"Your statement is true.'

"But bad? – and what is badness? Why has he been forced to steal? And the act of stealing is a single act, and on the grounds of a single act you are making a judgment about the whole person, you are calling him a thief. He does many other things too, not only stealing. He may be a good painter, he may be a good carpenter, he may be a good singer, a good dancer – there can be a thousand and one qualities in the man. The whole man is too big, and the fact of stealing is a single action.

"On the grounds of a single act, you cannot make a statement about the whole person. You don't know the person at all. And you don't even know in what conditions the act happened. Perhaps in those conditions you would have stolen too. Perhaps in those conditions stealing was not bad – because every act is relative to conditions.

"I have told you the story many times of when Lao Tzu was made the supreme judge of China.

"The first case was against a thief who had taken almost half the treasures of the richest man in the capital. And he was caught red-handed, so there was no question about his stealing. He had confessed too, that he had stolen.

"Still, Lao Tzu called the man whose house the thief had broken and entered and stolen from, and told the man, 'According to me, you both are criminals. Why have you accumulated so much wealth in the first place? The whole capital is starving and poor – and you cannot eat your wealth and you go on exploiting these people, sucking their blood.

"'This man was forced to steal. His mother is dying. He could not find a doctor who would come without asking for money; he could not get medicine without money. He is knocking on every door to get employment, and there is no employment. What do you want this man to do? He is ready to work, but work is not available. He has begged the doctors, but nobody is ready to listen. They say, 'Every day thousands of poor people are coming."