A common phrase that our elders, friends, and colleagues have been saying is: “Do good and good happens to you.” They believe that good things happen if we do good and vice versa. There is also possibility that they should suffer in early life but rewarded in their later life. According to them doing bad to others is a sin. As a result of doing bad or evil to others, they will suffer in the later life as a curse. But the questions that arise here are: What then is good and what really is bad? Who has the divine capacity or power to judge them all?
Your good may be perceived as bad by others whereas your bad may be good for them. This is a debatable aspect of good and bad that differs according to the capacity of the one who judges it. It is not necessary for all to be capable of judging people’s activities. For example, a good friend’s weird act is positively accepted whereas the same act of a bad friend will be negatively judged. So, it is vital to know who will judge what is good and what is bad. The one judging the array of good and bad should have the educational, practical, emotional and idealistic capacity to judge it.
Doing good means, whatever you do to yourself or others is for the sake of goodness. It reflects your character, nature, and your family background. Keeping in mind the same good that you are doing to yourself should be good to others too. Doing good would then mean, making yourself and the others happy at the same time. As all fundamentals of good or bad come from within us, we must have the power, be that spiritual, humanistic, karmic or self-conscious, to understand and identify whether something that is good for us is also be good for the others. It is all about reciprocity.
All human beings experience misery and joy. As a human being, consciously, we do not generally try to hurt anyone. We do our daily duties for the sake of self-sustainability, popularity and superiority. We hardly have the capacity to understand the result or outcome of our activities. We are the superior being, so we think whatever we do is always good and does not hurt anyone. But all this does not deny the fact that there are people who do bad things to inflict harm on others. We are conscious and well aware of the karmic revenge that nature or the super power gives us, yet, it is temptation that takes good away from us and gives a foul mind of lust and hatred that compels us to do bad to others.
Should we believe in karma? Should we rely on karma? There are people who do not believe in the karmic circle. They do not believe what they do will come back to them eventually and in the same way. Yet, there are orthodox people who believe that what they do to others will come back to them in the same way in this life itself. One must understand that life is an echo, which is your doing bouncing back to you. Irrespective of anything, one should do good to prove oneself as a superior and conscious human being.
Sabina Shakya Bajracharya
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