A series of 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]
atha
chet twam imam dharmyam samgraamam na karishyasi
tatah swadharmam
keertim cha hitwaa paapam avaapsyasi ll 2.33 ll
“But if you do not
fight this war for dharma, you will be abandoning your swadharma and keerti and
will incur sin.” 2.33
O0O
Bhagavad Gita is moksha
shastra, a scripture whose subject is freedom from bondage. In that sense it is
a book of nivritti dealing with the spiritual path of withdrawing from the
outer world and focusing on the inner world. But at the same time, it is also a
book of wisdom for living in the world wisely even if your interest is not in
the final freedom it talks about. It teaches us how to excel in whatever we do,
how to remain calm and poised under all circumstances, how to keep our
turbulent minds under control, how to live in the world with a winning mindset,
how to respond rather than react to people and situations, how to deal with
wicked people, what happens to us and the world around us when we allow
wickedness to flourish in our hearts, how to sharpen our intellects and awaken
intelligence, how not to be a slave to our emotions, how to understand
ourselves and find our place in the world and the purpose of our life and a
thousand other things needed to live our lives wisely.
One of the special
interests of the Gita is leadership – leadership of men and organizations. The
teacher of the book is a leader of the kind the world has rarely seen, the
greatest leader of the day, a leader of leaders and a kingmaker before whom
crowned kings bowed and who was offered worship as the greatest leader among
leaders in his days, who constantly lived in the world of leaders and knew
their lives and their problems intimately. And the student is a great prince, a
scion of a glorious dynasty as old as the sun, the greatest warrior of the day,
with impeccable morals and ethics, a partner with his brothers in ruling a vast
Indian kingdom to which tributes came from distant lands as far away as that of
the Vikings, the Chinas, the Romakas and the Yavanas, apart from every corner
of India such as the Keralaputras in the extreme south, the Pragjyotishas in
the east, the Gandhara and the lands beyond in the west and the Himalayan
kingdoms in the north and from all kingdoms lying between them.
And Krishna
himself says the teachings of the Gita were originally meant for rajarshis –
the highest kind of leaders, the philosopher-kings, the saint-kings or the
king-saints. He says the teachings were
given in the beginning to King Vivaswan, who gave it to his son King Manu, who
gave it to his son King Ikshwaku, the founder of the royal dynasty in which the
greatest king India ever produced, Rama, was born. These teachings, says
Krishna, were lost over vast stretches of time, and it is exactly the same
teaching he is now giving to Arjuna – the yoga for rajarshis that teaches them how
to do good to the people using the power invested in them, how to live for
others, how to live for the common good, how to achieve glory as leaders and
how to transform their job as leaders into a means for growth and awakening.
True, India has
always held that the ultimate aim for all men is spiritual freedom, moksha. But
India also repeatedly said that service to others could become a path leading
to moksha. As far as leaders are concerned, said India, what is right for the
common man is not right for them. For instance, India taught people in general
to practice contentment, santosha, but India said a king should never be
contented with his dharma, with
his artha or kama, he should never be contented with the amount of friends he has and the
amount of knowledge and intelligence he has: na poorno’smeeti manyeta dharmatah
kamato’rthatah, buddhito mitratah chaapi satatam vasudhadhipah. [MB Shanti
Parva 92.12].
All people can transform
pravritti, worldly pursuits, into nivritti, inner pursuits, taught Krishna, and
added that as far as leaders responsible to the masses are concerned, rather than
pursuing nivritti, they should transform their job as leaders of men and
organizations itself into nivritti. Leaving no doubt about his stand he said
both sannyasa and karma yoga can yield nishshreyasa, the ultimate human goal,
and then added: of the two, karma yoga is superior to karma sannyasa, the
renunciation of action, the path of pure nivritti. [sannyaasah karmayogashcha
nisshreyasa-karaav-ubhau; tayos tu karma-sannyaasaat karma-yogo vishishyate.]
[BG 5.2]
India also asks rhetorically
kim tasya tapasa rajnah kim cha tasya adhvairapi,
supaalitaprajo yah syaat sarvadharmavideva sah: “What use is tapas to a
king, and what use are sacrifices? If he has looked after his subjects well, he
has already attained all that he can ever attain.” [MB Shanti 69.73]. To India,
service to his people was his religion to a king, his highest spirituality, his
highest dharma; it was his yajna, his yaga, his homa, his pooja, everything.
There is nothing that a king cannot attain by performing his duties in the
spirit of yoga, Krishna says, and he gives us the example of kings like Janaka
who attained the highest through this: karmanaa eva him samsiddhim aasthitaah
janakaadayah. [BG 3.20]
O0O
While nisshreyasa or mukti was always the highest human goal for India,
at a lower level, at the worldly level, keerti was considered a highly
desirable goal for all, both men and women.
