Re: Does God Punish?
namaste everyone.
Some thoughts on the question: 'Does God punish?'
• To understand the answer to this question in proper perspective, we might ask a similar question: 'Does the judge punish the criminal?'
• Who actually punishes a criminal? The state? The laws of the state? The administrators of these laws? Or the criminal himself by the act of his crime?
• Obviously, the judge only dispenses justice. In the same way, Ishvara--God, dispenses the fruits of our karma, which is why he is known as phala-dAta.
• The punishment of locking up the criminal in a prison is to make him repent and reform him so he could turn over a new leaf after he is released from the prison.
• The 'punishment' for us of being born in specific circumstances in life is thus a result of our janmAntara karma--karma of a former life, and this confinement is to enable us to reform ourselves so we turn over a new leaf in another life.
• What about the victim in this scenario, who suffered materially/physically/mentally/fatefully? The state's administrative laws try to compensate him (either from the criminal or otherwise); where this compensation is inadequate, we try to seek a spiritual answer in the janmAntara karma of the victim himself.
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1. What about crimes of genocide committed by persons like Hitler?
• What could be the answer to such extreme situations? If God is omniscient and knew about it beforehand, why did he allow it? Why did he create a person like Hitler in the first place? Do we have a perverted God here? If God is omnipotent, why did he not prevent the genocide? If God is omniscient, then that makes him the criminal as well as the victim!
2. What about the puranic stories of God destroying demons en masse, staying divine or taking human avatar? Do we have an angry, revengeful and violent God here?
While we can readily find an answer to our own sufferings and 'punishment' in our inviolable obligation to expend our karmic balance, we can only speculate the answer for the above two situations, depending on the religious traditions we subcribe to.
Perhaps the best way to understand it all is to know about the divine lakShaNas--attributes.
• God's divine attributes are two-fold: svarUpa lakShaNa--essential attributes, and tatasttha lakShaNa--manifest attributes. taittirIya upaniShad indicates what these two kinds of lakShaNas are:
• In its svarUpa lakShaNa--essential qualities,
सत्यं ज्ञानमनन्तं ब्रह्म ।
satyaM jnAnam anantaM brahma |
Brahman as the Transcendental Absolute is 'Real, Consciousness, Infinite'.
• In its tatasttha lakShaNa--manifest attributes,
यतो वा इमानि भूतानि जायन्ते ।
येन जातानि जीवन्ति ।
यत्प्रयन्त्यभिसंविशन्ति ।
yato vA imAni bhUtAni jAyante |
yena jAtAni jIvanti |
yatprayantyabhisaMvishanti |
Brahman is that from which all these beings take birth, that by which they live after being born, that towards which they move and into which they merge.
• To understand the nature of tatasttha lakShaNa, two popular examples are given:
01. A house might be indicated by such a statement as 'the house on whose compoud wall a crow is sitting now.'
02. A river might be indicated by what lies behind 'those cluster of trees'.
Since the house is otherwise unidenfiable and the river is not visible right now, we describe them using indicative objects that are not essentially part of them. Since we cannot know Brahman with our mind or senses, we seek to describe it with its manifest attributes that appear to make him saguNa--qualified.
• Incidentally, saguNa brahman as manifest bhagavAn is usually spoken of with two sets of attributes:
01. jnAnam--Omniscience, aishvaryam--Sovereignty, shakti--energy, balam--Strength, vIryam--Vigour/valour, tejas--Splendour.
02. jnAnam--Omniscience, vairAgyam--Detachment, yashas--Fame, aishvaryam--Sovereignty, shrI--Glory, and dharma--Righteousness.
Understanding the svarUpa and tatasttha lakShaNas of Brahman could throw more light on why everything that happens is described as his lIlA.
रत्नाकरधौतपदां हिमालयकिरीटिनीम् ।
ब्रह्मराजर्षिररत्नाढ्यां वन्दे भारतमातरम् ॥
To her whose feet are washed by the ocean, who wears the Himalayas as her crown, and is adorned with the gems of rishis and kings, to Mother India, do I bow down in respect.
--viShNu purANam
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