I am
familiar with a business that was managed by an employee who betrayed the trust
of the owner and stole large quantities of money before he was eventually found
out and dismissed, then moving on to a second concern and actually doing the
same in even less time than before, being caught there too. Some employees at
the first place were in cahoots with him, others stood up to him, and one who
did was dismissed before the truth was found out… The owner of the business is
a person who is familiar with the Virtues, and after lengthy legal battles, a decline
in business, quite a few queries from clients, and doubts and frowns and criticisms,
etc., eventually the whole thing settled down and started flowing more
smoothly. There were many calls for vengeance, chastisement, having the thief
beaten up, and similar suggestions for behaving in a way which, according to
the owner, would have been tantamount to the original bad behaviour of the
thief in question.
So the
owner gave a lesson in patience, charitableness, faith in human goodness, and
non-violence, and an actual prohibition was given not to harm this thief in any
way – life would take care of him in due course. It was not necessary for
anyone to soil their hands meting out so-called “justice”. Wrongdoing cannot be
corrected by more wrongdoing even if it’s done in the name of righteousness. Your
own karma is affected if instead of doing right, you do wrong, or vikarma.
Some people
find it very difficult to understand why personal revenge cannot be taken. “If
we beat him to a pulp, he will learn not to do this again!” Well, no, hitting
someone may induce fear, but it is not going to change the wrongdoer’s mindset.
It’s no use arguing about it. Either you choose to do right action, or you don’t.
You have to see what it does to the mind to understand the application of
violence and pandering to the inbred desire for a vendetta.
Once you
see this and understand it, there are no grudges, no bad feelings, no
oozing wounds requiring some kind of misdemeanour. Vindictiveness is nipped in
the bud. A thief is a thief. He’s simply a person who ignores the boundaries between
“mine” and “yours”. He is protecting his own economic security without
realising that his actions are wrong. He justifies his actions to himself as
being good for him. He is blind to his action as being wrong or unjust to the
person he is stealing from. It is him first. His family first. His desires
first. Others simply don’t matter.
If we
look carefully, we will see that we all perpetrate this in some way, unless
there is sufficient Self-Awareness to counteract it. We want our desires
to be fulfilled, and when they aren’t, we get upset. We want our loved ones to be
protected. We want our friends, families, tribes, clans, nations, religions,
creeds, and so on, to be first – not those of others. We protect our egos, our
personalities, our sense of self. It is the way society has taught us to act.
Survival of the fittest means “me first, you later, if at all!”, and only
certain social norms are supposed to counteract the meanest of our human desires.
We pursue ego, but if we are somewhat cultured, we try to cater to this ego in
a “politically correct” way. The uncultured just do what their crude desires
tell them to.
So when
we see this, and truly understand it, we immediately forgive those who have
trespassed against us. Or don’t even blame them. They are us, we are them. The
truly intelligent apply Kshama, forgiveness, and endure so-called
“bad” behaviour with patience. “Bad” behaviour is totally relative. The
wrongdoers cannot help it. Society made them that way, and they haven’t started
working on their own self-development yet. They are still immature, unconscious,
child-like.
What’s
the solution? First, change yourself, by which you contribute to a change in society,
and then as society (a larger number of people) continues to teach its unconscious
lessons, the damage will eventually be lower… It may sound long and drawn out.
But it starts with you and me. Or do you think that from what we know of
history in the past 3000 years, punishment, home-baked settling of scores, or
even nation-state retaliation actually makes humans better?
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