One of the questions that one comes across often from kids is – If God exists, how come there is so much bad in this world?

One can understand kids asking this question since kids are usually told by parents that if they behave well, God will reward them and if they behave badly, God is scold them. However, what is interesting is that even grown-up adults ask this question to prove a point that because there is bad in this world, God does not exist. This question presupposes certain assumptions that are present within our understanding of the words “God” and “Good” which are really questionable in themselves. Let me elaborate.

Key question that comes about from such an understanding of God is – IS GOD GOOD? Forget how a kid will respond to this question but is this question itself rightly framed? People seem to believe that God must do good things only and bad is therefore done by XXX. There is no concept of evil or Satan in Indian scriptures – so who really is the reason for bad in this world? ….. Silence…. We do not really know and hence we either attribute the so-called “bad” also to God or we conclude that God itself does not exist. There is therefore a need to get a little deeper into this predicament.

Let me start with a shock value statement from the Gita –

I am the Gambling of the cheat

This means that the gambling instinct present within people who cheat others is an attribute of Krishna present within the people having a cheating instinct. In the Bhagavatam, Krishna as a kid is shown to steal butter from other people’s houses. How can God be a thief? Even in the Rudram chant, there is a shloka which states that Shiva is the thief of thieves. How can a good God play roles like these and still be venerated by lakhs of people across India? Surely, a thief cannot be good or a gambler cannot be good by any stretch of imagination. Do we therefore conclude that at least in certain situations, God is not good? This however brings us to a more difficult question – what is Good? To understand this, the following story from Srimad Bhagavatam may be relevant:

The king Shibi Chakravarthy was famous for his truthfulness, justice, and keeping his word. The king of righteousness, Dharmaraj, himself decided to test the strength of character of Shibi Chakravarthy.
Once when the king was alone on the terrace of his palace, he saw one dove coming towards him with great speed. An eagle was after him, and to escape from the clutches of the chasing eagle the dove made frantic effort to hide some-where. Seeing the king on the terrace, the frightened dove took shelter in his lap. The dove said, “O king, save my life, I have come under your shelter.”

The king had vowed to protect anyone who took his shelter. Thus the weak and deprived could not be exploited by the rich and strong. However, this was a new experience for Shibi Chakravarthy. Was he in any way obliged to protect a bird who seeks his refuge? Contemplating for a while, the king decided that even trees, animals, and birds require protection and help as do human beings.

Therefore, the king said, “Have no fear my son. That eagle would not be able to touch even your feather. Relax in peace, have no worries.” So saying the king readied himself to face the rapidly approaching eagle. The eagle landed in front of the king and said, “O king, you have hidden my prey. Please release him so that I can appease my hunger.”

The righteous king saw the point in eagle’s demand. He faced a peculiar dilemma of protecting the dove, and at the same time not to deprive the eagle of his rightful prey! He decided to resolve the issue by offering the eagle equal amount of meat from his kitchen. But the eagle insisted on having his prey -the dove – as his food. After some discussion the eagle agreed to set the dove free on two conditions.

The eagle said, “O King, I shall let the dove go, if equal weight of flesh from your body is offered to me as food.”

Shibi Chakravarthy was quite pleased with the adjustment. He thought that a pound (or two) of flesh from his body would not kill him and the life of the dove in his shelter would also be saved.
Thus he was happy that he was saved from a great sin of ‘inability to protect the weak’.

The eagle then put his second condition, saying, “O king, if a single tear drops from your eye I shall be constrained to accept your flesh as my food.” The king agreed and called for the knives and the balance. In one pan of the balance the dove was kept and on the other side a large chunk of flesh from the right thigh of Shibi Chakravarthy. But strange as it might seem, the pan with the dove always weighed more even as additional flesh was added! Thus almost whole of the right half of the king’s body was cut. Still the weight could not be equalled.

At this juncture a drop of tear appeared in the left eye of the king. The eagle objected to this saying, “O king, I cannot accept the food given in distress. The tear in your eye shows that you are unhappy. So give me my prey back and you shall regain your normal health.”

With a faint smile on his lips, Shibi Chakravarthy said, “Behold, O eagle, the left eye is not crying out of grief; this is a tear of joy. Now my left half of the body will also be used to honour the word I have given to you. Otherwise, if only right had satisfied you, the left half of the body would have been denied this great opportunity of sacrifice! Therefore, my dear friend, the left eye cries out of joy!”

This ultimate sacrifice of Shibi Chakravarthy was unparalleled in the history. The eagle and the dove disappeared and in their places stood the King of righteousness -Dharmaraj and the king of heavens –the Indra. Gods from the heavens showered flowers, perfumes, and praise on the king. They granted many boons to this noble king

The king Shibi Chakravarthy had passed the ultimate test to uphold Dharma, a true duty of every king. It is said that this king ruled for many years and after his death went directly to heaven to enjoy the fruits of his righteous karma.

