What is the right thing to do?

 

As human beings, we have so many different rule books to follow. There is the "law", varying from International Law, Federal Law, State Law, City Law to the "law" instituted by many resident communities. There is religion. There is conscience. I am not sure whether morality is somewhere covered between "conscience" and "religion", or is it something very different. In addition to them, we also have "tradition", much of it is not written.

 

So, what is the difference? What activities should be governed by "law" of the Government? What activities should be left to "ethics" or "morality" of the person?

 

Even before we try to define these, we have to answer, why are we even trying to define those rules? What is the purpose? After all, till we know what the purpose is, we can't really know whether we did it right. Well, I am going to make a guess. And I think to certain extent, there in lies the difference, between law, religion and tradition.

 

Here is how I will define it.

 

Law: Set of rules to allow a collective of individuals live together happily

Religion: Set of rules for an individual to be happy

 

Even as I wrote them down, I realized, that this definition is not going to make lots of people happy. After all, for many, the definition above makes "religion" a personal choice. A majority of people do not think religion is a matter of choice. To them, it is THE TRUTH. It is what God said, we should do. It is not a matter of choice at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's say you have been captured. The opressor asks you to choose one amongst the following

a) He is going to dip you in bucket of blue paint. Not to kill, just to color you and amuse himself

b) He is going to kill you swiftly and eat you

 

Which one do you think is more cruel? Well, for me, it is a no brainer and just to make sure we are on the same page, let me state it..it will be option "b"

 

Surprisingly, this is not how TV reporters view the world. Last year, there was a story on the local TV, where a person was being condemned for "cruelty against animal" as he had colored some "chicks" (yes, creature that come out eggs) blue on easter and was selling them. Now, I am not saying that it was not distasteful/cruel. But what is surprising to me, is that there is no story about people who actually kill chicken. I am sure that is much more cruel

As a kid, I often heard phrases like "Life is not a bed of roses", "who says life is fair?" At a purely semantic level they made sense, but never really sunk in. 

 

Many times, when bad things happen I still say "Why is it happening to me? I never wronged anyone". But slowly it has dawned on me, that the phrases above are the answer. Life doesn't care about being "fair". After all, innocent people die in terrorist attackes, young kids die of disease, nice people get cancer too, and careful drivers get killed by drunken drivers. So, there is no such natural law about life being fair.

 

Now once you accept that, it becomes difficult to reconcile with faith, where we really want to believe in a loving, omnipresent, omniscient, fair God. If He exists, how do you explain all the bad things happening to good people. Well, one conclusion you can draw is, there really isn't any such God. There may or may not be a supreme force, controlling and guiding world, but as a minimum, that Supreme force doesn't care about being fair.

 

In Hinduism, I guess people pondered about it and came up with a line of reasoning, that still works. You see, "good people" have only been good in this birth. They did "bad deeds" in previous births, so they are paying the price now. There still is hope. Once you pay your debts to Him, you can do "good deeds" and have a better life. Another way people explain is by saying "This is His test of your faith/character". I guess, if you do not believe in re-incarnations, that is the only other explanation for good things happening to bad people, that is still consistent with concept of a loving & fair God.  By the way, you don't get moksha/nirvana/bliss by doing good deeds. Good deeds can get you a better life, but you are still trapped in cycles of life & death. To really get moksha you have to realize real nature of supreme force, which as per ancient Hindu texts, is called Brahman.  Most people think of God as basically a human with super powers.

 

We anthropomorphize Him, cause that is the easiest way for us to understand. We can make him do favors for us by praying to him. Most prayers, at least the one I have seen, basically say, God you are so powerful, you have done such great things etc.. They do not seem any different than flattery/bribery to me. On the contrary, Brahman is a supreme consciousness, without any attributes. The only way to understand attribute of it is, that no attribute fits it. This is illogical  as you in logic for any attribute an entity either has it or doesn't have it. Anyway, like lots of stuff like quantum mechanics where an object is really wave form and theory of relativity, it is complicated and non-intuitive.  Anyways, coming back to bad things happening to good people. I am really interested in knowing if there is any other theory other than "payind debts for crimes that you do not know about" or "test of character" that are consistent with a loving/fair God.

 

Personally, I have not totally given up on my faith. I still go to temple. I pray daily. After all, what do I lose, except little bit of time. But my day to day thought process and actions are not really guided by concepts of previous/next birth. I wish, I still had that strong belief, as it would have made it much easier to sail through rough times. It is harder to accept that "bad things" happened just by chance to me and I had no control over them. It is harder to do the right/moral things cause there really is no "after life" or "next birth". It is even harder, as being an engineer, I like things to be deterministic & causal. Finally, I hate to feel that I really do not control my destiny. There are so many random things that can happen.

 

But, then I remember, what my friend said to me once, "Do not say, you have NO control, say that you don't have total control".