[Chaturamnaya] A Dialogue on Dharma - 1

[S Jayanarayanan]

(From the book "Dialogues with the Guru", some conversations with H.H. Chandrasekhara Bharati MahaswamigaL. I have added my own comments in parantheses.)
 
 
A gentleman (G) in a high social position once remarked to His Holiness (HH):

G: We who have been given only secular education from our boyhood may be excused if due to our ignorance of the dictates of Dharma we sometimes err. It seems to me that the Pandits who cannot have any such excuse but still err are more culpable than we.

HH: Apparently, it is no doubt so. You err because of your ignorance, but they err in spite of their knowledge. Their sinning, certainly, seems more grievous. But you lose sight of the other aspect.

G: What is that?

HH: They have learnt what Dharma is but only do not carry it out in practise. You have neither learnt nor are you practising dharma. To their single omission of practise, you have to answer for the two omissions of learning as well as practice. It would seem therefore that your sin is really the greater of the two.

G: It would be, if ignorance were by itself a sin.

HH: Ignorance by itself is certainly no sin, but it is a sin when there is a duty to learn.

G: How is that?

HH: Animals and young children have no conception of right or wrong, nor have they the ability to form any such conception. With them, ignorance is inevitable and therefore not a sin. But when a child grows up and is able to distinguish between right and wrong, he becomes responsible for his actions and incurs sin if he acts wrongly.

G: Quite so, for he then knows that what he is doing is wrong.

HH: I did not say that he knows that he is doing something wrong; it is sufficient if he has the capacity to know. Take for instance your penal laws. Does the court let go an offender even though it finds that he did not know the law when he committed an offense?

G: These are man-made laws and therefore artificial. If ignorance were allowed as an excuse, everybody will begin to plead ignorance and it would be practically impossible to convict anybody. In the field of Dharma or God-made law, where He retains in His hands the power to assess sin or virtue, He must certainly know whether a man is doing an act willfully or through ignorance.

HH: He does know it, but what do you want Him to do?

G: He must punish only those who sin deliberately and not those who act without knowing that it is wrong.

(In order to make the point that not knowledge of Dharma, but the capacity to know Dharma is the deciding factor in God’s judgment, it would be necessary to cite a case when God punished an ignorant man since the man had the capacity to know Dharma. But such judgments are not perceptible, so HH gives a slightly different, but very effective example.)

HH: Does fire refuse to scorch a young child who touches it without knowing that it will scorch?

G: But fire is an inanimate thing, which cannot distinguish between a child and an adult; surely we cannot compare All-knowing God with blind nature.

HH: Evidently you forget that the law that fire will scorch is not an artificial law but is a God-made law.

G: It may be a God-made law but it is carried out by blind (i.e. unintelligent) nature.

HH: God entirely withdrawing Himself from it and keeping quite aloof?

G: It would seem so.

HH: Certainly not. God can never withdraw Himself or be absent or blind at any time. Even in allowing the child to be scorched, He is carrying out His own divine law. Evidently, when the child was an adult in a previous life, he had committed some sin which deserved and necessitated this scorching now. 

(i.e. since a child is not a moral agent, the child cannot commit sin. But the child senses pleasure and pain, which constitutes the result of (im)moral action, thus implying that the child must have been a moral agent in the past. HH clarifies this as the dialog continues.)

G: If Dharma is as inexorable as the laws of nature, in as much as both are God-made, ignorance can certainly be no excuse, but Your Holiness said that a young child does not incur sin if he commits a wrong. How can that be? If fire scorches a child in spite of its ignorance, so must Adharma injure a child in spite of its ignorance.

HH: And so it does. That is why a large number of Samskaras of purificatory rites are prescribed to be performed for the child, and that is why the parents of the child are enjoined the duty of safe-guarding its spiritual interests. As the parents have to feed a child which cannot feed itself, so have they to look after its spiritual interests also till it is able to take care of them. If the parents neglect to take care of their child[’s health], they incur sin and the child grows weak and sickly. If the parents neglect to take care of its spiritual interests, here again they incur sin and the child is seriously crippled spiritually. So adharma does injure a child. 

G: But your Holiness mentioned before that a child is saved from incurring sin because of its ignorance.

HH: Not exactly so. The child is saved because of its incapacity to know, that is what I said.

G: Whatever it be, the child incurs no sin but does not escape injury. How can that be? If there is no sin, there can be no resultant injury.

HH: That is quite true. But I did not say that the injury it now sustains is the result of the present act of committing a wrong. It is but a part of the major Karma (i.e. actions in the past life) that gave the child its birth as the child of such parents. The immediate neglect by the parents is the occasion and not the cause of the injury, just as proximity to fire is the occasion and not the Karmic cause of scorching. If we relate, as cause and effect, the culpable neglect by the parents and the injury sustained by the innocent child, we will be attributing to God flagrant illogicality, if not deliberate inhumaneness. 

(i.e. it appears that the child suffers due to its parent’s error, but that would mean that one individual suffers due to the moral actions of another, which would be unjust of God. We can only infer that the child suffers now due to its own actions in a past life).

G: Really so. But if because of its incapacity to knowledge the child is exempt from sin for his present actions, is it not reasonable to expect that the period of childhood be equally exempt from the results of sin committed in previous lives?

H.H: Certainly not. To commit a sin, it is necessary to have the capacity to discriminate between right and wrong; and this comes only a few years after birth. But to suffer the result of sin, only the capacity to suffer is required; and this capacity, namely, the sense of pain and pleasure, is never absent from the child, even when it is in the womb. Once the former capacity of discrimination is attained, the responsibility for his actions immediately attaches itself to him. The fact that he allows that capacity to sleep by reason of ignorance will not lessen that responsibility.

G: Is there no difference between the culpabilities of the one who does not know and therefore errs and of another who does know and yet errs?

HH: There is a lot of difference, but that is a thing which the latter has to take note of and of which the former cannot take advantage. There is no doubt that the man who knows and yet errs is a greater sinner, but that is no satisfaction, much less an excuse, for the man who prefers to continue in ignorance and in error. 

(HH at last admits that G’s initial remark that those who sin knowingly are more culpable was indeed correct! As to why HH went into a long discussion to finally agree with G, one can only assume that it was because HH perceived a complacency in G with regards to the performance of Dharma, and wanted to impress upon him the importance of the practice of Dharma.)
 
 
(Will continue in next part)