Right or Wrong - Depends

We all have this question continuously probing in to our mind that whether what I am doing is right or wrong ? This questions bothers human beings all across. It does not matter, who you are , what you do , where do you hail from , what is your age , what stage of life you are at , what is your family size , what gender you are and what caste and colour do you carry? 

There are multiple roles that we all must be playing and we all could be at different stage of life but the difficulty of answering the above question is universally felt. There are lot of people around , who are trying to determine the appropriateness of our views and actions. We are confused because , there is lot of perpetual dilemma that we all get in to. This dilemma itself could be a value conflict or could be a conflict of value and experience. It could come from what we have studied and what we see , what we like and what we do , what we consider as correct and what our conduct is ,what we value and what we control in life.

There are dichotomies that we face regularly and deciphering them , understanding them and moving forward is a challenge. Some we truly understand , some we drop and some we carry to future validation and clarity , some we interpret but incompletely and the moral drawn could also be incomplete. The point is ,Irrespective of our education , experience , age , place and time , we all have these difficulties to figure out the right and wrong , complete and incomplete , appropriate versus inappropriate , fair versus unfair , just versus unjust and the life goes on. The day to day rigmarole takes its own toll and in the crowd of the day today sometimes the special get lost. I think it’s all very natural and normal. 

How do I understand the righteousness of my actions? 

Life is about relationship , relationship with self and the relationship with other. I repeat there is a relationship between the two( Self and Others) and both affect each other. All our life is relationship , at home , in the family , in the office , in the society and any other context. Its about context and it’s about our connect with the context. Context consists of following 

1. Time - This includes all comprehensible ; present , past and the future.
2. Place - This encompasses all existing places 
3. Person - This covers every thing about every body

Points to Ponder or examine , If I am heading right? 

1. Cause - What is the cause and what is the primary value of the relationship. All thoughts serving and strengthening the cause is fine. This is about understanding the relationship from causality and its mutual effect. What is the emotion involved , what is the value involved and how knowledgable we are about it ?
2. Conduct - How does conduct serves the cause? Does my action enrich the relationship , is it bringing more happiness , is it improving the knowledge , is it energising , is it invigorating , is it building up , is it widening , it is involving or excluding 
3. Consequences - The cause , the conduct and the consequences are going to be all connected. Right cause , right conduct would generally attract the desired consequences. 

The Mahabharata , The Gita proposes that , know the cause , conduct to uphold with dharma ( Read my article on LinkedIn heading 'Dharma' to get an insight on the concept of Dharma) and forget about the consequences. Results are determined by lot of factors that one may not be aware of and also may have limited control on. Focus on the purpose not on the impact . Check , is it the impact driving the purpose or the purpose driving the impact .

If the impact is driving purpose , then there could be a challenge. 

Think about it.

Jai Ho!