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. 

Daivi Leadership

The Daivi Leadership model is based on the daivi sampad discussed in the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. It is also based on the life of Krishna as a leader and on his teachings. Besides these, in developing the Daivi model of leadership, I have used insights from the wisdom of the Vedas and the Upanishads as well as from Indian leadership philosophy as discussed in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra, Tirukkural and other ancient Indian literary works. The Daivi model of leadership is a contrast to the Asuri model of leadership, which I have developed from the asuri sampad as discussed by the Bhagavad Gita and leadership thoughts in the texts mentioned above. These two twin leadership models form the extreme ends of a continuum, the Daivi Leadership being the best and the Asuri Leadership being the worst. In the ultimate analysis, Daivi Leadership focuses on light that ennobles the life of all people involved, whereas Asuri Leadership focuses on power for its practitioners, utilized for dominating others and creating wealth through exploitation. Eventually however, Asuri Leadership leads to all-round misery.

I have been teaching both the Daivi Leadership model and the Asuri Leadership model for the last couple of years at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur. These models are taught in detail as part of my course in Indian Philosophy for Leadership Excellence. What follows is a brief summary of the Daivi Leadership model.

The Bhagavad Gita lists daivi sampad as fearlessness, purity of heart, generosity, sacrifice, compassion, absence of covetousness, vigour, fortitude, etc. Asuri Sampad is described as hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness, ignorance, etc.

As other types of leaders have, the Daivi Leader too has a powerful vision and mission, which in the case of the daivi leader is a noble one. He is passionate about his mission and his commitment to his mission is total. The Daivi Leader shows the willingness to sacrifice his name and his life itself at the altar of his cause.

While the Daivi Leader is highly moral, his morality is often different from that of the society to which he belongs because he functions from a higher moral plane. He also raises his followers too to a higher moral plane, as the transformational leader does.

The Daivi Leader shows the same deep commitment to his followers as he shows to his mission and never abandons them. He treats their needs as their needs and their problems as his problems. He sees his happiness in their happiness, his success in their success. He considers as good not what pleases him but what is good for his followers and sees their welfare as his welfare. His care for his people is that of a pregnant woman to the child in her womb. Just as she constantly thinks about that child and lives for it and does nothing that will harm it even if she loves to do it for herself, he too lives for his followers and does nothing that will harm them.

The Daivi Leader has all the qualities that the Bhagavad Gita lists as daivi sampad and suffers from none of the evil qualities the Gita speaks of as asuri sampad. He is highly autonomous and has both great strength and vulnerability. He does not believe in hiding behind masks or playing helpless but accepts himself as he is.

In spite of problems facing him, the Daivi Leader retains his self-mastery. This helps him in retaining his serenity, which is a basic requirement for clear perceptions, unerring intuitions and right decision making. He has the energy and freshness of youth, has the quality of flowing, is childlike and is highly creative. Because of his originality and creativity, he is an expert in thinking outside the box.

For the Daivi Leader, his mission comes before his ego. For this reason, he is willing to accept injuries to his ego in the process of achieving his mission. He is also willing to serve, without occupying positions of authority, as the servant leader does. He can let go of things, which makes him very flexible where required. Because of his flexibility, he knows when to be firm and when to yield. He knows when to assert himself and when to gracefully surrender in the interest of his mission. Though he is generally gentle with people because of his sensitivity, he can also be tough if the situation requires it.

While being passionately in love with the world and life, the Daivi Leader also knows how to withdraw into himself and remain contented in the solitude of his inner sanctuary.

He is interested in what the Upanishads call preyas – immediate satisfaction, short term goals – but never loses sight of shreyas – long term good, which is his real interest. In the same way he is interested in both abhyudaya and nisshreyasa – prosperity in the material sense and prosperity in the spiritual sense. He sees life as a sacred yajna, a holy sacrifice, and looks upon his leadership too as such. He has both the passion of a devotee and his humility. In work he is a karma yogi.

The Daivi Leader trusts people and in their essential goodness. Because of his trust for people, he creates an atmosphere of trust in his organization. The Daivi Leader’s presence is that of a sattvic person – unlike the tamasic person who sucks up your energy and leaves you drained, and unlike the rajasic person who both energises you and makes you restless, the Daivi Leader energises you and at the same time help you reach your inner serenity. Like Krishna in the Mahabharata, at his highest level, he is gunatita, beyond all the three gunas.

