Questioner: How do we say that a decision is right or wrong? What is right for one is wrong for the other. Nature has given everyone the right to decide, who are we to label someone as wrong?
Acharya Prashant: Right or wrong really are not decided in the context of others. You are right, nobody has the right to label a person or person’s decision-making as right or wrong. However, it doesn’t mean that there is nothing called a right decision or a wrong decision. Understand it simply, what is it that we all fundamentally want?
We want peace, we want relaxation, we don’t want to be tensed; we want contentment. Ever seen anyone who enjoys being dissatisfied or diminished or hurt or angry? So, what is it that we all want? What is it that is a common universal need among humans? Peace and contentment. Nobody wants to be sad. We want a subtle joyful state of consciousness and we all want that irrespective of the country we come from; our age, our gender, our religion, our ethnicity, doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to be sad; nobody wants to feel hurt. So, if that is our core need then you should know when to call a decision right, and when to call one wrong.
If your decisions lead to peace, joy, contentment for you then they are right otherwise they are wrong.
And this decision regarding a choice being right or wrong obviously is not coming from others. It is about your own inner self. What is the impact of your choices on your life? That is what you must look at. Are your choices making you more insecure, anxious, jealous, unsettled, restless? Then it would be dishonest to call these as the right choices for you. And it's not in a relative sense, it's not as if one choice that is right for this person will be definitely right for the other one also. However, as we cautioned earlier, it doesn’t mean that any choice is alright. There is definitely something called a right choice and there is definitely something called a wrong choice. And you have to be very careful because choices determine your life.
