When purchased goods are placed on a traditional scale, it tips under the sudden impact, then slowly, swinging to and fro, draws near the exact value, and at last comes to rest. True, a few conditions must be met – the scale must be levelled and calibrated – but beyond that, by earthly rules, it should work well. We may say, then, that it is the swinging that makes a scale truly usable. A moral scale also exists, whose degrees are the ethical norms and whose working principle is swing and adjustment, and this spiritual scale, too, is made dynamic by change. It is in a crisis that man's true self, his backbone, is revealed. Without conflicts we might believe we were already past every obstacle, that we had reached spiritual peace and balance, but the slightest disturbance is enough, and at once the equilibrium is upset. It is said that at times even a great saint loses his self-restraint, but what sets him apart from the average man is that he soon regains his balance.
Order can not only bring cosmos, orderliness, out of chaos, but also give structure to human life. At the same time, orderliness can be dull too, and balance may grow monotonous. Stability may even tip over into sterility, when duty weighs life down, order kills play and the law treads on the neck of love. An abstract, sterile, conceptual balance is hostile to life, which is why many hold doubt to be dynamic and alive. Balance is not dynamic – they say – and if balance were good in itself, there would be no change, no growth, no sprouting. Yet without pruning the garden runs wild, and without rules there is no play. Rather, let stability be like the presence of water, for the water level always adjusts to its circumstances, fills the space available and, what is more, takes part in the great planetary cycle. Thus man's inner order, fulfilling his duties, running the full course of his life by playing the part allotted to him, in fact contributes to the balance of the universe. Yet this part is not always a pleasant one, for without Judas there is no Christ, but without light there is no shadow either.
If a man has no inner moral scale, he will be steered by external instruments of discipline, such as the compelling force of the laws, fate or karma. In the long run and on a cosmic level, karma is the means of maintaining moral balance. It is karma that plays the balancing role between injustice and justice. As a man calls out into the world, so it echoes back to him. In other words, karma is not a punishment from fate, still less a scourge from God, but a necessary correction in the course of life.
Balance is also a term used in philosophy, and it denotes the state in which the motives of the will are equal and none of them can act as the decisive impulse. Some hold that in this case the will chooses freely. The helplessness that arises from such a situation is the subject of the parable of Buridan's ass, which, standing between two equal bundles of hay at equal distances, starves to death.
Some suppose that on planet Earth only a fixed store of spiritual resources is available: a fixed measure of knowledge, of suffering, of love. The more people these are shared among, the less would fall to each individual. Even if we accept this egalitarian notion, let us apply it just to suffering: the more people share in the sufferings of others, indeed of one another, the less weight will bear down on any one person's shoulders. Yet science holds that the distribution of matter, too, though isotropic and homogeneous, still has points of condensation, and this is true in a moral sense as well: beyond the average ethical norms there are truly upright people, there exists pure goodness and concentrated happiness. Two facts, however, can certainly be established: moral balance depends on many factors, and false balance is no balance.