ONLY OUR DUTIES ARE REAL

One may be compassionate, sacrificing and sensible; but, if the one is not courageous enough, he cannot do good to others. While selflessness is generally associated with lack of timidity, extra courage is needed for the right actions, because the momentum of a right action, on its way, tends to scrub off much of the dirt of falsehood sticking to this mundane world.

One can still never be sure of the outcome a right action notwithstanding the compassion, sacrifice sensibility and courage of the one who acts. Call it the necessity of the consent of the God, universal intelligence being ever active and superposing the human action or the prevailing randomness; we are condemned to surrender before some unknown force that rules the world.

Some say, man must act rightly and leave the outcome to the will of God. Others say, the man is entitled to act, but, has no power to influence the outcome. The question is, with how much concern, we should look back on the outcome of our well intentioned actions. A review of the conduct of those men of impeccable character and indomitable will, who always thought of the well of mankind and ever remained busy with it, reveals that the outcome of all our right and righteous actions taken with enough selflessness, compassion, patience, courage and sensibility, making utmost sacrifices, must be viewed with  a view to identifying any shortcomings and errors  that might have crept into our action due to our lack of abilities; but adamantly refusing to get unduly concerned about our lack of authority to ensure an outcome as desired by us.

As human being we can do many things. We can eliminate greed from our behavior; we can act courageously without worrying about the possibility of any damage that may be caused to us; we can make sacrifices and bear pain; we can differentiate what is right or wrong; we can be patient; but, we cannot predict what would happen in future, the future that we have never been familiar with. Our ‘desires’, trespassing into the realm of the absolutely unknown future, have many things fallacious and fictitious about them. Referring to the great thinkers of the past with exemplary conduct, our scriptures say, ‘those who always thought of the good of the mankind and kept themselves busy with’; the scriptures do not talk about what they ‘desired’. ‘Thinking and keeping oneself busy with something’ could be in one’s control and authority, and hence, is independent of the external world; but, no one has any control over his ‘desires’ whenever or wherever and the external word figures in.

We have no right to worry about the outcome of our actions according to something as fallacious as ‘what we desire’; but, we are duty bound to align our actions to something as real as the good of fellow beings, act and review the outcome to find out and analyze the shortcomings of our actions for making improvements and rectifying the errors committed.

PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA

[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]