Living Bhagavad Gita 22: When Tamas Takes Over

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for people living and working in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times filled with stress and fear. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully, achieve excellence in whatever we do and find happiness, peace and contentment.

[Continued from the previous post]

Sanjaya said: Having spoken thus in the battlefield, Arjuna sank down into the chariot dropping his bow and arrows, his mind heavy with grief. BG 1.47

Chapter One of the Bhagavad Gita began with a question by Dhritarashtra about what his sons and the sons of Pandu did in the battlefield of Kurukshetra and now we have come to the last verse of the chapter in which Sanjaya tells the blind king that Arjuna has sat down in the chariot overcome by great compassion that has risen in his heart, refusing to fight.

The journey of the Gita which is a journey into light begins with tamas, darkness – Dhritarashtra is tamas. We cannot help but wonder how appropriate this is because all journeys have to begin from where we are and we are in darkness now. The purpose of the Gita is to take us from the darkness – spiritual darkness – in which we are now to light. Tamaso maa jyotir gamaya, lead me from darkness to light, says one of the oldest prayers known to mankind, a prayer that we find the Vedic people of India making to the unnamed power that presides over our lives. Gita is about this journey from darkness to light.

The Bhagavad Gita shows us how we can travel from darkness to light. Krishna tells us it is for each one of us to make this journey from darkness to light, it is for us to pull ourselves out of the abyss we have fallen into. Uddharet aatmanaa aatmaanam: Lead yourself by your own self, he says in the Gita. If we are in the gutter it is because of ourselves and it is for us to climb out of that gutter – that is what the Gita tells us, that is Krishna’s way. As the greatest leadership teacher in the history of humanity, Krishna knows that without our will to get out of the mess we are in we will never come out of it.      

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The darkness Dhritarashtra finds himself in when he asks that question in the first verse of the Gita was of his own making – others certainly aided him in that but his role in its creation is no less important than anyone else’s. From the television serials on the epic, many of us tend to blame Duryodhana and Shakuni for the tragedy of the Mahabharata, but Dhritarashtra was the king, the man invested with all power, and he was also Duryodhana’s father. Just as a modern organizational head is ultimately responsible for whatever happens in that organization, the responsibility for the tragedy of the Mahabharata in the final analysis is his, more than that of anyone else.    

It is interesting that this blind king because of whom India fought its greatest ever war was a biological son of Sage Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, the compiler of the Vedas, author of the Puranas and arguably the greatest sage our land has known – a fact that proves greatness and wisdom cannot be inherited but have to be acquired. As Gibran said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Each one of us is a child of Life. In our endless journey, each one of us has had thousands of mothers and fathers – they are the gates through which we enter this world but we do not originate in them. The Mahabharata says our relationships are like the relationships of two logs meeting in the vast ocean, now brought together and now again separated: yathaa kaashtham cha kaastham cha samaayetaam mahodadhau, sametya cha vimaayetaam, evam bandhu-samaagamah.  We are all alike eternal sojourners in this vast ocean of life. And in that beginningless and endless journey, each one of us undergoes endless experiences, including our experiences with our current parents, react to those experiences in our own unique ways and are shaped to become what we are now. Some of us end up as predominantly sattvic, some others as rajasic and yet others as tamasic.  Ultimately the responsibility for what we have become rests on us. [And so long as we blame others for what we, divine sparks the Upanishads calls amritasya putraah, children of immortality, have become, there is no possibility of change.]  

There is no way gunas can be inherited from our parents, as we see in the case of the four sons of Maharshi Vyasa. His son Brahmarshi Shuka is beyond all gunas – an enlightened man who has become gunatita. Vidura, another biological son of his, is predominantly sattvic and Pandu is rajasic. Dhritarashtra, the blind king with whose name the Bhagavad Gita begins, is deeply tamasic. In fact, he could be used as an example to explain what tamas means as I have done numerous times in my lectures to the business school students I have taught and the corporate officers I have trained during sessions on understanding self and others, motivating self and others and so on. It is difficult to find a better example for tamas in the Mahabharata than Dhritarashtra.

Tamasic people cannot create – creativity is the opposite of tamas. But they can destroy. They are not stupid, but have a kind of intelligence that Krishna names tamasic intelligence. Krishna gives us a definition of tamasic intelligence, tamasic buddhi, in the eighteenth chapter of the Gita:

adharmam dharmam iti yaa manyate tamasaavritaa, sarvaarthaan vipareetaamshcha buddhih saa paartha taamasee.

The intelligence which is clothed in darkness and sees adharma as dharma and views all things as the opposite of what they are, that intelligence is tamasic.  BG 18.32

Ruthless, cunning, manipulative, insensitive to the sufferings of others, totally self-centered and joyless, tamasic people try to doggedly hold on to whatever they have. They cling to things, cling to their power, positions and privilege, refusing to let go, ad Dhritarashtra does.