While the story may have ended happily, key issues raised in the story is the classic Dharma Sankat situation faced by the king. When the king was therefore saving the dove, he was being cruel to the Eagle. King was therefore really bad since legitimate prey is being kept away from the eagle. The dove on the other hand will label the king as good. So was the king good or bad? If we cannot clearly answer this simple question applicable to a day to day situation as conveyed by the story, how can we say that God is good when the meaning of the good itself is unclear?

To make this clearer, I describe below an imaginary dialogue between a kid and an informed parent:

Kid: I want the entire world to become good.

Parent: What do you mean by Good, my girl?

Kid: I want all people to be rich.

Parent: What do you mean by rich? Should everyone have 1 crore with them, 2 crores with them, 10 crores with them?

Kid: All people should have Rupees 10 crores in their account.

Parent: But my girl, this sum makes senses only if you also are aware of living costs. What is one loaf of bread costs Rs 1 crore? In such a case, all this person can buy is ten loaves of bread. Is that sufficient?

Kid: OK – I want all people to be able to own cars.

Parents: If all people own cars, there may be huge traffic jams on the road and besides, it will have a huge negative impact to our environment. Is this good or bad?

Kid: OK – I want all people to own electric cars.

Parents: For electricity, we again will take from nature in the form of fossil fuel which will deplete the earth’s resources. Even if you say that solar power may be used, the body of car will involve depletion of earth’s resources since car is made from iron, aluminium and other metals. Is owing cars therefore good or bad?

Kid: OK – it does not matter if people do not own cars but at least there must be no killing in this world.

Parent: If a police kills a murderer, is this good or bad?

Kid: Of course it is good. What I meant is that the world must not have any terrorists.

Parent: While you may be right in this case, you must also understand that when a terrorist kills people, he actually believes that it is a good thing. While others in the world may be happy with the way of the world, the terrorist remains unhappy and justifies this as the basis to execute his action. Clearly, the terrorist seems to feel that the world is bad which is why he wants to execute a terrorist action.  So is your view that the world is good is correct or the opposite view of the terrorist?

Kid: But why is there hatred in the minds of people? Why has God put hatred in the minds of people? Why can there not be just love for all people? At least then there will be no killing.

Parent: You have indeed made a good point. In your class, there are at least 5 people you have told me in the past whom you hate because they trouble you. I am not aware how many people you also trouble. But let us keep that aside – did God tell you to hate those 5 people? The decision to hate them is yours only – why do you blame God for creating hatred in your mind?

Kid: But those kids trouble me and hence I hate them. But if they had behaved nicely with me, I would not have hated them.

Parent: In a small class if there is hatred, I hope you can understand why there are reasons for hatred in the minds of crores of people within the world. Further, the attitude to assign the cause of this hatred to God is simplistic since it is not God who isactually telling you to hate people or love people.

I can continue the above dialogue but I trust you have got the drift of the argument. Many of us may not have really thought through what we really mean by Good or Bad but make statements attributing God to all the problems of this world instead of at least taking the blame on ourselves for the miseries in this world.

So you may ask – Is God good or not? Am I saying that God is actually bad? In the Gita, let us see how Krishna describes himself –

I am the Father of the universe and its Mother; I am its Nourisher and its Grandfather; I am the Knowable and the Pure; I am Om; and I am the Sacred Scriptures. I am the Goal, the Sustainer, the Lord, the Witness, the Home, the Shelter, the Lover and the Origin; I am Life and Death; I am the Fountain and the Seed Imperishable. I am the Heat of the Sun, I release and hold back the Rains. I am Death and Immortality; I am Being and Not-Being.

Nowhere is Krishna stating that He is good or bad. Krishna further adds in Chapter 10 of the Gita –

Neither the professors of divinity nor the great ascetics know My origin, for I am the source of them all. He who knows Me as the unborn, without beginning, the Lord of the universe, he, stripped of his delusion, becomes free from all conceivable sin. Intelligence, wisdom, non-illusion, forgiveness, truth, self-control, calmness, pleasure, pain, birth, death, fear and fearlessness; Harmlessness, equanimity, contentment, austerity, beneficence, fame and failure, all these, the characteristics of beings, spring from Me only. I am the source of all; from Me everything flows. Therefore the wise worship Me with unchanging devotion.

Once again, Krishna is not saying that He is good or bad. But he says something more interesting. Krishna says that everything in the world flows from Him since He is the source of all. What is fascinating is that even pain, fear, death, failure, etc. which are the so-called negative attributes also flow from him. Does this line mean that miseries of the world need to be attributed to HIM? Before we answer this, let us at least agree that God is neither good nor bad OR He is both Good and Bad. More closer to the truth is that good and bad are relative truths but not absolute truths. Good and bad are really contextual and vary from time to time and place to place. WHEREVER THERE IS GOOD, THERE IS BAD ALSO.

