How Do We Know The Right Way To Act?
Good and Evil
How do we know if we are acting on the right side? There certainly seems to be two sides right? The history of laws and revolutions show us the difference between good and evil exists. Reinforced ideas of good and evil in our society creates a desire to make the right choices. Why does one go to war, but the belief it is a good choice?
Other individuals are totally appalled by the idea of intentionally committing an act of violence. So very quickly, we see a clear line between good and evil gets complicated. Shortly, I talk about rethinking the concept of karma, and how this may help our ability to choose the right action over the wrong. First, its important to touch on how our foundation of good and evil is built as we grew up.
Building Blocks of the Divide
Scientists agree that the distinction between right and wrong is one of the earliest stage of our development. What does that mean for us? It means before we even form an identity we are splitting the world into right and wrong.
It begins in our immediate environment, our home. Little actions test what gets rewarded versus punished. We learn what action those around deem as good and bad. An important note here, early on a lot of our concepts of good and bad are tied to our feelings of pleasure and pain. (which is the earliest stage of our development)
From a very young age our behavior is guided by our understanding of our actions’ consequences. This is happening before we have formal or conscious concepts of good and evil. Yet, we build up internal models of what is right and wrong action.
Our Foundation Gets Buried
As our experience and understanding of the world grows, our concepts of good and evil are further molded. We come to a point when there are so many signals coming from our culture, institutions, and conditioned mind it may be hard to handle. This especially rings true in our modern digital age.
We get anxious about what is the right choice, and often choose inaction instead. Inaction keeps us comfortable, but it keeps us static. Non-evolution sets us up for depression. In a real sense, our actions signal our mind, and thus our body to die. Our body works in utility of the needs demanded of it. So, action is always necessary for life, but how do we act when we don’t know the right choice?
Karma as Principle
Karma provides us a new perspective, or model, to decide between right and wrong action. The common view in the West of karma is getting the deserved consequence of your action. If you do something wrong, a bird splats on you from above. If you do something right, you find $20 on your way home. Although my fingers are crossed on finding $20, this is not the best interpretation of karma.
Karma in its most direct sense from its Buddhist origin is volitional action. Volitional action means acting of your own will(power). Purposely choosing. This idea of karma is built upon the idea of cause and effect. Thousands of years before science, teachers knew actions always have a resulting effect. This foundation of cause and effect is similar to idea of finding $20 for a good deed, but it has different implications for us.
So what do we get when we join volitional action and a world of cause and effect? We find that karma tells us to intentionally act, but act with the faith that every action has a consequence. No matter if we are unclear of the result of our action, our pointed intention shall prevail. Why did we act? Only we know our inner-most intention.
Karma also acknowledges that an action’s effect may be non-physical. (actually they think “everything” is non-physical, but we’ll leave that for another day) This means when we act wrong a bird may not fly over us, but we still have to live with the resulting guilt. We are choosing to live with the inner residue that results from our action. So when we act with a loving intention, it doesn’t matter if the action isn’t’ seen or received well. We still feel at peace with our action.
Of course this spills into our external world too. Our positive and negative actions ripple out into our environment. Are we choosing actions that generate the reality we wish to be in? Do we feel comfortable with the life our actions have resulted in for us? What ripples are we causing?
Flipping Cause and Effect on Its Head
The key karma tries to make clear is that intentional action is necessary. Particularity, intentional action with the knowledge of cause and effect. If you cannot act intuitively, you can intentionally consider the result of your action. One element of this picture important to bring in, is the un-knowableness of your action’s result.
Those teachers who view karma as we’ve described, also generally believe the universe is too mysterious to seriously know an action’s full effect. When we factor in this piece it becomes even more clear how important the intention of our action is. Additionally, the resulting consequence of our action deals not so much with a physical manifestation, but a subjective or personal one. It deals with considering how that action will make you feel about yourself.
From this perspective our concept of good and evil has been totally flipped on its head. At first we learned what is right and wrong from our home-life, then our society, but now…. its on us. We fight for the good by intentionally choosing actions that internally resonate with us. We free ourselves from external authorities, and put faith in ourselves.
The world, right action, good, and evil come into clearer view. We do not have to memorize what things are good and bad from doctrines or our culture. We are not caught in confusion. We do not have to decipher the many layers of our life. Intentionally acting, and being internally aware is all it takes. There is a line between good and evil and exists within you!
So the message here is to act purely. Check in with yourself. Ask how your actions and behavior are making you feel. What are your intentions? Where are they coming from? Did you choose these consciously and freely? It comes down to being aware, being true to yourself, and choosing love.
