A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for
busy, stressed people living and working in these volatile, uncertain, complex
and ambiguous times. The only scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to
face our challenges, live our life fully and achieve excellence in whatever we
do.
[Continued from the previous post]
Then, O Lord of the earth, seeing
Duryodhana's men in position and the armies about to clash, Arjuna, raising his
bow, told Krishna, “O Krishna, take my chariot between the two armies. I want
to see the warriors I am about to fight. I want to have a look at those
gathered here for battle wishing to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra”.
BG 1.20-23
Arjuna here calls
Duryodhana the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra. The word he uses for
Duryodhana is durbuddhi – dhaartaraashtrasya durbuddheh.
Sage Vyasa meets
Dhritarashtra the night before the Kurukshetra war begins in a last minute
attempt to avoid the slaughter of millions. He asks his son to stop the war and
the blind king says he has no power over Duryodhana, he is helpless. Hearing
these words Vyasa concentrates his mind using his yogic power and meditates for
a short while. Coming out of his meditation he again tells Dhritarashtra he has
the power to avoid the slaughter of the war by restraining his sons and asks
him to do that. Of course Dhritarashtra does nothing of the sort because though
he does have authority as king and as father, he had no real power over his son
because of his weakness for him and the free reins he has given him throughout
his life.
Dhritarashtra here is a
warning for all of us who overindulge his children. Just as constantly criticizing
and punishing children is bad, never restraining them when they start walking
on evil paths too is bad. Love is not overindulgence. It is not freedom for
licentiousness. Children have to learn from the beginning that they are
responsible for their actions, that their freedom comes with responsibilities.
Duryodhana’s story is also
a warning to mothers who neglect their responsibilities as mothers and give those
responsibilities over to others who do their job not out of love but for
payment. Gandhari neglected her responsibilities as a wife – towards the end of
his life Dhritarashtra bitterly complains about this in strong, emotion-filled
words, saying how different things would have been had she been a good, caring
wife for him, had she been his eyes for him. For all we know, she neglected her
children too – unlike Kunti who lived for her children. The popular story in
which she removes her blindfold and using her spiritual power and transforms
Duryodhana’s naked body into vajra, makes it diamond-like, all of it except the
part below his waste where he had worn a piece of cloth, has no place in the
Sanskrit Mahabharata and is in fact against the spirit of the epic. She lives all
her married life and eventually dies with those blindfolds on – without ever
having taken one look at any of her sons, except once through the divine vision
given her by Vyasa after the war. There is no substitute for a mother; there
are certain things a child should get directly from its mother, like love,
affection, care, the physical touch and so on. When the mother neglects these
responsibilities, for whatever reason, calamities ensue. Modern sociology bewails
what would happen to the generation of children now growing up in societies
where mothers have no time or energy for their children.
O0O
The epic speaks of
Duryodhana as an incarnation of the Age of Kali. Kali is the age of wickedness
and darkness and it is wickedness and darkness we find in the actions of
Duryodhana from a very young age.
Western psychology believes
that we are all born with our minds like empty slates, with nothing written on
them, whereas eastern psychology believes that we come into the world with
memories, karmas, vasanas and samskaras from our past lifetimes. There have
been countless cases where people are hypnotically regressed and when that is
done, they relive their past lives, memories of which lie buried deep within
us. Dr Brian Weiss has written several books such as Many Lives, Many Masters and Through
Time into Healing in which he discusses real past life experiences as does
Dr Rosemary Ellen Guiley in her book Tales
of Reincarnation. Countless cases have been reported where children
remember their past lifetimes in precise details. [Please see my article Reincarnation: Persistence of Memory
available online.] Krishna in the Gita says: bahooni me vyateetaani janmaani
tava chaarjuna; taany aham veda sarvaani na tvam vettha parantapa – “I have
lived numerous lifetimes in the past and so have you; I remember them all, but
not you, O Arjuna.” BG 4.5
The sixteenth chapter of
the Gita speaks of people being born either with daivi qualities or with asuri
qualities. None of us comes into this world as blank slates. We come into this
world with the psychological tendencies and life scripts that we carry with us
from our past lifetimes. While the life scripts and psychological tendencies
lie dormant so long as right conditions are not available for them to sprout
and grow, given the right conditions, the scripts ripen and the tendencies
start unfolding one by one.
