If my boss tells me to do something wrong, who gets the karma – my boss or me?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if someone is working in a particular profession and while doing the profession, one has to do something wrong.
Who gets the karma? Does the person get the karma or does one’s authority get the karma? He is refusing to step over ants, but other talented people are stepping over ants. Do they get the karma or do they? Do the Nandini Bhagawan get the karma? Or do the Gaurava soldiers get the karma? Or is it only the Gaurava warriors who instigate the war, they get the karma? During the Nirenberg trials, Nirenberg trials were basically the trials after the Second World War of the German soldiers and generals who had participated in the Holocaust and the killing of the Jews and others who were destroyed in the Nazi concentration camps. So, one of the reasons and justification that many of the German officers or soldiers gave is that they are simply following orders.
This was rejected as a valid practice in the time. They said, no, even if you are following orders, you have to use your intentions, you have to use your conscience whether I should be following this order or not. So, in spiritual life, what to speak of the material life, in spiritual life, sometimes we have the example of Palli Maharaj being given an order by Shukracharya.
Shukracharya refuses that order. Shukracharya was the priest and almost like the spiritual teacher of Palli Maharaj. So, following orders is not a substitute for using your intentions.
By following orders, the whole purpose of the Bhagavad Gita was that Arjuna follow Krishna’s order. Krishna could have just uploaded the whole Bhagavad Gita in one word. But Krishna gave a whole elaborate philosophy, a whole worldview, so that Arjuna could not just understand the conclusion but also understand the reasoning behind the conclusion.
And once he understood that reasoning, he could apply that reasoning to other situations also. So, the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t talk about just actions or decisions. It talks about the foundations for actions and decisions.
And that is what makes the Bhagavad Gita so universal and relevant for millions of people who never have had to fight anyone. Similarly, in our worldly professions, we should certainly use our intelligence and our conscience when we are executing orders from our superiors. So, it is not just those who give the order that we get the karma.
Those who execute the order will also get the karma. For example, the Mahabharata says that when an animal is killed, it is not just the butcher who gets the karma. It is the person who has to execute the order.
They all get karma. So, similarly, if you have given something unethical, we also get some karma. Now, here, there is one important thing to note.
That there are themes of relatively higher importance and relatively lower importance. So, for example, if we are a part of some organization or some government structure, where the particular unethical thing is just a fact of life, then it will be up to each individual, upon one’s nature, to decide how much one wants to confront the system. Now, is it that devotees should normally be operative, but if some level of impropriety is a whole part of the system, and if one becomes a campaigner against that, that can consume all of one’s energy.
So, for example, if there is corruption, and one says, I don’t want to be a part of the corruption. It is fine. One may not voluntarily take the action, but if the whole system is like that, one has to be a part of it.
Somebody says, I will not be a part of it, and one gets transferred somewhere far away, and sidelined. Now, that may be as materially, from the medical perspective, I have acted in some form, I have been on the road, but spiritually, that may make me become unfavorable for them. So, then, we have to know, which is important.
We would like to be, which is more important. So, we would like to act in Satvamana, act honorably, but we are not champions of Satvamana. We are not champions of mundane morality.
Our purpose is transcendental devotion. And morality is included in devotion, but morality is subordinated to devotion. So, we don’t have to go against a campaign, a campaign protesting against an existing system, just because we are devotees.
Whether you want to take up that cause or not, will depend on various factors. Our own inspiration, our own nature, our specific position that we are in, our position in the hierarchy, all those factors can be taken into consideration. So, though we may get some karma, if we engage in certain activities, as devotees, our focus should not be so much on karma, as on how can we faithfully practice on that.
So, if a profession is involved in morality, based on the core religious principles, then that is different. We should avoid that entirely. But apart from that, if there is some amount of karma involved in something, we don’t have to get too caught up in that.
If I am writing a software program, and some company, somewhere, they use that software program for some unethical purpose. Yes, karma is ultimately a complicated net, but I cannot think about every possible consequence. And we decide based on that what I am going to do, what I am not going to do.
So, I can only consider my purpose and see how best I am serving that purpose. So, based on that, we move onwards. subordinates will also get karma.
And as devotees, we cannot use the following instructions to say that we are not responsible for our actions. But, we focus not just on avoiding bad karma, but on choosing options that are unethical to us. And we don’t want to compromise our bhakti just because of wanting to be one of the champions or material model.
If we can be a material model, and we say that that’s our bhakti, yes, we can definitely be a material model. But, priority should be on that failure that is involved. No solution.