Living Bhagavad Gita 011: What Duryodhana Sees, What Arjuna Sees

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: O Bharata, thus told by Gudakesha, Hrishikesha took the magnificent chariot between the two armies and stopping it facing Bhishma and Drona and other kings said, “Arjuna, see the assembled Kurus.”  Then Arjuna saw them standing there: fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, fathers-in-law, friends, all.  BG 1.24-27

One of the most dramatic moments in the entire Bhagavad Gita. Asked by Arjuna to take the chariot between the two armies, Krishna stops it facing Bhishma, Drona and other kings and tells Arjuna, “See the assembled Kurus.” And who does Arjuna who wanted to see with whom he has to fight the war see before him? Fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, fathers-in-law and friends.

Our perceptions are conditioned by our biases. We saw how speaking to Drona Duryodhana describes the Pandava army as bhima-abhirakshitam, protected by Bhima.  For Duryodhana, Bhima has always been the most important Pandava, not Arjuna.  When as a child he wanted to get rid of the threat to his power from the Pandavas, it was Bhima he tried to eliminate by poisoning him at Pramanakoti. Similarly when Duryodhana looks at the two armies standing face to face, he sees only warriors there. On his own side, he sees Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Ashwatthama and so on and he describes them using the words sarva eva maharathah – all of them are maharathis. They are not his grandsire, his gurus and so on for Duryodhana, but just mighty warriors, because he understands only the language of power.  To Duryodhana they are chess pieces in the game of power he is playing with the Pandavas. Like all power lovers, he believes in using people and loving power. He does not subscribe to the idea of loving people and using power for their good.

Duryodhana is a man obsessed with power, has been hankering after power all his life. When Krishna talks of peace in the Kuru assembly during his peace mission, Duryodhana refuses to listen to anything other than the language of power. He keeps asking Krishna: “...but who has more power? We or the Pandavas?” He wouldn’t share power at al – wouldn’t give the Pandavas even as much land as a needle tip.

All life is a power game for him and nothing matters other than power, just as to a man of sensuality, all life is about enjoying the pleasures of the body. He gives no more than token respect to grandsire Bhishma or guru Drona, because he believes he wields the power and they are bound to obey him.

In the Ghosha Yatra Parva of the Mahabharata, while the Pandavas are living in the jungle for twelve years, he goes there to show off his power and wealth. An army accompanies him, all the royal women are taken along, dressed in their best clothes and covered in ornaments, specifically to show Draupadi who is ‘dressed in bark clothes’. However, a quarrel erupts between his people and a group of gandharvas sporting in a lake in the jungle, a violent battle ensues, a beaten Karna runs away, and ordered by Yudhishthira, Arjuna goes there and saves him and his people from the gandharvas whose chief happens to be Arjuna’s friend. When Karna comes back later, after it is all over, a thoroughly shamed Duryodhana is sitting in prayopavesha, announcing a fast unto death, and Karna is able to persuade him to abandon his prayopavesha only by telling him Yudhishthira did no more than his duty by saving him – all subjects of a king are expected to do everything for him, it is their duty, the king does not have to be grateful to them for doing their duty, and therefore Duryodhana need not feel any shame for about being saved by Yudhishthira, so goes Karnas argument. It is this language of power that finally convinces Duryodhana to end his fasting unto death – that and the idea of a rajasooya sacrifice that would declare him the universal monarch, plus Karna’s promise to go on a digvijaya on his behalf, a mission of conquering all kings for him.

Why is Duryodhna so obsessed with power? Because born as the eldest son of the previous king, Vichitraveerya, his father who loved power had been denied power due to his blindness and he, Duryodhana, was born as the son of a man without power. Under different circumstances, Duryodhana would have inherited all the power of Hastinapura. Just as an orphan clings to relationships desperately because he has none, Duryodhana clings to power and he wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of his acquiring power. He literally believes in what Kanika told his father: Kill the person who stands in the way of your attaining goals even if he is your son, brother, father, or friend. Putro vaa yadi vaa bhraataa pitaa vaa yadi vaa suhrd, arthasya vighnam kurvaaṇaa hantavyaa bhootivardhanaiḥ,

We all hanker after what we do not have, hoping that if we get it, everything would be fine, we shall be feel happy and contented. Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winning American writer, wrote a novel based on this theme, her first novel, The Bluest Eye, a masterpiece of modern literature, in which the little black girl Pecola Breedlove living in abject poverty with her violent, constantly drunk father and her mother who hate each other and regularly get into violent fights, believes if only she had blue eyes everything would be fine. Every night when she goes to bed she fervently prays on her knees for blue eyes, hoping that then she would be loved by her parents, her parents would love each other and all life would be wonderful.

