Aversion is more of having negative emotion. Revenge. Revenge.
Yes. So we may feel vengeful. Yes, sometimes we can have, we can have, there can be a traumatic effect on us, the trauma can have physical symptoms, it can have psychological symptoms.
Yes, bitterness, we could say something similar emotion is resentment. Insecurity, so we may start thinking that if this person whom I was so close to whom I trusted, this person acted like that, then basically whom can I trust? See among, just to elaborate on some of these points, any other key emotions come up, cover the bigger gamut over here? Gratitude. Gratitude.
Because we may see it as that it could have been a lot more worse, or we may see that something Krishna is instructing us in this instance. Okay, so, we could say that, that is a response we would like to have. I don’t think that is a response we get immediately.
Yeah, we could say that, let’s put it in a different category. We could say that is more of a desirable response, we will come to that. See sometimes even gratitude, like I do a seminar on gratitude.
I say okay, list the things you are grateful for. One thing I tell over there, you have to list the things you actually feel grateful for. Not the list of things that you think you should feel grateful for.
Because trying to legislate our emotions doesn’t really work very well. Sometimes we make a list of things that we feel we should feel grateful for, and we don’t feel grateful for them, and then we feel grateful that we don’t feel grateful. So, it can be very complicated.
So, there is a natural human response that is there. And let’s try to get the broad frame of that right now. And we could say, oh, that actually may not be a healthy response.
It is there. Yeah, any other things? Yeah, somebody in here. You can withdraw within yourself, or away from the passion.
Yes, you can withdraw. It could be isolation. I just want to be alone.
I mean, I need to process what happened. Something like that, yes. Disappointment.
Disappointment, yes. It is when that person lets us down again and again. Or, oh, this is not what I thought.
I didn’t expect this from you. I would say, why this person is acting like this? I think I would say… Yes, it could be bewilderment, confusion, perplexity. On the positive side, it could be curiosity also.
But it could be… Basically, we get questions. What made this person do like that? So, it could be curiosity. Curiosity is a positive emotion.
It’s someone whom we are not very emotionally invested in. With that, curiosity is a little bit of a dispassionate emotion. But if you are very close to the person, it’s not so much curiosity.
It is confusion. It’s perplexity. It’s… It can even be agony.
How could this person do like this? So, on one side, we want to understand. But on the other side, we just feel this is terrible. Yes.
Thank you. Upset with our own self that we can’t support ourselves. Yes.
So, we may… There is insecurity and there is… We could say self-recrimination, self-blaming. Why was I so foolish to trust this person? Maybe I should have seen some warning signs. And I didn’t see at all.
Was I… Was there nothing to see or was it that I was not willing to see? We get that kind of feelings also. Thank you. Yes, please.
Regret. Regret. Regret for? Regret for our decisions.
For? For our decisions. For our decisions. Our decisions.
Regret for our decisions. Decisions. Regret.
Decisions. Regret for our decisions. Now, what decision? Decision to have a relationship with that person? Okay.
Exactly. Sometimes… Okay. Okay.
Sorry. Regret. So, I regret that… Okay.
It’s sometimes unnecessary. The only thing I regret that I ever named you in my life. That you came in my life.
Sometimes we feel like that. Yes. So… Yes.
Now… Yes, please. Rejection. Feeling rejected.
We feel rejected. By that person. When that person leaves us.
Okay. Or does something which is contrary to our expectations. So it’s not just that person’s actions.
But what that person’s actions say about us. To ourselves. So, there’s rejection.
Yes. We feel manipulated. We feel betrayed.
We feel cheated. Yes. I didn’t hear that.
We feel exploited. Manipulated. We could say exploited.
We use my… We abuse my trust. So… So… it can lead to a whole gamut of emotions. In the Ramayana, when Sugriva gets carried away by the royal pleasures, in the Ramayana the story Sugriva has been exiled and he is running for his life and then Rama helps him regain his throne and then it’s a rainy season, it’s torrential rains.
At that time amid the torrential rains, they can’t go out to search for Sita. The agreement between the two is that Rama will help Sugriva gain back his kingdom and then Sugriva will help Rama find Sita. After four months get over and still there seems to be no action from Sugriva’s side.
At that time Lakshman goes into the kingdom and among the many things that Lakshman speaks, expressing his outrage at Sugriva for not doing anything, for not keeping his word. He says that ingratitude is the worst of sins. Now we may say there are many sinful things.
Why will you consider ingratitude to be the worst of sins? There are so many other things people do, people can rob, people can kill, so many worse things are there. But it is when such statements come in scripture they are in a particular context. So here ingratitude is used in the sense of betrayal, that somebody you make a promise to someone and you don’t keep that promise.
And why is it considered the worst of sins? This is not necessarily from a karmic perspective but it is from a psychological perspective. The scars can run very deep. There can be three levels of psychological scars that can come when we are hurt.
The first is it is that how could I have trusted this person? Maybe I should have seen something coming. That’s bad enough. I made a bad judgment.
That’s bad enough. But what is worse is how can I trust anyone? Now if this person can do like this then what makes this person different from anyone else? How can I trust anyone at all? I was in California. I was going for a program.
There was a car in front of me, a car and a bumper sticker. The more I get to know people, the more I trust my dog. The more I love my dog.
Maybe I can’t trust people at all. But even more damaging than how can I trust anyone is how can I trust myself? That means how can I trust that I have the capacity to judge who is trustworthy? So the first level is this person is not trustworthy. Second is that no one is trustworthy.
Third is that I am not trustworthy about being able to judge who is trustworthy. And the third is the most damaging. So when people are hurt, it’s natural that they will be careful about whom they trust.
