Who Is Our Enemy?

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We use the words friend and enemy very easily.

Someone supports what I want to do:

He is my friend.

Someone opposes me:

He is my enemy.

Someone remains silent when I expect support:

He is not really my friend.

But is it so simple?

To answer this, we first need to understand something about karma, intention, support, results, time, and our own judgment.

1. Why Do We Perform Karma?

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Broadly, we want two kinds of things in life:

• We want to get something.
• We want to get rid of something.

Money, position, knowledge, health, a relationship, recognition, security, pleasure — or we want to get rid of pain, poverty, illness, fear, conflict, loneliness, responsibility, a person, or an uncomfortable situation.

To bring about the desired condition, we perform karma.

Here, let us use karma simply to mean chosen action. Call that chosen action Karma K.

I think:

If I do this, perhaps I will get Result R.

My Karma K may be doing A, doing B, doing C, doing A and B but not C, stopping A, avoiding B, or deliberately doing nothing.

Even not acting can sometimes be a deliberate action.

Therefore karma is not merely physical activity. It involves choice.

2. Karma Is Usually Performed for a Result

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Normally we do not act randomly. We expect something.

We study because we want knowledge or employment. We invest because we expect wealth. We marry because we expect a particular kind of life. We help somebody because we expect their well-being, our satisfaction, social harmony, punya, or perhaps something else. We oppose someone because we believe stopping them will produce a better result.

So in ordinary life, karma and expected result are closely connected.

For many people:

The value of karma is judged by the result of karma.

If the result is pleasant, we say: good Karma. If it is painful: bad Karma.

But this creates our first difficulty.

When exactly has the result arrived?

3. Time, Sukha, and Dukha

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A result may appear immediately, while Karma K is still being performed, when it finishes, days later, years later, or throughout the rest of life. One karma may also produce many results at different times.

A decision may give immediate pleasure and create suffering ten years later. Another may cause immediate pain and later save us from a much greater difficulty.

So we need at least two time dimensions:

When a result is pleasing, we experience sukha — pleasure, satisfaction, comfort. When it is displeasing, we experience dukha — pain, dissatisfaction, discomfort.

We may therefore begin to think: the karma that produced sukha was good karma, and the karma that produced dukha was bad karma.

That conclusion may be premature. Pleasure today may destroy health later. Pain today may develop discipline, maturity, and clarity.

Even more importantly:

Was what I wanted in the first place actually good for me?

That question changes everything.

4. Perceived Good and Actual Good Are Different

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Before acting, I may believe:

This is good karma.

But that is only my judgment at that moment.

Therefore we should distinguish:

• Perceived nature of Karma K — what I think I am doing: good or bad.
• Actual consequences of Karma K — what it eventually produces: beneficial, harmful, mixed, or still unknown.

Something can therefore be good in my judgment but harmful in consequence — or bad or unpleasant in my judgment, but ultimately beneficial.

This matters enormously when we start calling other people friends and enemies.

5. Now Another Person Enters the Story

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From here on the letters stay fixed:

• Karma K is the action I have chosen.
• Person X is the other person.
• Result R is the outcome I want from Karma K — a possession, a position, a relationship, relief, or some other desired condition.

Suppose I have decided to perform Karma K.

Person X can broadly respond in three ways: support, oppose, or remain neutral.

We immediately start forming judgments.

If I believe Karma K is good and Person X supports me: Person X is my friend. If Person X opposes me: Person X is my enemy. If Person X remains neutral: Person X does not care about me.

At this stage the actual result of Karma K may not even have arrived.

We have already classified Person X.

6. Four Variables, Twenty-Four Combinations

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At minimum, our judgment involves four variables:

Mathematically this creates:

2 × 3 × 2 × 2 = 24 possible combinations.

The label is assigned on a simple basis: I chose Karma K. I look at Person X’s support, and I look at the results. After the short run I stamp a name. After the long run I may revise it.

We will not narrate all 24 stories. The pattern repeats. What matters is that every case is named, so you can think it through yourself.

When I believe Karma K is good

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The Friend and Enemy stamps below will look the same. The mind uses the same rule: support plus a pleasant result, or opposition plus a painful one. The difference is only this: now I already suspect Karma K is bad, but I still want Result R. The “friend” may be helping me do harm. The “enemy” may be trying to stop me.

When I believe Karma K is bad — but I want it

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That is the full set of 24.

7. How the Mind Moves

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Case 2 — I believe Karma K is good. Person X supports me. The short run is good; the long run is bad.

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Initially I am happy. I thank Person X:

You supported me when I needed you.

Years later the same Karma K creates suffering. Now I think:

Why did Person X encourage me?