There is absolutely no doubt that we all need money, without money we will not have even the basic comforts, without wealth even spirituality will not be possible, inner peace  cannot be there for you when your stomach is screaming for food. That is why Swami Vivekananda said that to the poor man God comes in the form of bread. While India maintained that obsession with anything would stand in the way of inner growth, including obsession with wealth, India never taught the philosophy that to be spiritual you have to be poor. India saw wealth as the most beautiful goddess and worshipped her through hymns like the Shri Sukta, a hymn that appears in the Rig Veda, the oldest surviving book of humanity, and is still ritually chanted by millions of Indians every day. 

The poor believe they would be happy if they become wealthy like the rich; only the rich know that richness can give us all that money can buy but not happiness.

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, belonging to the Shukla Yajur Veda, we have a brilliant conversation between the celebrated Vedic Sage Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi.  One day Yajnavaklya announces to his two wives Kalyani and Maitreyi that he is going to divide his wealth between them and going away in search of spiritual freedom. Kalyani accepts his decision but Maitreyi has several questions for him before she would say anything. She wants to know if the enormous wealth he is giving her would make her find happpiness. The conversation between the husband and wife, who herself later becomes one of India’s greatest sages ever, is one of the most blunt and forthright discussions on wealth, love, human relationships and several other subjects. Yajnavalkya tells her that it will not, her life would be like that of any rich man living in the middle of comforts.

What Yajnavalkya means is that wealth alone cannot give us happiness and contentment. While wealth is desirable, it is not in it that we would find happiness and contentment, which is true with success, fame and all other things that man seeks in the world.

In my younger days, I lived for several years in one of the most respected ashrams in the country. We had in the ashram with us either on short visits or living for months at a stretch corporate giants, chairmen and MDs of major government enterprises, national and international celebrities, people who owned entire blocks of major cities, founders of banks, bureaucrats at the highest levels of the government and so on, all in search of what power and position and wealth could not give them.   

Ultimately all life is a search of ananda, which is to be found only within us. We are like the proverbial musk deer searching frantically everywhere for the fragrance the source of which is itself. Duryodhana believed it is power that would make him happy and the war that was being fought was also for him a means to find happiness and contentment through power, for which he did not mind sacrificing any number of lives. That so many people are willing to sacrifice their lives for him is also a matter of pride for him, as it would be for anyone for whom life is a power game. Their death is of concern with him.  

O0O

When Arjuna looks to the two armies, the people he sees standing there are fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, fathers-in-law and friends. But what Duryodhana sees when he looks around in the battlefield is maharathis everywhere: sarva eva maharathas. Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Vikarna, Jayadratha, Saumadatti – they are all mighty warriors on his side, ready to lie down their lives for his sake. And on the other side he sees Bhima, Arjuna, Satyaki, Virata, Drupada, Abhimanyu, the sons of Draupadi, and so on – again, all of them great warriors.

The people standing there are the same, but for Duryodhana they are warriors and for Arjuna they are fathers and uncles and gurus and so on.

It is the same everywhere. A ‘manager’ looks at the people before him and he sees his workforce which is the reason why management experts like Tom Peters have to remind them “People are People.” Sometimes when certain teachers – certain teachers, not all – look at the young people in front of them they see not young people but students – students whose natural tendency is to be unruly and have to be dealt with an iron hand, who have to be taught discipline, whose minds have to be filled with ideas and information, who have to be taught to think the way they want them to think, who have to be taught not questioning but obedience. Sometimes when we look at people through certain lenses, we don’t see them as people but as something else. 

When Hitler looked at the Jews, what he saw were not human beings of flesh and blood and feelings and emotions, but a race that had to be eliminated. And he systematically went about implementing his final solution for the Jewish problem.  Six million Jews were sent into his extermination camps, there to be used as workers until their death by overwork, starvation, diseases, and all kinds of atrocities committed on them. People were asked to stand in lines and dig their own graves and when they finished, they were shot into the pits. The next line of Jews was asked to fill the pits and then dig their own graves, to be shot into them. Smoke from the chimneys where the bodies of people gassed to their death were burnt rose up into the air thicker than smoke from huge factory chimneys. Unspeakably cruel medical experiments were committed upon them by doctors like Josef Mengele. Because you do not see them as people but as members of a race human but inferior, who had to exterminated.

The same thing happened to black slaves in the United States too throughout the slavery centuries. People were bought and sold as though they were animals, they were made to work from dawn to dusk bound in chains and were tortured using instruments specifically invented for the purpose. They were starved and so cruelly whipped that they felt death was preferable. Toni Morrison herself was the granddaughter of a black slave in the United States. In her most famous book Beloved, we come across a mother who kills her own baby. She wanted to save it from her own fate which was a thousand times worse than death.

Duryodhana does not see people as people but as a means for his purposes – they were just warriors for him. Arjuna sees them as people – as fathers and sons, as uncles and nephews, as gurus and disciples, as brothers and friends.

