Living Bhagavad Gita 003: Arjuna Vishada Yoga

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

[Continued from Living Bhagavad Gita: 002]

Praise in the right place is praise; praise in the wrong place is an insult. Praise at the right time is praise; praise at the wrong time is an insult.      

In these opening verses of the Bhagavad Gita, Duryodhana addresses his guru Acharya Drona using the word dvijottama, a word that literally means the best of brahmanas and in common usage means a noble brahmana. Since Drona is neither the best of brahmanas nor a noble brahmana, this definitely is an insult, or at least sarcasm. Unless of course he is trying to flatter his guru, which the context shows he is not.

The definition of a brahmana handed down for thousands of years through the karna-parampara, the oral tradition, is: one who knows the Ultimate Reality, Brahman, or in other words someone who knows God: brahma janati iti brahmanah. By an extension of the definition, the term could also be used for one whose aim of life is knowing God and treads the path that leads to God realization by living a life of nivritti – of serenity, quietude, acceptance, forgiveness, patience and so on.

This is not the way Drona has been living his life, though the society in his days expected a brahmana to live such a life. Instead, he had chosen to be a teacher of the martial arts and is standing in the battlefield fully armed to fight a war and kill Duryodhana’s enemies. Though he is not the commander-in-chief of the Kaurava army yet, he would become that once Bhishma falls. That definitely is not being a noble brahmana.

The Buddha is just stating the traditional perception of who a brahmana is when he says in the Dhammapada:   

One who has laid down the rod

In dealing with beings, moving or still,

Who neither kills nor causes to kill,

Him I call a brahmin. [James Carter translation]

And again:

Whoever endures abuse, assault, and imprisonment

Without animosity,

And who has forbearance as one’s strength,

As one’s mighty army,

I call a brahmin. [Jack Kornfield translation]

Forget about being a dwijottama, Drona is hardly a dwija at all, unless you go by birth alone, though even then you are expected to live a certain lifestyle which Drona has given up a long time ago.  Some of the basic virtues by which a brahmana lives are lack of vengefulness, forgiveness, great self mastery, endurance and so on.

Consciously or unconsciously, Duryodhana is just adding another insult to the list of insults he heaps upon his guru in these opening verses. And by doing that, he is not promoting his cause in any way. The only way to understand his behavior is by assuming he has temporarily lost mastery over himself and his actions are not emerging from his conscious self but from his unconscious, as it happens with all of us in our moments of great fear or stress.

Duryodhana here demonstrates complete lack of emotional intelligence. He is not in touch with his own inner feelings and naturally has no mastery over these feelings. He has got into such situations numerous times in the past too, thus incurring the curse of rishis and the anger of his elders.

The Kuru prince has throughout his life been a slave to his emotions, something no leader can afford to become, either in earlier times or today. Atma jeyah sada rajna – one should always be a master of oneself, says the Mahabharata, discussing one of the first principles of leadership. And self mastery means mastery over one’s body, one’s senses and one’s mind. It includes mastery over the six enemies of man – kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada and matsarya – lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride and intolerance..This is particularly true of a man in a leadership position, because he is responsible not only for himself but for others, sometimes tens of thousands of others, as in the case of an ancient king or the head of a modern corporate house, or the captain of a team of let’s say mountaineers, sportsmen, explorers, or whoever else.  One of the most striking examples of a sportsman losing mastery over himself and suffering great loss for himself, his team and his nation in modern times is that of the great Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 Football World Cup final in Berlin.

Why has Duryodhana lost mastery over himself? What could be the reason? Let’s look at his words to his guru Drona once again before we proceed further.

Among other things he tells the Acharya his own army is aparyapta and that of the Pandavas is paryapta. His words here are traditionally interpreted in two different ways. One, to mean his army is boundless and that of the Pandavas is limited. And two, just the opposite: his army is not sufficient to meet the challenge, and that of the Pandavas is adequate.