The same person moves in my mind from friend to foolish friend to perhaps enemy.

Person X has not changed. My knowledge of the consequences has changed.

Even when both runs go well, a quieter question remains: was Person X’s support wise, or did Person X merely agree with me and happen to be right? And if both runs go badly, another question remains: who chose Karma K? Unless Person X forced or manipulated me, support does not remove my responsibility.

Case 6 — I believe Karma K is good. Person X opposes me. The short run is good; the long run is bad.

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This is where the mind is quickest to say enemy.

At first I think:

Good thing I ignored Person X.

Later things deteriorate. Person X’s old warning becomes meaningful:

Person X could see what I couldn’t see.

The person I called an enemy may now appear to have been a friend.

If I succeed despite Person X, I may say Person X was jealous. That may be true — or Person X may have opposed me sincerely, with limited information. Being wrong does not automatically make someone an enemy.

If Person X opposed me and the short run is already bad, I may call Person X a friend. If the long run stays bad, that label often stays.

Opposition does not tell us intention.

Case 14 — I believe Karma K is bad, but I want it. Person X supports me. The short run is good; the long run is bad.

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Now the word friend itself becomes unstable. I want something harmful, foolish, addictive, or shortsighted. What does my mind expect from a friend?

Support me.

Person X says: Do it. I am with you. The first result is pleasure. I say:

What a wonderful friend.

Years later the consequences become painful:

Why didn’t Person X stop me?

The person who helped satisfy my desire may have helped deepen my suffering.

If Person X had opposed me, I might have become angry: Who are you to stop me? Later, if suffering appears, the supposed enemy may have been the real friend.

Even what I called “bad Karma K” may have been incomplete. Perhaps the action was unconventional rather than genuinely bad. We have to distinguish what I thought Karma K was from what it actually was.

Neutrality

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Neutrality is easy to misread. We think:

If Person X really cared about me, Person X would have supported me.

But Person X may not understand the situation, may lack information, may believe it is my decision, may disagree but not want to interfere, may agree but not want responsibility, may be indifferent, may fear conflict, may respect my autonomy, may be afraid of me, may secretly want me to fail, or may believe I must learn through experience.

Silence, by itself, does not tell us whether it was friendship, indifference, wisdom, cowardice, or respect.

So neutrality cannot automatically be classified as hostility.

8. Intention and Knowledge

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Suppose Person X opposed me and I later suffered. Was Person X my friend?

Not necessarily.

Person X may have opposed me from hatred, wanting me to fail, and by accident that opposition protected me. The outcome was beneficial. The intention was hostile.

Now reverse it. Person X supports me, sincerely believing Karma K will help me. It later harms me. Person X may have loved me but lacked knowledge.

We must distinguish intention from outcome.

Person X may act from concern, compassion, love, selfish interest, fear, jealousy, hatred, control, ignorance, social pressure, or uncertainty.

Two people can perform the same external action for opposite reasons. One stops me because I don’t want you to suffer. Another stops me because I don’t want you to succeed. How then can opposition alone define an enemy?

Knowledge is a further unknown. Person X may know something I do not. I may know something Person X does not. Neither of us may know enough. A person can have a good intention and bad judgment. Another can have a bad intention and accidentally give good advice.

Life does not organize itself neatly around our labels.

9. Advice Is Not the Same as Force

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Person X may advise me, encourage me, discourage me, pressure me, emotionally manipulate me, deceive me, prevent me, or physically force me.

These are not equivalent.

If Person X advises me and I freely act, I remain responsible for my choice. If Person X knowingly deceives or coerces me, Person X carries much greater responsibility.

Support or opposition must also be understood in terms of how much freedom remained with me.

10. Good for Whom?

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When I say the result was good, I normally mean: good for me.

But karma does not happen in isolation. Karma K may be good for me, bad for my family, profitable for my company, harmful to customers, convenient for my generation, destructive for the next.

Friendship cannot be evaluated only through personal benefit. Someone helping me exploit another person is not necessarily my friend simply because I benefited.

11. What Karma K Made of Me

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Until now we have discussed external outcomes. Karma also changes the person performing it.

An action may give money, status, influence, or victory — and simultaneously increase greed, arrogance, fear, dependency, hatred, or restlessness. Was the result really good?

An unpleasant experience may increase patience, discrimination, compassion, courage, humility, clarity, or freedom from dependency.

Beyond short-run and long-run outer results there is another question: what did this Karma K make of me?

A pleasant karma can bind me. An unpleasant karma can free me.