So when Sugriv hears this, Sugriv fervently apologizes and then he does not repeat his action. He actually lives true to his promise thereafter. So when somebody does something bad, something that hurts us, now the question is that for us, how much does a person’s actions reflect their character or does it reflect a slip from their character? Means this is who you really are or this is just a one off thing that happened.
This is not who you actually are. That’s the bigger question that we have. So broadly speaking, whenever there is any wrongdoing, wrongdoing is an action from that person who has hurt us.
So these can be classified or in terms of their causes into three levels. I’ll first talk about the two extremes and then we’ll come to something in between. There is circumstantial wrongdoing.
That means that person found themselves in a circumstance where they got tempted, they felt assured and now they certainly did something wrong. So we cannot say that they did not do anything, but primarily it is circumstantial. So let’s put it this way that if there’s a person and we’re talking about there’s a soul, there’s a subtle body that we can call it a short mind and there is a body and then there is the outer world.
Now when somebody does something wrong, so a wrongdoing could be triggered by some external, the wrongdoing. The wrongdoing is triggered by something external. There could be an external trigger.
We’ll discuss what this could be. The other could be that that is what they wanted to do. So this is from circumstantial, the opposite of it is intentional.
They planned to do it. You could call this calculation. It’s very difficult to know whether somebody had an intention or not, but what we can see is how much calculation is involved in it.
I’ll give examples to illustrate this too and then we’ll go deeper into it. So the example of this as I mentioned is what Sugriv did. Now Sugriv failed to live up to his, the promise that he had made, but did that make him a bad person? Well, not really.
What happened was he was a prince born in royalty and he had lived a life of responsibility but also a life of comfort and luxury and one day there was a misunderstanding with his brother and his brother became his enemy, became his potential assassin and he had to flee for his life and it was from royalty he became a, not just went into poverty but he became a fugitive trying to survive, trying to just constantly look over his shoulder to see where the next assassination attempt is coming from. Now from there when he came back to the kingdom and then he suddenly had all the comfort and luxury and enjoyment that he had been deprived of for years and on top of that there was nothing to do because of the rainy season being so unusually torrential at that severe at that time. He just couldn’t do anything.
So to a large extent it’s understandable that he succumbed. Now does that mean that he is not responsible? Well, of course, some amount of responsibility is there of his but it is an understandable situation and then after that once he came out of the situation he didn’t do it again and again. Later on, just before the war, Ravan tried to create a division in Ram’s forces and he sent a message to Sugriva saying that we have always had a good relationship.
We demons and you Vanaras monkeys. He said I had a very good agreement with the previous king. Let’s continue that.
I have never done anything harm to you and you don’t have any harm to me. You just go back and Sugriva said the day you abducted Sita, you have harmed me. So I am going to stand by my alliance with Ram.
Although Ravan offered him a lot of wealth and allurements, Sugriva didn’t agree. So it was a one-off thing and sometimes even the best of people can get caught in difficult, provocative, terrible situations and they may end up doing something which is bad. That’s circumstantial.
Now we contrast this with some wrongdoing. If we consider Ravan’s abducting of Sita, now was that circumstantial? No, not at all. It was not that Ravan was just passing by and he saw Sita, she looked beautiful and she seemed to have no protector and he found himself.
That’s a vicious thing to do. But still, I am not justifying that, but it was not circumstantial in the sense that it was not just he found himself in that circumstance, but rather he created that circumstance. He made a whole conspiracy by which Maricha would first deliver Ram away and then after they had gone far enough, Maricha would speak in the voice of Ram so that Lakshman would be pulled away and then Sita would be left all alone.
So we all sometimes get caught, may get caught in some situations that trigger some lower desires within us. It’s a matter of concern that those lower desires come up and we do something wrong. But it’s one thing to be caught in circumstances that trigger our desires and it is quite another to create the circumstances by which we can fulfill our lower desires.
So that is, this is calculational, this is intentional and these two are very different thought processes, mindsets, attitudes that are there when a person is doing something wrong. Now in terms of, so both of these are wrongdoings, but this, is the red color visible to everyone? Yes. So this is largely circumstantial wrongdoing.
Whereas something which comes from the person itself, from within them, that’s intentional or calculational. Now the difference between these two is important to understand in terms of what will be the response or what should be the response. In general, when there is wrongdoing, there needs to be two things.
There needs to be some regret internally and there needs to be some reform externally. You regret, oh I’m sorry, I should not have done this. So that inner feeling of regret has to be there.
And then words are in one sense cheap. Words have to be followed up with some actions. So if we consider in terms of these wrongdoings, then we will have different categories of wrongdoings and I will talk a little bit of our responses, what it should be.
But when it comes to circumstantial wrongdoing, do you think there is regret? Yes. Is there reform? Yes. Now if we consider in contrast to this, there is intentional or calculational wrongdoing.
So say for example, Duryodhana tried to poison Bhima. He tried to burn the Pandavas alive. That’s clearly not circumstantial.
It’s not that, oh, he saw a house there and the house got set on fire. No, he built a house, built an entire palace which is made of inflammable material. Then he had arranged to have them sent over there, creating an excuse for that.
So it was clearly calculated. Now after he tried to kill them and they escaped, did he regret? Yes, he regretted. He regretted that he was not successful.
So the regret was not I did something wrong. The regret was why did it work? So, but in terms of our context, there is no regret. And was there any reform for him? No.
If you consider Duryodhana’s actions, they kept becoming more and more brazen. First, he tried to poison Bhima. That itself is bad enough.