In my previous discussion [Living Bhagavad Gita: Short Essays 002], I had followed the first traditional interpretation of his words. Let’s now give his words the second meaning: that he feels his army is inadequate whereas that of the Pandavas is sufficient. Why does he say such a demoralizing thing when he and his people are standing in the battlefield ready to begin the war?

Well, Duryodhana has just counted the major warriors on both sides. While on the Pandava side he mentions several mighty warriors, he mentions only a few on his own side. Surprisingly he misses even such powerful warriors on his side as his brother Dusshasana, Bhurishava and Shalya, each one of whom is a truly mighty warrior, each capable of commanding large armies and causing great harm to the enemies. Shalya has in fact joined his side with an entire akshauhini of army and would eventually become the commander-in-chief of all Duryodhana’s forces after the death of Karna!

And he mentions Karna – who is not present on the spot to fight the war, has vowed not to enter the war field so long as Bhishma stands!

Has the presence of so many mighty warriors on the enemy side confused him? Has it made him doubt his chances of victory, lose his confidence?

A short while before the war was finally decided upon, Duryodhana was absolutely sure of his victory. When Krishna had gone to the Kuru assembly and negotiated peace, the language Duryodhana used throughout was the language of power. Every time Krshna would suggest a way to end the conflict and find peace, Duryodhana would ask: But who is more powerful, they or us? But all on a sudden, his sense of his own power, his army’s power, seems to have deserted him. What could be the reason?

Could it be that the sight of so many mighty maharathis on the Pandava side made him suspect his own power? It is possible that earlier Duryodhana had assumed that the Pandavas would not be able to procure the alliance of so many mighty warriors and such a huge army?

While I believe that is possible, there could be another important reason. Something related to his people’s commitment to him. 

Duryodhana has doubts about the commitment of his people to him and to his cause. In fact they have told him so openly several times in the past and he himself has accused them of being more sympathetic towards the Pandava cause than to his cause. This has lead to explosive scenes in the Kuru assembly numerous times in the past.

When he looks at the Pandava army, he sees people totally committed to one cause, all of them standing behind Yudhishthira as one. But on his own side he knows no one is really with him. No one, not totally. Except perhaps his brother Dusshasana, who was like his twin soul.

Let’s take a quick look at the important people on Duryodhana’s side, those he mentions and those he does not mention. The first person on his list is Acharya Drona himself. It is well known that Drona’s favourite disciple is Arjuna, loved so much by the Acharya that to make sure that he remains his best student he asks for the thumb of Ekalavya in gurudakshina, thus destroying Ekalavya as an archer forever and gaining for himself eternal notoriety as a guru. It is also equally clear that Drona has no love for Duryodhana. The acharya sees him as arrogant, impulsive, incompetent brat, a usurper of power.

It has been so from the beginning. In the crocodile test devised by him to check the devotion of his disciples, when a crocodile attacks Drona, it was Arjuna who saved him risking his own life while Duryodhana watched on helplessly. While Duryodhana failed to give the guru dakshina Drona wanted in the form of Drupada, captured, bound and brought to him, Duryodhana failed to do that and it was the Pandavas, led by Arjuna, who did it. Arjuna repeatedly proves his total devotion not only to his guru but also to learning, even defeating his guru in his cunning, unethical schemes to stop him from becoming his best disciple. Every teacher would love such a disciple.

Drona has repeatedly said that Duryodhana has neither any right over the Kuru crown nor the ethical requirements to wear it. The acharya certainly has no commitment to Duryodhana. Just before the war starts, as Yudhishthira comes to Drona seeking his blessings in the war and requesting him to join his side, Drona publicly announces he is on Duryodhana’s side only because of his financial indebtedness to him. Arthasya dasah – a slave to his wealth, that is how Drona describes himself then.

Kripa’s attitude in everything, including his commitment to Duryodhna, is the same as that of his brother-in-law Drona. Drona’s son Ashwatthama is close to Duryodhana as a friend, though he has frequently and bluntly questioned Duryodhana’s unethical ways.

