The problem of evil - Sankara, Jesus, Buddha and Caitanya

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

The simple fact is there is no reason/logic behind why some people suffer while some others sail through life with little or no pain. Loving or not loving God has nothing to do with it.

Some people want to link love of God with absence of pain (i.e. karmic reactions). This is not necessarily true, as there are various qualities of love, and accordingly papa-karmas will remain and some must be exhausted through fruition.

 

[gHari]

Pete,

 

I think you stay around because somehow deep inside you have developed some humility. The false ego sometimes thinks it can understand and criticize Sri Krsna, but deep inside you know well that all is very very complicated and these involved and seemingly drastic plans of God's are quite beyond our ability to comprehend.

 

If we are trying to follow Sri Krsna, then when we stub our toe we immediately stop and chant "Nityananda-Gauranga", for something is clearly wrong. Most people who are not as attuned to the Lord will need much more than a bang in the toe to get them to change their destructive behaviours.

 

You can understand the spectrum of karmic reactions when considering it as a bit in the mouth of a horse. To change direction sharply or quickly, the reins must be pulled hard. If the horse is running in the wrong direction, the horseman must yank the reins very hard. If the horse does not alter its course absolutely in sync with the reins then the bit will produce pain - until it conforms. The more obstinent the horse, the more pain will be experienced. A really diabolical horse will run right off the mile high cliff because it cannot respond to the directions of the bit in time.

 

Finally the wild horse is tamed, and a gentle relationship develops between it and the rider where the slightest desire of the reins is gladly executed by the horse as if second nature.

 

Please consider: if I put my hand in a fire, it hurts. But actually it is GOOD that it hurts! If it didn't hurt, I might leave my hand there and it would eventually be burned to ashes. So karma, both positive and negative reinforcement is Krsna's mercy. It is all factually Krsna's mercy.

 

No matter what happens, we should consider ourselves fortunate to have encountered Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Krsna's Holy Names, and in all humility receive the mercy of Sri Krsna with an open heart.

 

gHari

[theist]

I wonder if the idea of evil is even perceivable from the absolute plane.

[pete1]

Originally posted by gHari:

Pete,

 

If we are trying to follow Sri Krsna, then when we stub our toe we immediately stop and chant "Nityananda-Gauranga", for something is clearly wrong.gHari

When I start chanting and folowing again, suddenly everything arround me begins to go wrong, not just ones but every time. So much so,that I am afraid to start again.

 

 

Originally posted by gHari:

You can understand the spectrum of karmic reactions ....gHari

I do understand the idea of karma,my question is why ? In your story with the horse, you describe how the horse is forced to surrender and how its free will is slowly broken by the rider. Finally the rider and the horse go on with each other, but not until the horse is conditioned by the rider to submit.

 

Love based on force and pain ? I know the soul is supposed to come out of all this undamaged, but the soul does feel any pain, mental and physical whilest in the body and suffers terrible consequenses to his actions,because he is allowed (unstopped) to commit these original karmic activities in the first place.

 

 

[gHari]

Pete, I don't think that you're saying that because you can't see some pleasant reason for all the bad stuff, then there must just be no wonderful reason. Surely when you look into the night sky in the countryside at the billions of stars you don't think you should know why they are all there.

 

I think the way past your dilemma is humility. Gaze at the stars, become a spec again. Make that mind a spec again; a dog at the foot of his master.

 

I have noticed that when anarthas have eventually disappeared, that near the end they often became particularly unenjoyable. A case in point was my messing up my thumb playing golf. Now I factually don't care if I ever play again, but while it was still a thrill, my attachment would not let me see what a waste of time it was?

 

When things go wrong, I usually assume that what I am doing is not Krsna's desire. Chanting will place the atman in charge, but still some residual false little egos will out of habit try to interfere. During the battle for each time slot, some little egos are bound to be defeated by the atman or each other, and with only one arm and a leg remaining, they will find their old pastimes difficult to execute with the previous precise pleasure levels.

 

But it's all Krsna's mercy. We have to see that with our intelligence or simply accept from authorities like Srila Prabhupada or Lord Krsna, Himself. He is our best friend. Everyone's.

