Living Bhagavad Gita 023: Journey to the East

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.]

The name given to the first chapter of the Gita is Arjuna Vishada Yoga – the Yoga of Arjuna’s Vishada. The word vishada is translated variously as melancholy, sorrow, grief, depression, despondency, sadness, misery and so on.  

We just saw in the last article how Arjuna surrendered to melancholy, dropped his bow and arrows and collapsed into his chariot telling Krishna he will not fight, he finds no point in fighting and killing, no point in winning the kingdom, no point in pleasures or even in life itself. Kim no rajyena govinda, kim bhogair jeevitena vaa, he asks: “What good is the kingdom, Krishna, and what good are pleasures or life itself?”

All over the world today there is a lot of discussion about depression which is fast spreading and assuming the form of a wild fire that can consume everything. I was part of the faculty team giving an intensive training programme for doctors at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources and we were having a pre-programme dinner when the topic of depression came up. Several professors felt depression is fast becoming the most dangerous problem the world is facing today with a large number of lives claimed every day. This was of course in the days before the covid-19 pandemic.  

Bright young people seem to be particularly susceptible to depression. In his bestselling book The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology, Shawn Achor speaks about depression in Harvard University where happiness was the subject of his research for several years. Achor says “despite all its magnificent facilities, a wonderful faculty, and a student body made up of some of America’s (and the world’s) best and brightest, it is home to many chronically unhappy young men and women. In 2004, for instance, a Harvard Crimson poll found that as many as 4 in 5 Harvard students suffer from depression at least once during the school year, and nearly half of all students suffer from depression so debilitating they can’t function.” Shawn Achor then goes on to say that “This unhappiness epidemic is not unique to Harvard. A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling. Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960. Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old.”

Speaking about depression, the Himalayan monk Om Swami says in his book When All Is Not Well: Depression and Sadness: “Depression isn’t just sadness. It is emptiness, it is misery. It is pain and nothingness at once. When you are truly depressed, you lack the ability or will to cheer yourself up. No one just ‘has depression’. You suffer from it.”

Continuing, Om Swami explains what depression feels like. “You will wake at 5, 6, maybe 7 a.m., feeling as though you had only just fallen asleep... If you don’t have to be somewhere, you could lie in bed for another three hours; too tired, too miserable and pathetic to crawl out of your bed. Or maybe you will sleep until 1 p.m., because it’s so much easier to sleep through most of the day than actually live it, and you’re so unbelievably tired anyway. You will push through the day, knowing that every hour will be a struggle and not knowing how you will feel tomorrow. People will ask what is wrong, and you will simply smile and say, ‘Nothing, I’m just tired.’ ...You will spend your days not only lost in the haze of depression, but your mind will be so consumed with these thoughts of escaping and self-destruction that you think you could explode…”

But the important question is why so many people are feeling depressed today. Why is depression spreading across the world like a deadly epidemic today?

The reasons are not too difficult to find. For one thing, our life has become too fast. We are obsessed with speed – in real life as well as in virtual life. We have become intolerant of slowness. And stillness? Of course, we have grown strangers to it. We have forgotten that all that is beautiful in life comes from stillness. Creativity comes from stillness. Intuition comes from stillness. Art and music come from stillness. The essence of dance is not movement but the stillness that is its substratum, from which arises and into which it goes back. All inventions and discoveries are made in moments of stillness. Intuition comes from stillness, insights come from stillness, healing comes from stillness. Medical professionals have long recognized that silence plays an important part in healing. For instance, the experience of even a little real silence can produce physiological changes that neutralize the effects of stress.“When you are still, you find that your perception of life is at its purest,” says Ron Rothbun in his book The Way Is Within.

We are all familiar with the story of Archimedes who ran through the streets of Athens shouting eureka, eureka. The Athenian ruler had given him an assignment. Someone had gifted the ruler a crown and he wanted to find out if the crown was of pure gold or some alloy had been mixed with the gold. The specific gravity of gold was known then, but no one knew how to measure the mass of an irregular object like the crown. Archimedes was the best scientist of the day and he struggled for weeks to find a solution to the problem. If only there was a way to measure the mass of the crown! Then you could decide whether the crown was pure gold or not.