It is too well known that Bhishma has no commitment to Duryodhana. Nor has Shalya, not mentioned here by Duryodhana, who is really Pandu’s wife Madri’s brother and thus an uncle of the Pandavas, who was waylaid and tricked to join the Kaurava side while he was on his way to join the Pandava side. His heart is with the Pandavas.

Vikarna, a younger brother of Duryodhana, is the only one who shows the courage to question what was being done in the Dice Hall to Draupadi, apart from Vidura. Though he fights for Duryodhana because they are brothers, his heart is not with him.

And Karna? His heart is definitely not with Duryodhana in this war, as he himself says openly to Krishna, because he considers Duryodhana ethically unfit to become king. When Krishna offers Karna the kingdom and asks him to join the Pandavas who are actually his brothers, Karna tells him he knows that and asks Krishna not to give him the kingdom because if it is given to him, out of his friendship with Duryodhana he would give it to him, and he does not deserve it, he is unfit to become king. True, Duryodhana counts on him heavily and perhaps believes he is with him fully, but he knows the fact that because of a quarrel with Bhishma, he would not be joining his side to fight the war so long as Bhishma stands. He may not know of the promise Karna has made to his mother not to kill any of her sons except Arjuana, but he certainly knows that Karna has put his own ego above Duryodhana’s interests by taking the decision to keep away from the war so long as Bhishma fights.             

Is there any wonder then if Duryodhana is shaken as he looks at both the sides as the war is about to start? He knows that wars are not won by skilled people, but by skilled people with commitment. A successful leader is he who is able to generate that commitment in people whether it is in the Mahabharata war, in any other war, or in a modern corporate house, a political party, an election, or whatever ‘battle’ it is. People contribute best to a cause when their heart in it.

Duryodhana knows he is a failure as a leader. His guide all his life has been Shakuni whereas the Pandavas have Krishna with them to give them strength and to show them their path. He also knows he does not have even the blessings of his own mother for this war in which she considers him on the side of adharma! She refuses to bless him as he goes to her seeking her blessings as he starts out.  As he bends and touches her feet, instead of the conventional vijayi bhava, be victorious, what she says is yato dharmah tato jayah – Victory will be where dharma is!  

O0O  

Rather than asking Duryodhana to shut up, Bhishma in a tactically brilliant act blows his powerful conch to stop Duryodhana’s babbling and to announce the war.  He has openly criticized Duryodhana all his life but does not want to do that again at this juncture and in front of all these people!

tasya sanjanayan harsham kuruvriddhah pitaamahah

simhanaadam vinadyocchaih shankham dadhmau prataapavaan // BG 1.12 //

Then Bhishma, the aged Kuru grandfather, roared like a lion and blew a powerful blast on his conch making Duryodhana’s heart leap with joy.

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Thank you in advance for your comments and questions!

Mind Power, the Will to Live and Cancer

In one of my sessions earlier this week in a training programme for young engineers from Tata Steel held at the Centre for Excellence, Jamshedpur, one of the topics we discussed was managing the mind – something every executive should know in today’s world. The job of an executive today is more challenging than it has ever been in the past. His pace of work is hectic and unrelenting, and the content of his work is varied and fragmented. Much of his work is reactive rather than proactive in nature, requiring him to react to decisions taken by others and actions initiated by others. The decision making processes are disorderly, characterised more by confusion and emotionality than by rationality and frequently involve hard negotiations. Besides, organizational politics and self-serving interests of individuals and groups complicate the process further. Under such conditions, an executive who does not know how to manage his mind ends up as a total failure.

Our discussion on managing the mind led to a discussion about the mind’s power to heal and to cause diseases. Though this would have been strange to doctors from the western world to accept until a couple of decades ago, I do not think there is any sensible doctor in the world today who does not believe in the power of stress to cause diseases. About seventy percent of all our medical problems, for instance, are believed to arise from stress and stress related reasons. As far as skin diseases are considered, experts say that most of them are related one way or other to stress.

I would like to explore here in some depth a topic that we only touched upon in the training programme, since the topic was really beyond the scope of the training. Is there then any connection between stress and cancer? Is the mind in any way involved in the development and growth of cancer? Can he mind heal cancer?

