Evil and Good - Chat on 21/09/2002

[Guest guest]

Namaste everyone,

 

I wish you all a very good morning/afternoon/evening(whichever is

applicable) according to your time:).

 

First of all, let me thank all the members who had come for the

conference chat on 'Good and Evil' on saturday 21/09/2002. It was

nice meeting all the members.

 

The actual topic of discussion was 'why is there evil coexisting with

good when God impermeates the whole world'.

 

Unfortunately during the chat, most of the members were facing

problems with /internet and were getting logged out. Later on

the chat was continued on MSN messenger conference. But not everyone

could join on MSN. People who had could not continue with the chat

should not get disapppointed. For your information and for others, I

am summarising what we discussed, so that we can actually continue

the discussion here on the board and don't have to wait till the next

chat.

 

The discussion started by the basic questions -- what is 'Good' and

what is 'Evil'? As all of you know these two terms are abstract /

realtive and it is very difficult to arrive at a consensus or a

generalised defination. But we all need to agree upon some defination

or understanding of 'Good' and 'Evil', which we can take as guidance

in our every day life. So i request all of you to share your

views/ideas on this.

 

As all of you would agree with me, the best way to understand

something is by giving examples. For our discussion, we

considered 'Mahabharata' as it is one of the good resources to learn

about everything which we require to reach our goals. The situation

we took was the battle-field of kurukshetra where Pandavas fought the

kauravas. During the battle, even pandavas had to kill so many

people. The question is that isn't killing an 'Evil' action?

 

As per one of our members, the actions of pandavas were 'Good'

because they were for Dharma and actions of Kauravas were 'Evil'

because they were against Dharma.

 

It was pointed out that the 'Intention or the attitude behind the

action are important and not the action itself'. But this statement

lead to few other questions

 

What is 'Karma'? Is it only the 'Action'? or is it the 'Intention'?

Or is it both 'Action'+'Intention'?

 

If the intentions are for dharma but the actions are not sattwic but

tamasic or rajasic in nature, then how will be our karmas? Will we

have to face the effects of our actions irrespective of the intention?

 

The chat was ended with the above open questions to be discussed here

on the board. All the learned members, please share your views and

enlighten us on the above.

 

 

Hari Aum.

 

Love,

Prasad

[Guest guest]

Namaste Prasad,

 

Thank you for posting the great summary of the chat. I regret I

missed it this time. It sounds like it was a wonderful discussion.

 

The following is just my opinion, but I feel that intention is the

most important when it comes to our karmas. As SVCS pointed out to

me once, a surgeon may cut into another person with the intent to

heal whereas a murderer may do the same, but with quite a different

intent. Are these two actions the same? Personally, I do not think

so.

 

My biggest question in regards to this topic is, how can we be sure

of our own intent? All situations are not as clear as the one I've

stated above. If we take an action with the intent that we must do

our duty, and it turns sour, how will our karmas reflect this? How

can we, as mere humans, be aware of our intent of every action we

take?

 

Looking forward to discussion...

 

With love,

Erica