In his international best seller Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach speaks of a village of creatures living at the bottom of a crystal river. He says:

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.”

These creatures at the bottom of the river that Richard Bach speaks of are excellent examples for tamasic people. These insecure people are like baby birds in a nest, refusing to let go of the security of the nest and thus denying themselves the freedom and joyfulness of the boundless skies. Dhritarashtra is like those small creatures at the bottom of the river, like those baby birds who refuse to flutter their wings, let go and take to the skies. The name Dhritarashtra can mean one who holds the rashtra, the kingdom, together. It can also equally well mean one who holds on to the rashtra, the kingdom, one who clings to the kingdom, to the throne and crown, to power, as Mahabharata’s Dhritarashtra definitely does.

Continuing Bach’s story:

“But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom.”

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”

But they cried the more, “Saviour!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.”

Tamasic people just cannot let go. They are incapable of doing that. Unfortunately without letting go of the alpa, the small, there is no bhooma, the big.

But the tamasic just cannot let go. Clinging because of their insecurities, the tamasic live a life of fear, a life of dread, seeing threats everywhere, afraid of what they have being snatched away from them any moment. They become paranoid.

There is a beautiful Taoist story about a phoenix and an owl:

Hui Tzu was prime minister of Liang. He had what he believed to be inside information that Chuang Tzu [the great Taoist master] coveted his post, and was plotting to supplant him.

When Chuang Tzu came to visit Liang, the prime minister send out police to arrest him, But although they searched for three days and nights, they could not find him.

Meanwhile Chuang Tzu presented himself to Hui Tzu of his own accord, and said: “Have you heard about the bird that lives in the south – the phoenix that never grows old? This undying phoenix rises out of the south sea and flies to the sea of the north, never alighting except on certain sacred trees. He will touch no food but the most exquisite rare fruit, and he drinks only from the clearest springs. Once an owl chewing an already half decayed rat saw the phoenix fly over. Looking up he screeched with alarm and clutched the dead rat to himself in fear and dismay.”

“Prime minister,” asked Chuang Tzu, “why are you so frantic, clinging to your ministry and screeching at me in dismay?”

Had Dhritarashtra cared about the good of his subjects as an Indian king was expected to rather than clinging to power, had he cared even for his own son’s good, the war would not have happened. He should have handed power back to Yudhishthira, whose it really was as per the conventions of the day since his father Pandu was the last king of the Bharata’s and Dhritarashtra was no more than a caretaker. Had he done that, he wouldn’t have had to weep at the end of the war that all his one hundred sons have been killed, that Bhima did not spare even one of them.    

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The Mahabharata tells us that when Sage Vyasa came to his sister-in-law Ambika to produce a child through the ancient custom of niyoga as ordered by his mother, seeing his ascetic form she closed her eyes and that is why her son was born. This story is symbolic of Dhritarashtra’s mother turning away from light, closing her eyes to light, rejecting light at the moment of his conception, for Vyasa was light, wisdom, goodness and spirituality at the highest level.

Just as his mother did at the moment of his conception, throughout his life the blind king turned away from light and remained a prisoner of darkness, of the asuri sampada that the Gita speaks of.

 It was not for the first time that in ancient India, or even in the history of the Bharata dynasty itself, that primogeniture has been overlooked in favour of competency. Bharata himself, after whom the dynasty is named, rejected all his nine sons born to his three queens since he did not find them ‘appropriate’, competent enough, and accepted a rank outsider called Bhumanyu as his successor. Dhritarashtra’s own grandfather, Emperor Shantanu was not the eldest son of his father Emperor Pratipa – he was his youngest son. Pratipa’s eldest son was Devapi who on his own gave up inheritance because he had leprosy and became an ascetic. Devapi’s younger brother Bahlika abandoned his right to the Kuru kingdom and went to live with his maternal uncle in what we call the Balkh country today and eventually inherited that kingdom. That is how the crown came to Shantanu.  

The rule that someone who suffered from a physical defect or disease was not fit to rule was based on the ancient understanding that kingship was a responsibility and not a privilege and to be fully effective a king – a leader – should have all his faculties at his command so that he can understand the situation personally and take the right decision. Dhritarashtra was denied the throne based because it was felt by those in power that a blind king will not be able to fully comprehend challenging situations and if he failed to do so and took wrong decisions on important issues, the kingdom would suffer. One of the important expectations in those days was that the leader led from the front, particularly in the battlefield, and here a blind man was at a disadvantage, though exceptions to this rule did exist.  