The battle that happened 3102 years before the Common Era was a war between two sides, one of which saw people as people and the other, people as a means to achieve their goals. It is this war that Krishna tried his best to avoid, risking his life, stooping so low that future generations would call him a man without principles. But he did not mind it because for him his name, his ego, did not matter.  What mattered was the good of the world, lokasangraha. For him, as for Arjuna, the war is the very last alternative. But for Duryodhana, it is a matter of his ego, his first choice, so that he can have absolute power. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for power.

It is this philosophy that Krishna wanted to destroy: the philosophy that people could be used as a means to your egoistic goals, that people are expendable.

O0O   

Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.

Living Bhagavad Gita 010: Hrishikesha

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]

Sanjaya said: O Bharata, thus told by Gudakesha, Hrishikesha took the magnificent chariot between the two armies and stopping it facing Bhishma and Drona and other kings said, “Arjuna, see the assembled Kurus.”

The word used by Sanjaya here for Krishna is Hrishikesha, a word that means master of the senses – hrishika means senses and isha means master. What exactly does mastery over the senses mean?

The Katha Upanishad using the metaphor of the chariot calls our senses the horses that draw the chariot that is our body because it is the senses that lead us out into the world – indriyaani hayaan ahuh, says this ancient Upanishad that belongs to the Krishna Yajur Veda. These horses can be disciplined and trained, or they can be wild. How we live our life will depend on whether they are wild or disciplined.

Wild horses yoked to our chariot lead us to disaster and so do uncontrolled senses. To live a life led by uncontrolled senses is to be a slave to our senses and to our body. Such people live for the body, as though we are nothing more than the body.

Swami Vivekananda once said: “You may be the greatest philosopher, but as long as you have the idea that you are the body, you are no better than the little worm crawling under your foot! No excuse for you! So much the worse for you that you know all the philosophies and at the same time think you are the body!”

Look at this picture of extreme sense indulgence from our contemporary life. The middle aged man is lying on a recliner with his hand on the naked shoulders of a young, beautiful woman next to him whose services he has hired for the day. In the room the TV is on in front of him and not far from him a music player is loudly playing some fast music. He is watching the TV and listening to the music at the same time, while his hand is moving gently over the skin of the hired woman, softly caressing her. Every now and then he takes a sip of vodka from the mug he holds in his other hand and in the gaps between the sips, the girl picks up potato chips from the bowl kept in front of him and places them in his mouth, giving him a kiss along with the chip.

This is considered to be the very acme of sensual enjoyment for a man. While this picture is from our times, life in the past, for those who could afford it, was no different, except that in place of the TV and the music player they had live performers singing and dancing in front of them and in place of the hired woman each had a harem of women surrounding them.

Life of sensuality hasn’t changed, except in superficial aspects. A slave to the senses five thousand years ago was the same as a slave to the senses today.

The Mahabharata tells us the story of Emperor Nahusha, an ancestor of the Kurus, who was invited to the heaven to become its ruler while Indra had to go into hiding for the sin of killing the asura Vritra. In the heaven however Nahusha who was the greatest ruler on earth, soon fell a prey to a life of the senses. Every moment awake he started spending in the pleasures of the senses, listening to heavenly music, watching heavenly dances, enjoying heavenly food and drinks and indulging in sex with the apsaras, until he fell asleep exhausted only to continue his life of pleasure the moment he woke up. One day he was in the Nandana Gardens surrounded by his coterie when he saw an incredibly beautiful celestial woman passing by. Asked who she was, he was told that she was Indrani, the wife of Indra. “If she is the wife of Indra and I am Indra now,” Nahusha asked shocking even his coterie, “why has she not yet come to my bed?”

Terrified, the chaste Indrani sought the advice of Brihaspati, the guru of the gods, and of Indra himself and as asked by them, told Nahusha she would receive him in her bed if he came to her in a palanquin carried by the saptarshis, the seven divine sages. They agreed to carry him to Indrani but in his impatience he kicked one of them, Agastya, on his shoulder, asking him to hasten, saying sarpa, sarpa, meaning hurry, hurry. The sage in turn cursed him and turned him into a sarpa, a snake.

Nahusha’s son Emperor Yayati too lived a life of sensuality and his name became a synonym for lust, so deeply did he sink into a life of the senses. But towards the end of his life he realized that a life of the senses cannot satisfy man and said: na jaatu kaamah kamaanaam upabhogena shaamyati; havishaa krishnavartmaiva bhooya eva abhivardhate – “Verily, desire can never be satisfied by indulgence. The more you indulge in them, the more demanding they grow just as fire grows when you offer havis into it.”

Both emperor Shantanu and his son Vichitraveerya destroy themselves through slavery to the pleasures of the senses. In a moment of frustration, Pandu calls his father Vichitraveerya a kamatma, meaning a man whose very soul is lust.

That is slavery to the senses.

