Ep.05~ Judging and Acting

“You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work”– Krishna Das

Transcription:

Q:  The woman behind me had asked essentially, about taking direct action versus looking inward and doing the spiritual practice. And I’ve run into that myself.

KD: I don’t know if that’s what she asked exactly but, I don’t know, there is no “versus”, you know? There are not two different things.

Q: Well, that is my question because I have begun to try to look inward and try to develop a spiritual practice, an interest thing has happened, which is, I have become a more passionate, a compassionate person.

KD: You ever hear of a Freudian slip?

Q: Probably that, too actually.

KD: That’s good for you, too. No problem there. Money and sex, who can do without it? Some people think they can.

Q: And so the harshness of the world outside us is there.

KD: Sure.

Q: And it seems to me that direct action is often required or I feel that need to take direct action and we do need to in this world. If somebody came in here, a cruise ship drunkard, we would have to physically remove them.

KD: Maybe.

Q: And so how do we balance looking inward, developing a spiritual practice with also going out in the world and making a difference in the world. That’ my question.

KD: It’s really easy. You do the best, don’t take it away from him, I didn’t forget the word you used. “Challenge.” No, it’s really easy. You do the best you can. That’s it. Now think about that. Just think about it for a second. You do the best you can. What would you like to… how would you modify that statement?

Q: I guess what I’m hearing, sometimes, is don’t take direct action.

KD: You never heard it from me.

Q: Ok, that’s where I got confused, because she was saying these other people that are doing horrible things. Then what I’m hearing is, who are we to judge? And sometimes we have to judge.

KD: No. You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work. If you hate that person, you’ve created a whole drama for yourself. Who knows what you’re going to do out of? Who knows? You might take that to excess. You might kill the person. And you know what they say in the East? They say, if you kill somebody, you give that person the right to kill you for a hundred lifetimes. Karma. You can’t. When you start talking about these things, you can either say, ok there’s no such thing as karma,