There is a story in Mahabharata when Drona puts a test to Yudhistira and Duryodhana after their education is over. Drona asks both of them to take a horse and go around a few villages for a few days and come back to report their observations. Duryodhana returns and tells his Guru that the world is a selfish place with selfish people who would always like to cheat one another. He therefore felt that world is a very bad place with bad people. Yudhistira on the other hand returns with a view that the world is a beautiful place where people are very helpful to one another and do not let anyone else be hungry once they come to know about it. Yudhistira feels that the world is a beautiful place with a lot of good people. The world view thus is also a factor of our own mind and what it projects outside – is it not?

You may now raise a question – how do we understand God? Or closer to where we started this discussion – why is the world what it is? It will be difficult for us to imagine given our ignorance of the reality of the world. However, using the words used by Krishna, we are free to make a working hypothesis using our imagination. So what did Krishna tell us in the Gita? Among other things, Krishna told us that HE is the father as well as mother of us all. We can picture a world like a playground where Krishna has left us to play. Krishna does not interfere since He is a strong believer of freedom of speech, freedom of action and freedom to experience all types of experiences in the playground. He has left us in this world to have as much fun as we would like to have. As we Jivas experience the joys of playing in this playground, somewhere and on some day, we have forgotten the fact that it is Krishna who sent us in this playground. Once we have lost our connection with Krishna and forgotten that we are in this playground thanks to Krishna, we develop Ahamkaar (selfish ego) and start fighting with other kids in the playground. Till we were fully conscious of our parents’ eyes watching all our actions, we are well behaved but the moment we sever this connection with Krishna, our ego takes over our actions. This is the time emotions like good and bad get created. If a kid allows us to play, we say that the world is good but the moment another kid stops us from playing, we bring the label of bad to this world. The world is thus a playground where all emotions are happening simultaneously where both good and bad co-exist simultaneously.

So the moot question is – why does our world have miseries? I will now bring out an analogy here that may be useful here. Suppose we have a mobile phone and are standing close to a mobile tower. The signal on our phone will be maximum and this will ensure that we are able to use our phone most effectively at this place. The farther we move away from the mobile tower and enter a hilly place within a forest area, the mobile stops receiving the signal and therefore will not be helpful to its user. The mobile remains the same but its performance depends on the quality of signal that it receives from the mobile tower. We can imagine the people of the world also in a similar way. If a person is close to God meaning that he or she is full of love and is of the firm opinion that all people are one or belong to the same family, such people who are full of godliness tend to live a life of Dharma helping others and making the world a better place. On the other hand, people who see themselves as distinct entities separate from the other and not believing in the family connection of all of life act only to feed their stomachs and thereby create problems for the others. Just like a mobile in the forest, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the latter person since Krishna dwells in this person also in equal measure (like ability of mobile to receive the signal). However, Krishna also allows freedom of experience and this Duryodhana like person can create havoc in his environment owing to his limited world view. Miseries are thus brought about by people who live a life of Adharma just like the mobile in the forest which is unable to work or live as per its real possibility.

Now you may argue that a person doing Dharma may be labelled good and the other one bad. But this should not be done. If one reads the Indian Itihasa or Purana story closely, the stories always focus on acquisition of Dharma. The key focus is always to follow Dharma and the various Devas, Kings, people, etc. are only respected if they uphold Dharma. So what is this Dharma? DHARMA is one of the most intractable terms of the Indian Philosophy. Dharma denotes “that which holds together the different aspects and qualities of an object into a whole”. While a loose translation of the word has found various meanings – Duty, Righteousness, morality, etc. – a closer definition of this word has been given as “that which makes a thing or being what it is”. Accordingly, Dharma of the Sun is to provide heat & light and thereby sustain life; Dharma of a tree is to give fruits/ flowers. If one stands below a large Banyan tree that gives shade to people below it and place for many birds to lay many nests within its branches, is the Tree good? The tree is merely living its nature and this is what we mean by the tree merely doing its Dharma. But merely by doing its Dharma, it is helping a large number of people and birds and animals.

A human being must also therefore focus on Dharma meaning that he or she must live her or his own real nature. In whatever role we are in or in whatever role we perform, we must perform this to be best of our ability. If I am a carpenter, we must strive to be the best carpenter, if we play the role of husband, we must strive hard to protect the family and keep all together by showering all with love, if we play the role of a CEO, we must work in the interest of both shareholders as well as employees in a lawful manner. One can go on and on. Apart from Jati Dharma, there is also a general Manushya Dharma that applies to all people. As a true Manushya, our real Dharma may be given as below that is in tune with our real Krishna nature:

1. Understand the integrity and connection between all of life and experiences the ONENESS of all of life (humans, plants & animals).
2. In all situations, we undertake such actions as will be deemed as most objective and appropriate to the situation at hand.
3. All our actions are really unselfish and done with the intention of maximum benefit of society and not with the intent of greed and personal aggrandizement.