O0O

Today the world in general is living the philosophy of the setting sun, as the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa calls it in his celebrated classic Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior. The philosophy of the setting sun says there is only one life, it begins at birth and ends with death, and the way to live is to enjoy all the pleasures you can while you are alive, just as you try to visit all the places you can when you are on a short conducted tour, crowding your schedule without wasting even one moment. This is the ancient Indian philosophy of the Charvakas too, who said:

yaavad jeevet sukham jeevet rnam krtvaa ghrtam pibet 

bhasmeebhootasya dehasya punar aagamanam kutah

“So long as you live, live merrily! Borrow and enjoy the best! Once the body is reduced to ashes, from where does it come back!”

Those who live for the senses seek the purpose of life in sense gratification, pursuing pleasure after pleasure, frequently several pleasures at the same time because you don’t have time enough to enjoy them all separately and you don’t want to miss any. Since such a life cannot give you any satisfaction or contentment, you end up filled with still more desire, longings, lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride and jealousy. Anxiety, hatred, depression, frustration, and disappointment become your very nature.

The Mahabharata speaks of Krishna as: 1. A great master of yoga, a yogeshwara; 2. An incarnation of the yogi Narayana, the friend of the yogi Nara; and 3. God incarnated in a human body. In whatever way you see him, he is someone who has realized that a life of sensuality does not give us lasting satisfaction.  He is no more a slave to the hungers and thirsts of the senses. Instead he is a master of the senses, someone who uses the senses as their master: a Hrishikesha.    

Mastery over the senses does not mean complete denial of the senses, suppressing them totally. The senses are very real, their needs are very real and we must give unto them what is theirs, taking care to see that they do not enslave us. A master driver of a car does not keep the break pressed down all the time, nor the accelerator. He steps on them when required, takes his foot off when required. Exactly like that you don’t suppress the senses all the time, but instead enjoys the pleasures they bring remaining their master. The world is prakriti and purusha dancing together and what an amazing dance it is! When we remain masters our ourselves and join this dance, life becomes a wonderful kreeda, an amazing leela.

What is criticized as disastrous is not sensual pleasures but slavery to them.  Krishna calls those who suppress the senses but think of sensual pleasures in their mind all the time hypocrites:

karmendriyaaṇi sanyamya ya aaste manasaa smaran
indriyaathaan vimooḍhaatmaa mithyaachaaraḥ sa uchyate BG 3.6

Those deluded fools who restrain the organs of action but continue to dwell on sense objects in the mind, hypocrites they are called.

Krishna is the most life assertive spiritual master known to man. He believes in living life in utsava bhava, in the spirit of festivity, celebrating every moment, enjoying everything we do, living life to the full, but as a master of the senses and not as their slave. He has no compulsions to wage a war with the senses, to suppress them, because they are always under his command, as disciplined horses yoked to a chariot are under the command of the master driver.

He is truly a Hrishikesha as Sanjaya refers to him. The way of life he teaches is neither of the denial of the world of pleasures nor of plunging blindly into sensual indulgence. His is the path of awakened living. As a master of yourself, as a master of your senses, as a master of your body, as a master of your mind. As a swami, and not as a dasa. And if you are a master, then samsara, the world of sense objects is not your enemy, they do not tempt you, do not enslave you, conquer you.

Ancient India talked of asidhara vrata and awakened masters practiced that path of the heroes. Asidhara means the edge of the sword and asidhara vrata is the vow of walking on the edge of the sword. It is living in the middle of all kinds of pleasures, enjoying them all and yet not being bound by them.

It is called the path of the heroes because it requires heroic courage and immense mastery over yourself to live it.

Greek mythology tells us the story of Odysseus and the sirens. Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey, had to sail by the island of the sirens whose music was so hauntingly beautiful that no man who heard it could control himself. Men jumped into the rough sea trying to reach them and drowned. The island was surrounded by mountains of bones of men who had thus perished. Though warned of this danger by the sorceress Circe, Odysseus wanted to enjoy the music and yet not lose his life for it. So as they approached the island, he asked his sailors, who were also his friends, to tie him to the mast of the ship and not to release him whatever happened. He told them he would fight to get free, shout and yell at them, scream and threaten them, but if they loved him they should not release him until they were far away from the island. As for themselves, Odysseus asked them to fill their ears with bee wax so that the waves of the song of the sirens did not reach them.  

As the ship approached the island of the sirens, Odysseus tied to the mast started shouting and screaming and threatening them, shrieking and bawling at them, ordering them as the captain of the ship to untie his ropes. He was going insane!  But they loved their friend and captain and had more sense than to obey him. Soon they passed the islands and were away from the soul melting notes of the song of the sirens. It is only then that they released him. The story ends by telling us that Odysseus, also known as Ulysses, thus became the first man to listen to the song of the sirens and yet remain alive.

When India speaks of asidhara vrata, India asks us to do something even more difficult: Listen to the song of the sirens, expose yourselves to their temptation, and yet remain untempted, without the binding of the ropes, by retaining your mastery over yourselves. Of course, it is as difficult as walking on the edge of the sword, if not more.