[Guest guest]

What is the original sin ? Adam eating the apple. Why did eve get lured in to accepting the apple from the satan ? We get in to origin problem in Vaishnavism also. Is it not inexplicable why there is a false in the first place ?

 

 

[theist]

Isn't the original sin the desire to be the prime enjoyer?

 

The forbidden fruit wasn't an apple ram.It was the knowledge of good and evil(duality).

 

[This message has been edited by theist (edited 07-03-2002).]

[radharani]

Originally posted by pete1:

I do understand the idea of karma,my question is why ? In your story with the horse, you describe how the horse is forced to surrender and how its free will is slowly broken by the rider. Finally the rider and the horse go on with each other, but not until the horse is conditioned by the rider to submit.

 

Love based on force and pain ? I know the soul is supposed to come out of all this undamaged, but the soul does feel any pain, mental and physical whilest in the body and suffers terrible consequenses to his actions,because he is allowed (unstopped) to commit these original karmic activities in the first place.

 

 

when babies' teeth grow, it hurts

 

 

[pete1]

Thank you Ghari prabhu, but become a speck again ?

 

"Like children so you shall become" the problem with that is that you make yourself vulnerable. In a meek and humble state its is difficult to confront. One is the teacher and the other one is preconditioning himself not to be upfront when things seem to be a little difficult to believe. One is supposed to please the teacher, so no one dares to say anything and everyone just nodds their heads even when things get really stupid.

 

"in a class in Germany years ago, the temple president said "If Hitler and Gobles would have done what they did for Krishna, it would have been okay" No one protested, why ? We where all like a bunch of coneheads, with no mind of our own.(about 80 devotees in class)

 

Humble before God ? Yes why not, but this does not automatically solve my moral dilemma, seeing the souls of humans and animals alike, suffering beyond anyones comprehension and understanding how an all loving always smiling God fits in to that.

 

If I can pass this hurdle and get an understanding other (deeper) then karma, prison house,rebellious souls e.g. I might be able to pick up where I left and continue with my spiritual life.

[gHari]

Originally posted by pete1:

[...] If I can pass this hurdle and get an understanding other (deeper) then karma, prison house,rebellious souls e.g. I might be able to pick up where I left and continue with my spiritual life.

But why are you in this spiritual discussion group if you don't believe in God?

[Guest guest]

Originally posted by gHari:

But why are you in this spiritual discussion group if you don't believe in God?

hare krishna gHari prabhu. You might be having unshaking faith even though you cannot answer some of the questions sastrically. As per Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhantha, this MAY be the position of a madhyamAdhikAri. A kanishtA may be swayed by powerful arguments from otherside. Instead of training your guns on the such people and asking them to go away, it is better to acknowledge our inability to answer them and start cultivating knowledge that is necessary answer such questions. One progresses to the level of uttamAdhikAri only by deliberations according to NOI.

 

This is just my humble opinion.

 

 

[pete1]

I used to have all the answers myself, until I realised that I was just like a parrot. Fact is that I dont know in reality. I love the devotees, well, not all of them but most and I have experience good and bad in their association as we all have.

 

I am consistantly set back spiritually,sometimes for a long time and sometimes just for a while when things happen which affect my personal or material life in a bad and negative way. Since my past experience tells me that it seems to accelerate when I approach Krishna Consciousness I developed a certain reluctance to make just another start and again watch my life crumble arround me.

 

Normally I might not mind so much about this if it wasnt for the fact that my only shelter would be the devotees and temple life. The devotees are always fighting there are politics and so many other issues which prevent me from "surrendering"

Therefore I hang on to my miserable existance in the "karmi world"

 

It would take me a long time to make a new start anyway and my present situation is such that I am "right inside the dark well of householder life bound by the robes of attachment" I have realised,that I am a failure materially and spiritually and that I have nothing to offer to either side.The feeling inside me is one of great emptiness, because of my own shortcomings lack of faith and the non ability of the vaisnavas all over the world to make peace with each other.

 

To answer your question yes, I believe in God, but this does not mean that I have to be blindly accepting everything and that from the moment one believes that there are no more questions, my questions have increased and it is because Krishna is so lovely loving and attractive that this alone creates questions inside me as to why he has created the system the way it is.

