Right wrong... and beyond
   Date :01-Jul-2020

Right wrong beyond_1 
 
 
By Biraj Dixit :

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
- Rumi
 
 
‘Beyond’ - a tempting word or a wholesome thought! It is in dreams, hopes, faith, vision! ‘Beyond’ – Oh! what a lingering thought, a driving force, a march forward! Whatever is one’s state, ‘beyond’ beckons all. It is only when the wisest reach the farthest reaches of ‘beyond’ do they see that field, that grass, letting the alluring beyond melt into nothingness. But before one reaches that pleasing field, one dwells in the ideas of wrongdoings and rightdoings. Perhaps that is what makes meeting (in its truest sense) such an impossibility. But who does not desire meeting? Yet, who can meet? With minds stuffed with ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, who can meet? Since the very beginning, right and wrong have trespassed our thoughts.
 

just like that_1 &nb 
 
The world, it is said, had two forces – positive and negative - working in opposite directions. The Sur’ and Asur gained characteristics as our ideas of them gained fixation. The right and the wrong fell further apart, stretched and went places. There they met other ideas of right and wrong doings and turned upside down – so the Asur that was wrong became Ahur that was right and the Sur, or the Devas that were right became the Daevas (upgraded version, in Zoroastrian ideology) that were wrong, or so it is said. Since so long a time, people have been fighting for their right against their wrong.
 
Since so long, they are convinced that right resides within and wrong is in every zone of the without. Who knows whether the Divine created us and the devil or whether we created the devil or whether we let the perfectly normal and natural be ideated into the Divine and the Devil? Much, much ahead of the Judgement Day, we have been judging constantly, relentlessly, ceaselessly, making divines and devils in our midst, above us, below us, near us, farther to us, around us and even within us. We seek good and bad everywhere. Ever thought why was the tree of knowledge forbidden? Knowledge leads to too much understanding of right and wrong, of good and bad, of positive and negative. It makes too much out of us and then – too much of me and me – the original sin. Pages and pages of history books tell stories after stories of how when the ‘right’ gained extreme high grounds, the ‘wrong’ become all the more visible, almost ubiquitous. The most ‘righteous’ of times for some became the ‘dark ages’ for others. Shameful exhibition of dead morals for some became the Renaissance for others. Purity of the Master Race for some was named Holocaust by others.
 
Why the most unaffected, unassuming and logical of all our expressions – the numericals too have rights and wrongs! Two positives will always make a positive. But once a positive meets a negative, it is bound to be negative. Similarly, even if a negative meets a positive, it has to be termed a negative. And finally, it is only a negative that can stand tall to a negative, if a positive outcome is desired. Our literatures depict this human dilemma so beautifully and ‘to be or not to be’ forever remains the problem and yet when the well-tutored human mind is put to work, the results are often‘…for good or evil in superlative degrees of comparison only.’ Our arts - in rock-cut statues or sketches and colours on paper, depict abandon while exploring life and then shrink the omnipotent, omnipresent divine into an idol seeking absolute submission. Our cultures speak highly of freedom while setting rules. Our civilisations present to us rulebooks about good and bad and then switch the covers. Right from the time of eating the forbidden fruit to the present day, the continuous process of deciphering rights and wrongs, cultivating them, cherishing them and preserving them is on.
 
We catch hold of ideas, idolised them to such degrees that they became absolute rights and absolute wrongs, an unflinching principle that one has to stand forever by. Doubting, checking and rechecking, introspections of these rights and wrongs are not required. Often, our rights and wrongs meet dead-ends even before we realise. Yet, seldom did we have the courage to take a u-turn. At some levels, rights and wrongs, good and bad, positive and negative all makes sense. They seem necessary also, for we need paths to walk on, we need principles to guide. But it is their absolutism that chains us. Chained thus, with such a heavy metal as absoluteness, can we touch the farthest limits of the ‘Beyond?’
 
The rights and wrongs have acquired new names and terminologies, new destinations. They used to be capitalists and communists when I was born. Right and wrong, then, were determined by which side of the globe one resided. Right and wrong are still on the ‘right’ and ‘left’ of our thoughts blooming into political beliefs, entering simple conversations and estranging smiles. They are telling us that we are a divided house. They are telling us that our meeting is an illusion. Perhaps! Perhaps not! Who knows? May be the truth is known only to those prophets who had warned us, saints who had cautioned us and many of those nonchalant beings who had smiled at the misgivings of our rights and wrongs. “Bura jo dekhan mein chala, bura na miliya koi Jo man khoja aapna, mujhse bura na koi,’ says the great saint, Sant Kabir, instigating us to recheck.
 
“Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth,” advises the wise Khalil Gibran, well aware of world’s tenacity to convert the single into the only. The ‘beyond’ beckons as does the field and the meeting. But that beyond and that field resides far from perceived notions of rights and wrongs. So, won’t it be logical to leave judgements of Sur and Asur for the Judgement Day? n