Ancient India tells us of monks spending their chaturmasya, the rainy season retreat of four months, in the house of rich prostitutes who invited them and leaving at the end of the retreat with the prostitutes transformed into their monastic followers, bhikshunis.

But it is difficult indeed, almost impossible even for great masters, what to speak of ordinary people. In the Hindi movie Nishabd we have Vijay in his sixties, played by Amitabh Bachan, falling head over heels in love with the beautiful teenager Jiah, played by Jiah Khan, his daughter’s same age friend. The girl had come to his home to spend her school vacation with his daughter and he becomes obsessed with the temperamental, unpredictable, self-centered and at the same time irresistibly charming Lolita after spending a day alone with her in his sprawling tea estate among rows and rows of mountains of the High Ranges of Kerala. Reminded of who he is and who the young girl is, Vijay finally orders her to leave their home, but is never able to come out of his destructive infatuation with her that he considers true love. He contemplates suicide but does not do that only so that he can live with Jiah’s memory for some more time.        

In modern industry, business, politics and other walks of life, there are endless examples for people failing in their mastery over themselves and losing everything, ending up as a shame for themselves and everyone else, the most famous of which being that of an erstwhile American President. 

That is the reason why when the Mahabharata discusses leadership, which it does in great detail, one of the first thing it says is: atmaa jeyah sadaa raajnaa – a leader should always be a master of himself. Even if you have everything else, if you have no control over yourself, you will destroy yourself.

The best way to develop mastery over oneself is conscious living – mindful living, being aware of whatever you do. You could begin this with simple acts, like having a cup of coffee mindfully, and then slowly extend your mindfulness into everything you do, whether it is taking a walk, or whatever else.

We can also train ourselves in self mastery by following the 110% principle. The principle asks us to set targets for ourselves just outside our present limits, our comfort zone, and master it. Once the higher target is mastered, that becomes your comfort zone and you set a target just outside it. It is amazing what you can achieve using this principle.

Years ago when I used to teach a course called theatre in education, I tried an experiment based on this principle with my students using the game of ball bouncing as a challenge. Over time, my students were able to move from twenty bounces to a thousand and more bounces without dropping the ball or moving from their place.

A young lady I know was a chain smoker and it is through this principle that she quit smoking. She set a target for herself – she wouldn’t smoke for one hour. And the next target was not smoking for seventy-five minutes and then for ninety minutes and so on. Today she has quit smoking completely, and not only that, she has helped several others to quit smoking!

You can practice getting rid of other forms of addiction using this principle. You can practice mindfulness and self mastery itself using this principle. You can practice anger management using this principle. Endless are the possibilities. And every time you become a master of yourself, you become a Hrishikesha in your own right!

O0O

Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.

Living Bhagavad Gita 009: Gudakesha

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]

sanjaya uvaacha

evamukto hrisheekesho gudaakeshena bhaarata

senayorubhayormadhye sthaapayitwaa rathottamam

bheeshma-drona-pramukhatah sarveshaam cha maheekshitaam

uvaacha paartha pashyaitaan samavetaan kuroon iti // 1.24-25 //

Sanjaya said: O Bharata, thus told by Gudakesha, Hrishikesha took the magnificent chariot between the two armies and stopping it facing Bhishma and Drona and other kings said,“Arjuna, see the assembled Kurus.”

Sanjaya calls Arjuna gudakesha here.Gudakesha literally means isha of gudaka, conqueror of sleep. Amarakosha, the ancient Sanskrit thesaurus, says: nidraa gudaaka samproktaa – sleep is called gudaaka. According to the tradition of the Puranas, it was Shiva who first referred to him by this name because he did tapas to please the Lord and to get the Pashupata weapon from him on the Indrakila Mountain without sleeping. Another meaning of the word gudakesha is with curly hair, guda meaning kutila, curled and kesha meaning hair. I like better the meaning ‘conqueror of sleep’ that describes Arjuna as the warrior ascetic who meditated on Shiva without sleep – vinidrena.

The word gudaka also stands for other things closely related to sleep, such as lethargy, dullness, inertia, lack of energy, apathy and so on – all of which are qualities associated with tamas, one of the three gunas. The Arjuna we see in the Mahabharata is the opposite of what these mental and physical qualities describe. There is very little tamas in him. He is always full of energy, zeal, passion and drive. He is a typical kshatriya – his dominant guna being rajas, with sattva as his secondary guna and tamas as the third guna. [There is nothing in existence that is not made of these three gunas, except the purusha, the indwelling soul. na tad asti prithivyaam vaa divi deveshu vaa punah
sattvam prakritijair muktam yad ebhih syaat tribhir gunaih. BH 18.40]

Arjuna is an outstanding example for excellence in his chosen area. This would not have been possible unless he was a conqueror of dullness, lethargy and other negative qualities that the word gudaka stands for.

