I about pooped my pants when I read this in another thread, and it was corroborated by another poster.
What the heck does this mean?
Do you mean the title of this thread? thomas
Yes, sorry.
Two posters in another thread said, “Nothing is right or wrong,” and that things are either appropriate or inappropriate according to the circumstances.
Got you Thomas…
I find I cannot do wrong without a feeling, a strong feeling it carries a bigger sentence than the crime say, I have committed …whatever that sentence is, I don’t know, (unless its very obvious like break the law and you run the risk of court or prison etc)
I just feel it so it corrects me either at the time or later to never do it again…hopefully!!
“There is no right and there is no wrong.”
Is this statement right? Or is it wrong?
Or is it both? Or is it neither?
I think to evaluate that statement in the light of the statement itself, it’s a totally meaningless assertion, and I would agree with that.
I am sure it was then just appropriate for you to just about pooped your pants. 
Thomas, I have a feeling this thread is aimed at me and at what I have said in another thread and in the thread about tolerance. So I’ll try to respond. What is wrong in your eyes due to your upbringing, beliefs, social conditioning, religion, perception etc might not be wrong in my eyes. For example, seppuku (or ritual honour killing in Japan) might be viewed by many as suicide and we might say it is wrong and have many reservations about it. However, in the eyes of the samurai and his clan, there was nothing wrong with what he did, in fact for them he did the “right” thing. I live in a country where there are many cultures, religious beliefs and social differences and they are very obvious. It fuels hate, intolerance and fear when people start to proclaim that everything that I say and do is right and yours is wrong.
And now most people will say to me then how about the rapist and murderer, were their acts also appropriate and my answer will be yes. However “disgusting” we may find what they have done, we do not know their karma and we don’t know what both parties in this act had to learn and from that pov it was appropriate that it happened as it did.
Now, all can go ahead and have a field day in proclaiming how right they are and wrong I am, it will be just appropriate.
To help aid the discussion here, I wanted to add the posts that Thomas is referring to. Thank you for creating a new thread to explore these particular points of interest further
btw, if you click on the little arrows next to any of the three quoted members below, it will take you to the original thread where you can read the whole thing.
[quote=yalgaar;19251]Last few weeks I am working on a business deal. To the best of my knowledge I have not been fair in this deal. “what is fair” is a totally different topic. But for this thread, I believe I am taking full advantage of the situation for my gains, more profits, more returns that are unfair as per my concious mind. Also just so that I can take advantage of this situation and can have upper hand and control, I myself created this situation. To sum it up, I played dirty to make more gains.
This morning when I was doing pranayams, all these thoughts surrounded me completely and I was feeling bad and guilty about my actions. There was some part of me that said I should not be feeling gulity becuase this is business and I have to do it becuase I have needs, family to support, bills to pay. But some part still kept telling me I am doing something “wrong” But then if I don’t do it how will I pay my bills and support my family? How can this be wrong? Also some part of me also tells me “all this is OK” this is how it works. You have to do all this to “survive” But then again something tells me “no I do not have to do all this to survive”
In the end I convince myself, this is all in your mind. Since I went to business school and all the business experience, I learned that business comes first, everyting comes after that.
I also always had interests in religion, spirituality. My parents also always taught me on all wrong you do comes back to you, etc etc. All good you do comes back to you.
So it seems like it is all in your mind on how you were brought up thorugh your life. But what happened, happend, you can’t change it; but what do I do now? I still am at a point where I don’t know the right thing to do?
Do you also go thourgh any thing similar? How to you finally settle down?[/quote]
[quote=InnerAthlete;21280]Hello Yalgaar,
If I understand your question it is “How do I balance a chosen life on the yogic path in the context of modern or current-day living?”.
One of the great benefits I’ve gleened (from my practice) is an ability to think, weigh, decide, then act based on a framework of the path of yoga. This mandates an ever-growing awareness, an urge to grow, and a willingness to change (me). While each thing that arises must certainly be taken on its own merits, case by case, the framework rarely changes.
As Pandara outlines, there is no right and there is no wrong. However there is certainly “what is appropriate for me, in this situation, this moment, based on why I am here on the planet in this body?”. In Purna Yoga™ we are taught that the practice should help us to explore, discover, then live our purpose, our personal mission, our svadharma. Therefore, what is appropriate must vary from one person to the next.
Furthermore, as mentioned elsewhere here, that personal mission fits together like cogs of a wheel with the Yamas, Niyamas, and Kleshas (for a person on the yoga path - not for those not on that path, of course).