He tried to kill someone and at this time he was just a teenager. Some people say that, oh, it was Shapuni’s bad influence that ruined Duryodhana. That made Duryodhana a bad person.
Well, not so simple. Because he came up with this whole scheme to poison Bhima even before Shapuni came into picture. But then after that, he tried to burn all the Pandavas.
You can’t kill one of them, kill all of them. And not just all of them, even their mother, who had never in any way harmed him, who was not a she was not even a very politically inclined woman. She was not politically involved.
Gandhari, his own mother was a little more politically involved than she was. So for him to kill her, that was terrible. Now, after that, what did he do? He tried to gamble and steal the Pandavas.
So now this, in one sense, might seem like a smaller thing. You have to try to kill someone, then you just have to steal their kingdom. But actually, if you consider Duryodhana’s wrongdoing.
See, what are we trying to do over here? We are trying to understand that when a person does something wrong, is it internally, was it circumstantial, was it intentional? We can’t know whether they have regret or not. Sometimes somebody can speak words which seem to be regretful. But how earnest are those words? We can’t see that.
But we can definitely see actions. And with Duryodhana, there was absolutely no reform. What actually was there was that he became more deformed.
He became more degraded. So, you know, kill, first was kill one person, whom he thought was a threat, that is Bhima. The next thing was kill all five of them, plus their mother.
The third thing was he tried to steal their property, defraud them of their freedom. But this might be a smaller crime. But what was it was like an open air daylight robbery.
He did it in public. And after that, he tried to disrobe Draupadi. Now, this was horrendous.
The action is horrendous. There are always predatory males who will try to exploit vulnerable females. But generally, when somebody does something like this, they’ll find some dark corners, some dark alley where there is no evidence, no eyewitness and they will do something like that.
Now, if somebody does a crime like that in public, that means they have no fear of the law. Now, if somebody goes to a police station and does something like this, and that means not only they have no fear of the law, the law has fear of them. So, such a mentality is utterly dastardly.
So, Duryodhana’s wrongdoings became more and more brazen. So, that indicates that it was clearly intentional, it was clearly calculational. So, basically, how do we know whether a person, the wrong that they did is circumstantial or intentional? It is whether they feel regret, whether they feel wrong.
If it’s calculational, they will not, they may speak some words of regret, but their actions will not only continue, they will go insane. And these two are categorically different mindsets, when somebody is doing something wrong. And the responses also need to be different.
So, with respect to somebody who is, who has done something wrong intentionally, intentionally, there has to be some discipline, some punishment has to be there. Because such people, they will not learn a lesson with good intelligence. We’ll talk about other responses later.
Right now, we are trying to look at from that person’s perspective. So, for such people, punishment is required. They are not likely to learn in any other way.
Now, do you notice something about this table? Sorry, there is an empty bill in between. There is something peculiar, where there are cases where there is regret, but there is no reform. A person not just puts on a facade, oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry to get away with it.
They actually feel, I shouldn’t have done this. But still, they keep doing it. Now, we may, if somebody does keep doing something wrong after saying they will not do it, we may not believe them, say you never meant it, you just wanted an excuse to continue doing it.
But we will notice that we ourselves are sometimes prone to such behavior, where maybe we speak some harsh words, we yell at someone, we do something which we genuinely regret. But next time when the provocation comes up, we again do the same thing. So, this is, this cannot be just called circumstantial, this is conditional wrong.
Now, when I use the word conditional, the word conditional can have two distinct meanings. Conditional can be an adjective for conditions and it can be an adjective for conditionings. Conditions and conditionings.
So, which meaning do you think is relevant over here? Conditionings. Conditions would be the same more or less as circumstantial. So, sometimes people have some conditionings and because of those conditionings, they just keep doing that thing, although they do not want to.
So, to go back to that earlier visual, yeah. How about a person doing something wrong without realizing, so that he does not mean to hurt someone, but still he is hurting someone, but he is not realizing that. Yeah, that happens.
One time I was trying to do a mediation between two people. I did a seminar on percussiveness and I talked about how we can write our emotions about how we would forgive someone and I put in a letter and then recite. So, one participant came and told me, I wrote this and I went and I felt a big release after writing this.
Then I went and told the other person, I forgive you. That other person responded by saying, I forgive you for the audacity to think that I need your forgiveness. So, that other person was completely oblivious that they had done something which required forgiveness and hurt somebody else.
So, yeah, some people are just completely clueless about those things. Now, it could be that they are insensitive. It could be that two distinct things over here.
When somebody hurts, but does not know that they have hurt. So, it could be two extremes. One is that person is just insensitive.
The other extreme is that they are just desensitized. So, insensitive means they don’t care for other people’s feelings. Desensitized means they have just lost the capacity or they just don’t have the capacity to care.
Some people are socially clueless. They speak things and they just don’t realize, okay, I put my foot in my mouth, but somebody has to tell them and even then, why are you so worked up about it? So, in those situations, that person needs to be made more aware of it. So, I wouldn’t call that as a person intentionally doing it, but you could say it comes in some kind of conditioning in the sense that they don’t intend to hurt, but they are hurting others.
So, in that situation, if eventually it is communicated to them and they think, oh, I hurt you. I didn’t mean to do that. Oh, okay.
Then they may learn and they may reform, but sometimes it’s just that for them to gain that awareness itself may take some time. Okay, these kind of actions are, this kind of word, this kind of actions hurt others. So, we could put both of these in the conditional wrongdoing only.
It’s coming from conditionings. When we say conditioning, the idea is that it comes, the person is not deliberately thinking about it and doing it. It is just something springing from their subtle body.
