[Advaita-l] REQUEST FOR GUIDANCE

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Maheshji,

Can I put in a slightly different way? In the law of Karma if one is to be held responsible for one's Karma then one has to have the free will. That is why at the end of the discourse of the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna asked Arjuna as to what he (Arjuna) wanted to do. It is another matter how one is judged for one's action.

Now coming to the  issue of A and B, in one case if A could have had the option to kill B or not then he could have exercised his free will. In the second case it could be that A had to kill B in self-defence as otherwise B could have killed A. So no free will is involved unless death or no death is all the same to A. In the third case A could have killed B unintentionally by accident. In another case A could have been compelled to kill B against his own will due to force from a third party but A may yet be responsible for his involvement with the third party. There could be a number of reasons and ways for  A's killing of B and the Karma will be different in each case. One thing is certain that once the action is over then irrespective of whether it is free will or not the action of A got added to his past Karma.

Coming to B what happened to him is ascribed to his destiny or fate or the result of his past Karma. It is not possible for one to analyse this Karma and Karmaphal. As Lord Krishna tells us one has the right to do his karma but not to the Phat (ie. to the result of the Karma)  Hindus believe in divine dispensation of justice. 

All this is at the Vyavaharic level. However when one realises that all actions are done due to one's association with Prakriti then one can dissociate oneself from the effects of actions and there will be no further accumulation of Karmaphal as one will shed the desire for Karmaphal. Then one realises that everything is done by the Mother but not before that. At that stage  one abandons the doership and so also the idea of free will. Thus it appears to me that there is no real conflict between what Shri Chandrasekhara Bharati Mahaswami said and what Ramakrishna Paramamhansa said.

Sincerely

Sunil K. Bhattacharjya



--- On Mon, 5/18/09, Mahesh Ursekar <mahesh.ursekar at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Mahesh Ursekar <mahesh.ursekar at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] REQUEST FOR GUIDANCE
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Monday, May 18, 2009, 10:14 PM

Pranams!

Ah, pity. I was awaiting with baited breath for a succinct answer to that
last question, just like Jaldhar gave to the previous ones!  The article
posted tacitly assumes that free will exists. No justification is given for
the same.

In any case here is my take on the issue: If Sri Ramakrishna is to be
believed, everything is done by the Mother. So, A's killing B is done by the
Mother & so is B's death by A. The standard objection to this is that we can
behave as we like & get away with it by saying, "Oh, God did it, not me!".
But that is like looking at the back of a book for the answer to a question
and saying that you know how to solve it! So, who is the Mother? It is A & B
- all is the Mother. So A is not only the killer but also the killed! It is
ONLY when you *realize* this that you can abandon the idea of free will but
till that time you have no choice but to take responsibility for your
actions!

Assuming free will ends up with lots of problems, the main being that you
need to posit a causeless cause. And if you are a materialist (i.e.
physicist), that's a huge challenge!

If not Sri Ramakrishna, all Master have hinted at the same: Jesus - "Thy
will be done", Mohammand - "Insha Allah", Guru Nanak - I forget the exact
words but it is on similar lines.

Thanks, Mahesh



On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>wrote:

> On Mon, 18 May 2009, Jayaram Subramanian wrote:
>
>    1)Destiny and free-will are two sides of the same coin. For example,
>> if 'A' kills 'B' , is it in B's destiny to be killed by A or is it because A
>> exercised his free will? And if it is B's destiny to be killed by A, how can
>> A be punished for bad karma?
>>
>
>
> You may be interested in the following article on our website which is from
> a discourse by HH Swami Chandrashekhar Bharati of Shrngeri.
>
> http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/articles/The_Riddle_of_Fate_and_Free.htm
>
> --
> Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Archives: http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/
> http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.culture.religion.advaita
>
> To unsubscribe or change your options:
> http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/advaita-l
>
> For assistance, contact:
> listmaster at advaita-vedanta.org
>
>
_______________________________________________
Archives: http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/
http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.culture.religion.advaita

To unsubscribe or change your options:
http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/advaita-l

For assistance, contact:
listmaster at advaita-vedanta.org