Wisdom Munches 13: Why we need good karma to do bad karma

Transcript

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there will be more dangerous animals than in the forest some people what happens is they try to do something bad and they don’t succeed then they think this is not meant to be, they give it up once a devotee approached me and said I have a very serious question okay, what is it? he said that if I insult someone and that person doesn’t get the insult then do I get the karma now if you are aware of karma then why go about insulting anyone at all but generally the consequence of action depends on three things what we did, why we did and what is the result of what we did sometimes we may speak words that are disrespectful but our intention is not to be disrespectful so there is intent, content and consequence three things are there so we might speak disrespectful words that are bad but later on we say actually I didn’t mean to be disrespectful sometimes in different cultures there are certain words which are considered politically incorrect which are considered disrespectful now we may not know that those words are like that and then we speak those words and the other person feels that oh I am sorry so the content was bad but there is no intent sometimes the content is there which is bad and the intent is also deliberately to disrespect, to deride, to mock the other person then that’s bad now if the person gets insulted, feels insulted, that’s worse but even if the person doesn’t feel insulted when we try to do something bad, it’s a bad thing but many people when they try to do something bad, it doesn’t work they think ok maybe this is not meant to be, I should not be doing such thing their conscience pulls them back but some people, they have this perverse attitude we are successful now I will be successful, it’s a good thing to have motivation when we are trying to do a good thing but when we are trying to do a bad thing and we are failing see the irony of the world is you need good karma to do bad karma what do you mean you need good karma to do bad karma say like somebody decides from the bad karma of robbing a bank now maybe 100 people 100 people plan to rob a bank most people they go there and they find the security system is too good police are here, this is there, forget it, I can’t do it they fail, now some people succeed now why do some people succeed because they have done some good karma in the past so success in any activity requires some past good karma because nothing in this world is easy to do even crime is not very easy to do now of course in some places crime might be easy if the citizens are unsuspecting if the police are incompetent whatever, but the point is that in general succeeding in anything is not easy and to succeed requires some good karma but if somebody wants to do bad karma so success in bad karma requires good karma but it’s a double loss because what is happening is you are exhausting your good karma from the past, see we have some stock of good karma from the past, which will give us some success in this life but now in trying to do bad karma we are exhausting that stockpile of our good karma and in the process we are also creating bad karma so in one sense failing in bad karma is better than succeeding in bad karma because at least your past good karma is not getting exhausted I travel to America regularly so we have not a Hare Krishna center but we have a small devotee community in Las Vegas now what is Las Vegas famous or infamous for Gambling so it’s gambling so one of the devotees works in the hotel over there not directly in the casino but in the hotel in the admin staff so they interestingly the worst thing that can happen for somebody who gambles what do you think is the worst thing that can happen yes losing is bad but winning is worse isn’t it yeah you lose money that’s terrible maybe I should not gamble I don’t want to waste my money like this but if they win then what happens is they get that taste for for quick money it’s like many tigers if they have not tasted human blood then they are not really after human blood they just find some other predator and eat it but once they taste human blood then they become very dangerous so like that in one sense for that person to win at gambling it requires some good karma isn’t it but the result of that is worse for them so what happened to Duryodhana is that his motivation I want wealth and I want wealth at all costs okay he tried to kill Bhima that didn’t work far from being killed I won’t go into the full story many of you may know it but what happened is Bhima actually survived and came back stronger then he decided okay if I can’t kill Bhima I’ll kill the entire family and the brutality of this is not just the Pandavas he planned to kill even their mother so he sent them to this house of fire house of fire the Varanavar and there he planned to have them all burnt alive and for some time it seemed he had succeeded the Pandavas disappeared so they lived incognito in the forest for some time during this time his bad karma seemed to have paid off however what was happening is see generally I said there are two possibilities when we try to do something wrong and it doesn’t work one part of us says maybe this is not meant to be I should not be doing something like this but the other is that person did one wrong it didn’t work did one further wrong I have to make it work