My thoughts on good, bad, punishment and reward

My thoughts on good, bad, punishment and reward.

Mahendra Gonsalkorale.

(14/08/2026, 17:41:38)

Today, on the 14th of August 2026, I'm going to talk about our concepts of reward, punishment, good and bad, causation, the desire to feel that what we do as good will bring us good rewards and what we regard as bad will bring bad consequences. Furthermore, what is good and bad? It's not absolute; it depends on one’s own moral concept and background; it depends on what religion you believe in. 

And it is not something that is laid down in law. We have different views depending on who we are, where we are, what epoch we live in, and our cultural background. But the expectation of something good (or at least not bad!) happening to anybody who lives a good life is quite natural. So, for example, a good person does not expect to lose a limb, to get cancer, lose their young spouse, etc. 

You feel that you have no reason at all to suffer those indignities because you have led a very good life from the time you were born up to now. So, what makes people have bad experiences? Why is it that sometimes people who live a very good life suffer some consequences which are “unfair”? This concept of fairness and unfairness is common, and I think it's driven by expectation, and the expectation is driven by either a moral system that you believe exists in the world; an absolute moral system which distinguishes good and bad, or a relative moral system which exists because of influences from religion. 

For example, in Christianity, the Ten Commandments are there, and if you break them, you're in trouble. And believers don't complain because that's the way it operates. Very clearly, those commandments state that if you do ‘that’, ‘this’ happens; cause and effect. 

On the other hand, if you don't believe in a theistic religion or philosophy, you can still believe that good and bad exist, and that good actions will have good consequences and bad actions will have bad consequences. This is partly through experience: you notice that, in life, for example, a person who takes care of his garden by weeding and watering has a nice, clean garden, whereas with a person who doesn't look after the garden and lets weeds grow and doesn't water it properly will have an ugly one.

That's the natural law, and you see that happening all the time, and you expect the same will apply to you. For example, a man who has been a lifelong non-smoker and understands the dangers of smoking doesn't touch a cigarette. He lives a good life. He may not be perfect. He doesn't smoke at all. But when he's 50 years old, he gets lung cancer. And he says, how ‘unfair’; this concept of ‘fairness’ comes in. You expect it is unfair for a good person to suffer bad life events. How unfair! I, who never smoked, I, who purposely avoided smoking because I knew it's bad, get lung cancer. What kind of unfair world are we living in? If there's a God, how could He, with all his powers, let this happen to me? If there's no God, what determines how I get this? How can a Buddhist say it's my karma? Because I know people who smoked more than me who didn't get lung cancer. 

So, why should I get lung cancer? What is the determining factor? And so, you begin to look for causes to answer the question why. And it's easy to pick something religious, such as, I got it because I deserve it, because I did something wrong. Or if you believe in karma (not in a mature Buddhist sense but in a superficial and inaccurate way in my view), you can say, well, my past actions in this or a past existence were wrong and I therefore reap the consequences, cause and effect. But it's not that simple. Because as I said, there are many people who smoke a hell of a lot who don't get lung cancer. Why me? 

There are people who smoke, and there are people who don't smoke at all, but still get lung cancer. So, not all the people who smoke get lung cancer; not all the people who refrain from smoking don't get lung cancer. In other words, there is conditionality; it is not just smoking that leads to cancer. 

If you smoke, you lay down conditions which favour the occurrence of lung cancer, but it doesn't determine that you get lung cancer. It only favours it by producing conditions where cancer can arise. So, if you're a person who has a long history of smoking, that's one condition. A strong family history of lung cancer could be another condition; a mental state where early signs are neglected could be another. Others, such as neglect of diet, failure to exercise, and not managing other factors, such as not looking after his heart disease or whatever other comorbid conditions, could increase the chances of getting lung cancer. You don't determine that you get lung cancer; you just increase the chances by providing suitable conditions. 

We cannot conclude that a person who doesn't smoke doesn't get cancer, or the person who smokes heavily gets cancer. Whether a person gets or does not get cancer is multifactorial. We're only talking about the conditions which favour cancer, not a destiny to get cancer. So, I hope I made that clear. 

The other thing I like to say is about the concept of right and wrong. To believe that there are absolute rights and wrongs, to me, is wrong. If you interpret the 10 commandments as absolute, then there are at least 10 things that you shouldn't do. And if you don't adhere to them, you incur the wrath of God and have to suffer the consequences. 

I don't believe that. Jesus or others may have said it to promote a society ruled by justice, where people can live in harmony. Rather than give theories about when an action that appears bad isn't bad and create confusion, you create absolute meaning. Just like saying, if you go through a red traffic light, you're doing wrong. You can't say I went through a red traffic light, because my brakes failed or whatever, you know, going through a red traffic light is the wrong thing to do. I mean, there may be extenuating circumstances such as you may be rushing to the hospital because your wife is in the backseat in labour. But that's not the point. The point is that sometimes you need absolute laws for society to function. That doesn't mean human nature, human behaviour, or human existence work that way absolutely. 

