Should society dictate the criteria for when to take legal action and when to forgive?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Should society dictate to us the criteria for which we should use when forgiving someone, for example, jail rehabilitation, fines Generally society does not dictate forgiveness forgiveness is very much a voluntary activity, I’ll talk about forgiving or not forgiving that in a full later session but here I’ll talk about general principles Now we we live today in a multicultural world and even in the past if you look at the time of the Mahabharat at that time also there are many different philosophies present there are people who were Shaivites there are people who were Vaishnavas, there are people who were Shaktas, Mahabharat describes that Bhagavatam also describes, very nonchalantly Shamik Rishi is described to be an impersonalist there is no value judgment associated with it impersonal realization is also a high level of realization it becomes a problem when it is claimed to be the highest and Krishna’s form is considered to be an illusion, otherwise impersonalization is also a high realization the point is that Krishna is that it is never going to be that that the devotional principles of morality are going to be completely in accord with the social principles the devotional principles and social laws will always be the same so we wherever we are we need to respect those once there was a new temple and they had beetles and there was a neighbor who had many flowers in his garden that person took all the flowers and they came back and made a garland offer to the deities now this neighbor woke up and he was furious what happened? he came to the devotees and saw they had made a garland publicly, like somebody robbed something at least they hid what they had robbed so the devotees put the garland on the deities for everyone to see and he was very angry and Prabhupada came to know about it Prabhupada said, the devotees said, no Prabhupada everything belongs to Krishna everything belongs to Krishna Prabhupada said, yes everything belongs to Krishna but Krishna has entrusted that to this person right now it belongs to him so we are souls but we are situated in particular situations the soul currently is in a particular body, it’s in a particular dynasty it’s a particular nationality and we don’t have to totally identify with that but we can’t deny that Vrindavan is ultimately in the spiritual world but in this world’s map in this world’s topographical classification we try to put in we try to put Vrindavan in India we are not going to put it in Pakistan or Russia or Africa it’s in India so whatever are the local laws we understand that this is the particular situation I am in by my past karma and we function appropriately generally we should be devotees should be law abiding, we should be seen as people who are in the mode of goodness broadly speaking when Prabhupada was asked how can we identify your followers Prabhupada said, they are perfect gentleman humans Prabhupada did not say that they are always chanting Hare Krishna he could have said that but here Prabhupada was talking at a public forum he said how should devotees appear to be perfect gentleman humans we have our siddhanta, we have our sadhana we have our sadhacha siddhanta is our philosophical understanding our sadhana is our personal spiritual practices our sadhacha is our behavior the world doesn’t care what is your siddhanta, what is your sadhana what you believe, what you practice as a spiritual practice the world doesn’t care what the world cares is how we behave and if our behavior is good, it’s a nice person it’s a nice person I want to know more, I want to know what makes you click what makes you tick and then they become interested in Krishna so devotees, whatever situation we are in, in a social national, cultural situation we need to adapt to ourselves accordingly and function in a way that will be, that devotees will be respected in an extreme society