Duryodhana had come into
this world, like everyone else, with these scripts and tendencies. In his case
they were predominantly dark and negative. The overindulgence of Dhritarashtra
and the complete neglect of Gandhari in his early years provided the right
atmosphere for these to sprout and grow, making him the durbuddhi that we find
in the Mahabharata who in his jealousy and greed for power causes the death of
practically the entire kshatriya varna of India.
Once of the first incidents
that the epic mentions in detail is the picnic at Pramanakoti which was plotted
by Duryodhana along with Shakuni and Karna, which shows Duryodhana as an evil
genius even as a child. The incident happens when he was very young – before he
begins his studies under Drona or even Kripa. The thoroughness with which he plans
the wicked deed is amazing and the ruthlessness he shows here is scary.
After plotting out the
entire wicked plan in detail with Shakuni and Karna he goes to Pramanakoti on
the banks of the Ganga, selects the place and gives orders for a beautiful
mansion surrounded by rich gardens to be built there. Then, when the mansion is
fully ready, he invites the Pandava brothers for a picnic there. By the time
they reach there, on Duryodhana’s orders the best cooks have prepared all kinds
of delicious food and drinks for the princes. Reaching there Duryodhana takes
them all on a tour of the place and then the food is served. They eat with
relish both the food cooked by expert cooks and fruits fallen from trees.
Duryodhana and his brothers feed the Pandavas by their own hands and the
Pandavas do the same to them too. Secretly Duryodhana has the deadly poison
kalakuta mixed in Bhima’s food and it is this food that Duryodhana smilingly
feeds him with his own hand. The innocent, unsuspecting Bhima, fond of food
that he is, happily eats everything Duryodhana gives him.
If in the Gita Arjuna uses
the word durbuddhi for Duryodhana. the epic uses the word durmati for him here.
Both words mean precisely the same: evil minded, of crooked intellect. The epic
calls Dhritarashtra’s dark-hearted son here a papi, an evil sinner. Speaking of
him the epic also says: hridayena kshuropamah,,,vaachaa amritakalpas cha,
meaning, like a dagger in his heart and like nectar, like ambrocia, in his
words.
Following the meals, they
all sport in the Ganga. As always, Bhima is more active than all his brothers
and cousins. He gives himself totally to the sport in water and continuously
encourages others to give all of themselves to the fun. Eventually, after a
long time in water, they go back to the pleasure palace and lie down there to
rest, relax and have a nap. Bhima soon enters a deep slumber. He is fatigued
with all the swimming and encouraging others, and the deadly poison that would long
ago have killed any other person has finally started having its effect on his
strong body. Duryodhana now ties him up with forest vines and drops him into
the Ganga from a cliff, hoping that if the poison does not kill him, he would
drown in the torrent of the river.
However, contrary to his
expectations, when deadly snakes bite him underwater the poison in his body is
neutralized. Eventually Bhima reaches the land of the Nagas and there,
recognizing that he is a kin of theirs through Kunti, whose mother Marisha was
a Naga woman, they save him and give him medicinal drinks that make him far
more powerful than before. Soon Bhima is back in Hastinapura.
But Duryodhana’s durbuddhi
does not rest even after this. Once again Duryodhana plots to kill Bhima with
poison that was even more deadly than the one used before. Yuyutsu,
Duryodhana’s half-brother who had become friendly with the Pandavas realizing
their goodness, informs Bhima of this and Bhima in spite of knowing his food is
poisoned, swallows it all without being harmed in the least by it because of
the medicinal treatments he had received in the land of the Nagas. Duryodhana keeps
making attempt after attempt to end the life of not just Bhima but all of the
Pandavas.