It is this keerti as well as his swadharma that Krishna says Arjuna would
lose if he refuses to fight the war.
“But if you do not
fight this war for dharma, you will be abandoning your swadharma and keerti and
will incur sin.”
The paths that
lead to keerti are many, said India.
Marutta was a king
who became a legend in his own times. He was the son of king Avikshit and the
grandson of King Khaaninetra, both celebrated rulers who served people with
devotion. Such was Marutta’’s glory that it eclipsed the glory of Indra,
the lord of the gods. The Indra that we
are speaking of is the Indra of the Puranas, a symbol of the ordinary human
mind full of lust and anger, power hungry, unprincipled, cunning and cheating,
with no hesitation to stoop to any level for saving his power, unlike the glorious
Vedic Indra who is the symbol of the enlightened mind: calm, serene, unaffected
by the winds of samsara, beyond success and failure, beyond raga and dvesha,
longing and hatred, beyond jealousy and anger, with nothing to achieve for
himself and working only for the good of others. So this Indra, the symbol of
the ordinary mind, says the story of Marutta, became jealous of the king. In
those days Brihaspati had not yet become the guru and priest of the gods but
was Marutta’s priest. When Marutta wanted to conduct a Vedic sacrifice with
Brihaspati as the chief priest, Indra approached the priest and gave him the
position of the chief priest of the gods and told him that since he was now the
priest of the gods, he should not serve Marutta, a mere mortal, as his priest.
Brihaspati agreed.
When Brihaspati
refused to be his priest for the sacrifice, Marutta approached his brother
Samvarta who was a greater priest than Brihaspati himself and was not obsessed
with power and position and loved roaming free of attachments like a homeless
avadhoota. After a lot of persuasion Samvarta agreed to be Marutta’s priest with just one condition:
the jealous Indra and Brihaspati are going to do all they can to stop the
sacrifice and at that time Marutta should not become afraid and abandon the
sacrifice in the middle, which is a great sin.
Marutta agreed to
this condition and refused to bow down to the thousand things Indra and
Brihaspati did to obstruct the sacrifice, including asking Agni not to go to
the sacrifice and as we all know, without Agni, fire, no sacrifice could be
conducted. Indra attacked the sacrifice with fierce thunder and lightning but
fearlessly Marutta went ahead with the sacrifice and eventually Indra bent
before Marutta’s determination and was forced to accept the king’s invitation
and come for his sacrifice.
Maruta’s sacrifice
became a glorious success. The lord of the gods himself was forced to bow down
before the unshakeable will of a human being and Marutta achieved immortal
keerti for his courage and unshakeable determination.
O0O
Shakuntala’s is the story of the
fearless independence of an abandoned girl brought up by a rishi who achieves
immortal fame on her own apart from being the mother of Bharata after whose
name this land of ours is known. She is woman as fire who represents the
highest in Indian womanhood. To quote from one of my articles available online
called Shakuntala: Flaming Indian
Womanhood, “Shakuntala stands for all that is beautiful in Indian
womanhood. She would risk her honour as a woman for the love of a man, and yet
she would not take one harsh word that goes against her dignity from that man.
She has the softness of the softest flower and yet she is as fierce as fire
itself. She is strength that knows how to bend. She is the courage to trust.
She is silence that knows how to be eloquent when the need arises.”
She gives herself to Dushyanta who
meets her in the ashram but after marrying her by the gandharva rites, he
abandons her in spite of his promise to send his people to escort her to the
palace when he reaches back there. Thirteen years later when she comes there on
her own with her son, he refuses to acknowledge her and insults her publicly in
the royal court. Shakuntala, abandoned by her mother and father at birth, now
abandoned by her husband, becomes an enraged snake and raising her voice in the
assembly fearlessly tells the king that culture demanded that a wife who has
come to her husband’s place for the first time needs to be honored; she needs
to be offered worship. “You err by not worshipping me as I stand here,” asserts
Shakuntala, demanding from her man the obeisance that is every woman’s right by
Indian culture. “I deserve to be worshipped. And you do not offer me worship
that is my due.”
She asserts that a wife is not a
man’s plaything – she is an equal half of his being, his best friend in the
journey of life, the root of his dharma, artha and kama [virtue, wealth and
pleasures]. And for a man who wants to cross the ocean of samsara and reach
moksha, she is his most powerful ship.
Not content, not caring that he is
a king and is surrounded by his courters, this woman who grew up in a ashram
and knows no fear tells Dushyanta that she has not come to him for his charity
– she does not need it. What she demands is justice – what is hers by right. In
fact, she herself does not need even that, she tells him. She is perfectly
willing to go back to the ashram from where she has come – she will always be
welcome there. She does not care for the comforts of the palace – such things
do not tempt her. She needs just one thing: that his child be acknowledged as
his. And she warns him of dire consequences if he ignored her.
