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.
O0O
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.
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.
O0O
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.
O0O
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.
O0O
