The curious case of examining one's own thoughts and conscience

In any examination of one's own thoughts and conscience, the self is the judge, the prosecutor, as well as the defendant. The self that presides over this 'juridical' process is the same as the self that prosecutes, and the self that is being accused and examined is also not different. This creates a curious kind of empathy among the involved parties. Unless checked by a sincere intention to use the trial to get to the 'truth', this empathy could result in an acquital of the self being examined. A lot of evil has its roots in this lack of critical examination of one's thoughts and conscience. One could even say that more often it is 'ignorance' rather than 'inherent viciousness' that causes evil actions, because self-awareness and sincere critical examination of one'e own thoughts (which significantly shape our actions) would certainly prevent us from doing many things we end up doing because of our ignorance about 'what is right'. So, this self-examination is important for us as individuals and as members of society.

Staying with the 'trial' analogy, what rules should guide such a trial? In my limited experience, if one is somewhat indepedent, this kind of trial may be quite oblivious to 'laws of the land', or even in contradiction to them. The true self-trial of our thoughts is done with rules that we really agree with. These are rules that are developed from our innate sense of right and wrong, as well as conditioning and self-reflection over a period of time. 'Reason' and 'compassion' are important tools in the definition of these ever-evolving rules. In fact, many a times, the act of the trial itself helps redefine these rules. The 'law' as such has limited role here. It is important to nuance this by saying that law is important for upholding the collectively defined sense of justice in a society, and should usually guide our actions. But, our thoughts should be independent, guided by our deep inner rules. Our sense of right and wrong may not match the law's sense of the same. So, if we see glaring gaps between law and reality, and in a manner that seems to be hurting the society, we must try and get the law itself changed, while trying not to break it. We may even need to break the law, but not for selfish interest, but for larger common good, as many have done. It is important to understand the legitimacy of the process by which law is defined. For instance, human freedom should not be made subservient to arbitrariness of a autocratic regime. Law loses its meaning in such a context.

Coming back to the question concerning examination of thoughts and conscience, if faults are found what should be the punishment of these faults? How should we approach this post-discovery phase? The natural empathy for oneself that may sometimes lead to a perverse acquittal of the defendant self is important here. It does help us live with ourselves, see our faces in the mirror everyday. So, the challenge is to try and treat the defendant self with as much objectivity as possible, while continuing a deeper empathy and an intention to understand and help. I think there should primarily be a renewal intentionality in this trial. The self that examines should do so to renew the self that is being examined, to make it better, to improve it. Having found faults, the idea should be to change one's thoughts in a manner that we think in the 'right' way from the next moment onwards, while acknowledging the impermanence of this definition of 'right'. The past is to be left unsaid, the guilt of the past thoughts to be overcome or overwritten by the fresh thoughts and actions. So, in some sense, the examining sense should be like a benevolent judge trying to 'help' the defendant self, more like a friend. The judge and prosecutor will gain if the guilty one improves, because they are it, and it is them.

This empathetic process of improvement still leaves space for repenting and apologising, which should be done, but only to the extent that our thoughts have created actions that have hurt others. Otherwise, just having thought something, which now appears 'bad' or 'wrong', shouldn't lead us to start and keep cursing ourselves. Suffering, in this case, doesn't necessarily lead to betterment. Rather, sincere understanding and acceptance of renewal is of key importance. There is no point in getting into the kind of self-criticism that borders on a destructive kind of masochism. It is more helpful to consciously focus on the evolution of our thoughts and conscience. We need to 'move on'.