Talk:Objections to the Doctrine of Karm and Responses:Karm and Human Apathy

By Vishal Agarwal

Objection: Believing in the Law of Karm promotes apathy towards those who are suffering. If I see someone in pain, why should I help him? After all, he is suffering the fruit of his own Karm. And I do not want to interfere in the Divinely upheld Law of Karm by helping him alleviate his pain.

Response: Hindu Dharm exhorts us to show compassion (Dayā), serve others (Sevā), and to be humble (Vinaya). Believing that the suffering person must have performed evil actions while you have not ignores a critical truth: the fruits of actions appear with an indeterminate time lag. You may have performed worse actions than the person who is now suffering, but his lesser Karm has ripened before yours.

Judgment of such matters is the prerogative of the Divine. Our responsibility is to help others and alleviate their suffering in every way we can. Ignoring suffering is a form of bad Karm in itself, which will inevitably bear painful consequences. Just as we forget our comfort for those we love, we must expand that same love toward others, seeing the Divine (Īśvara) in all beings—and not hide behind the false idea that helping others violates Divine law.

“When we see a beggar, we can be certain that he is experiencing the effect of a cause he has instigated in a previous life. Probably he refused charity to someone who was desperately in need of it, and now a compassionate Nature is giving him a chance to be on the receiving end and thus balance his debts. Of course, this does not mean that you should not help him. Your duty if you have the money and the means, is to help him to your fullest capacity. It is not your duty to judge his worth or otherwise. If you refuse to help him, you will be starting another cycle of cause and effect, which you will have to experience.

Instead of trying to balance the pros and cons yourself, all you have to do is help the beggar if you have the means to do it without questioning his worth or his past karm. This is not your problem. Your problem is to make sure that you do not take in more negative karm by refusing to help a person who appears to be in need. Whether or not he deserves to be helped is not your problem.

Naturally, we are bound to see a selfish person as a selfish person and a murderer as a murderer, but we are not the ones to judge them. We cannot see the karmic debt that is being paid off by the selfishness and the murder. This does not mean that we should not act in the way that is appropriate to the situation. We can and must call the murderer to task and hand him over to the police, but that is all that we are called upon to do. The moment we start judging him from the human point of view, we become involved in the process of cause and effect. In every situation, you can either look at it from the angle of your higher Self or your personality, your lower human self.”