Nyasa – the sense of detachment and renunciation – is part of the Daivi Leader’s attitude towards people and life. While he passionately cares for his people and is intensely concerned about them, he is not carried away by his care and concern. He is able to detach himself from them and is able to look at them objectively and make clear assessment of them and their situations.

The Daivi Leader is motivated more by the need to give than by the need to get. He is not driven by deficiency motivation. At the organizational and at the personal level, he has the three purusharthas of dharma, artha and kama – virtue, wealth and pleasures – balanced.

Speaking of the effectiveness of Daivi Leadership, ancient India had achieved great economic, cultural, educational, ethical, philosophical and spiritual heights and high standards of living for its people. This was possible because of the Daivi Leadership it practiced.

O0O

Masters Who Wear Masks

The Man in the Iron Mask [1998 version], is a movie I saw again on TV recently. It is a movie I love much for many things, including the invaluable lessons it gives in leadership, a subject I have been teaching for the last few years at XLRI School of Business, Jamshedpur. These lessons the movie gives us are both in the best kind of leadership, which I have been teaching as Daivi Leadership, and the worst kind, which I have been taching as Asuri Leadership. The two models of leadership are based on the Daivi Sampad and the Asuri Sampad that the Bhagavad Gita speaks about.

In the movie young prince Philip is the man in the iron mask, having forced to live with an iron mask on his face practically all his life, locked up in a dungeon in the notorious Bastille. However, towards the end of the movie, Phillip tells a dying D’Artagnan, “It is you who have been living under a mask.” Phillip is right; D’Artagnan has lived all his life wearing a mask on his life, in fact more than one mask.

But in wearing a mask, D’Artagnan was just being like any one of us. Most of us live all our lives wearing masks. That is, most of us ordinary mortals.

But it is not unusual for a great enlightened spiritual master to hide himself behind a mask either.

One such awakened master from the fictional world is Donald Shimoda in Richard Bach’s Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. “He learned of this world in the public schools of Indiana,” says Illusions. “But the Master had learnings from other lands and other schools, from other lives that he had lived.”

The master believed that every man was a son of God and had the power to help others. Other people see his power and come to him to be healed of their troubles and diseases. However, soon his fame spreads and large crowds always throng in front of the shops and garages where works as a mechanic – crowds of people who seek his learning and his touch, and long that his shadow might fall upon them and change their lives.

When the crowds become too big, he goes to the countryside where too people come to him. They start calling him a Messiah and worker of miracles. He teaches them that “within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another,” but people tell him he is different and they cannot become what he is, cannot do what he can.

He tells them a story. “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.

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.”

What the Messiah tells the crowds is the same truth that enlightened masters from across the world have been saying throughout history. We have all the power we can imagine and much more. We are the source of all the power in the universe. The truth is, in the words of the Maitreyi Upanishad, “I am me; and I am the supreme. I am Brahman, and I am the origin of all. I am the guru of the whole world and I am all over the universe. Such am I.”

“ahamasmi paraschasmi brahmasmi prabhavo’smyaham; sarvalokaguruschasmi sarvaloke’smi so’smyaham.”

When the master realizes that the crowd is not interested in waking up and in realizing the truth of what they are, but only in clinging to their ignorance and ignorance-born ways, that they want him to heal them and solve their problems for them forever, he decides to leave. “I quit,” he announces once day. He then goes through the crowds and leaves them, returning to the everyday world of men and machines. He has now put on the mask of ordinariness, and as far as the outside world is considered, he is one of them.

Says Osho, speaking about masters who wear masks to hide themselves from people: “Sufis do that; they have a very strange method of becoming invisible. They remain visible – they remain in the world, they don’t escape from it – but deliberately they create a certain milieu around them, so that people stop coming to them. Crowds, curious people, stupid people, simply stop coming to them; the Sufis don’t exist for them, they forget all about them. This has been an ancient method of the Sufis so that they can work with their disciples.”

In the following postings of on this topic, we shall explore some real-world awakened masters from across different cultures. We shall begin with Lai-Khur, a little known Sufi Saint who was one of the greatest ever.

O0O

Continued on Masters Who Wear Masks 2