Am I selfish? The Gita's test for it
The short answer
A choice is selfish when only your side of the scale counts. The Gita's test is to weigh their joy and pain exactly as you weigh your own, and then to choose, which sometimes means choosing yourself.
The Gita's test
In its sixth chapter, the Gita describes the perfect yogi by one habit of sight:
आत्मौपम्येन सर्वत्र समं पश्यति योऽर्जुन। सुखं वा यदि वा दुःखं स योगी परमो मतः।।6.32।।
He who, through the likeness of the Self, O Arjuna, seeth equality in everything, whether pleasant or painful, he is considered a perfect Yogî.
The words "through the likeness of the Self" mean seeing their pleasure and pain as if they were yours. Run that on your choice. If you would call their cost unbearable when it falls on you, it counts as unbearable for them. The scale works both ways, too: your own cost sits on it. Weighing only theirs breaks the scale in the other direction.
Three questions that settle it
- Who pays for this choice, and do they know? A cost nobody has been told about is where selfishness hides.
- Is their cost for a season, or for good? And yours? A year of strain is not a lifetime of it.
- Is there a version where you take your path and still pay your debts? The calls below found one.
Real calls, both ways
Three readings, three different answers. Each weighed the choice, never the character.
Real dilemma · Career. A promotion that means leaving a team who depend on you. The call: "Take it. How you leave decides whether you're a promotion or a wound." The line worth sharing: "You don't owe them your ceiling. You owe them a clean exit." See the card
Real dilemma · Ambition. A career-defining project that means a year away from the children. The call: "A year of absence isn't a rounding error. Name what it costs them — then decide who you'd respect tomorrow." The line worth sharing: "Ambition that erases presence rarely brings it back when you call." See the card
Real dilemma · Family. Parents hoping for marriage and grandchildren that their child does not want. The call: "Sacrificing your life trajectory to ease parental sadness creates mutual harm; honesty about your values and boundaries is the harder dharmic path." See the card
The first call chose the self and put the duty into how you leave. The second asked for the children's cost to be named before anything else. The third chose honesty over a life lived to ease someone else's sadness.
Family or love?
Many people asking "am I selfish?" are really asking "family or love?". The scale is the same: your parents' hopes, your partner's place and your own path, each weighed in full, and then the first honest conversation that moves it. If your parents have not accepted the person you love, read how to convince parents for a love marriage, without lying to them.
Decide yours
Guilt tips the scale one way and resentment tips it the other. Write the choice down the way it is in your head. KarmaLens weighs both sides on the Gita's eight lenses, makes one clear call, and gives you the first step.
Free, private, about two minutes.
More: relationship decisions · Am I the problem? · Duty towards parents