Dr Carl Simonton is one of the doctors who strongly believe that the mind is involved in the development of cancer and since it is involved, it can also help in the healing of cancer. In fact, he believes that any treatment of cancer that does not take the mind into consideration is bound to be ineffective. “The mind, the emotions, and the attitude of a patient play a role in both the development of the disease and in the response that a patient has to any form of treatment,” he says. True, he does not abandon conventional treatments like radiation in treating cancer. But such is his faith in the power of the mind to cause diseases and to heal them that he invariably uses meditation and other forms of mind-based healing techniques in all his treatments along with surgery and chemotherapy.

Dr Simonton’s journey into mind-based healing began in 1969 while he was doing his internship in radiation therapy at the University of Oregon Medical Centre in the United States. One of the observations he made during this period was that while some patients receiving the treatment did not make much progress, others beat all kinds of odds and made great progress. In a few cases, a few patients who had almost no chances of survival lived on for years. He questioned why this was so.

In his discussions with the patients, Dr Simonton realized that the patients who survived were those who refused to accept the verdict of the doctors about the certainty of their end. In some cases, people felt that they could not afford to die at the moment because they had so much to do.

Incidentally this later feeling was something that Dr Viktor Frankl, the developer of logotherapy, had enquired into deeply. Dr Frankl was an inmate of Nazi concentration camps in Germany during the second world war. He observed that while the unimaginably horrid conditions of the bestial concentration camps killed the vast majority of the inmates, a few people survived in the camps too. He himself was a survivor, despite finding, to quote from the Preface of his bestselling book Man’s Search for Meaning, “himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, excepting for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he—every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination—how could he find life worth preserving?”

His enquiry into the reasons for his own and other people’s survival led him to conclude that those who survived were the ones who had deeper commitments in life – those who had a compelling reason to live on, a purpose to live for. In other words, those who found meaning in living. If you still found meaning in living, you lived on, and if you found no meaning in life, you surrendered to death. Based on his observations, he developed what is known as logotherapy, a sister science of psychotherapy. Logotherapy helps people to find meaning in life and through that meaning develop the will to live on and find the strength to fight their problems..

As I write this, a report in the local edition of The Hindustan Times [dated 17th March, 2010] says in my small city of Jamshedpur alone 57 people have committed suicide so far this year. Which is a shockingly huge number – 57 people choosing to end their lives in two and a half months, most of them young! The figure was given in connection with the report of a young girl, a class eleven student, in one of the leading schools committing suicide on the previous day and a boy ending his life the day before.

People, young and old, commit suicide when they find there is no point in living on anymore. When they lose meaning in life, when they lose purpose.

And, concluded both Dr Viktor Frankl and Dr Carl Simonton, people succumb to diseases and death when they lose meaning in life, when they lose purpose. And they refuse to succumb to death so long as there is something for them to live for.

One person told Dr Simonton, “I can’t die until my son graduates.” Another said, “I can’t die until I see my grandchild.”

Dr Simonton says, “They didn’t die until they wanted to. I couldn’t help wondering if maybe something as simple as the will to live could alter the prognosis of cancer.”

Hope. Things to look forward to.

Dr Simonton’s next step was in trying to find out if there was a connection between the opposite factors and the beginning of cancer. Was there any connection between hopelessness and cancer? Between having nothing to look to forward to and cancer? Between meaninglessness and purposelessness and the origin of cancer?

His enquiries led him to statements such as “I felt trapped,” and “I had nothing to live for.” These were the feelings of patients who were suffering from cancer at the time of the development of cancer. Some were people who had found that all their chances of making a living after retirement were closed. Some others couldn’t get along with their spouses. Yet others had nothing to do. “It seemed as if the mind had decided to die on at a less than fully conscious level, and the body simply found a way.”

Can cancer then be psychologically induced?