Speaking of this the
Mahabharata tells us:
evaṁ duryodhanaḥ karṇaḥ shakunis
chaapi saubalaḥ
anekair abhyupaayais taan
jighaamsanti sma paaṇḍavaan
[MB BORI 01119042a-c] [MB
GP Adi 129.40]
“Thus through numerous
means Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni the son of Subala repeatedly kept trying to
kill the Pandavas.”
As we all know, not only in
their childhood but throughout their
life Duryodhana treacherously tries to destroy the Pandavas, the house of
lacquer and the cunning dice game being just two examples.
It is to see the forces of this
Duryodhana that Arjuna asks Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies.
O0O
The sixteenth chapter of the Gita is a short chapter that discusses just
one single idea: daivi sampada vs. asuri sampada. Among daivi sampada, noble or
divine virtues, Krishna lists twenty-six qualities such as fearlessness, purity
of heart, self mastery, tapas, straightforwardness, and so on. The list of
asuri sampada or demonic qualities Krishna gives us is shorter, though it is
the asuri sampada that he discusses in greater detail. The short list consists
of just six qualities: hypocrisy, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness and
ignorance, but the discussion of the asuri people only begins with this list. The
asuri people are slaves to hundreds of desires, he continues, and, given over
to lust and anger, they constantly strive to amass wealth by unjust means and
hoard it for sensual enjoyment. They are driven by power hunger, lust, anger
and jealousy and are slaves to egoism and pride.
Of course, Duryodhana is not all evil – no one in the Mahabharata is.
The Mahabharata is not written in black and white, but in grey colours. There
are positive qualities in him too, like courage
and so on which he displays on many occasions in his life. But if we
look at Duryodhana’s life from his birth to his death, at his life as a whole,
the description of people with asuri sampada Krishna gives in the sixteenth
chapter of the Gita seems to fit him perfectly.
Such people create hell for themselves wherever they are and live in
that hell perpetually. Because a man with endless desires in his mind, with
constantly burning anger in his heart and filled with insatiable greed lives
constantly in hell. Hell is not a geographical place, but a psychological state
in which you are constantly haunted by desire, anger and greed, by hatred and
the need for vengeance. The light of the joys of life is denied for them, he
sees no beauty in the sunrise or the sunset, the cool wind does not blow for him,
clouds do not shower rains for him, and when flowers bloom him do not see any
beauty in it, nor does he see the beauty of a child’s smile. The Ishavasya
Upanishad says: asooryaa naama te lokaa andhena tamasaavrtaah taams te pretya abhigacchanti
ye ke chaatmahano janaah – Sunless indeed are called those worlds, steeped in
blinding darkness. And whoever kills their own selves, they enter those worlds.
To kill oneself is to live a life without joyfulness, denying the ananda
which is our true nature. Rather than living in the present moment, in the now,
where alone all joy is, all happiness is, all ananda is, when we are constantly
on the run seeking it, constantly living in the future, we are killing our
selves. This is the suicidal life that
the Upanishad speaks about
Today’s world is encouraging this kind of life. That is why there is
less and less peace in the world, less and less joy. Stress dominates our life
and we seem to be constantly on the run, to reach where nobody knows. The
strange thing is that even after knowing we get nothing from all this running,
we still keep running.
O0O
Modern Psychology and Organizational Behaviour speak of the Type A Personality.
Type A people are highly competitive and lack the sense of joy in their life.
They get easily wound up, tend to overreact, live with a sense of desperate urgency
and are impatient with delays. Easily aroused to anger and hostility, they see
only the negative side of others. They are full of envy and lack compassion.
Hostile towards people in general, highly aggressive, they bully everyone over
whom they have power. Restless, bulldozing through life, they drive people
around them insane, spreading stress and unhappiness all around.
That reads like a description of Duryodhana.
Woe to you if you have someone in power around you like him, like a
boss, your spouse or a parent. I know someone who had a boss like that. After
three years of every day abuses, humiliations, threats, bullying, conflicts and
tensions he finally resigned and left, moving into a new profession in which he
was his own master.
O0O
Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra
Thank you in advance for your comments and questions.
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