Rejecting Dhritarashtra, Pandu was made king and he proved himself to be superbly effective. But perhaps Pandu who was very sensitive towards others felt guilty about ruling as king while his elder brother was alive – Ramayana’s Bharata refused to sit on the throne even though according to Valmiki the kingdom was his by birth since Dasharatha had married his mother Kaikeyi by giving the kingdom as rajyashulka, by promising that her son would inherit the throne. Pandu eventually gave up the throne and went to live with his wives in the forest as an ascetic, though there may be other factors that contributed to that decision. From Dhritarashtra’s subsequent behaviour, we clearly see that he had more than ordinary greed for power – power was the most important thing for him, the  be-all and end-all of his existence, power for himself and his future generations.

Like most power hungry people, he had no respect for anything other than power. Once a great rishi of awesome spiritual powers called Baka Dalbhya came to him asking for a few cows. It was a common thing in those days for rishis to approach kings and request for cows and kings usually gave not one or two but hundreds and sometimes thousands of cows to them. But what Dhritarashtra did was truly shocking – he pointed out a few dead cows and asked Rishi Dalbhya to take them – that’s all he would give. As a consequence of this action of the king, says the Mahabharata, the entire Kuru kingdom suffered from terrible draughts and famines that lasted for twelve years and a vast section of the population died from hunger, thirst and starvation. Dhritarashtra accepted his mistake and made amends only when he realized Baka Dalbhya’s incredible spiritual powers.

Power is perhaps man’s greatest temptation. Because with power comes everything else. In modern political organizations, in industry and business, in fact everywhere, we can find people clinging to power whether they are good as leaders or not, and appointing their own people in positions of power – what we call nepotism in English and bhai-bhatijavad in Hindi. Many organizations have died sad deaths because of this.

The Dhritarashtra Vilapa, a long soliloquy by the blind king, is at the very beginning of the Mahabharata. In the vilapa the blind king recalls one by one sixty-eight occasions when he lost all hope of victory – the verses describing these incidents all begin with the words yadaa shrausham, when I heard..., and end in ...tadaa naaham vijayaaya naashamse, then I no more hoped for victory. Practically all these occasions speak of some success or another of the Pandavas – like their escape from the lacquer house in which they were supposed to be killed, Arjuna winning the archery contest for wedding Draupadi, the Panchalas becoming allies of the Pandavas and so on. He sees each of these as occasions that destroyed his hopes.

The Pandavas are really not ‘others’ – they are the children of his brother, and they gave him the same love and respect that they had for their father; but the world of the tamasic is very small and have no place even for one’s nephews. That is a major difference between the sattvic and the tamasic – for the sattvic, the whole earth is their family, as is said in Sanskrit vasudhaiva kutumbam, whereas for the tamasic, their family is too small, and even their own nephews are not part of it.

As his father and as the caretaker king, Dhritarashtra had all the power he needed to stop Duryodhana’s evil ways but never once does he take a strong stand against him, newer a stand that will really stop him. True he did speak against him a few times, but never with all his authority and never in such a way that his son will not be able to go against him.

The face of Dhritarashtra we see in the Mahabharata most of the time is of an absolutely shameless old man who does no more lip service to the children of his brother who are the rightful heirs to the throne. Even in the Udyoga Parva of the epic when the war has become imminent, the message he sent to the righteous Pandavas is truly unbelievable in its meanness: he tells him since they are lovers of peace they should not wage a war against him or even demand their rights, but should go somewhere else and ask someone else for some land as charity!

It is this face tamas that we see in the Sabha Parva of the epic too where the dice game happens. It is possible that Dhritarashtra is the happiest man in the dice hall every time Yudhishthira loses a game. It is his voice alone that we hear at these times and every time his question is the same: jitam mayaa, have I won it? He is asking about what Yudhishthira has staked and lost, including Draupadi as the last stake. There is great thrill in his voice as he asks that question every time.

It is this Dhritarashtra that Arjuna does not want to dethrone because he is his uncle; and also because in that process he will have to slay in battle Bhishma and Drona. Arjuna’s vision has temporarily become clouded by blind mamata, which is form of tamas. But Krishna clearly sees what Arjuna does not see: the danger of surrendering the world to Dhritarashtra’s philosophy. He can see the dangers of having tamasic people in positions of power.

When tamas takes over individuals, they are finished. When it takes over organizations, they are finished. When a culture is taken over tamas, when a nation is taken over tamas, it is finished.  

The Nobel Prize winning book The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass discusses how Germany plunged into darkness under Hitler. Bhishma Sahni’s Tamas brilliantly shows what happened in the days of Partition as tamas conquered us.