In Zen, we speak about shoshin, the Zen mind, described as the beginner’s mind or the child’s mind, speaking of which the famous modern teacher of Zen,Shunryu Suzuki in a celebrated statement says:”In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind, few.”

A person with shoshin sees things with an open mind and fresh eyes, as a beginner does. Such a person is full of intelligence, creativity, resourcefulness, childlikeness, spontaneity, authenticity and autonomy. His mind is full of receptivity, curiosity, resilience, perseverance, freedom, newness and other similar qualities.

From what we learn about Arjuna from the Mahabharata, he clearly had a Zen mind that leads to excellence. One of the definitions of yoga that Krishna gives in the Gita is: yogah karmasu kaushalam. The word kaushalam is a variation of the word kushalata, expertise or excellence, and the complete definition means yoga is excellence in action. If Arjuna was the best archer of the day, perhaps the best archer in the history of India barring Rama whose name Krishna takes in the Vibhooti Yoga of the Gita as the best bowman ever – raamah shastrabhrtaam varah – he should have had the qualities of shoshin, the Zen mind.

O0O

Gudakesha in this sense is someone with a Zen mind, or in Indian terms, the yogic mind. One of the ways of practicing yoga that India has always recommended and the Bhagavad Gita itself recommends is focusing on the now, focusing on whatever you are doing at the moment. Arjuna definitely did that.

Arjuna’s focus on what he is doing at the moment is legendary. In a story practically every Indian child grows up with is that of Arjuna’s focus on what he is doing at the moment. The story tells us of Acharya Drona arranging a test for his students sometime towards the end of their studies. The acharya had a wooden bird secretly made up on a tree. One day he takes all his students there and beginning with Yudhishthira, the eldest, calls one student at a time and asks him to take aim at the bird. When Yudhishthira has taken his aim, Drona asks him if he can see the neck of the bird, which he had been asked to aim at and Yudhishthira answers, “Yes, Acharya, I can.”

The acharya then asks him if he can see the whole bird and Yudhishthira says again, “Yes, Acharya, I can.” Then the acharya asks if he can see the branch on which the bird is perched, and then if he can see the whole tree and then if he can see the other students and if he can see all of these at the same time – the whole bird, the branch, the whole tree, the other students, all. “Yes, Acharya, I can,” says Yudhishthira. All the time, without Yudhishthira knowing it, Drona’s face is growing darker and darker. Finally the acharya asks, “Can you see me too, with all these?” And Yudhishthira answers, “Yes, Acharya, I can.” It is then Drona explodes in anger, “Drop the bow and get away! Apasarpa! You can’t hit it! Naitat shakyam tvayaa veddhum!”

The acharya gives this test to all the other princes and all of them fail in satisfying him. It is only then he calls Arjuna who picks up the bow, takes aim at the neck of the bird and stands ready. “Can you see the neck of the bird?” Drona now asks Arjuna and he says, “Yes, Acharya, I can.” “The whole bird,” asks the acharya and Arjuna answers, “No, Acharya. Just the neck of the bird.” For the first time a smile appears on the face of Drona. He says, “Let go of the arrow.” And the next instant the head of the wooden bird falls on the ground with a thud, neatly chopped by Arjuna’s arrow.

Arjuna knew how to focus on the now, focus on whatever he was doing at the moment, focus on one thing at a time, whether it was the neck of the bird, his studies, his life’s goal of becoming the best archer in the world, or getting the Pashupata astra from Lord Shiva and other divine weapons from the gods, or learning dance and music from the gandharva Chitraratha because he had conquered lethargy, dullness, inertia, lack of energy, apathy and so on. 

O0O

Speaking of gudaka in the specific sense of sleep, not only did Arjuna conquer sleep as an ascetic meditating on Shiva on Mount Indrakila but also as a student. Not content with practicing during the day as the other students of Acharya Drona did, he continued his practices in the night too, due to his commitment to learning.

The Mahabharata tells us that once Guru Drona instructed the gurukula cook not to serve any meal to Arjuna in the dark. When we read that, we wonder why the acharya would say something like that to his cook but his crooked reason becomes clear as the story progresses.

One day while Arjuna was having his supper, a strong wind came and the lamps were blown out. Arjuna continued eating in the dark. That night what the acharya had feared happened. At midnight, he was woken up from sleep by the loud, booming sound of the bow string being released. Coming out, the acharya saw that Arjuna was practicing shooting in the dark.

From his eating in the dark, young Arjuna had deduced that just as he can eat in the dark, he can also shoot in the dark, without seeing the target. And he was already a master of sleep, so he was practicing and mastering at night the new insight he had gained in the evening!

The reason why Drona had told his cook not to serve a meal to Arjuna – specifically and only to Arjuna – in the dark now becomes clear. It was precisely to prevent this eventuality that with a cunning mind the acharya had given that instruction. Until that day Drona did not want Arjuna to excel in archery or to become his best student. It was his own son Ashwatthama that the acharya wanted to become his best student.