That conditioning is there within them and that conditioning prompt them to do something with it. That is conditional wrongdoing. Yes, that is true.
I’m just mentioning over here that this third possibility is there. Just because somebody keeps doing the same thing again and again, that does not necessarily make them a vicious person. That does not make them a terrible person.
So, this will become different. That sometimes we may not have the same kind of conditionings that they have. So, when I use the word conditionings, let’s try to understand that.
See, basically, if we consider this is the body, this is the mind, and below that is the whole person, the soul. Now, on the subtle body, there are, in the mind basically, there are some impressions. Now, these impressions are formed by past actions.
And what happens is these impressions, they lead to propositions. So, impression is samskara, proposition is pravritti. Certain tendencies come up within us.
Now, some impressions may be there and, say, some propositions come up from there. Say, suppose somebody does something which hurts us and then, in samskara, we want to speak very harshly, we want to use some severe words, we want to speak some profanities. That urge comes up within us.
Now, maybe because of culture, because of context, we may not speak those words, but those come up. Somebody may have lived in a very pure environment, they may not even know those pure words. So, then that propensity, that urge itself will not come within them.
So, now, the conditionings lead to propositions, the impressions. In some cases, what happens is the impressions may not just be slight, they may be much, much more. When we say deep-rooted means, they are much stronger.
So, the distance between the proposition and the action that follows, the time duration or the distance may be very less. So, thought comes up and immediately they do it. That is all there is to it.
So, if later on they reflect a little bit, hey, maybe I should not have done that, but that’s just the way they act. If somebody has grown up in a familiar environment, where the only way to resolve a conflict was to raise your voice and raise your fists. And later on, they maybe come into a more cultured, more civilized environment.
But even without realizing it, the way they have learned to behave in the past, that is the way they start behaving originally. So, generally, when it’s conditional, the person does try to change. So, there is a clear difference, let’s say, with respect to conditioning.
There is an addict. There is a person who is an addict. They have some compulsive behavioral issues.
But an addict is not the same as a villain. The addict is not the same as a criminal. Now, can addicts become villains or criminals? Of course, they can.
But addicts are, they are more tormented than they are evil. So, it’s that the conditioning from within is pushing them. And this is what I have to, I don’t want to hurt anyone, but this is what I have to do.
So, if somebody gets hurt, that is not their intention. That’s just like a collateral damage. See, when there is, when there are people who are evil, they actually get pleasure in hurting others.
They start thinking, okay, I’m so clever that I did this to a person, that person was just cool, they didn’t realize it. So, those who are really dark people, calculational wrongdoers, they actually feel proud of their wrongdoings. So, generally, which wrongdoing falls in which category, to see that we have to look at the bigger context.
We can’t just determine by one action alone. See, the overall character of the person, the overall behavior in time. See, generally, it’s a, there is action and now from most often from the action we arrive at an assessment or a judgment.
Okay, that this person is like this. But this is quite likely to be a mistaken assessment. Because one action doesn’t really tell us much about the person.
Say, we talk, we talk with someone and they just yell at us. Yeah, this is such a rude person. But maybe they had a very bad day.
Maybe they got some bad news. Maybe they had some family crisis going on. You just caught them on a bad day.
It’s possible. So, generally speaking, to make an assessment, we have to look at the broader context. So, when we look at the context and then make an assessment.
Now, how do we get context? Broadly, it’s by three things. It’s over time, how does the person behave? Are they doing the same thing again and again? It is also with people. Is this person like this with me alone? Or is this person like that with everyone? If somebody is an abuser, exploiter, cheater, they will, if it’s a pattern, they will keep doing it again and again and again.
It won’t be one person alone. Maybe they will wait till they find a gullible prey or a vulnerable prey, but they will keep doing it. So, do they do the same thing again and again? Do they do it with many people? And do they do it in more and more situations? So, if that is happening, like Duryodhana, his wrongdoings are becoming more and more from more discreet, from more overt, they started becoming more and more overt.
So, if that person’s actions are something which they are doing again and again. So, one thing is now time, people, situation are different, the same action and again and again with me, the same action with different people and the same action at different times. Sometimes you may understand that, okay, like some people are just not morning people.
If you ask them something in the morning, they are just a little irritable. So, now, if we come to know that, okay, if we are working in a company, we understand the boss has certain moods. So, we don’t ask them and this time we don’t ask them, this time we ask them something.
So, okay, in that situation, we know this person is like this. But if at all situations they are like that, or many situations they are like that, then it becomes a problem. So, context is looking beyond the situation in different ways.
Yes, please. If they are provoked. See, in one sense, the conditioning has to be there in all the situations.
Without some conditioning be there, even the external circumstance won’t provoke. Say, if a person has never heard, say, a particular swear word, then no matter how angry they get, how much somebody angers them, they won’t speak that swear word. So, some level of conditioning has to be there in all three.
Even when somebody is, we say, arounding a circumstance, there is some conditioning involved. But what we are trying to differentiate is, which is the, for dealing with it, which is the primary thing. So, somebody who has never been an alcoholic, they go to a party where everybody is drinking.
Now, when they have a good upbringing, they have good values, they say, okay, I am not going to drink over. So, even if somebody proposes to them, let’s have a drink, they’ll come up with some reason, be polite, but be firm and not drink at all. So, if the conditioning is not there within them, then even if the circumstances come, they won’t get provoked.
Now, somebody might be a recovering alcoholic. And say, suppose they are a recovering alcoholic, and they are very earnest about recovering. But say, their house is right next to a bar.
Or they have a bar in their house. So, it’s not for me, it’s for my guests when they come, I want to be a good host. Well, there is a guest who will come.