 

What I am saying is that there must be a deeper or greater reason behind the creation. Answers like prisonhouse, rehabillitation for the soul, criminals being punished e.g.might be sufficient in the beginning, but the whole thing is so complex and puzzeling that It is not enough for me anymore. The reason is because the suffering experienced by humans or animals alike is mind boggeling and to much to comprehend to be seen as a simple punishment for just "wanting to be seperate from God" or as the other explanation goes that we have just glanced from the tatastha region over the material plane and that was enough for us to come here. Others who have glanced over the spiritual world instead went straight away there. Neither of the two "why we have come here ideas" seem to contain enough sinful reasons to justify millions of years in the material world, experiencing the kind of suffering some have to go through.

 

Having being a devotee for so many years and ending up with a dilemma that would have been previously easily solved with a standard KC answer, bugs me, I can not see the answer and I am stuck

 

 

[radharani]

I have similar experiences as you, Pete, I just keep trying, what else is there to do? I am drawn to Krsna consciousness because it is the largest spiritual community that I am mostly in agreement with (I dont see using cow's milk as moral, though) but I am drawn to a certain mystery, that maybe there is something to learn here that I cant learn anywhere else. I dont agree with everything, and I dont like every truth that I believe I discover in the process, but if it's true, then I want to know it (or at least I think I do). New truths and new levels of truth are probably still to be discovered. I dont see why anything would have to be set in stone, even within Krsna consciousness. The goal for me (and for humanity), I thought,

is to evolve to a greater level of consciousness, I got the impression that's what Krsna consciousness was about, so it would make sense that Krsna would continue to reveal more and more as humanity becomes

capable of perceiving it.

[radharani]

Imagine someone trying to explain how wonderful prasadam is to a 700 BC barbarian. He'd say, what, you call this food. Give me some meat! Oh wait, people still do that.

[gHari]

Ram. I was not asking anyone to leave. I was trying to let Pete admit that he loves Krsna. He knows Krsna is the Cause of all causes and All that is. He is a devotee. He will soon overcome his doubts, for Krsna's devotee is never vanquished.

[gHari]

Johnnie the Junkie thought he bought a bag of smack. He was totally elated.

 

The powder in the bag turned out to be toilet bowl cleanser and Johnnie ended up in the hospital with white gue oozing from his mouth and nose. The doctors put Johnnie in a de-tox clinic where he was forced to go without drugs. The physical and mental suffering was unbearable as the withdrawal set in. Johnnie would have done anything to avoid this terror, but he could do nothing about it.

 

This hell lasted weeks, yet eventually Johnnie's physical attachment had subsided, and he had developed a few new interests to beat the psychological addiction.

 

To make a short story shorter: Johnnie gets a job and lives happily ever after.

 

Now, as armchair angels, do we see Johnnie's horror as good or bad?

[radhe]

An article of Sri Aurobindo's on the problem of evil..from his book "Life Divine"

 

http://intyoga.bravepages.com/ld2_14.htm

[gHari]

Since it is the mind that is giving us trouble here, perhaps we should resort to logic. It would seem to be the master for now, instead of Srila Prabhupada's lotus feet.

 

Let us work backwards from the present. What is it that stops me from chanting 24 hours a day? Perhaps we can classify all these things as an attachment to enjoying this temporary body, to be the enjoyer not the enjoyed, or maybe a desire to forget Krsna (perhaps out of envy, perhaps out of boredom, or enmity, or whatever). Is it logical to extrapolate backwards to the beginning of the temporary dance of maya, and by induction assume that the cause of our endless misfortune was indeed this same cause that stills our devotion now?

 

Somehow we are saying that Krsna has not justified His handling of the desperate souls in the material world. Until He does, we are going to be mad at Him, and perhaps even conclude that He does not exist, denying His very Being. Arjuna too had some complaints about what he was expected to do on the battlefield. Lord Krsna spoke at length to vanquish his doubts. Perhaps that conversation will help us too.

 

Can we get to this stage of absolute love:

From Lord Caitanya's Siksataka 8

aslisya va pada-ratam pinastu mam

adarsanam marma-hatam karotu va

yatha tatha va vidadhatu lampato

mat-prana-nathas tu sa eva naparah

 

I know no one but Krsna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles me roughly by His embrace or makes me brokenhearted by not being present before me. He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord unconditionally.