Eventually Archimedes gave up his struggles admitting defeat and sank into a tub for a relaxed bath. It was then, in that moment when there were not struggles in his mind and the mind had become still with his acceptance of defeat, that he noticed water spilling over from the tub as his body sank into the tub. That very instant insight was born, a great discovery happened: the mass of water that spilled out was equal to the mass of his body that had submerged in the water. The quantity of water that flows out when a substance is immersed in a vessel full of water is equal to the mass of the substance.

In that still moment, his problem had been solved and climbing out of the tub he ran through the streets of Athens shouting that word that has now become part of every language in the world: eureka, eureka!

We all have had the experience of something, a name, we had forgotten coming back to us the moment we give up the struggles and the mind becomes still.

All science and all technology is the product of still moments. All that is precious to humanity are products of inner stillness, of the mind is that is empty of restless thoughts. The saying that the empty mind is the devil’s workshop is completely wrong. The empty mind is God’s workshop!

Indian culture says the universe is born of God’s empty mind. The Taittiriya Upanishad says, “Sa tapo’tapyata. Sa tapas taptvaa idam sarvam asrjata. Yadidam kincha.” “He did tapas. Having done tapas, he created all this. He created all that exists.” It is from the mind of God that has become empty because of tapas that the universe comes into being.      

There is story told about the world famous painter Raphael and an unknown woodcutter. One morning as the woodcutter was going to the forest to cut wood, he saw Raphael sitting by a lake, lazily picking up pebbles and dropping them into the lake. The woodcutter shook his head in disapproval – what a waste of time! – and went on his way. As the woodcutter was returning home with his load of firewood, he saw Raphael still sitting there picking up pebbles and throwing them into the lake! What an idiot, he thought! I have done a whole day’s work and the moron is still sitting there and throwing pebbles into the lake!

We know today that such a woodcutter existed because of Raphael, one of the greatest painters the world has known.

In the ancient Indian tradition, in fact all over the world, we began everything with a few moments of silence, of mental stillness, of prayer. But today stillness, and even slowness, is looked down upon. It is one of the greatest casualties of the age of speed.      

The virtues of slowness are unlimited, says Carl Honore in his book In praise of slowness. In his book Slowing Down to the Speed of Life, Richard Carlson says more or less the same thing. And it is that slowness that we have rejected in favour of speed! Faster, faster, ever faster, says our culture!

Slowing down and experiencing stillness is one of our basic needs – it is as essential as breathing. Our brains go completely haywire unless we experience slowness and stillness on a regular basis. Which is exactly what is not happening today. And that is taking a heavy toll on young minds today, especially gifted young minds, leading to depression and all that depression leads to. The philosophy aaraam hai haraam has to go. Laziness is bad, sluggishness is bad, sloth and apathy are bad, but relaxation is not. It is the most healing thing most of us know, apart from sleep. In fact sleep is a form of relaxation too. The second highest form of relaxation, after meditation which is the highest form of relaxation in existence.

We need to spend more time ‘plucking daisies’, we need to spend more time climbing mountains, we need to spend more time unfocused and in ‘purposeless’ activities, like Raphael picking up pebbles and throwing them into the lake. We need to give our souls time to catch up with us. That is the medicine for fighting the insane obsession with speed that drives us away from our own calm inner centre.  

A European explorer was in the Amazon forests, exploring the flora and fauna there. He had hired a supervisor and the supervisor had hired native people to help him in his work. One day passed the explorer and the natives hurrying from one thing to another, then another day and then yet another day. On the fourth day when the explorer was ready to start he found not one native was ready. When enquired, the supervisor gave him an incredibly beautiful reply. He told the explorer: they are giving time for their souls to catch up with them!

We all need to give time for our souls to catch up with us.  

One of the most beautiful Chuang Tzu stories ever says:

The prince discovered when he returned from the top of the mountain that he had mislaid the Priceless Pearl up on the mountain.

