We chastise someone out of love but it spoils the relationship – what to do?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Sometimes we may chastise someone out of love but that person doesn’t understand it is love because of which he chastised and then the relationship turns sour so what do we do at that time yes in the Mahabharata the question is raised how do we decide what is right and what is wrong there are three ways three broad ways there is intention there is intention behind action there is the content of the action, the action itself and there is a consequence of the action all three are important and all three can apply in different situations for example as I said we chastise someone, our intention was good but if I find the consequence that person got alienated from me then ok my intention was, but the effect was not right, so then we may have to learn we can’t just assume that the right intention will automatically lead to the right consequence because there are many factors involved at a very gross level if I am not a surgeon and I have a good intention if this person is having pain I will operate them it is said that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions so just our intention is not good enough, it is important we need to have the right intention but the right intention does not guarantee the right execution and does not guarantee the right consequence so we also have to have the appropriate competence, the appropriate situation for doing that now that means if you find that ok we chastise this person and this had this effect, this person got alienated then we may have to do some other actions which show our love for the person so if say, say between parents and children or in a relationship spousal relationship the primary interaction is when we are telling, you did not do this, you did not do that, you did not do that, you did not do that then what happens then the other person feels, you are just nagging so there are often times when we need to correct others but that has to be done in a setting in a situation when people have seen other expressions of our love if they have not seen that if they have not felt that then they will just feel that we are fault finders and sometimes we may feel this is such a big problem I have to correct it but we have to see actions ok, this person did something wrong and this wrong is a bad thing, it needs to be corrected but sometimes in correcting that wrong thing we may end up alienating the relationship and then that person goes away from us and that person does further bad things so sometimes in some cases it is better to let people learn by consequences that means I am telling you because if you do this it will hurt you, so don’t do this but we tell them and they just feel hurt because we just said in some cases we just have to let people learn their own lessons it is very difficult if you see someone going on the wrong track and we know that they are going to be hurt by this but if they are not in a position to hear us that means we have two things one is their right and wrong action and their right and wrong disposition towards us so we have to wisely choose it is not that just because we are in a relationship where we feel that we are wiser than them, we may be wiser than them but they may not feel like that so what we need to do is we need to evaluate the dynamics of that relationship based on what happens so if you find that the chastisement is alienating, then put it aside and just offer expressions of love and then sometimes people have to learn through experience and if we have not alienated them in the process then they learn through experience and then they come back hmm what you said was right but sometimes what happens is if we say that this is wrong and still they do it and we have alienated them then even if they realize that we were right and they were wrong we say you are doing this you are so proud you are not listening to me one day you will come crawling back on your knees and tell me that I was right even if we turn out to be right because we have challenged their ego even if they realize they are wrong they will not come back so what happens is we can’t just act in a relationship based on a specific action this is right, this is wrong we have to act in a relationship based on the longevity of the relationship based on the stability of the relationship so Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita in 17.15 he says that austerity of speech means first thing is speak in a non-adjudicating way speak in a way that does not agitate others second is speak truthfully speak beneficially but first thing is speak in a non-agitating way if we agitate others quite often they just get closed they get closed and they just can’t understand what we are saying so they need to feel loud and then what we say even if it’s harsh to take they will take it