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As Arjuna collapses in his chariot surrendering to a dark wave of tamas perhaps for the first time in his life, his mind and body drained of all energy, his will deserting him, Krishna shows him how to walk out of the blinding darkness he is in now and reach the world of light: of victory, joyfulness, prosperity and glory.

That glorious path is the Bhagavad Gita.

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Living Bhagavad Gita 008: Duryodhana and Asuri Leadership

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for busy, stressed people living and working in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times. This 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

The Mahabharata tells us that a year after the princes completed their studies under Drona and Arjuna gave him the guru dakshina he wanted in the form of Drupada defeated, captured, tied up and brought to him, Yudhishthira was appointed the crown prince of Hastinapura. He was the rightful heir of the throne as the son of the previous king, Pandu, and had impeccable ethical integrity, apart from total commitment to the welfare of his people, great self-mastery, steadfastness, determination, firmness, fortitude, patience, benevolence, and scores of other qualities that were considered essential in a king in those days. The Mahabharata tells us that this was done ‘moved by kindness to the people’, bhrityaanaam anukampaarthe, perhaps a way of saying that this was done in response to the desire of the people. He started ruling the kingdom with the help of his four brothers. His brothers subdued more kings than their father Pandu had done and soon his fame exceeded that of his celebrated father who was adored by the people.

Dhritarashtra is now filled with jealousy towards the Pandavas. Constantly thinking and worrying about them, according to the epic, “he could not sleep in the nights,” – sa chintaaparamo raajan na nidraam alabhan nishi.

One day he calls his minister Kanika and confesses to him of his jealousy. “The Pandavas are growing in fame every day,” he tells him, “and, O Brahmana, I am jealous of them “utsiktaah paandavaa nityam tebhyo’sooye dvijottama. He seeks Kanika’s advice about what to do promising he would do whatever Kanika asks him to. Kanika apologizes to him in advance for the evil nature of what he is going to say, seeks his protection in advance, and then gives him such dark lessons in grabbing power and retaining it that dwarf even Machiavilli in evil.

Kanika tells the blind king to use speech as a tool for deception. “Vaangmaatreṇa vineetah syaad, hridayena yathaa kshurah,” he tells him: Confine your sweetness to your words. In your heart, be like the dagger. He asks Dhritarashtra to be ruthless. “Putro vaa yadi vaa bhraataa pitaa vaa yadi vaa suhrd, arthasya vighnam kurvaaṇaa hantavyaa bhootivardhanaiḥ,” Kanika tells him: Kill the person who stands in the  way of your attaining goals even if he is your son, brother, father, or friend. The minister advices him to turn cruelty into an art, as the fisherman does. “Naahatvaa matsyaghaateeva praapnoti paramaaṁ shriyam.”  Without piercing the very vitals of others, without accomplishing many stern deeds, without slaughtering after the manner of the fisherman, one cannot acquire great prosperity. Another advice Kanika gives his king is to follow the ways of the razor. “Kshuro bhootvaa haret praanaan, nishitah kaalasaadhanah; pratichhanno lomahaari, dvishataam parikartanah,” he tells Dhritarashtra. “In the matter of destroying their enemies, kings should forever resemble razors in every particular; pitiless and sharp, hiding their intents as razors hide in leather scabbards, they should strike when the opportunity arises as daggers are used when the occasion demands, sweeping off their foes with all their allies and dependants as daggers shave the head or the chin without leaving a single hair.” 

After he finishes his teachings, Kanika winds up what he had to say by telling a fable.

Once there lived a jackal in the forest with his four friends: a tiger, a mouse, a wolf and a mongoose. There was a large herd of deer in the jungle and their leader was a male deer in the prime of its youth, big as a bull and faster than a tiger. Tempted by the majestic deer the five friends chased him several times but every time the swift deer outran its chasers. Even the tiger, fastest among the friends, failed repeatedly. Eventually, they sat together and devised a plan, elemental in its simplicity: when the deer sleeps, the mouse will crawl up to it and bite its leg. After that the deer will not be able to run at his normal speed. At that time the tiger can chase and kill it.

The brilliant plan was put into practice and the five friends sat around the killed deer to feast upon its delicious meat. The jackal now asked all his friends to go and have a bath and come back for the meal. He would guard it in the meantime, he told them.

The tiger came back first. The jackal incited him saying the mouse was laughing at the tiger’s strength. The tiger left the meal and went away saying he did not want any part of a meal caught with the help of a mouse. The mouse came next and the jackal incited him saying the mongoose has said the meat is poisoned because it has been bitten by the tiger and so he wouldn’t touch it. Instead, he would eat the mouse. The scared mouse retreated to its hole. When the wolf came next, the jackal told him the tiger was furious with him and had gone to fetch his wife and together they had plans upon him, hearing which the scared wolf ran away. The mongoose was the next to come. The jackal told him that he had driven away all the other animals with his strength and if he dared he should fight him, the jackal. A scared mongoose too ran away. And the jackal had the entire deer the size of a bull all for himself.