He sent his generals and their armies to search for it, but they could not find it. He employed Huang-Ti, the vehement debater, to find the Pearl, but Huang-Ti was unable to find it. He sent his skilled gardeners and his artisans to find it, but they too came home empty-handed.

Finally, in despair, having tried everyone else, he sent Purposeless to the mountain, and Purposeless found the pearl immediately.

"How odd it is", mused the Prince, "that it was Purposeless who found it!"

We are all birds meant to fly in the open sky. Those who have known the truth, the Upanishad rishis for instance, call us amritasya putraah – children of the Immortal, each one of us a divine spark. The Mundaka Upanishad tells us: yathaa sudeeptaat paavakaad visphulingaah sahasrashah prabhavante saroopaah, tathaa aksharaad vividhaah somya bhaavaah prajaayante tatra chaivaapi yanti: Just as sparks in their thousands are born from a roaring fire, each of the same nature as the fire itself, so do, dear one, beings come forth from the Imperishable One and return to It. [Mu.Up.2.1]   

No, we are not meant to spend our lives hopping about on the ground searching for worms but to stretch out our wings, soar up and enjoy the bliss of the boundless skies – the boundless skies of consciousness. We are meant for the bhooma, the vast, and not for the alpa, the small. The owl will be satisfied with the rotting body of a mouse, but not the phoenix which will touch no food other than certain sacred fruits and drink only from the clearest springs. The chakora lives on moonbeams, says Indian mythology, and will touch nothing else. The way man lives today is like the phoenix being forced to live on rotten mice and the chakora being forced to live on the food that pigs eat.

By and large, man has forgotten the higher. We have become flotsams with no roots in our spiritual selves. We are living not the philosophy of the rising son as we did in the past but the philosophy of the setting sun. Frustration and depression are bound to be there.        

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As we saw, the vishada that happened to Arjuna in the battlefield is called by different names such as melancholy, sorrow, grief, depression, despondency, sadness, misery and so on

But there is a different name for it. India calls it vairagya, dispassion, and considers it sacred. Vairagya is the first step in the journey to the east, the journey to the land where the sun rises, the journey to the source of all light. Light as bright as the light of a thousand suns, light before which all other lights pale.

There is mantra that is traditionally chanted when we do arati, ritually show burning lamps before a sacred idol. Na tatra sooryo bhaati na chandrataarakam nemaa vidyuto bhaanti kutoyam agnih; tam eva bhaantam anubhaaati saravam tasya bhaasaa sarvam idam vibhaati, says the mantra. “The sun does not shine there, nor the moon or the stars. How then will this fire? That alone shines and everything else shines after it, reflecting its light.” The journey to that source of all light begins with what Arjuna is experiencing now and that is why India considers vairagya sacred.   

This is something that happens only to sensitive people. Much of the time the kind of questions Arjuna asks, the feelings Arjuna feels, come to us from a great shower of blessing that descends upon us. It is ishwra-anugraha, the grace of God, says India.

The rishi of the Svetashvatara Upanishad declares boldly and unhesitatingly:

vedaaham etaṃ puruṣhaṃ mahaantam aaditya-varṇaṃ tamasaḥ parastaat;
tam eva viditvaa atimṛtyum eti naanyaḥ panthaa vidyate'yanaaya. Sv. Up. 3.8

“I know the Great Purusha, He who is luminous like the sun and beyond darkness. Only by knowing Him does one go beyond death. There is no other path worth travelling!” 

Vairagya is the invitation to begin our journey on the only path worth travelling.

It is not only Arjuna who has grace showered on him as he stands in the chariot driven by Krishna in the middle of the two armies in Kurukshertra, but all of us, the entire humanity. Because it is in response to this vairagya he felt that the Bhagavad Gita was born on a shukla paksha ekadashi day, on the eleventh day of the bright lunar fortnight in the month of Margashirsha, more than five thousand and one hundred years ago. 