You may then ask – Does this mean that God has created a world where he has left us to play where both Dharma and Adharma co-exist? This means that people doing Adharma continue to behave like this forever and there is no check on such people. The answer is – there is a check; this check is called the Law of Karma. This is again a long topic and I have already used too many words. I will therefore merely state that Law of Karma is a law of checks and balances where both unselfish actions and selfish actions gain points where the former gives positive points while the latter gives negative points. For positive points, man benefits from good experiences (good position, monetary benefits, good family, etc) while for negative points, the person suffers (disease, fear, anxiety, losses, etc). These consequences may be experienced both in this body and after death. Most modern Hindus do not know that life in Swarga (Heaven) or Naraka (Hell) are temporary in the sense that post death, a person with positive points will get to spend time in heaven while those with negative points get to spend time in hell. However, once these points are exhausted, people are sent back to Mrithya Loka (earth) to re-live their life again in their journey to get back to their real Paramatma nature (Moksha, Kaivalya, etc). All good or bad consequences of any action have benefits or losses but both consequences are temporary and one has to again re-live again and again till one gets the real purpose of life. This is the real Hindu idea of life as per scriptures.

Many of you know Ramayana. Many of you will then also label Rama as good and Ravana as bad. While this understanding is fine when one is a kid, one must note that Ramayana is actually a book of Adhyatma and not a simple good vs evil story. For people who know Ravana as a bad man, do also note that Ravana is actually is a Brahmana while Rama is a Kshtatriya. Ravana is also a great Bhakta of Shiva and also a every educated and smart person of his age. Equally, he strayed from his true character and got killed. But there is another story behind this. Jaya and Vijaya were two doorkeepers of Vaikuntha. Once when Sanatkumaras came to meet Narayana at Vaikuntha, these door keepers stopped them from entering Vaikuntha. Now no one in the world can and must attempt to stop the Sanatkumaras but because of the silly act of Jaya and Vijaya, they got cursed by Sanatkumars to be born on Earth. Realizing their foolishness, they sought forgiveness of both the Sanatkumaras and Narayana Himself. Narayana then offered them two choices – they can either take thousands of births on Earth as noble souls and return to Vaikuntha after these numerous lives or they will be born as Vishnu-haters for three lives only. Jaya and Vijaya chose the latter since keeping away from Vishnu for three lives only was preferable than thousands of births on Earth. This Jaya and Vijaya were thus born as Hiranyayakshu and Hiranyakashyapa (and were killed by Vishnu) and were born again as Ravana and Kumbhakarna (and were killed by Vishnu as Rama). Ravana’s hatred for Rama was therefore the boon he took from Narayana Himself and even as Ravana, he was really a Rama Bhakta since he was thinking of Rama ever since he kidnapped Sita. Sita kidnapping was thus just an excuse to get killed by Rama as early as possible. The third life was that of Kamsa and Shishupala. One can appreciate that the Law of Karma indeed operates in inscrutable ways and one cannot make superficial childish assessment of stories of the Puranas as simple good vs evil stories. But I may have digressed significantly and I will conclude with one last paragraph.

I assume you will at least agree now that looking at the world in a simplistic “good vs bad” prism is childish. Instead, one must understand God by relating God to a beautiful and caring mother who looks at all her children equally even though all children may not behave in the same way. If one of her kids is badly behaved, she will initially encourage other more mature kids to behave nicely with this badly behaved child so as to allow the badly behaved child to learn from others. If this does not work, she will talk nicely to her badly behaved child encouraging him to behave nicely with other kids. If this does not work, this loving mother will scold the badly behaved child. If this also does not work, as a last resort, she will take the badly behaved child away from other kids and place him in a boarding school. God behaves like a mother to all HIS kids. In the spirit of freedom of experience, action and expression, God allows all his kids to live the way they want but He keeps a close eyes of all his kids. Living within all HIS children, God similarly experiences joy in the minds of the kids as well as pain the minds of other kids. However, for kids who behave badly, after giving them enough opportunity, God moves them to another life (like a new boarding school) and thereby gives them another chance to improve. This movement from life to life goes on and on till eventually the child grows up to learn the wisdom of Dharma and with this becomes one with Paramatma at the end.

 

Om Tat Sat

(PS – the writing above cannot answer all questions. It merely seeks to provide an alternative perspective so as to encourage readers to start looking at our scriptures with renewed interest and vigour. Keeping sensible friends, reading scriptures and continuous thinking on such topics will eventually lead us to truth).