If the student - in this case you - is creating disharmony inside the Self then they are surely creating disharmony outside of the Self. That lack of harmony can only lead to suffering and I am speaking about more than a contusion of muscle.
It is, of course very possible to do business, earn a living, feed your family, and have exactly what is needed for YOUR dharma (no less and no more) AND maintain integrity in dealings. One can bargain with great effort without any aggression just as one can powerfully contract their quadriceps without any performing or violence. Neither happens inherently.[/quote]
I guess things in life are never really so black & white. There are always many layers of grey.Like let’s take criminals in jail , you have no idea how they got there or what their life has been up that point.People don’t start off bad. An innocent baby gets corrupted by us unfortunately.Never liked soapboxes anyway myself
I heard the zen(buddhist?) folk maybe say this. There is no right or wrong.They are judgement after all. Or binary oppoistes. I heard Allan Watts mention it i think. He was into Zenn buddhism which appears to be a more stripped down B devoid of ritual of course.Full of paradox etc.
My discussion here is not at all personal or about who made the statement. Two posters made similar statements and no other posters challenged it.
It’s about the statement itself. I have no personal issues with anyone here, except Pawel, because I’m jealous of how easily he does a handstand.
I will look over the comments and respond, but just wanted to make that clear.
There are acts that are objectively wrong. Rape is always wrong. Murder is always wrong. Stealing is always wrong.
There are circumstances that mitigate the guilt or culpability for wrong acts.
If a child was taught to steal by his parents and knew no other way, he would not be culpable for his acts until he reached a certain level of reason and and understanding. But the acts themselves would still be wrong.
I’m not so much interested in the original post that started this, and I don’t think the poster ever went into any detail of what was weighing heavily on his concscience. But if he was stealing, it was wrong. It does no good to counsel a theif with words like, “there is no right and there is no wrong.”
A thief should be told “IT IS WRONG TO STEAL,” period. That’s doing a service to the community, should you convince him, possibly a service to yourself, or you might find yourself without a bike to ride home, and a service to the thief himself, by keeping him out of jail. Giving him an out, or laying some mumbo jumbo on him about moral relativism, does nobody any good, and could cause further harm.
Karma has a cruel twist for the innocent watcher of wrong deeds, I think.
Leaving the watcher/s to suffer the burden of being upset.with their mind in some turmoil. xxx
The moral relativism of zen buddhism(?) that there is no right or wrong seeems to me to be based on the fact that it is a human judgement and so therefore flawed by it’s nature .Like only God can judge, if you like.I’ve got a certain amount from this idea or teaching and so i think there is or can be some truth found in it.
A thief should be told “IT IS WRONG TO STEAL,” period.
Many thiefs assuming they recognise such act as stealing do not need to be told it is wrong.They often perhaps deep down know it of course.They need to understand the implications , and i’m thinking karmic here since this is a yoga forum, and repercussions of their actions.And for that they need to raise the level of their consciousness or awareness which is a transformative act.Clearly it’s not enough, typically, to have it pointed out but that a knowing is raised that the stealing is not from another object but they are of course stealing from themself.Like the act itself carries it’s own debt/merit,i.e implications and simple moral ignorance, the plea i did not know it was wrong is not enough.
We all know stealing is wrong. In philosophy i thhink they call that a tautology or tautological statement.It does’nt really reveal or say anything.The “wrong-doer”, assuming we can judge them as such( playing devil’s advocate here) must understand why and/or how etc… This is a lesson best gained from the doing ratther than from commandments or moral laws laid down by society or based on human judgement.It’s not letting him off ;it’s giving a “wrong doer” a chance to learn from wrong action not through prescription, you must do or not do xyz but from understanding cause & effect deeply( hint spiritually)
There was something Surya said a while ago that resonated with me and i’ve come to quuite similar sounding conclusions-- that is that we all have a sense of what is right or wrong.The challenge of course is acting it out- doing right action. Now i can see why say in Law( i mean man-made Law,scriptural or societal) that the position that ‘ignorance is no defense’ is a reasonable one for a human soceity that judges to operate from.
So i warm to this moral intuiton idea.Inner guru btw i think operates from this vantage pt.- it regulates our action- is morally self-regulatory. It does not need to know. It just does,acts without validation from outside authority or moral concepts.
Sorry if this sounds really kindergarten-ny but the child that regularly steals alot of people’s sweets in the playground would do well to learn he will quickly not make friends not to mention other implications. In fact thee things will not servehim in his living. Even children have a moral sense of right or wrong even if of their culpability is of course much less than adults.So often as hard as it sounds the best most powerful lessons in life,living are learned through the doiing.You act from a pure place and the conceptualisations that can cloud your judgement and inded goood or right action can fall away.At that point you don’t need to conceptualise it ;i.e you just d o good without thinking about it.I believe folk really in touch with God,Inner Guru, real self( as opposed to false or limited self) or spirit do this,act from this place of knowing.Some might call it like or a kind of integrity.