Twenty years later I may still think: Those were the glorious days. If only I could have them again. Pleasure has become attachment. Or I repeatedly think: Why did that happen to me? Pain has become resentment.

The body completed Karma K. The mind did not. The event survives as craving, regret, pride, guilt, nostalgia, anger, or fear.

Perhaps a truly good Karma K is one whose memory eventually leaves the mind with greater clarity, maturity, compassion, equanimity, and freedom — not merely a pleasant memory.

12. Our Labels Change with Time

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Imagine one event.

At age 25: Person X ruined my life.

At age 35: Perhaps Person X had a point.

At age 45: If Person X had not stopped me, I might have made a terrible mistake.

At age 65: Person X was one of the few people who really cared for me.

Which statement was true?

The event did not change. Person X’s action did not change.

The observer changed. Knowledge changed. Consequences unfolded. Priorities changed. The meaning changed.

This should make us cautious about permanent labels created from temporary understanding.

13. A Friend Is Not Someone Who Always Says Yes

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If friendship means someone who helps me obtain Result R, then a flatterer can become our greatest friend. An addict’s best friend would be the person who provides more of the addiction. An angry person’s best friend would be the person who encourages revenge. A greedy person’s best friend would be the person who helps him acquire more.

Clearly something is wrong with that definition.

A genuine friend may sometimes say yes, sometimes no, sometimes I don’t know, and sometimes this is your decision, but think carefully.

Agreement is not friendship. Disagreement is not enmity.

The person who makes our path difficult may be protecting us. The person making our path easy may be helping us walk toward a cliff. Difficulty cannot define an enemy either.

We judge other people through our present desires. We judge past decisions through later consequences. The standard itself keeps changing.

14. Then Who Is the Real Enemy?

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Perhaps the deeper enemy is not always a person outside us.

It may be our lack of discrimination, impulsiveness, ignorance, attachment, fear, greed, borrowed desires, unquestioned beliefs, inability to think long-term, inability to tolerate temporary discomfort, or certainty about things we do not actually know.

In Vedantic language this is close to viveka — discrimination between what appears desirable now and what is genuinely worth pursuing.

Our greatest problem may not be that Person X is stopping me from getting Result R. The deeper problem may be:

Do I know whether Result R is worth wanting?

The mind creates the labels very quickly. I desire Result R. Person X helps me get it: friend. Person X obstructs it: enemy. Hidden inside that judgment is an enormous assumption: getting Result R will make my life better.

If that assumption has not been examined, the labels built upon it are unstable. Suppose Result R itself later becomes the source of suffering. The whole classification collapses.

This does not mean that enemies do not exist. People can deliberately deceive, exploit, injure, manipulate, betray, or destroy. We should not use philosophy to deny such realities.

But even then, clarity is more useful than a hurried label. We need to distinguish a harmful action from our complete judgment of a human being.

15. The Complete Framework

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Notice the last possibility: still unknown. We may need to use it more often.

The most important unknown inside all 24 cases is time. At the moment of action we know very little of the complete result. Karma K performed today may continue producing consequences for decades. Whenever we say this person helped me or this person harmed me, we should silently remember: as far as I can presently see.

16. So Who Is Our Enemy?

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Perhaps sometimes there is an external enemy.

But very often what we call an enemy is simply someone standing between us and Result R. And what we call a friend is simply someone helping us obtain Result R.

That tells us more about our desire for Result R than about the other person.

If our understanding of Karma K is incomplete, if the consequences are still unfolding, if we do not know Person X’s intention, if we do not know what they knew, and if we ourselves may later change our understanding, then perhaps the wisest response is not friend or enemy.

Perhaps it is:

I do not yet know.

And perhaps this restraint itself is a form of viveka.

Before asking who is my enemy, we may need to ask:

What Result R am I trying to achieve?

Why do I believe Result R will give me sukha?

What will Result R do to me in the long run?

What will Result R do to others?

Will Result R leave me freer, or bind me more strongly?

And finally:

Am I calling Person X my enemy merely because Person X is obstructing Result R?

That may be the most important question of all.

Because sometimes the person standing against our desire is our well-wisher. Sometimes the person enthusiastically supporting it is not. Sometimes both are ignorant. Sometimes we ourselves are ignorant. And sometimes only many years later do we discover who really helped us.

Until then, perhaps we should be slower in creating friends and enemies in our mind.

The same haste appears wherever we want something — in marriage, work, business, faith, society, and politics. We rush to label people. We rush to judge them.

The Upanishads encourage sākṣī-bhāva — to live as a witness. The names we give to people, situations, and events come from a small present understanding. Time can revise those names. It can also revise us.

Hari Om Tat Sat
Yours Truly Hari

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