And that guest will be your own alcoholics. So, if the bar is very close, then there will be no bar for them to go to the bar. So, in that case, the circumstances needs to be changed.
So, if they are really serious about recovering, then they have to relocate. They have to remove all the alcohol from their home and relocate to a place where the bar is not that close. That is not a final solution.
But that is an essential first step. So, if it’s circumstance that is the primary trigger, then changing the circumstances will lead to that particular provocation, that particular agitation going on. So, sometimes that’s why we say, out of sight, what happens is? Out of mind.
We just, we say we are passing by some place and we see some delicacy. Oh, I want to eat that. But, okay, I don’t have time right now.
We just pass on and forget about it. So, just because there was a positive there, the desire came. So, some circumstantial means, although, now if you didn’t even know what the delicacy was, you wouldn’t even get the desire.
So, some impression is there inside us. But the primary trigger is outside. And after that circumstance changes, we no longer have that desire.
We just, we are able to, it just goes off. So, that’s circumstantial, generally speaking. Now, it is conditional.
In some cases, when it is out of sight, it does not go out of mind. It’s like the person goes, you can say here what happens is? The person goes out of their mind. Have you lost your mind? Are you out of your mind? We say that this person goes crazy.
Sometimes, what happens? When the external stimulus is gone away, then the internal recollection, internal proposition becomes stronger and stronger. Like there are, traditional wisdom goes both ways. One side, it is out of sight, it is out of mind.
The other is separation makes the heart grow fonder. So, when we don’t have something, our craving for that can increase more and more. So, if out of sight leads to out of mind, then we could say if this is happening, then this is circumstantial.
But if out of sight makes the person go out of their mind, the person just becomes crazy because the craving makes them crazy, then it is at least conditional. Now, it could become very intentional when they manipulate and they lie and they create the circumstances by which they can fulfill their desires. Did that answer your question? Thank you.
So, now, in general, I will just make a couple of points and then we will have questions. So, while we do any kind of classification, it is helpful to have some broad patterns to understand. But in general, reality is too messy to fit any convenient system of classification.
And there is a problem with any kind of taxonomy. Any kind of taxonomy that we do, taxonomy is never identical to the reality. It is like we have maps.
The map is never the same as the territory. So, and before I came here, I was in India. Before that, I had gone to visit Bangladesh.
So, now, India-Bangladesh previously had one of the most complex boundaries. On the map, okay, India is here, Bangladesh is here. Maybe here you have, okay, UK is here.
Now, of course, UK is an island. So, you do not have boundary problem that much exactly over here. But whichever is a, either North America, there is Canada.
On the land, the boundary looks very, on the map, the boundary looks very clear. But if you actually go there, is this particular place in America or in Canada? Is this particular place in India or in Bangladesh? But it is fuzzy. So, there was, the India-Bangladesh boundary previously was such that inside Bangladesh, there were some portions which were in India.
And inside those portions which were in India, there were certain portions which were supposed to be in Bangladesh. And similarly, with India also, with the Indian territory also. So, eventually, they decided to strap land and resolve the issue to some extent.
So, the point is that in real life, things are not that real in terms of category. But still, although a map does not, is not equivalent to the territory, the territory is more complex, but still a map is helpful. So, now, so, why am I talking about this? That this, while these three categories of wrongdoing are helpful to understand, a person can degenerate also.
Now, if you consider the story in the Srimad Bhagavatam of Ajamil. Ajamil was a virtuous Brahmana, Brahmana’s son, who was a young man, who was married, had a family. And then, he went on a very dark path.
So, what do you think Ajamil’s fall? How many of you know the story of Ajamil? Some of you know the story. So, basically, Ajamil had, can we do something about this? Okay. So, this character Ajamil had once gone to the forest to get some firewood for his father’s fire sacrifice.
And while he was there, he saw a society, a prostitute, embracing a man. And seeing that, he became agitated. And he came back with the children, but then those images kept rippling in his mind.
Then, he went, and he was with her. And then he came back, and still, the craving was there, fire was triggered within him. And then he decided that, you know, I just don’t want to be with her once.
I want to be with her, and he was with her again and again. And he felt, no, I don’t want to be with her, I want her to be with me. So, then, he found some excuse, and he rejected his chaste wife.
She was outraged. Her parents were outraged. He rejected his old, infirm parents also.
Now, he was a priest, he was a Brahmin. And then he started having a, he brought this prostitute to his home, abandoning his own family. The society criticized him.
Society condemned him. Nobody would want such a person to be officiating at holy occasions for them. So, they condemned him.
And what did he do? He rejected the society. So, he couldn’t have his job. So, he started robbing, he started threatening, he started plundering.
He started hurting people so that he could continue his way of living with his particular, in living in this particular. So, now, if we consider, in the sixth candle, the story is a very dark story. Fortunately, of course, Ajamil is saved by the Lord, and he’s transformed by the chanting of the holy names of the Lord.
But, now, was Ajamil’s wrongdoing circumstantial, conditional, or intentional? What do you think? So, Ajamil’s wrongdoing, you could say it started as circumstantial. Ajamil’s fall. Now, he did not plan to go to some red light area or something like that.
He was just going about his job, his service. So, that’s the time some circumstances came upon him. Now, when the circumstances came, that it’s bad, it’s terrible, but still it’s understandable.
Okay, that urge came with an event and he was with that particular person. But, I said the difference between circumstantial and intentional is, in circumstantial the circumstance comes upon us. In intentional or calculational, we create the circumstance.
So, by the end of it, when he wanted her to be with him, when he abandoned his family, rejected his family, that time, we cannot say it was circumstantial. By the end, it was definitely calculational. It was, he, see, we all, it was intentional.