I think these so-called absolute rules aren't absolute. They are relative, but it's cumbersome to try and put that in the context of how it could be different if the context is different. Just let me give you an example. 

A man draws a gun and kills a person who is approaching a mother with a gun, shouting at her, saying, I'm going to kill you. And this man is recognised as having killed people before; his picture was in the newspaper. So, I feel that if I don't take action, this man will kill my mother. I have a gun with me, and I point it and shoot the man and kill him. But in a way, my intent was not to kill him. My intent was to save my mother. 

The mode by which I saved my mother was to draw a gun and shoot the man who was approaching my mother, knowing well that I would either disable him or kill him. But the prime purpose really was to save my mother from death. That was my prime motive. 

You should also ask whether there were any other alternative actions available for him to achieve his motive of stopping his mother being murdered. In this particular context, there weren't because it happened so quickly. In other circumstances, he may have had other possible actions to take. 

Also, the consequences of not acting have to be taken into account. Thus, it's not only the actions available, but the consequences of not acting. This brings me to my perspective of how you make judgments on actions. 

Firstly, the motive or intent is of paramount importance. It should not be purely selfish. Saving a mother's life or your loved one's life from being shot by a person, to me, is a very good motive. 

Secondly, what actions are available for me to prevent this from happening? One is to use my gun and shoot the man. Second is to do nothing. But if I do nothing, I may feel good that I didn't kill somebody, but I'll have to deal with the fact that my mother is now dead, thanks to my inaction. If the time constraint wasn't there, if I knew beforehand that there was a plan to kill my mother in the next week, then that's different. I could go to the police; maybe I could get help from other people. And maybe I could pursue other avenues to save my mother without actually killing the potential assailant. 

Firstly, what other actions are available to me? Secondly, what are the consequences of not taking the action I took? Clearly, in this case, the consequence is a very high likelihood of my mother dying. 

I say high likelihood, because the person with a gun may have had a blank cartridge, which you're not aware of. He may shoot and miss the target, because my mother might move aside. So many things could happen, as nothing is destined; but you don't know that in the short time it happened.

Your best judgment is -here's a man at close distance, brandishing a gun, who is going to shoot my mother, and the action I took in shooting was not because I want to kill him, although that obviously was part of the result of my action. Your intent was not driven by anything against him but by your desire to save your mother. The indirect consequence was that you shot and killed the man because you had no other choice. 

If there was a choice of saving your mother without killing him, you could have taken it. That's why I say the motive, the result of inaction (i.e., what could happen if you don't act), and what other actions were possible at the time all have to be considered. 

The context includes not only the time in history, but also your own circumstances, etc. Take a ‘crime’ like homosexuality. There was a time when homosexuality was a crime. It was a punishable offence. Religions are strangely silent on this. It's no longer a crime in the UK, where homosexuality is accepted. It's no longer a crime. But if you lived 40 years ago, it was a crime. This is why I think these so-called moral rules are not absolute. They change with time for understandable and defensible reasons. 

Moral rules have to change. They have to adapt. They have to be contextualised. And they have to be interpreted according to all those factors which I spoke about. 

Finally, my perspective as a person who was born into Buddhism and who admires Buddhist psychology is that the all too frequently ‘Buddhists’ view that if you do something, you have to suffer the consequences purely as an “if A, then B has to follow”. If you kill somebody, you will suffer; “punishment” follows. I don’t think that is the true Buddhist teaching. 

With many actions considered bad, such as killing somebody or taking what doesn't belong to you, you create conditions which are unfavourable for your future welfare. For example, by taking somebody else's money, you create conditions for possibly being arrested by the police, put in jail, punished, or whatever it is. But it doesn't necessarily or absolutely follow because there are people who have taken money which doesn't belong to them and who got away scot-free and died a happy death without ever being caught. It is not determinism. It's not absolute. Karma is conditionality. Karma is what you do, your actions and perceptions and what is happening to you and constantly changing. 