This is how the minister sums up his teachings to Dhritarashtra, the heart of which is to let no values stand in the way of fulfilling your selfish ambitions and to grab what you want without a thought of others.

And that is exactly how Duryodhana behaves with the Pandavas, showing them no sympathy or pity. He tries to destroy them again and again, refuses to give them even as much land as a needle tip though Yudhishthira was the rightful heir to the Bharata throne. He even goes to the jungle to eliminate the Pandavas while they are living there for twelve years following the foul game of dice he played with Yudhishthira.

We learn what we want to learn, what appeals to our heart. Numerous rishis and wise men try to teach Duryodhana dharma throughout his life, Vyasa himself tries it, his own mother and father try to on so many occasions, Vidura tries repeatedly, but he refuses to learn. What he learns and practices is what Kanika teaches his father, because his teachings appeal to him instantly, just as the ways of Shakuni appeals to him. During his peace negotiations, as requested by Dhritarashtra, Krishna tries to teach him what is right and what is wrong and that too has no effect on him.

Because Duryodhana is asuri by nature, only asuri teachings appeal to him.

Our sanskaras, vasanas and karmas that we bring with us into this life from our former existences decide what we are influenced by and practice in life, just as they decide whether we are born asuri or daivi. Krishna tells Arjuna in the sixteenth chapter of the Gita that he is born daivi: maa shuchah  sampadam daiveem abhijaatosi paandava – Do not grieve Arjuna, you are born with daivi sampada. But Duryodhana’s case is just the opposite.

In the Mahabharata war Yudhishthira is persuaded to do one single wrong – tell a lie about the death of Ashwatthama – and he feels guilty about it all his life. But Duryodhana commits wickedness after wickedness and he feels no guilt about it. Before telling Krishna in the Kuru assembly that he would not give the Pandavas as much land as the size of a needle tip, the speech Duryodhana gives Krishna is highly revealing. He does not see that he has done any wrong against the Pandavas in their entire life! What he has done is no more than practicing the ways of the kshatriyas as taught by the rishis, he believes. His asuri nature makes him blind to his own evil nature and evil deeds. Perhaps this is the reason why Krishna despairs in the Gita later, prakritim yaanti bhootaani nigrahaḥ kim kariṣhyati – all beings follow their own nature, what can suppression do? [BG 3.33]. Being blind to one’s own evil nature and being insensitive to other’s sufferings is part of being asuri in nature.

“You must speak, Krishna, after reflecting on all circumstances,” says Duryodhana in the Kuru Sabha. “You find fault with me alone and address me in harsh words without any reason, just because the Pandavas give you much respect. But before censuring me, have you assessed the strengths and weaknesses of both sides? [Duryodhana here equates strength with being right and weakness with being wrong!] You, Kshatri [Vidura], the king [Dhritarashtra], the acharya, and the grandsire all reproach me alone all the time, never another person. However, I DO NOT FIND THE LEAST FAULT IN MYSELF. And yet all of you hate me – and that includes my own father! I have been reflecting and reflecting on this and yet I DO NOT FIND ANY SERIOUS FAULT IN ME, NOR DO I FIND ANY SMALL FAULT IN ME. Not even the minutest!”

That is Duryodhana, the evil minded son of Dhritarashtra, the durbiddhi, as Arjuna refers to him while asking Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies.      

Duryodhana is proud of everything he has done in his life and believes and asserts proudly he has never erred from kshatra dharma, the way of the kshatriyas. But he forgets that kshatra dharma does not teach cheating, betrayal, treachery, lying, poisoning people, setting fire to their houses, and violating the dignity of women. 

Unfortunately, that he learnt and practiced the ways of Kanika and Shakuni and of no one else was not just his tragedy and the tragedy of the Pandavas, but the tragedy of all the kshatriyas born in India in his age, of this sacred land itself.

No culture gave more importance to leadership than ancient India did. Speaking of leadership India said raja yugam uchyate – the king is called the four ages. The Mahabharata says whether it is Satya Yuga in a country or Treta, Dwapara or Kali, depends on the king. When the king is what he should be, a man of integrity and other virtues, and does what is expected of him, we have Satya Yuga, the age of perfection, in his country. And we have Treta Yuga or Dwapara Yuga or Kali Yuga in the country, depending on to what extent the king comes near the ideals set for him. When the king fails miserably in being what he should be and doing what he should do, we have the Age of Kali.