Dushyanta calls her a liar for
claiming she is his wife and the child is his. He calls all women liars. And
Shakuntala’s voice booms in the royal court once again – with the power of
truth, as the voice of truth. No, she is not lying, she tells him. Truth is
sacred to her. “Truth,” she tells him, “is superior to a thousand ashwamedha
sacrifices; the study of all the Vedas, bathing in every sacred tirtha in the
world – nay, even these are not equal to the sixteenth part of the truth.”
Shakuntala calls Dushyanta a fool
for rejecting her. And even under the tremendous stress she is in, she shows her culture by
apologizing to Dushyanta for doing so, in spite of Dushyanta’s use of the word
whore for her and her mother.
As she turns around to leave, she
tells Dushyanta she did not bring her son to Dushyanta in the hope of his
inheriting the kingdom. No, he does not require it. For, her son will rule over
all the earth even without his help.
Gods and celestial sages interfere
here on Shakuntala’s behalf. They appear and testify that she is indeed
Dushyanta’s wife and Sarvadamana is his son and suggest that he should now be
renamed Bharata.
The women who people our epics are
shaktis: each one of them is endowed with power, sure of herself, sure of the
choices she makes, sure in her speech, protective, passionate, loving, giving,
hungry for life, filled with adventurousness, a fearless wanderer in life’s
vast fields. They inherit their spirit from our Vedic women: Independent,
assertive, strong winners, who took responsibility for themselves; authentic
women who participated in all fields of life as men’s equals, who debated on
the meaning of life with the best of philosophers, who explored the mysteries
of existence just as the men of their times did, who composed poems, sacred and
mundane, poems of the soul and of the flesh, singing of spiritual ecstasy and
sexual longing, that survive to this day.
Shakuntala’s is keerti achieved
through fearlessness, through assertiveness, by her refusal to accept that
women are less than men, by her refusal to bow down before a king’s unrelenting
might.
O0O
Our next story of keerti too is of
a woman fearlessly walking into a royal court and demanding justice from the
king: that of Kannaki [Kannagi], the heroine of the greatest ever south Indian
classic, told in Tamil at least two thousand years ago by Prince Ilanko Adigal
who became a Jain monk: the story of an unfortunate woman who refuses to bow
down to misfortune, whose righteous anger raises her to the level of a goddess
worshipped by millions and is today identified with Goddess Kali, the
embodiment of righteous, divine anger.
Because of the treachery of a
greedy goldsmith, Kannaki’s husband Kovalan is accused of stealing the queen’s
anklet and is condemned to death by the Pandya king of Madurai. When Kannaki
hears of this, she reaches the court while it is in session and openly accuses
the king of murder – Kovalan is innocent and he had put to death Kovalan
without a proper enquiry. She tells the king and the court that the anklet
found with Kovalan was not the queen’s but hers, and she has the other anklet
of the pair with her. Kannaki asks the king what was inside the queen’s lost anklet
and he says pearls. She then raises the other anklet of hers, the one still
with her, and throws it on the floor of the court.Out springs from it rubies
that scatter all over the court floor, proving that the anklet confiscated from
Kovalan was not the queen’s.
The king famous for justice is
shocked by what he has done unknowingly and blaming himself for gross injustice
falls down dead, hearing which the queen too dies. But still in a rage, Kannaki
walks out of the court into the city of Madurai, her eyes spitting fire.
Standing at the heart of the city, she plucks out one of her breasts and flings
it on the ground. A roaring fire blazes up from where the breast fell and
engulfs the city of Madurai, reducing it to ashes, thus punishing the whole
city for the sin of its king.
Legends in Kerala tell us that
Kannaki, her anger still unappeased, walked all the way to Kerala from Madurai.
She stopped at a place called Attukal where local women received her and fed
her. In memory of this event, a temple has been built for her at Attukal, where
a festival called ponkala is celebrated every year when women gather in what
has become the world largest women’s only gathering with around five million women
participating in the festival annually. They cook food by themselves on the
spot and offer it to Attukal Amma, Kannaki, commemorating the original event.
Kannaki proceeded further to the
ancient city of Kadungalloor in Kerala where she is identified with Goddess
Kali. Her temple there draws huge crowds for the festivals every year,
festivals that are unlike any other in the world, with thousands of women
dancing ecstatically in ritual intoxication with Devi’s swords in their hands.
Kannaki is a symbol of marital constancy.
She achieves immortal keerti for standing with her husband in thick and thin
and avenging his unjust killing by the king. Subsequent culture, as we saw,
raises her to the status of a goddess worshipped by millions, including in the
largest all-women gathering in the world, as certified by Guinness Book of
World Records.