Dr Simonton’s asked himself, “Everyone has cancer many times during his lifetime, but most people don’t realize it. What is unusual in cancer is not that malignant cells arise, since in the day-in-day-out replacement of billions of cells, some ‘bad cells’ do get made. But at times, and for some reason, the body allows these ‘bad cells’ to grow when it normally, routinely, reorganizes them as abnormal and destroys them. Why, then, in these instances, does the normally operative immunological system break down?” And he concludes that it must be because the mind lowers host resistance to these cells.

Under conditions of hopelessness and purposelessness, when there is no will to live, the mind does not resist the cancerous cells. It ‘permits’ the cancerous cells to grow and spread.

His next question to himself was: “How the hell could I bring about the will to live in someone who felt badly enough about life to develop cancer in the first place? How could I change such a defeatist attitude, one made worse by having cancer? How could I mobilise the power of the mind to affect the immunological response to cancer?”

His answer to the question was something that we in the east have practiced for ages: meditation.

He asked his patients to meditate for fifteen minutes, three times a day. He asked them to physically relax during these meditations, and then, in the next stage, to visualize a natural scene of peace and serenity. In the third stage, the patients were told to visualize vividly, in total clarity, the immune system systematically destroying the cancerous cells. The visualization involved something that was new then but has become an old method now: Patients visualize that an army of white blood cells are attacking, destroying and carrying away the cancerous cells.

One woman used the vacuum cleaner technique – visualizing that the white blood cells form a vacuum cleaner and suck in the diseased cells. A young man visualized what is going on inside him was the timeless battle between the powers of darkness and the powers of light in which the powers of light destroyed the powers of darkness.

And then at the end of this visualization, the patient begins the final visualization. He sees himself, with complete clarity, as totally cured of the disease and being in perfect health.

The visualizations are repeated exactly as they are, three times a day, day after day.

The practice produced amazing results. It was found that those who were cooperative with Dr Simonton’s meditation programme and followed his instructions achieved excellent results while those who were uncooperative and did not follow instructions fared poorly. Dr Simonton defined excellent results as ‘marked relief of symptoms and dramatic improvement of condition’ and poor results as ‘no relief of symptoms.’

In the cases of both kinds of patients, conventional forms of treatment had been given along with meditation. Which is to say that while conventional treatment was an important element in the healing process, meditation was another significant element.

Of course, the patients’ will to live was yet another significant aspect of the whole process.

The mind does have power over cancer.

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In his book The Healing Mind: the Vital Links between Brain and Behaviour, Immunity and Disease, Dr Paul Martin, who is more cautious about the powers of the mind, says:”There is now little doubt that psychological and emotional factors can influence the development and progression of certain cancers... Psychological variables such as social support and the patient’s emotional response to their disease have substantial bearing on survival. Equally, there is little doubt that appropriate psychological and social interventions can be of enormous benefit in helping cancer patients to cope with their disease, improving the quality of what remains of their lives and, in some cases, extending their survival time. To ignore the mind is an irresponsible waste.”

According to Dr Paul Martin, “The termination of a close relationship, whether through death, divorce or other means, has often been linked with cancer. When American psychologist Lawrence LeShan looked at more than four hundred cancer patients he discovered that a remarkably high proportion [72 percent] had suffered the loss of someone close to them not long before the onset of their cancer. In contrast, only 10 percent of comparable people without cancer had suffered such a loss.”

The link between the sense of hopelessness and cancer is so high that one might even say that it can be used to predict cancer. In a study, women undergoing cervical smear test were interviewed before their test results were available. And it was found that “women who expressed feelings of hopelessness during the interview had the greatest likelihood of being diagnosed of having a malignant tumour. The interview alone predicted the results of the smear test in over three-quarters of cases.”

Two thousand and six hundred years ago, the Buddha said in the first verse of the first chapter of the Dhammapada: “All that we are, is the result of what we have thought: It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”

A lot of things that ancient masters have said and many things that psychology and psychoneuroimmunology tell us today suggest that sickness and health are personal choices we make.

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Note: In writing this article, I am deeply indebted to an essay on Carl Simonton in a book by David Hammond on the powers of the mind [The book is not exactly about healing. It is called The Search for Psychic Power. The chapter on Dr Carl Simonton, however, is about healing.].