What is Paap and Punya in reality?

Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa says that as long as we believe we have free will, we have to own up the consequences of actions done by us with our free will. But it is indeed true that at the exalted level of comprehension, everything is God's will. A person who attains this conviction firmly is the one who has attained God realization or self realization. Only such a person becomes the perfect instrument of God. Sri Ramakrishna says that whatever that person does is simply the acts of God and it will only be perfect and right.

If ordinary people do whatever they want to do by saying that they are doing it as God's instruments they are only deluding themselves. Suppose a person, out of a very reasonable justification (in his own assessment) kills another with anger and vengeance. He may say, “I have delivered the right justice this fellow deserved for his actions. I have acted as God's instrument . His 'Prarabdha' is such that he gets killed by me in this birth.

So, I have not committed any sin.” If his argument is really true, what happens if police arrest him and the court orders a judgement that he should be hanged? Should he not accept that it is also by God's will and the judge acted as God' s instrument and punished him? That's why Shri Ramakrishna says that along with the ‘idea’ of free will, the concepts of punya and papa too shall coexist. If not, there will be total anarchy. Without fear of punishment based on papa, people will keep doing all sorts of atrocities.

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita says.

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Prapya etc. Of Shashvata of Vishnu (personal god). [His] years : three years of Vishnu. Of the pure persons : of those whose mind is prone to touch (to meditate upon) the body (amsa) of the Lord. Attaining the worlds of the righteous, and residing there for eternal years, the man fallen from Yoga is born in the house of the pious and the prosperous.

"First, dealing with punya (pious activity) and paap, (sinful activity) can be understood on two levels. ‘Karma’ means proper activities outlined through dharma, one’s occupational duties, which will bring materially beneficial results, these are punya - pious. ‘Vikarma’ are activities that are forbidden. They will bring unpleasant results and are Paap, sinful. At a deeper level, any activity that is not done with the pleasure of the Lord as the goal is sinful. There is a very broad spectrum here, from almost negligible to catastrophic.

As an example: a vandal may break into another person’s house, trash the place, eat and drink whatever is there, put all the valuables in a big sack marked SWAG and generally make a mess until the police, alerted by a vigilant neighbour, comes and arrests him. A friend of the owner’s son may arrive at a house and finding it locked he climbs in through the window, and being hungry eats a little food, maybe puts on the tv waiting till their friend or their parents come home, but meanwhile, the police, again alerted by a vigilant neighbour, come to the house.

Now both of them are both guilty of trespassing but one will go to jail and the other will not (I hope). So while both have broken the law the first case is serious and the second is almost negligible. In this way even pious activities have an element of paap if they are not done for the pleasure of the Lord, because this universe is His property. As a simple rule of thumb, anything that brings a person closer to the Lord is punya, and anything that takes a person away is paap. Next the question reads “ every action of human is prefabricated by God”.

This is not exactly how it is, but it is not entirely incorrect either. Everything I do on my computer is possible due to the operating system, but the writers of the code do not control what I do. At the same time I cannot do anything that they have not written code for, so I can only do what they have allowed, so in a sense they have predetermined what I can and can’t do, but they have no say in what I chose to do within the parameters of the software. They have control over how I do something because I can’t do something that is not possible, but they don’t determine what I chose to do with the facility they have made available.

God writes the software for the material universe, and so determines what we can do and what we can’t, but He doesn’t ‘prefabricate’ what we chose to do. He only sets the limits and the ways we can do what we chose. Because of this He is not responsible for our choices and actions, we are. Then the question continues “and human beings are (acc. to Gita) an "instrument" in the hands of God.”

Again this is part true and part not. If a human being follows the instructions of Shri Krishna then they are His instrument, and Shri Krishna urges Arjuna in this direction They are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Savyasachi, can be but an instrument in the fight. SBg 11.33 If however we chose not to follow the Lord’s instructions then we are instruments in the hands of material energy.

Material nature will force us to act and by so doing we will be instruments of happiness and distress to others and ourselves, but this is not directly under Shri Krishna’s supervision, it is under the three modes of nature, which is Shri Krishna’s operating system for the universe. And again material nature forces us to act according to our desires and previous activities, so at no point is the writer of the code - Shri Krishna - responsible, any more than Bill Gates is responsible if someone uses their computer for criminal activities. Jay Shri Krishna