If human judgemt is always flawed then what hope can there be to guide and therefore do good action??. Another agency divine in nature could then be concevibaly operating somewhere somewhow( for those that perhaps don’t immeditaely warm to the idea of a a God or cosmic ordering principle,balance of payments etc etc). Listening to God, prayer , trying to raise your own awareness, not rying to control or evaluate everything with limited mind-based consiousness. Hope this does’nt sound too wooly but that you get the essence of what i am trying to suggest.
This notion of there being no right or wrong has helped me not to judge other actions. Only God can judge. Is this statment itself right or wrong? Well that just seems to me lto be like another of zen buddhism paradoxes but neither.That truth is kind of relative also.Probably partly why buddhism and zen is often critiqued, amongst other reasons, as nihilstic existentially-speaking and philosphically.Perhaps lacking a little meaning or purpose for some.No reall God you mean? which could be a mute point-Whatt? and so on.The idea of a divine agency seeing our actions somehow fuels more belief in the spirit of humanity- to do good, for us all to evolve maybe slowly like myself but steadily. Nothing is lost in “wrong” action. We simply learn, i.e try not to do it again, and become more evolved. As Surya said the wise are not fools because they learn quickly, sometimes after a mere few mistakes, and don’t have to go on endlesly suffering for their mistakes-like the hamster that goes round the wheel but never really goes anywhere.They get off the wheel and realise there are other options, other ways of living,other things they can be doing etc etc.
Thief: Is it wrong for me to continue stealing?
Response: There is no right and there is no wrong.
Would that be a proper response?
[QUOTE=thomas;43051]Thief: Is it wrong for me to continue stealing?
Response: There is no right and there is no wrong.
Would that be a proper response?[/QUOTE]
Actually the resposne should be “why do you steal?”
That could be a response.
But would it be wrong to respond with “There is no right and there is no wrong”?
[QUOTE=Yulaw;43052]Actually the resposne should be “why do you steal?”[/QUOTE]
My response would be to make sure he understood it is wrong to steal. This shows a concern for future victims.
It doesn’t have to be either/or. We can get into the “whys” of his stealing too and see if he can come to understand it and change. But that could take some time. Meanwhile, it would be good to let him know that stealing is wrong, and not muddy the waters or give him an out with a comment like, “there is no right and there is no wrong.” That statement is false, is wrong, and the foundation for more wrong and more mischief, since it could be used to rationalize and excuse.
Ever read Les Mis?rables?
Was it wrong for Jean Valjean to steal?
Would why he stole be important?
Jean Valjean could have asked for the bread.
It was wrong for him to steal it, but there were mitigating circumstances–like the starvation of his sisters’ children. Still–he could have asked, and that option was discussed in the book.
But what of the thief who just wants more stuff? What of the thief who is not starving, not in need, but who is greedy?
We need to give him a seminar to help him with greed?
Fine, but meanwhile, is it wrong to tell him that it’s wrong to steal?
Would it be right to tell him, there is no right and there is no wrong.
That was the context of the discussion in another thread. The poster was worried he was doing something unethical to make a gain, but was told “there is no right and there is no wrong.”
How does that help him stop stealing? Why not say it is wrong to take unfair advantage and wrong to steal?
And note that Jean Valjean went on to steal silver candlesticks from the bishop who befriended him. Can you say that was wrong? Valjean knew it was wrong. Realization of that fact and repentance led him to lead a virtuous life.
Knowledge with awareness and discrimination…differentiation with awareness…
Communication is on duality… can confuse the concepts of totality.
That quote is meant to apply to particular situations where laws that we perceive to be objective do not remain so under particular circumstances.
One of my favorites “sub stories” in the Mahabharata was about a sage who was famous for taking a sacred vow to never tell a lie. Normally you would think that vowing never to tell a lie is magnanimous. However, when he was meditating a group of people ran past him and took shelter in the woods behind him. Moments later 2 robbers appeared and asked the sage as to the whereabouts of the group of people. As he could not lie, he told the robbers exactly where they were as he feared the repercussions of going back on his vow. As a result, the robbers looted the group of people and killed them for good measure.
If he had broken his vow and not told the truth, the group of people would have survived and he would have not suffered the karmic consequences. So what seemed to be right was wrong, and what seemed to be wrong was right, IN THIS SITUATION.