A well known story from the Mahabharata says that both Arjuna and Duryodhana went to meet Krishna seeking his help before the war began. Duryodhana was the first to enter Krishna’s bed chamber and he went and took a seat by the head of the bed. A few moments later Arjuna entered the chamber and he too could have gone and taken a seat at the head of the bed as Duryodhana had done. Instead, he went and stood at Krishna’s feet. When Krishna opened his eyes a few moments later it was naturally Arjuna who was standing at the foot of the bed that he saw first. As we all know, it was on him that Krishna’s grace fell in the form of his presence with him during the war and as his driver.

Krishna is grace. The greatest possible grace! With Krishna on your side, the impossible becomes possible. With Krishna on your side miracles happen. Mookam karoti vaachaalam pangum landhayate girim, yat-kripaa tam aham vande parama-ananda-maadhavam, says one of the shlokas traditionally chanted before the study of the Gita: “I bow down to Krishna, who is supreme bliss itself, with whose grace the speechless become eloquent and the lame crosses over mountains.”

The choice that Arjuna made in Krishna’s bedchamber, rejecting the Narayani Sena, rejecting the power of a mighty army and choosing just Krishna, Krishna’s grace, it is that choice that is now showering on him in the form of the Bhagavad Gita. All we have to do is to make that choice, everything else happens by itself. That is why Krishna concludes his teachings in the Gita by saying:

sarvadharmaan parityajya maam ekam sharanam vraja; aham twaa sarvapaapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah BG 18.66

“Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in me alone; I will liberate you from all sins. Have no grief.”   

Duryodhana missed Krishna’s grace throughout his life. After the war was over, Gandhari curses Krishna saying he could have and should have helped her son but did not. But grace can shower on you only when you are open to it. If a pot remains upside down when the sky showers rains, not a drop will go inside even if an entire season passes. In fact, the only thing you need to deserve grace is openness to it, receptivity to it, which is what Duryodhana did not have.  There were a thousand occasions in his life when he could have taken refuge in Krishna, but rejects every single one of them.

There is a famous Indian story about a beggar who was crossing a bridge, walking with a stick in hand. The story says that Goddess Parvati takes pity on the poor beggar and requests Shiva to bless him with wealth. Shiva says there is no point because even if he gives wealth to him, he will not get it because he is not open to his blessing. But the heart of the goddess is the heart of a mother and she insists that the man be given wealth. Shiva agrees and a treasure chest appears on the bridge. The moment the chest appears on the bridge, the beggar has a thought: “I am young now and I can see well, but what will happen to me when I grow old and lose my eyesight? I must practice walking blind right from now.”  With that thought, he closes he eyes and walking with the help of the stick crosses the rest of the bridge, missing the treasure completely!

Throughout his life Duryodhana behaved like that beggar.

Whereas Arjuna chose Krishna lifetimes ago. The Mahabharata tells us they have been friends across lifetimes, meditating in the Himalayas together.

There is a mantra in the Mundaka Upanishad that my teacher Swami Dayananda Saraswati was very fond of. During the years when I was in the Sandeepany Gurukula and learning timeless Indian wisdom from him, he must have quoted this mantra hundreds of times.

pareekshya lokaan karmachitaan braahmano nirvedam aayaan naastyakrtah krtena tadvijnanartham sa gurum evabhigacched samitpaanih shrotriyam brahmanishtham. Mu.Up.1.2.12 

“Having examined all in the world that is gained through actions, after attaining nirveda and realizing that the uncreated cannot be achieved through actions, let [him who has thus become] a brahmana, approach with samit in hand a guru who is learned [in the traditional spiritual lore] and rooted in the Brahman.”

The soul of the entire Indian spiritual culture could be found in that one mantra. Before approaching the guru and being qualified for his grace, we must developed nirveda towards all that can be attained through our own power, through our actions. Nirveda means vairagya – what Arjuna is experiencing at the moment. It is when this vairagya is born in your heart that you become a brahmana – one whose entire focus is on  attaining the Brahman, one whose concentration now is only on attaining the spiritual goal. And then he should go to his guru with samit in hand. Samit is kindling used in sacrificial fire. Carrying that to your guru is the symbol of your joyful willingness to serve the master.

