Excuses Don't Eliminate Consequences

Two suttas were recently added to accesstoinsight.org. One of them is MN 97: Dhanañjani Sutta, instruction from Sariputta to Dhanañjani the brahman.

It starts off with Sariputta asking another monk about a friend of his in the area from which the monk has just come:

"At the Tandulapala Gate is a brahman named Dhanañjani.1 I trust that he is strong & free from illness?"

"Dhanañjani the brahman is also strong & free from illness."

"And I trust that Dhanañjani the brahman is heedful?"

"From where would our Dhanañjani the brahman get any heedfulness, friend? Relying on the king, he plunders brahmans & householders. Relying on the brahmans & householders, he plunders the king. His wife — a woman of faith, fetched from a family with faith — has died. He has fetched another wife — a woman of no faith — from a family with no faith."

"What a bad thing to hear, my friend — when we hear that Dhanañjani the brahman is heedless. Perhaps sooner or later we might meet with Dhanañjani the brahman. Perhaps there might be some conversation."

So later Sariputta does meet with Dhanañjani and among other things he mentions:

"What do you think Dhanañjani? There is the case where a certain person, for the sake of his wife & children ... his slaves & workers ... his friends & companions ... his kinsmen & relatives ... his guests ... his departed ancestors ... the devatas ... the king, does what is unrighteous, does what is discordant. Then, because of his unrighteous, discordant behavior, hell-wardens drag him off to hell. Would he gain anything by saying, 'I did what is unrighteous, what is discordant, for the sake of the king. Don't [throw] me into hell, hell-wardens!' Or would the king gain anything for him by saying, 'He did what is unrighteous, what is discordant, for our sake. Don't [throw] him into hell, hell-wardens!'?"

"No, master Sariputta. Even right while he was wailing, they'd cast him into hell."

So again, we have another sutta that underscores the fact that consequences can't be avoided just because we can think of some justification or the other. We always need to be looking for a blameless way to meet our responsibilities. The ends don't justify the means.

At the end of the sutta, when Dhanañjani is dying, he comes to practice brahma-vihara at the instruction of Sariputta, and ends up being reborn in a brahma realm. So as in the story of Angulimala, we also see from this that one can overcome negative kamma through skillful means, but simply trying to argue that one's actions were justified won't work.

After all, who would you be arguing with? Trying to argue with kamma is like trying to argue with physics.