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Ep.05~ Judging and Acting
“You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work”– Krishna Das
Transcription:
Q: The woman behind me had asked essentially, about taking direct action versus looking inward and doing the spiritual practice. And I’ve run into that myself.
KD: I don’t know if that’s what she asked exactly but, I don’t know, there is no “versus”, you know? There are not two different things.
Q: Well, that is my question because I have begun to try to look inward and try to develop a spiritual practice, an interest thing has happened, which is, I have become a more passionate, a compassionate person.
KD: You ever hear of a Freudian slip?
Q: Probably that, too actually.
KD: That’s good for you, too. No problem there. Money and sex, who can do without it? Some people think they can.
Q: And so the harshness of the world outside us is there.
KD: Sure.
Q: And it seems to me that direct action is often required or I feel that need to take direct action and we do need to in this world. If somebody came in here, a cruise ship drunkard, we would have to physically remove them.
KD: Maybe.
Q: And so how do we balance looking inward, developing a spiritual practice with also going out in the world and making a difference in the world. That’ my question.
KD: It’s really easy. You do the best, don’t take it away from him, I didn’t forget the word you used. “Challenge.” No, it’s really easy. You do the best you can. That’s it. Now think about that. Just think about it for a second. You do the best you can. What would you like to… how would you modify that statement?
Q: I guess what I’m hearing, sometimes, is don’t take direct action.
KD: You never heard it from me.
Q: Ok, that’s where I got confused, because she was saying these other people that are doing horrible things. Then what I’m hearing is, who are we to judge? And sometimes we have to judge.
KD: No. You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work. If you hate that person, you’ve created a whole drama for yourself. Who knows what you’re going to do out of? Who knows? You might take that to excess. You might kill the person. And you know what they say in the East? They say, if you kill somebody, you give that person the right to kill you for a hundred lifetimes. Karma. You can’t. When you start talking about these things, you can either say, ok there’s no such thing as karma, I’m just going to be a good person and do the best I can. That’s fine. So find out what the best you can, is. Is the best you can getting really pissed off and angry and you go and prevent somebody from slaughtering a sheep and go home and kick the dog because you’re so pissed off? Or abuse, or get mad at your kids or have a car accident or do something stupid because you’ve lost your mind? There’s nothing good about that. There’s nothing righteous about that. So whatever you do, it’s like the Dalai Lama said, “Am I gonna let them take my piece of mind also?” That’s where you, that’s your kingdom. Where you have say. Where you have the only vote to find a way to stay at ease within regardless of what’s going on outside. You know, one time Maharajji was sitting in a room with somebody, with a group of people, and these two guys walked and they sat in the back and Maharajji ignored them, all right? So finally one of the guys stood up and he said, “Excuse me, Baba, but my friend here is in great difficulty.” So then Maharajji looks at the guy and says, “Why did you kill him?” To the other guy. And he said, “Baba I didn’t kill him.” “No, but you arranged it. Why did you do that?” He said, “Baba he was in my way.” He said, “You didn’t think about his family. Who’ll take care of his family? What have you done? What have you done?” He said, “Promise me you’ll take care of his family and his children.” The guy, the murderer, said “Ok.” The judge, the story goes, I don’t know how they know these things but the story goes that the judge had already written the verdict as guilty. He got up in the middle of the night and changed it to not guilty because that guy had agreed. He agreed that he had done wrong and he had also agreed to take, you know, in India, no one knows, there’s a tremendous amount of the population, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We have refrigerators full of shit that we throw out. They don’t know. So many people. Less these days. But still. So, and this was 50 years ago or more so, where is this woman going to take care of her kids? How are they going to eat? Where are they going to live? What’s going to happen to them? The only person who was making, taking care of them was just murdered by this guy. So Maharajji could have blown him off and said “You’re a bad guy. You ought to be killed. Get out out of here.” But no. He said, and they other thing He said, was “Eventually you’ll understand what you’ve done.” So, judging is one thing. Acting is another thing. You know?
Q: Great answer. Thank you.
KD: I gotta tell you a funny story. You know, this is big time judging, this is a murderer. But Maharajji didn’t judge anyone, but He knew everything, ok? So there was this one guy who’d been a devotee for many many years and he was a big guy in the government, and he was a very righteous, honest guy. Now as you know, the Indian government, up until very recently, lives on bribes. Bribes are a way that they get extra money. It’s not really a bad thing. The heads of the departments will get this money from people who want services, they’ll take a certain amount for themselves and then they’ll pass it down the line to their, the people who work under them, it’s just been going on for years. But this one guy, he would never take a bribe. So everybody was very afraid of this guy and very straight honest, straightforward kind of guy. So, one day he’s sitting in a room, now when this guy was young. Much younger. Long before he met Maharajji… I hope you’ll appreciate this. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Ok, I’ll tell you. So, when this guy was young, he hurt his back and he went to an Ayurvedic ashram somewhere and he was getting treatments and everything and he had this woman who was treating him every day and they wound up having an affair. This is like, 40 or 50 years, 40 years before the time I’m talking about, and gradually his back got better and he came back to his family and blah blah blah. Now 40 years had gone by, they’re sitting in a room, and this guy recently had hurt his back again, after many years, so he’s sitting in a room with a bunch of devotees with Maharajji, and one by one, Maharajji sends all the other people away and finally it’s just Him and this guy, and he leans over really close to this guy and he says, “She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Don’t go back there.” How is that… that’s too much. I thought, that’s the secret teaching I just gave you. I hope you appreciate it. What does that show? He knew everything, right? He knew what had happened. He knew the guy had hurt his back again. He knew he was thinking about going back to that place and look how he chose to tell you. Such a filthy mouth, right? It’s fantastic. She’s too old and her daughter’s too… What kind of a slimeball is my Guru? The best. She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Terrible. Her daughter was probably 40, by the way. All right any more questions? Behind all this stuff is incredible love, you know? It’s, when you have this, when you sit deeply enough in yourself, not judging just means loving. And when you love someone, you love them as they are. You’re not trying to change them. You’re not going to love them only if they change. You already love them. This is the kind of love Maharajji has, or these great Beings have for us. They see us exactly the way we are. They see everything we’ve done. Everything we’ve thought. Everything we’re going to do. And they still love us. It’s inconceivable. It’s, you can’t wrap your mind around it. You can only, at some point, if we’re lucky, feel it just a little bit. It’s called unconditional love. They don’t love us because we’re good and they don’t pull that back from us if we do things that are harmful or hurtful. It’s the way the sun shines on everything.
Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana
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