Every action has effects, and it's not one effect but several. And every time, every second you live, you create effects, you create conditions, and these conditions can accumulate and result in a certain outcome, or it may not. That's chance. It's not determined by God or karma or by moral law. If, when I walk on the road, some stray car loses control, hits me and kills me, I cannot say it was something I deserved because of my past karma. It's just a random occurrence because a chap was driving a car recklessly where I happened to be at the same time, and he was drunk, the light was very poor and if it wasn't me, and somebody else was there, he could have been killed. So, it's not that I deserved it or was destined to have this happen. Too many unpredictable factors came together to produce it. He died because... he happened to be there at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just imagine the task of making sure it happens if some external force planned it!  Okay, you say you deserve it due to karma. What are the things required? I have to be walking at that time on that road at a certain time. A man has to be in a car, drunk or whatever it is, at the same time. A man has to be in a car which he has no control over. The man has to hit me in such a way that rather than injure me, I die. Isn't it impossible to bring all these together at a certain point in time?

That has to be just random. 

But to smoke heavily, not to look after your body by not performing enough exercise, not looking after your diet, those are conditions that you cause yourself. And consequences will follow naturally. You will, or you are likely to suffer effects which arise as a result of all those conditions coming together. You provide conditions which make it more likely at best, but not absolutely, that you will get cancer. It's not determined; there's nothing laid down that if you smoke for 40 years you get lung cancer, and you will die. That is determinism, which I completely disagree with. 

There's only causality in terms of events leading to conditionality. You build conditions that promote a certain outcome; that's how I look at it. 

Okay, let me deal with another aspect. I think that the concept of right and wrong, good and evil also arose from the need for society to function and be disciplined. Rules and laws are necessary for society to function. Like it or not, we are part of a living community with deep interactions and common needs. 

For example, if there were no rules about driving on the right side of the road, traffic lights, speeding, etc., it would be a chaotic world. If there were no rules about theft, about murder, and so many other offences, the world would be a place where it would be impossible to live harmoniously. So, you need discipline in this world for the community as a whole and for human life to exist and be propagated. 

What better discipline than a hidden force which watches you all the time, which punishes you, rewards you, and you can't even see it because, well, you are not ‘meant’ to see it! I'm referring to God. If you have fear of God, you don't have to worry about policemen or laws; it could be a clever solution!

If you really believe in that, then you will believe in doing what is regarded as the norm and accepted as good in society. Furthermore, not every aspect of life happens because of fear, but many do. Fear is an important part of what drives civilisation harmoniously. 

You need to have fear as well as love. Love promotes societies working together and supporting each other harmoniously. If you're well off, you should support other people who are not as well off, and have charity towards human beings and animals. 

The higher ideals of human life also promote the very existence of humans and our planetary system. If we don't care for our planetary system, natural objects such as trees will disappear, there'll be prolonged drought, there'll be floods, and human existence will cease. So it's natural for there to be order, and I think that is inherent. 

I don't think you need to bring God into this because the moment you bring God, you have to ask: why is God there? Did he come from nowhere, and why did he appear? If so, where did he appear from? Why does he create our universe? Is he just having fun, playing a game where he's watching people do what he wants them to do or not want them to do, punishing them, rewarding them? What's the whole purpose of it? And to me the answer is very simple. There's no such force, there's no such God. It's a man-made invention without any proof at all. 

So, I think, coming back to my earlier theme, the concept of good and bad, right and wrong, are there for civil obedience, for a harmonious society. Now, putting on my evolutionary hat, because I believe Darwinian evolution is one of the best theories that mankind ever came up with, for human survival, cooperation promotes survival. If you don't have cooperation, if you don't care for your fellow human beings, our days will be numbered. So, purely from a survival standpoint, it is natural that society should function harmoniously. 

It is natural that members of society should have love for each other. Members of society should want to help each other. To me, that is enough to explain why we have a concept of good and bad. 

But underlying all this, I maintain that there is a randomness in what happens. It's not ordained, preordained or predetermined. It's random. 

But that randomness is affected by conditions caused by our actions. Just like I said about the smoker, he made conditions favourable for him to get lung cancer, but smoking didn't cause him to have lung cancer. That's the difference. 

So causation is a big topic in philosophy, but my idea of the Buddhist concept of causation isn't absolute cause-effect. It is more like a chain. It mostly causes conditions for effects to happen. Depending on how many other conditions are prevailing at the time, an action will follow. 

So it's not one simple chain, one leading to the other. It's actually a chain of causations, a chain of conditionality, which ultimately determines which way it goes. And it is random. 

It is not preordained. It is not according to God's design, karma, or whatever it is. It is the way it is. 

You know, if you look after your plantation, water it, put fertilisers, you get the benefits of that. It's not ordained by God or whatever. It's not the farmer's karma. It is just the way nature operates. So many things in nature happen because that's the way nature is. And if you ask, why does it happen like this? I don't think we can answer that. 

My own answer to why it happens is, why not? If whatever is there, we will always question why, but we'll never know what could be there if nothing was there before what is there. So, if there is something, could there have been nothing before there was something? To have nothing, isn’t it acceptance of something? It's a big philosophical question. Thank you very much