During a lesson Yudhishthira receives from Bhishma in the Shanti Parva of the epic, the dharma king asks his grandsire whether the leader creates the age or the age creates the leader. And Bhishma says: kalo vaa kaaranam raajnah raajaa vaa kaalakaaranam iti te samshayo maa bhoot, raajaa kaalasya kaaranam. “Let there be no doubt in your mind as to whether the king makes the age or the age makes the king: The king makes the age.”

Whether it was in the past or today, whether it is in a kingdom or a family or an organization, the leader makes the age. Put in today’s terms:  Let there be no doubt in your mind as to whether the leader makes the age or the age makes the leader: The leader makes the age

I once worked for an institution in which the leadership changed and with it, almost overnight, the institutional climate changed too. Under the old leadership, if the institution was in Satya Yuga, under the new leadership it entered the Kali Yuga. The changes were instant and total and the only change that had happened was the change in leadership.

It is not that the asuri leadership principles Kanika taught Dhritarashtra do not work – they work, but only for a short time, and ultimately it destroys. It destroys those who practice it. Their effectiveness is short lived and eventually they backfire, as we see in the Mahabharata itself. That is why the Katha Upanishad speaks of the path of short term good as the path of preyas and the road widely travelled; and the path of long time good as the path of shreyas and the road less travelled. Speaking of these two paths, the Upanishad says:

shreyas cha preyas cha manushyam etas tau sampareetya vivinakti dheerah; shreyo hi dheero’bhipreyaso vrineete preyo mando yogakshemaad vrineete // - Katha  Upanishad, 1/2/2

Translated loosely, the mantra means that as man walks on the path of life, both shreyas and preyas appear before him and the intelligent man, differentiating between the two, chooses shreyas for lasting good, whereas the fool chooses preyas for immediate gains.

Much of the tragedy the world is facing today is because we have been ignoring shreyas and choosing preyas at the individual, at the family, at the community and at the national level, leading to dissatisfaction, frustration and unhappiness. Modern industry and business inspired by western models have for a while now been consistently choosing preyas over shreyas, which explains much of the tragedy in our world today, in spite of the great advances in science and technology, and why we our planet is on the brink of destroyed.

Power should not be in the hands of durbuddhis, nor should our leaders and leadership be of asuri nature.    

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Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.

Living Bhagavad Gita 007: Duryodhana the Durbuddhi

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.    

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Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your comments and questions.

Living Bhagavad Gita: 002

Short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for the busy, stressed working people of today. Discusses how to live the Gita in our daily life.

[Continued from Living Bhagavad Gita: 001]

Responding to Dhritarashtra’s question, Sanjaya says:

Having seen the army of Pandavas drawn up in battle array, King Duryodhana then approached his teacher, Drona, and spoke these words:

“Behold, Oh Acharya, this mighty army of the sons of Pandu, arrayed by the son of Drupada, your disciple of great intelligence. 

“Here are the fearless mighty archers equal in battle to Bhima and Arjuna: Yuyudhana [Satyaki], Virata, the great chariot warrior Drupada, Dhrishtaketu, Chekitana, the valiant king of Kasi, Purujit, Kuntibhoja,  the great Shaibya, the heroic Yudhamanyu, the brave Uttamauja, Abhimanyu and the sons of Draupadi – all great warriors indeed.

“Now know, Oh Great Brahmana, the names of the leaders of my army, the most distinguished men on our side. Let me tell you their names for your information. Yourself, Bhishma, Karna, the war winner Kripa, Aswatthama, Vikarna, Jayadratha and Saumadatti. And then many other heroes too who have laid down their lives for me, all outstanding in warfare, all armed with all kinds of weapons.

Boundless is our army led by Bhishma, but their army under the protection of Bhima is limited. So in whatever formation the army is, all of you stand in your positions and make sure Bhishma is well protected.

Then Bhishma, the aged grandfather of the Kurus, roared like a lion and blew a booming blast on his conch, making Duryodhana’s heart leap with joy. Gita 1.3-12

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The truly wicked do not abandon wickedness till the very end.

Along with Shakuni, Karna was with Duryodhana in all his dark deeds right from their childhood. The three of them together made numerous attempts on the life of the Pandavas even before they began their studies under Drona, says the Mahabharata. However, towards the end, sometime before the war, Karna’s transformation begins. He still fights on Duryodhana’s side, but his heart is not in his friend’s victory. In fact he says so when Krishna offers him the kingdom, asking him to join the Pandava side. He says openly to Krishna that Duryodhana is wicked and should not become king.

Seen in this light, his refusal to fight so long as Bhishma fights, his giving away of his armour and earrings that made him invincible and his promising his mother that he would not kill any of her sons other than Arjuna, all assume a different meaning. 

However, Duryodhana never gives up the path of wickedness until the very end. The epic says he was an incarnation of the Kali Age and perhaps that is the reason why he never abandons evil. Kali is evil.  

