People like to say, "stop judging me!" What does it signify? This statement appears in the process of judgment about judgment. Judgment as a process is usually attached to decision making activity. Decision is taken only when ambiguity emerges or confusion clouds the mind. When conflict is apparently visible in form of choices; decision must be a progeny of choices. The whole question of "being" is answered in the language of choices, for decision making activity has a central role to define and unite the characteristics of being. It won't be outrageous to say that everyone is a judge who decides a way to adopt and about a means to neglect or denounce. Every judge is a moral or aesthetic being. Judging is an art of reaching over conclusion from preliminary sensation and experience. One has to decide about taste, distaste, morality, immorality, beauty, ugliness, good, evil, just, unjust, and so on. The act of deciding is an act of choosing between choices. The moment one chooses all, the act can't be accepted as the truthful excerise of choosing. It's like one has refrained from the process of choosing. One may avoid choosing but in that very process one is preferring to choose non-choosing. One may decide to embrace a non-judgmental journey of life, if possible; just like a judge without judging. The moment one doesn't will to decide, in that very act one is willing. One may define freedom as options to decide, judge amongst various choices. This aspect of conceptual journey is not a new phenomenon. People love to talk about freedom to contract, freedom to sell and buy, freedom to talk, etc. I prefer to call it "freedom to judge". One is always already a prisoner of judgement. One loves to judge others, but in fact, in that very process, he or she judges himself or herself more than anyone else. There is no art of judging except imposing our own imagination and subtle experiences to the outer reality. In that sense, one is always already on trial in the process of judging others. Beyond judgment, in silence, like "choiceless awareness", one overcomes the anxiety of will to life, and a fear of nothingness. Freedom is beyond the possibility of judgment. In fragmentary choices, one is always producing and re-producing its own limits and finite existence.
Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...
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