Now, in terms of psychology, we could put that we all have, if we consider cravings, I will use the word craving, I will use the word urges. It could be anger, it could be greed, it could be lust, any of these with time. Now, we may all have them, but sometimes these things have surges, they are like spikes.
Now, these spikes can also increase with time, but basically, so there are the urges and the urges have surges. Now, sometimes the urges may surge at a time when some external opportunity comes up or some external opportunity comes and at the time the surge is there. Say, we are in, somebody is in great need of money and they are invited to a friend’s home to stay and when they are staying at the friend’s home, they find that, okay, the friend has gone out of the home and they have kept their safe with a huge amount of money unlocked.
They say, okay, I will just grab this money. They may not be a criminal, they may not be a robber, but at that particular time, that’s what happens. So, sometimes, so when the urges have surges, at that time, even good people may end up doing bad things, but the problem is that what do we do in between? Is the person trying to avoid getting into those circumstances again or is that person creating the circumstances or arranging so that they can have those circumstances more and more frequently? So, that makes a huge difference.
So, in this between period, are we trying to eliminate those circumstances or are we trying to recreate those circumstances? So, that will determine whether the person will go upward or that person will go downward. So, generally speaking, so this is one point about this, how the intention, circumstantial can very well go down to intention. The person, okay, they are caught in a circumstance, but they think, hey, yes, this was great, I got away with this, let me do this again, let me do this again and that way they keep doing it more and more and more and eventually, they are trapped.
Eventually, they just get lost completely. They hurt others, they hurt themselves and they do not realize it or they do not acknowledge it even if they realize it. So, that is one point.
Now, the last point is, I mentioned that with respect to these three things, we will talk about more of our responses later. But here, what does that person need? If it is purely circumstantial, then it is best to forget and forgive or you can say forgive and forget, whichever way. So, no one mentions Sugriva s lapse in the Mahabharata thereafter.
That was a lapse, it was a serious lapse, but it is over. No need to bring that up again and again. Now, if it is conditional, then that person first of all needs some warmth.
They need to accept that I have this weakness inside me and whenever I am going into the circumstances or any circumstances like this, I am likely to get into trouble. So, they need to be ready to accept boundaries. Otherwise, they are going to go down on a dark path.
And not just boundaries, we will talk about one more thing which we mentioned in the second or third session, that is they need some healthier bonds. They need not only something which prevents them from going down, but they also need something which helps them rise up. So, this is what Krishna talks about as abhairagya and abhyasa.
He says if we have to control our minds, we need these two things. We need to have some boundaries by which we do not come into those situations, but we create healthier habits. We create better impressions within us and that requires building up new bonds, that requires developing healthier relationships, that requires adopting better habits which will replace the earlier ones.
So, we will talk about this in a later session. But at this particular point, the response for people who are doing wrongs will have to be different depending on where their wrongdoing is coming from. Yes.
Thank you. I understood this as if a person has some conditional bad habits and they make a mistake, that they should be given some boundaries so that they do not do the same thing again. And if they are intentionally doing something wrong, then there should be discipline.
In my mind, I am thinking it is the same thing by giving discipline and boundaries. Is there a difference? Okay. Yes, in one sense it is the same thing, but the degree is significantly different.
So, for example, if somebody has a drinking problem, then they may be told that you cannot go to alcohol bar. Sometimes people are trying to recover. They have arrangements that they or their relatives say that even this person comes to a bar and wants some drinking, wants some drinks, you should not do that person.
So, basically, there are those kinds of boundaries that are created. Or somebody may say that, okay, I will not have too much money with me, I will not have a credit card, then I cannot buy too many things. So, there are those kinds of boundaries.
But imagine somebody has not only a drinking problem, they have a problem of drinking and driving. And they have hit someone, they have injured someone, then they are put in a jail. Now, a jail is also a boundary in one sense.
But the boundary is much more severe, they are physically restrained in some way. So, when you are talking about discipline or punishment, there is a punitive aspect to it. Hmm.
This is an important concept. I was trying to mention this a little later when we are talking about the third session. But in the Mahabharata, there are, it is described that when we are responding to wrongdoing, there are three different stakeholders.
And depending on which stakeholder is the most important in that particular context, the stakeholder, one is the victim. The second is the victimizer. And the third is society.
So, what do I mean by these three things? Say, if somebody commits a crime, say, let us start with something simple. Somebody robs a shop and they rob it in daylight. And there are people who are watching.
And this person robs and just gets away with it. Now, what is going to happen by that? Other people are going to get away with it. I can also rob and get away with it.
Police do not persecute. So, that person’s robbing, it is not only affecting the particular shop owner who has been robbed, but it is also affecting society. So, broadly speaking, if you consider these three stakeholders, now at one level for the victim, there needs to be some reparation.
Now, reparation means, oh, you were hurt and I want to make up for it. Now, reparation can be something as simple as an apology. Sometimes it can actually require making some amends.
It could mean financial reparation. There is a word reparation in financial sense. But with respect to the victim, there has to be some reparation.
And if only the victim were involved, then we could just forgive also. Okay, let us forgive and forget. But the victim is not the only stakeholder.
As far as the victimizer is concerned, we could say it is a spectrum. At the very least, there has to be restriction. Restrictions so that the person does not do it.
Now, at best, there is reformation. Now, restriction can go further down and there can be retribution. Retribution means you hurt someone, so you have to be hurt.
So, with respect to the person who has done something wrong, at best, that person gives up the tendency to do the wrong and becomes a good person, a good citizen. At the very least, you could say, is that the person should not have the facility to keep doing that wrong again and again and again. Say, if somebody has robbed, somebody says the child abused, it is a terrible thing.