We see this darkness in Duryodhana’s heart right in the first words he speaks to his guru Drona in the Gita.

Behold, O Acharya, this mighty army of the sons of Pandu, arrayed by the son of Drupada, your disciple of great intelligence.

Every word he speaks here spits out vicious dark fumes of poison at his guru who is with him in the battlefield ready to lay down his life for his cause just out of gratitude for the Kuru wealth he has enjoyed for years and not because he believes in his cause. He has no faith in Duryodhana, no respect for his claims over the kingdom, no respect for him as a person, and does not consider him ethically fit to rule, still gratefulness compels him to fight on his side, as he says again and again openly. In spite of that, and perhaps partly also because of that, we see Duryodhana’s contempt for him in these words.

He does not forget to point out to Drona that the supreme commander of the Pandava army is his disciple and the knowledge and skills he is using against them are all taught by Drona himself. Not content with this, he also points out that he is the son of Drona’s arch enemy Drupada!

The placing of the words panduputraanaam and aacharya is interesting. Was it a Freudian slip that the two words could be read together thus making Duryodhana insult Drona further by calling him the acharya of his enemies?

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One of the essential leadership qualities is to know when to speak and when to keep quiet, when to give advice and when to seek advice. Prattling reveals lack of confidence and reduces your credibility, respect and the ability to command as a leader. An able leader retains mastery over himself however difficult the circumstances are and holds back the tendency to babble and rattle. The war is about to begin and Duryodhana as the leader of the Kauravas, should have sought his acharya’s advice and guidance rather than telling him what to do, which is what he does in the nine verses he speaks in the Gita, all of which are said here. Besides, there is absolutely no need for him to tell Drona who the important warriors on his side are – that acharya knows every single one of them.

Speaking of great leadership, John Heider in his book The Tao of Leadership, which interprets for us people of today Dao De Jing, the ancient Chinese classic and the second most translated book in the world, says:

The wise leader speaks rarely and briefly. The leader teaches more through being than through doing. The quality of one’s silence conveys more than long speeches.

Be still. Follow your inner wisdom.

In order to know your inner wisdom, you have to be still. The leader who knows how to be still and feel deeply will be effective. But the leader who chatters and boasts and tries to impress the group has no centre and carries little weight.

By speaking when he should have kept quiet and allowed the acharya and others to speak, Duryodhana reveals his shallowness here. And by what he says, he reveals his meanness and wickedness.

What is the reason behind Duryodhana’s lack of confidence that makes him blather?   

Truth, integrity and uprightness give us strength and confidence. Guilt drains our confidence. Duryodhana is a swindler of power, a usurper. He knows he has no right over the Kuru throne. All of it belongs to Yudhisthira and he could have avoided the war if he was willing to give him just five villages, but he wouldn’t give them so much land as could be pierced by the tip of a needle. Deep in his heart he knows the warriors in the battlefield are all going to die for the sake of his ego, because of his power hunger. That guilt weighs down on him heavily. He tries to project confidence in his actions and speech, but his confidence is not real, it is only a put on. Just beneath his façade of confidence there is complete lack of confidence. All you have to do is scratch the surface and his lack of confidence becomes visible.

Duryodhana, in the words of the epic, is an incarnation of the age of kali when naked power hunger rules the world, as we can see around us every day. Our world believes that anything you do for power is justified. Our politicians earlier admitted secretly that there are no permanent enemies in politics, but today they openly and loudly proclaim it as their governing principle. 

Soon after the princes complete their education under Drona, Yudhishthira is crowned yuvaraja and he becomes famous as a competent ruler and his fame exceeds that of his father Pandu who was adored by his subjects. Dhritarashtra becomes jealous of his success and asks his minister Kanika to advice him how he can recapture power. Kanika gives a long lecture here on cunning, manipulative, asuri leadership and advises Dhritarashtra to practice it. It is as though Duryodhana did not have to learn such leadership but was a born master of it, for that is what he practiced all his life, right from his childhood, even before he became a student of Drona. And he knew all along what he was doing and that gave birth to guilt in him. There is a famous Sanskrit verse said by him, a verse whose textual source has been lost, which says: janami dharmam na cha me pravrittih, janami adharmam na cha me nivrittih; kenaapi devena hridisthitena yathaa niyukto’smi tathaa karomi - I know what dharma is but I am not driven to act according to that and I know what adharma is but I cannot keep away from it; I act as directed by some power that lives in my heart.

When you know what is right and do not act accordingly, when you know what is wrong and you still follow it all your life, there will be immense guilt in you. It is this burden of oppressive guilt that erodes Duryodhana’s confidence and makes him blabber on as he does here.