But now Drona, inspired by Arjuna’s commitment and dedication to learning, shows the nobility to appreciate what Arjuna was and hugging him promise that he will now see that Arjuna becomes his best student. 

O0O

Of course, conquering sleep does not mean not sleeping at all. Sleep is perhaps man’s greatest blessing, the relaxer, the healer, the restorer, the rejuvenator. It is the greatest therapy in existence. It is the ultimate performance enhancer, the reason why our grandparents advised us to get a good night’s sleep before exams. Innumerable people have gone to bed with problems they are not able to solve in their minds and woken up with clear solutions. As someone put it, a culture of working until we are fatigued and then working through that fatigue are stealing one of our most vital natural health resources. The largest number of accidents on the road or in workplaces happens because people are sleep deprived.

Lack of sleep means poor intelligence, poor memory, poor creativity, greater edginess, increased impulsiveness, poor judgment, poor digestion, greater stress, increased hostility levels, inability to trust resulting poor interpersonal relations and a hundred other negative conditions. After even a short nap you feel mentally clearer, sharper and more alert. Which is the reason why many leading organizations today provide for their workers a nap pod, as Google does.

That Arjuna was a master of sleep does not mean he did not sleep. What he had done could be to enter deep states of sleep quickly by training himself to relax deeply. Perhaps he had also learnt to take quick refreshing naps – shwana nidra – every now and then.

Sleep deprivation is one the greatest tortures known to man.

There used to be an ascetic in the city where I have been living for the last several decades. People claimed that he did not sleep for fourteen years. He used to walk up and down day and night between two parallel pipes some twelve feet long. Krishna makes it clear in the Gita that yoga is not for such people. He teaches that yoga is not for those who go to the extremes in anything. He says:

na atyashnatastu yogo'sti na chaikaantam anashnatah

na chaati swapnasheelasya jaagrato naiva cha arjuna // BG 6.16 //

Verily Arjuna, yoga is not for him who eats too much nor is it for him who eats not at all. It is not for him who sleeps too much nor for him who always remains awake.

This mastery over sleep – again not denial of sleep, but mastery over it – was always recommended highly for students. A famous ancient Sanskrit verse says:

kaakacheshtaa bakadhyaanam shwaananidraa tathaiva cha

alpaahaaree grihatyaagee vidyaarthee pancha-lakshanam

The endless curiosity and alertness of the crow, the deep focus of the stork, the short sleep of the dog, eating less and abandoning home – these are the five signs of a good student. Abandoning home here refers to students leaving their homes and going to gurukulas or ashrams, as they did in old times.

Mastery over sleep is a requirement today more than at any other time in the past. I have taught in three of the top business schools in the country. In these schools we had students not just from India, but from all over the world. When I was teaching a course in one of these business schools, we had in it students from some thirty different countries of the world. Such was the nature of their studies that they had to be masters of sleep. It is a requirement in today’s business schools and much more so in today’s corporate world where each one of them is expected to work endless hours in challenging conditions, switch tasks all the time, attend endless meetings that go on and on, and yet remain fresh throughout.

Sleep is an absolute necessity of the body and particularly of the brain and for that reason it is dangerous to deprive the body of sleep. Sleep does three things mainly: relax and rest the body, release healing hormones and growth hormones and strengthen immunity, and make possible the process we know as dreaming. It is an absolute necessity of the brain that we move from the beta state, in which most of us adults spend much of our waking time, to the alpha and theta states, if not to the delta state every day at least for some time. Prolonged deprivation of the experience of these deeply relaxed states makes us dysfunctional.

Deep meditation can enrich our sleep. Deep meditation does all that sleep does – relax and rest the body, release healing and growth hormones, strengthen immunity, and make something akin to dream possible through the images and memories that pass through the quiet mind. So one way of achieving mastery over sleep is to supplement it with deep meditation. You achieve greater strength and orderliness in brain functioning, greater cardiovascular efficiency, respiratory efficiency, neuromuscular efficiency, and stability of the autonomic nervous system and enhanced overall performance through deep meditation.

We must remember that according to the Mahabharata Arjuna was the yogi Nara reborn as a Pandava.  

O0O

Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments.

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 dependents 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.    

O0O

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.

O0O

The epic speaks of Duryodhana as an incarnation of the Age of Kali. Kali is the age of wickedness and darkness and it is wickedness and darkness we find in the actions of Duryodhana from a very young age.

