WebSadhu

Few days back, I was in a great confusion about: What is sin? I talked to lot of people discussing about Sin. But none of them gave me the satisfactory answer. Then I started serious study of Gita, where I realised that the answer is very clearly given by the Lord Himself as to what is sin and what is virtue. He explains that the theory of Karma is very deep. The action may be the same but it is the bhava (intention) that makes it Karma or akarma. A yajna performed with the intention to harm someone is a sin and the same performed for one's evolvement is a virtue. In this regard my father once told me a story.

A saint had never committed any sin in his life. On his death he was sure of a seat in heaven. But Chitragupta ruled that he should have committed one sin at least and repented for it, to lower his ego. He gave the saint 12 hours to go back, commit a sin, repent and return.

The saint went back to earth in a quandary. As he passed through a village he saw a deformed woman beckoning shyly. The saint made love to her the whole night. In the morning the woman thanked him profusely for giving her the pleasure no one had ever given her because of her deformity. She blessed him for his deed. The abashed saint was left speechless by her sincere emotion.

I forget what happened to that saint, whether he went to heaven or hell, but I did learn that whatever you do, if your intentions are to harm someone, it is sin. One criterion someone gave me was that ' The action that you need to hide from others is a sin.' The notion which went deep in me was "While committing an action everyone in his heart knows whether it is sin or not." Hence we need not go anywhere to discover that but need only look within ourselves.