Comparing Justice, Karma and the Golden Rule

Comparing Justice, Karma and the Golden Rule
by James E D Cline
20060816

Contemplating three operational principles of relationship strife, that of Justice, of Karma, and of the Golden Rule, provides some interesting insights.

To explore this, let’s have a hypothetical test example, and see how the three principles would compare in its expression’s responses.

Imagine a young man and woman are sitting on a park bench, with their laptop computers, enjoying the nature environment of peace while doing creative work on their computers. He is very happy that he has found a girlfriend, as she is too; and their early efforts have found each other satisfying and a joy being together.

Then down a path comes a pair of bullies, who spot the couple on the park bench. A quick agreement on strategy, then one abruptly appears in front of the young man and gets his attention away from the computer activity. The bully waits long enough to let the young man suddenly see the second bully grab the startled girlfriend, dragging her roughly up and into his burly arms. As the situation sinks into the young man’s awareness, the first bully lets him feel the anguish as the bully relishes the grief, letting the young man’s last thoughts be that as the bully knocks him cold. The bully then stomps on the laptop computers destroying them, momentos for the young man to have when facing life without his new girlfriend.

So, what would Justice do optimally in this situation?

Justice would have the young man report the event to the police. The police would track down the bullies. The bullies would be put in jail for awhile, then freed. No mention of the girlfriend nor computers. The bullies are freed after serving their time in jail, and off they go to look for another couple in a park somewhere, to continue to prove what powerful winners they are. The young man has no computer nor girlfriend, but society says justice has been done, end of subject.

And so what would Karma do optimally in this situation?

For the bullies, they would continually experience in themselves and others, that which they enjoy and value, being suddenly wrested away from them, no reason given. This could go on essentially endlessly, until some new karmic pattern takes its place.

for the girlfriend of the young man, she would experience the pattern of being grabbed away by powerful people, watching the grief expressed by gentler and helpful people while also the gloating assaults of the powerful. Going on until some newer karmic pattern takes its place.

For the young man, perhaps it would consist of continually working long and hard to achieve creative success with computers and women, only to have stranger bullies suddenly drop in and destroy and take it all away from him, over and over again, until a new karmic pattern takes its place.

So, what would the Golden Rule do optimally in this situation?

The Golden Rule is about choosing what kind of karma one wishes to have in the future. The Golden rule works differently for each of the participants of this scenario. For a reminder, the Golden Rule is to treat others in the same way as you would have them treat you. It is as a two edged sword, so to speak, works both ways.

First, the Golden Rule applied to the two bullies. They believe that life is to ever establish who is more powerful, setting hierarchical positioning that way; it is the stuff of life to them, expressed in a myriad of ways. It is all they know, bred born and raised in that tradition, and it is all they can be aware of. They won’t notice kindness, interpreting kindness as a display of weakness and subservience, the nearest equivalent in their world belief pattern. To communicate, one must speak the language of those whom one would communicate with.

Yet, to communicate to them by abuse and upsmanship, would create undesirable karma for oneself. Choose that path at your own peril, enticing as it may seem at the moment. Heads up!

Are they to be treated in the same way as they treated others by the example they had set? The path being their role in the example scenario. Thus are they to be treated per the Golden Rule as if by their request thereby, to have their girlfriends wrested from them in a moment of comfort, be bashed and whatever their valued possessions in use at the time, to be destroyed and left for their awakening’s discovery? Not unless you want to give the same pendulum another swing, to come at you sometime in the future. Prepare a better path; would you not want a better path? Do it.

Second, from the girlfriend’s participation, when she encounters a young couple happily together along her life travels, who would smile at them and wish them joy, and continue on her way. When she encounters a pair of bullies on a park bench, she will also smile at them and wish them a happy life in peace, and continue on her way. That way, she builds desirable karma for her future.

Third, the young man’s Golden Rule experience might be to be incapacitated to help just when some bullies are suddenly in a desperate need of help, yet still to strive to provide the bullies with safety and comfort somehow anyway. For he would know that the bullies are conditioned to expect assault and abuse of all kinds, that is the power of life to them; deprive them of that energy. Provide the safety and comfort instead, as that would be how he would like to have been treated and wold like to be treated in the future.

The young man and woman as a couple, might choose to be in a place of isolation and safety when being totally engrossed in their creativity efforts on computers. And if instead, they are in the park on a bench, when they see a pair of bullies approaching with them in their attention, that the couple wave and smile at the two bullies and invite them to see what they are creating on their computers that might be fun for them to experience. (The bullies still might choose to assault, beware.)

The Golden Rule provides a most precious treasure for each person at every moment of life, the option to prepare their own future karma by treating others just as they would like to be treated by others now and in the future. Give others despair only if you are choosing to experience despair in your own life in the future, and that applies to the treatment of bullies, too, per the golden Rule.