Paapa and Punya - Kanchi Paramacharya Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati

Nobody wants to be known as a sinner, but all the same, we keep transgressing the bounds of morality and disobeying the divine law. We wish to enjoy the fruits of virtue without being morally good and without doing anything meritorious.

Arjuna says to Bhagavan Krishna: "No man wants to commit sin. Even so, Krishna, he does evil again and again. What is it that drives him so?" The Lord replies "It is desire. Yes, it is desire, Arjuna."

We try to gain the object of our desire with no thought of right or wrong (dharma or adharma). Is fire put out by ghee being poured into it? No, it rises higher and higher. Likewise, when we gratify one desire, another, much worse, crops up. Are we to take it, then, that it would be better if our desires were not satisfied? No. Unfulfilled desire causes anger, so too failure to obtain the object we hanker after. Like a rubber ball thrown against the wall such an unsatisfied desire comes back to us in the form of anger and goads us into committing sin. Krishna speaks of such anger as being next only to desire (as an evil).

© Bhavan's Journal (October 31, 2000) published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Munshi Sadan, Mumbai 400 007.  Reprinted with permission.

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