O0O
Rama had immense keerti even before
he was crowned the prince regent of Ayodhya. People praised his virtues and his
conduct in the highest possible terms. For Rama truth and dharma are the
highest, they said. He is like the moon in
showering happiness on the people, they said, like the earth in forbearance,
like the guru of the gods in intelligence, and like Indra in valour. He knows
fully what the right thing to do is under all circumstances for all including
himself; his character and integrity are of the highest order, he is beyond the
touch of jealousy, always ready to forgive, consoles everyone in times of
distress, gentle, full of gratitude even for the smallest things done for him
and a master of his senses. He is soft in speech and in his dealings with
people, has a steady, unwavering mind, is serene, knows how to speak sweetly
keeping the good of the people in mind even when he has to tell them harsh
truths, He has served learned and wise men and learnt from them sitting at
their feet. He is a master of the weapons of the gods and the asuras, apart
from being a master of the weapons of men. He is a master of different sciences
and of the Vedas along the subsidiaries of the six Vedas, they said.
And then he does something and with
that single act of his, his keerti soars into the skies and he becomes the
maryada purushottama of Indian culture, the ideal man of principles for all
times to come: He refuses to cling to power and willingly leaves the throne to
is younger brother to keep his father’s word, in spite of the fact that all his
life he had been readying himself to become a king who will set standards for
kings for all times to come.
When he does that Rama was not only
showing his commitment to truth, but also to his dharma as a son, his putra
dharma. His immortal keerti rests not just on these two but on many more:
ethical integrity, renunciation, fearlessness, rootedness in dharma,
generosity, treating all as equals, forgiveness...the list is long. Krishna in
the Gita calls Rama the greatest warrior ever: raamas shastrabhrtaam varah.
O0O
As we saw, there are many ways of
achieving keerti and kshatriyas sought it
through battle, especially battles fought for dharma. The Mahabharata says
there is nothing more shameful for a kshatriya than dying of old age and
disease in his bed. It is this opportunity for keerti through a war fought for
dharma that Arjuna would be abandoning if he refuses to fight and runs away
from battle. That is why Krishna tells him that if he does not fight this war
for dharma, he would be abandoning his swadharma and keerti and incurring sin.
Before we conclude
the discussion of this verse, a word about sin. The old definition of sin is
doing something forbidden or not doing something you are enjoined to do.
Tradition also said that sin is something you carry with you into your future
existence when you leave this body and the consequence of sin is suffering.
India gives us an endless list of sins and the suffering that follows as the
punishment for each, including the hells to which you go to undergo punishment
– hells like tamisra, andhatamisra, raurava, maharaurava, kumbhipaka and so on.
These hells are described like ‘geographical’ places, though in other
dimensions of existence to which the living have no access, specially created
to meet out punishments for sinners.
As we know, sin is
not in the action, but in the feeling and intention behind the action. Lying is
sin, but if it is done to save a life, it is not. Killing is sin, but killing
an enemy soldier in battle is not. Adultery is sin but not when it is done as
noyoga.
When Bodhidharma reached
China, the Chinese emperor told him that he has been feeding thousands of Buddhist monks and looking after numerous
monasteries. He then asked the master if he would go to heaven when he died.
Bodhidharma told him there was not a chance of that, heaven is not the reward
for greed. When asked to explain himself, the Zen master told him he has been
doing all his charity as a bargain, so that he can go to heaven when he dies.
By giving a small part of his wealth to monks and monasteries, he wanted to get
heaven – that was greed and heaven is not the reward for greed.
But just as heaven
need not be after death, hell too need not be after death and punishments for
our sins need not necessarily come after we die. Modern understanding, which I find
very sensible, is that we are punished not for
our sins, but by our sins. An
evil act is its own punishment, an evil thought is its own punishment.
Hatred, anger, jealousy,
intolerance, vengeance, greed, lust – these are their own punishments. They
make those who harbour them in their hearts suffer, apart from causing
suffering to others. A man whose heart is filled with anger, with hatred, with
jealousy, vengeance, greed or lust knows no peace of mind. These feelings are
like fire that consumes the wood that it gives birth to it.
Hell is not out there and
after death, but it is in our heart and now, as anyone who has lived through
hatred or other asuri sampada knows. A man filled with vengeance is always
remembering the past and plotting the future. His mind is never in the present.
And all joy is in the present.
When Krishna says
Arjuna will incur sin for not fighting the war for dharma as he is supposed to
do as a kshatriya, Krishna could be understood as saying Arjuna will suffer
hell in his heart – the guilt, the shame, the sense of failure and other
feelings that will follow his desertion and torment him like furies the rest of
his life.
If swadharma is
heaven, abandoning swadharma is hell.
And so is akeerti.
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