
How many times have you felt wronged by someone? Feeling the anger seeth through you, you feel the need to argue what the other person did was wrong. And if they don’t understand, you think about how they should pay for their actions.
It’s not particularly hard to find injustice within the world right now. Whether looking at the bigger picture of the world, or simply what is happening in our day to day lives.
I’ve felt conflicted for a long time on how we deal with people who are doing bad things. On the one hand, I want to practice the art of forgiveness, demonstrating that I am not holding a grudge. This is particularly the case when the slight is small – forgetting to thank me for something, or being a bit rude in the morning.
But on the other hand, I wonder whether I am being complicit in their actions. Should I not make it known that what they have done is wrong?
At the Vipassanna course I went to, one of the things that stuck most with me was truly learning about Dhamma, or the Universal Law of Nature. When we do good things, good things come to us. But when we do bad things, we receive a negative consequence.
The idea can sound nice in principle, but challenging to accept when we see the inequalities of the world. Yet when we delve deeper, we see that the surface level appearances are different to the reality.
A man can do bad actions and become rich. This is an undeniable fact – we see it all the time in the world. But when we dig deeper, we can see that the man cannot really be happy by being rich that way.
If the man has gotten to riches by lying and stealing, he will forever be looking over his shoulder, worrying whether he might be caught. He will also see his own actions in others, and forever be wary of someone lying and stealing from him. So despite his riches, the man is spiritually poor, and lives unhappily. No wealth and material comforts will change this fact.
Even if someone wrongs us, it is not our duty to deliver them moral castigation. It is not our role to play Universe. If we do, we end up creating misery for ourselves, because we get frustrated, often ruminating over anger.
After all, how many times have you played an argument out in your head? Has this actually ever helped you?
This approach doesn’t mean that we be totally passive. What I enjoy about Eastern philosophy is that it gets away from overly intellectualising every position.
When we have set out that certain actions will have consequences, then it is also our duty to follow through with them. If we do not, then we are complicit with the negative action. We have not acted against a moral wrong. If you’re a shop owner and you catch someone stealing, you stop them. You call the police.
Even a judge can sentence someone to life imprisonment without wishing ill will on the person. This is the judge playing their role in society, based upon the agreed precepts of what people are forbidden to do. But beyond sentencing someone to imprisonment, it’s not the role of the judge to be angry at the person.
Too often we can try to play God, judging people as being bad people. This is not our role, and it only leads us to misery.
The best thing we can do is get out of the way and let the universe do its thing.
This is one of the key foundations to creating happiness in our lives.