Duryodhana stands for the political philosophy Krishna fought to destroy all his life: power as an end in itself. He was told repeatedly by such elders as Bhishma and Drona and by his own mother and father that he had no right over the throne by birth and even if he had, he is not morally fir to become king. His father openly tells him in the Kuru court that he, Dhritarashtra, was never king and hence the kingdom cannot be his by inheritance.  

Poor interpersonal skills have always been one of Duryodhana’s many weaknesses because of which he made enemies throughout his life. He earns the curse of several sages and elders because of his arrogant ways of dealing with people. Though the Gita does not specifically say so but only indicates it, it is clear his words here ire and irk the revered acharya and creates confusion in the minds of other senior warriors on his side who could hear him, which is why Bhishma interferes at this juncture and blows his conch announcing the war, thus preventing him from continuing his senseless speech.

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It is interesting that it is to his guru Drona that Duryodhana comes to speak, and not to his army’s supreme commander Bhishma, who is also his grand uncle, a member of the Kuru family, and the most senior warrior on his side. Bhishma is also perhaps the oldest man in the battlefield and the wisest man on the Kaurava side. His intention here is to stir up his guru, but what he actually accomplishes is to outrage the acharya, to insult him, disgrace him.

Duryodhana uses outrage and insult as a means of motivation repeatedly. All asuri leaders do so and Duryodhana is clearly an asuri leader. Such men like to humiliate and anger their people thus hoping to get the best out of them. Of course they also intend to demonstrate their power over their people. This is typical boss behaviour – something that a leader rarely does and a boss always does. This kind of motivation does work for a while, like whipped horses people give what they can out of their fear of insult and punishment – but it ultimately proves counterproductive because all of us resent wounds to our ego and would let down the leader and avenge the insult as soon as we get an opportunity.  Motivation through fear is the worst kind of motivation. It destroys relationships – and effective leadership is a relationship.

In his prattling, Duryodhana praises the enemy army and its warriors, which is tactically stupid at this stage. He says the strength of his own army is Bhishma. Even if this is the truth, saying so to Drona at this point is not the right thing to do from a motivational angle. For all we know, Drona is no less a warrior than Bhishma. What Duryodhana does here is to tell the acharya that he is not as important as Bhishma is, not as competent as Bhishma is. Demoralising a warrior like Drona at the beginning of the war and creating resentment in him is idiotic.

Krishna later in the Gita classifies people as daivi or asuri – daivi people are those who are rich in noble virtues and asuri people, in dark qualities.  Asuri people spread fear, distrust and resentment wherever they go, and that is what Duryodhana does all the time. Speaking of such people, Krishna says they are bound for hell. It is not only that they live in hell all the time, but also create hell for others.  

What Duryodhana does in the next few verses of the Gita is, apart from insulting the acharya, telling him what to do. Of course, Duryodhana has the right to do so since he is effectively the Kuru king and the acharya is working for him. Drona is an employee of the Kurus and Duryodhana is his de facto employer and as his de facto employer he has every right to tell him what to do.

But apart from being his employee, Drona is many other things too. He is Duryodhana’s guru, the greatest living teacher of the martial arts, and from all we know, knows the dhanurveda, including the war strategies it teaches, better than anyone else in the battlefield and you do not order about such people.      

Tom Peters is the author of the world’s first modern management best seller The Pursuit of Excellence. In his subsequent book A passion for Excellence, he talks of seven people truths, one of which is: “Listen to your people... Bosses don’t have all the answers.” This is a people truth Duryodhana forgets when he instructs Guru Drona what to do.

He also forgets another people truth that Tom Peters talks about: “People have egos and development needs…and they’ll commit themselves only to the extent that they can see ways of satisfying these needs.” Duryodhana’s words to Drona here crushes the achary’s self-respect by reducing his role in the war to that of someone second to Bhishma whose guard he should be throughout the war because if Bhishma falls, everything is lost. Drona is an ambitious person, had perhaps ambitions of becoming the commander-in-chief of the Kaurava army – later, after Bhishma’s fall, when he is given that position he celebrates it. It is that Drona who has been told what he should do in the war – protect Bhishma.

When you are guilt ridden, you lose confidence, become confused and say things you shouldn’t say and do things you should not do.   

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Why does Duryodhana go to Drona here and not to Bhishma? Bhishma is not his employee and will not listen to him, instead will openly ask him to shut up unless he has something meaningful to say, whereas Drona is bound to listen to him, albeit unwillingly because even though he is Duryodhana’s teacher, but he is also his employee. And as his employer, Duryodhana can command him.

That is how the arrogant mind thinks. In India we worship our gurus, but once power goes to your head, the guru is no more a guru, the disciple is no more a disciple.  

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Thank you in advance for your comments and questions!