But then that person, if they are going to employ somebody else, the employer should have some access to the records. This person has this kind of thing. So, now, that does not mean they should be permanently condemned for that.
But it is a serious thing. So, that person, it should not be easy for them to do the same thing again. So, there has to be some restriction.
Now, if restriction is not helping, then people just don’t, they try to find a way around restriction. They just keep doing the wrong thing. Then there has to be retribution.
You have hurt another person. You have to be hurt. You have to suffer some pain because of that.
Now, with respect to society, the basic point is regulation. That regulation means the society should not, regulation so that they don’t go down the path of victimizer. They don’t become like the victimizer.
Now, for the society, you can also say that there has to be protection. Protection means that they should not be made like the victim. So, on one side, if a wrongdoer is punished, in the past, justice was a little more, you could say, public.
People were, wrongdoers were publicly punished or shamed. The idea was justice should not just be done, but it should be seen to be done. That people understand that actions have consequences, not will.
So, there is regulation that they won’t become like victimizers. Now, regulation in one sense can also mean protection, in the sense of protection. So, regulation means your behavior is regulated, but the government has some rules and regulations, like say, you know, companies cannot do Ponzi schemes or whatever.
So, that is also so that they don’t become a victim. There has to be some protection. So, there are multiple stakeholders involved.
So, when somebody says, oh, this person has done something wrong, forgive them. But okay, if I was the only person who is being hurt over here, and it’s a one-off thing, I can forgive. But if it’s a repeated pattern, then expecting forgiveness or giving forgiveness may itself be unforgivable.
Because that person will simply be unable to keep doing the wrong thing. So, I’ll summarize what we discussed. And then if you have some questions, we’ll discuss or we’ll take a break.
And then we move to the next part to discuss about what is the, how do we discuss this more from a psychological behavioral perspective till now. In the next segment, we’ll discuss from a more devotional spiritual perspective. So, where is God in all this? Why does God, that means, when bad people do bad things, why does God let them get away with it? Or why does God not protect the good people? What goes on with it? From a devotional perspective, that’s what we’ll discuss in the next session.
So, the session we discussed today was that the understanding the motive for wrongdoing or the cause of wrongdoing. So, broadly, we discussed that wrongdoings can fall in three categories. Now, wrongdoings can have many negative consequences.
There can be negatives out of it. The worst among them is that if there is betrayal, the person may think the other person is untrustworthy. Everyone is untrustworthy.
And I am untrustworthy about deciding who is trustworthy. The last one is most damaging. So, there are deep scars that can come.
So, to be human, to have relationships means we are going to be hurt by others. So, being hurt is just a part of life. But when we are hurt by others to respond properly, so we need to see beyond their actions to their motivations.
That will help us to determine how what we should do. So, how do we see beyond the actions? That’s what we discussed primarily in today’s session. We discussed that the wrongdoing can be in three categories.
It can be circumstantial, it can be intentional or calculational, it can be conditional. So, we discussed that one table which I mentioned that if there is regret and there is reform. So, circumstantial, there is regret and reform.
Intentional, there is no regret, no reform. Conditional, there is regret but no reform. So, it is basically like the wrongdoing.
When it is happening, the primary source for it, where is it coming from? Is it primarily coming from externals? Is it primarily coming from the intention of the person? Is it primarily coming from the conditioning of the person? So, that will determine which is the wrongdoing. And based on each of these wrongdoings, there have to be appropriate different responses. There needs to be punishment if there is wrongdoing.
Here it is just forgive, forget and forgive. And here there will be boundaries. There will be some regulation.
Have some boundaries. So, now for us to evaluate, we discussed with respect to this framework. Discussed three things that that we did to evaluate.
We need to look at the broader context. And the context involves looking at time, how often a person does something. We look at the situations in when they do it and the people with whom they do it.
Then based on that, we can understand which category a person falls in. And then we discussed how also something can with time go down from intentional, from circumstantial to intentional. So, this is like a map for navigating territory.
So, we have to rather than expecting things to fall in the watertight categories, we try to use this as a tool for navigating the territory. And lastly, I discussed about why when there is. So, forgive is good.
Forgiveness is important. But if only the victim is concerned, victim is the only stakeholder. But if there are other stakeholders, then we discussed how there are other factors also to be considered.
That there is actually a restriction of the wrongdoer. Sometimes there has to be retribution so that they learn a lesson. So, in our next session, we will discuss about how do we as devotees and especially if you are dealing with somebody else also is a devotee.
So, then what is the role of God in all this? How do we see God’s role and how do we make sense of the situation considering God’s role? That is what we will discuss in our next session. Any questions or comments? I just wanted to ask about the previous question which I asked like that someone who you call as like an addiction. So, not the addiction in a sense like that drinking alcohol or anything like that, but in the sense of behavior which hurts the other people.
But that person is not realizing how can. So, how can I help that person? Okay. See, basically what happened? Am I audible? No.
Hare Krishna. The mic is telling us we should end this class now. So, we will end shortly.
See, when we help others, broadly the help can range over many things. One is we protect them from the consequences of their actions. That is one definition of love, care, protection.
Say, if our child has just got a new license for a car and they steal it and they are pulled over. And either they have to spend one week in jail or they have to pay some empty money. Then we say, it’s my child.
I don’t want my child to be in jail. But the child doesn’t have the capacity to pay the money. But we pay the money for them and we protect them.
So, one aspect of caring for someone is that we cover for them. We protect them from the consequences of their actions. That is an aspect of love.