Western psychology believes that we are all born with our minds like empty slates, with nothing written on them, whereas eastern psychology believes that we come into the world with memories, karmas, vasanas and samskaras from our past lifetimes. There have been countless cases where people are hypnotically regressed and when that is done, they relive their past lives, memories of which lie buried deep within us. Dr Brian Weiss has written several books such as Many Lives, Many Masters and Through Time into Healing in which he discusses real past life experiences as does Dr Rosemary Ellen Guiley in her book Tales of Reincarnation. Countless cases have been reported where children remember their past lifetimes in precise details. [Please see my article Reincarnation: Persistence of Memory available online.] Krishna in the Gita says: bahooni me vyateetaani janmaani tava chaarjuna; taany aham veda sarvaani na tvam vettha parantapa – “I have lived numerous lifetimes in the past and so have you; I remember them all, but not you, O Arjuna.” BG 4.5

The sixteenth chapter of the Gita speaks of people being born either with daivi qualities or with asuri qualities. None of us comes into this world as blank slates. We come into this world with the psychological tendencies and life scripts that we carry with us from our past lifetimes. While the life scripts and psychological tendencies lie dormant so long as right conditions are not available for them to sprout and grow, given the right conditions, the scripts ripen and the tendencies start unfolding one by one.    

Duryodhana had come into this world, like everyone else, with these scripts and tendencies. In his case they were predominantly dark and negative. The overindulgence of Dhritarashtra and the complete neglect of Gandhari in his early years provided the right atmosphere for these to sprout and grow, making him the durbuddhi that we find in the Mahabharata who in his jealousy and greed for power causes the death of practically the entire kshatriya varna of India.          

Once of the first incidents that the epic mentions in detail is the picnic at Pramanakoti which was plotted by Duryodhana along with Shakuni and Karna, which shows Duryodhana as an evil genius even as a child. The incident happens when he was very young – before he begins his studies under Drona or even Kripa. The thoroughness with which he plans the wicked deed is amazing and the ruthlessness he shows here is scary.

After plotting out the entire wicked plan in detail with Shakuni and Karna he goes to Pramanakoti on the banks of the Ganga, selects the place and gives orders for a beautiful mansion surrounded by rich gardens to be built there. Then, when the mansion is fully ready, he invites the Pandava brothers for a picnic there. By the time they reach there, on Duryodhana’s orders the best cooks have prepared all kinds of delicious food and drinks for the princes. Reaching there Duryodhana takes them all on a tour of the place and then the food is served. They eat with relish both the food cooked by expert cooks and fruits fallen from trees. Duryodhana and his brothers feed the Pandavas by their own hands and the Pandavas do the same to them too. Secretly Duryodhana has the deadly poison kalakuta mixed in Bhima’s food and it is this food that Duryodhana smilingly feeds him with his own hand. The innocent, unsuspecting Bhima, fond of food that he is, happily eats everything Duryodhana gives him.   

If in the Gita Arjuna uses the word durbuddhi for Duryodhana. the epic uses the word durmati for him here. Both words mean precisely the same: evil minded, of crooked intellect. The epic calls Dhritarashtra’s dark-hearted son here a papi, an evil sinner. Speaking of him the epic also says: hridayena kshuropamah,,,vaachaa amritakalpas cha, meaning, like a dagger in his heart and like nectar, like ambrocia, in his words.  

Following the meals, they all sport in the Ganga. As always, Bhima is more active than all his brothers and cousins. He gives himself totally to the sport in water and continuously encourages others to give all of themselves to the fun. Eventually, after a long time in water, they go back to the pleasure palace and lie down there to rest, relax and have a nap. Bhima soon enters a deep slumber. He is fatigued with all the swimming and encouraging others, and the deadly poison that would long ago have killed any other person has finally started having its effect on his strong body. Duryodhana now ties him up with forest vines and drops him into the Ganga from a cliff, hoping that if the poison does not kill him, he would drown in the torrent of the river.

However, contrary to his expectations, when deadly snakes bite him underwater the poison in his body is neutralized. Eventually Bhima reaches the land of the Nagas and there, recognizing that he is a kin of theirs through Kunti, whose mother Marisha was a Naga woman, they save him and give him medicinal drinks that make him far more powerful than before. Soon Bhima is back in Hastinapura.

But Duryodhana’s durbuddhi does not rest even after this. Once again Duryodhana plots to kill Bhima with poison that was even more deadly than the one used before. Yuyutsu, Duryodhana’s half-brother who had become friendly with the Pandavas realizing their goodness, informs Bhima of this and Bhima in spite of knowing his food is poisoned, swallows it all without being harmed in the least by it because of the medicinal treatments he had received in the land of the Nagas. Duryodhana keeps making attempt after attempt to end the life of not just Bhima but all of the Pandavas.

Speaking of this the Mahabharata tells us:

evaṁ duryodhanaḥ karṇaḥ shakunis chaapi saubalaḥ

anekair abhyupaayais taan jighaamsanti sma paaṇḍavaan

[MB BORI 01119042a-c] [MB GP Adi 129.40]

“Thus through numerous means Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni the son of Subala repeatedly kept trying to kill the Pandavas.”

As we all know, not only in their childhood  but throughout their life Duryodhana treacherously tries to destroy the Pandavas, the house of lacquer and the cunning dice game being just two examples.

It is to see the forces of this Duryodhana that Arjuna asks Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies.

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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.