But if that person starts using that as an excuse and says, you know, my parents will always bail me out no matter what I do. Then what may happen is that they start enabling their unhealthy behavior. So, sometimes helping others we mean we no longer protect.
We refuse to protect. That means you did this and you have to bear the consequences of your actions. This is what is often called as tough love.
That sometimes whenever there is an addict, there is the co-dependent can become like an enabler of the addict. Somebody has alcohol, they have an alcoholic episode and somebody else cleans up for them, makes some excuses for them and make sure that they don’t suffer much. Well, once or twice it’s fine.
But that person starts doing that again and again and again. You have to deal with the consequences. Maybe that’s what will force them to get their act together.
Now, of course, the refuse to protect is an extreme situation, but it is sometimes required. Now in between is that we educate them. Now educate can be polite education.
It can sometimes be a little harsh reminder also. This is what you are doing. This is where you are going.
Educate them about the consequences. The way you are acting right now, this is where you are going to go. So if somebody is repeatedly doing something hurtful, then that person has to learn that this kind of action has this kind of effect on others.
And they have to at least make some effort to tone themselves down, to try to regulate themselves, to try to improve. Now sometimes that conditioning may just not be changeable. And if that’s not causing a serious problem, then we may just have to lower our expectation from that person.
And if this person is like this and this particular trait is never going to change, then we will decide that maybe other aspects of this person are so good that, let’s say that, okay, I don’t like this, but I’ll grit my teeth and bear this. So we’ll talk about tolerance in our third session when we are talking about our response part. Then we’ll discuss more about it.
Yes, please. For some people, where do you think narcissists fall into this? There’s a bit of conditioning, a bit of self-assertion. It feels like it’s the whole package.
Okay, so where do narcissists fall in it? Well, narcissism at one level can be a conditioning. Everybody has a certain level of selfishness towards them. And we could say we have to look out for ourselves.
Survival is like the first rule of existence. So that’s fair enough. But narcissists take it to an extreme degree.
So we’ll have to see what they are narcissistic about. Sometimes it might just be just conversation. They just want to take over every conversation.
Any problem, it just goes back to their problem, their experience. That’s annoying, but that’s not really very harmful. But some narcissists are like, if you don’t care for me, don’t listen to me, I will remember you for the rest of my life and I will show you my power.
So they can be cruel, they can be vicious. So it depends on what that narcissism leads them to. So rather than focusing only on narcissism, like somebody who has a short temper.
But then short temper can mean different things. That person just yells. Yelling is a bad thing.
But if that’s the only thing they do, that’s one thing. But somebody has a short temper and they start punching, throwing fists. They take a knife, they take a gun.
Then you can say they are all short tempers. But that short temper is having various degrees of implications. When you touched upon narcissism, how do you deal with a communal narcissist who is very good towards a society but do bad intentional things to some people? Yes, so when narcissism joins with activism, it’s a deadly combination actually.
So activism is, I want to do something. It can be humanitarian activist, environmental activist, animal rights activist, women’s rights activist, this right activist, that right activist. So activism in one sense is good because there are a lot of things wrong in the world and they need to be fixed.
But when somebody, let me say, how can a narcissist become activist? Because they are so self-centered. Why would they actually take up some cause beyond themselves? But this is basically, for them, it’s just a matter of virtue signaling. I am such a good person.
So the cause is not about, they may take up a cause, but they take up the cause not so much to do good in the world as to proclaim to the world how good I am because I am promoting this cause. And then that’s when they start demonizing others. Anyone who doesn’t agree with me, that person is not just wrong, that person is wrong-headed, that person is evil.
So this is, when it’s virtue signaling, then it’s very easy to, if I am virtuous, then I demonize anyone who doesn’t agree with me. Demonize disagreeers, dissenters. Then it goes on a dark trajectory.
People rarely do bad things as nonchalantly, as when they believe they are doing it for a good cause or a great cause. That’s the danger of ideology, religious ideology, secular ideology. But once people believe that my cause is so good, then I can do whatever I want because my cause is so good.
When the idea becomes that ends justify the means, then whether it was religious ideology or people think that anybody who opposes my religion, I can kill them, because they are against God. Or it can be secular ideology, communism, or anybody who doesn’t support the state. Even if it’s my own family member, I’ll out them.
And they can be destroyed. So, in general, any ideology, ideology itself has a negative connotation, but any worldview, any ideology, which makes us suppress our conscience, that is likely to be a toxic ideology. Any ideology, it should actually be strengthening our conscience.
The Gita is not centered on simply telling Arjuna, do this and don’t do this. The Gita’s whole focus is to equip Arjuna to do the right thing. So, ideology, ideally speaking, the word ideology itself has a negative meaning, but it’s a worldview, it’s a philosophy.
In general, the difference between ideology and philosophy, they are similar, but philosophy is concerned more about understanding. What exactly is happening? How can I make sense of it? Ideology is about changing. It’s almost like imposing.
This is the right thing and this has to be done. Make this happen. So, if you say, if we try to educate, Krishna is God himself, but he does not force Arjuna to comply.
If Krishna had simply wanted to use the power of his Godhood to force Arjuna into compliance, Krishna could have completed the whole Gita in six words. I am God. Obey me.
Fight. Bhagavad Gita, Sampurna. Krishna does not do that.
So, somebody wants to do good, that is good, but if it is deadening their normal sense of human decency, their conscience, then it is a harmful thing. So, we’ll stop now. We’ll have a break.
And then we’ll have next session and we’ll have Krishna answer that time also. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Guru. If I could kindly ask, if anyone, if you want to stay in this room, remove the mask, please.