Duryodhana is still far from the nirveda the Upanishad talks about. He is not willing to surrender to Krishna and therefore is not ready for the grace. He has not yet developed what makes you a brahmana ­– the all consuming urge to abandon everything else and walk the path of shreyas to reach the land of the ultimate good, the land of light, having reached which you never return – yad gatvaa na nivartante. He is still very much with the loka of wealth, power, position, sensual pleasures and so on.

Arjuna has developed that urge and he is ready. That is why he is asking, “What good is the kingdom, Krishna, and what good are pleasures or life itself?” The vishada he is experiencing at the moment is the clear sign of that.

All vishadas, depressions, are not bad, some are good. Some can take you to the higher. They come to you from divine grace. With them begins our journey to the east, the greatest journey we will ever make.

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Living Bhagavad Gita 17: Journey to True Greatness

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.]

For that reason, we should not kill the Dhartarashtras, our relatives. How can we be happy after killing our own people, Krishna? Because their hearts are overpowered by greed, they see no evil in destroying the family and no sin in harming friends. But we know what evil it is to destroy families. How then can we not, Krishna, turn back from this sin? BG 1.37-39

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In his book Forerunner, Kahlil Gibran paints a beautiful picture of greed:

“In my wanderings I once saw upon an island a man-headed, iron-hoofed monster who ate of the earth and drank of the sea incessantly. And for a long while I watched him. Then I approached him and said, “Have you never enough; is your hunger never satisfied and your thirst never quenched?”

“And he answered saying, “Yes, I am satisfied, nay, I am weary of eating and drinking; but I am afraid that tomorrow there will be no more earth to eat and no more sea to drink.”

Krishna considers greed one of the three gates of hell, lust and anger being the other two, and asks us to free ourselves from them: trividham narakasyedam dvaaram naashanam aatmanah kaamah krodhas tathaa lobhas tasmaad etat trayam tyajet.  BG 16.21

It is our insecurities about the future that give birth to greed in our mind. And so long as insecurities are there, greed will be there too. The insecure man will never be contented with what he has, however much he has, and will constantly try to acquire more, whether it is power, position, wealth, or whatever else he thinks will make his future secure.

In Abraham Maslow’s triangle of needs, security needs come as the second group of needs from below, after physical and physiological needs. Insecurities about the future are built into human nature and until man wakes up from the life of illusions he is living and realizes his true nature, or learns to surrender to Existence, to God, they will be there.

A botanist was in the Himalayas along with his young son, exploring the Valley of Flowers. He tied a rope to his son’s waste and slowly lowered him to explore a deep gorge in the valley. As the son disappeared from sight and started going deeper and deeper into the gorge, the father’s heart started beating faster and faster, his head started nearly reeling in fear. Unable to control his fears any more, he called out, “Son, are you all right? Are you afraid?”

And he heard his son’s laughter from the gorge. Laughing, the young boy answered, “Why should I be afraid when the rope is in my father’s hands?!”

That is how surrender is. As we shall see later, Krishna concludes his teachings to Arjuna by asking him to surrender to him. By surrendering to Existence, you give yourself over into the safest of hands. And awakening to your true nature, you realize you are what the Gita speaks of as what neither weapons, nor fire, not water can touch, what is unborn and deathless. And with that all insecurities and fears disappear and so does the need to acquire more and more, to hoard.

A difficult path to practice, of course. That is why the Upanishads say that religion is for the truly brave – to walk the spiritual path, to tread the path of shreyas, you have to be truly strong and courageous.  Listing divine qualities, daivi sampada, Krishna lists abhayam, fearlessness, as the very first quality on his list. 

Duryodhana’s is the sad story of a man who cannot surrender to God, even though God was there in the form of Krishna all the time. His asuri nature prevents that surrender, his ego prevents him from surrendering to Krishna and accepting him as his protector and guide. Instead, he would like to imprison the Divine and make him do his bidding, as he tries to do when Krishna comes to speak of peace in the Kuru assembly. Before the war begins, Arjuna and he both approach Krishna seeking his help and Arjuna is given the first choice: to choose between Krishna’s army and an unarmed, non-combating Krishna. The epic tells us that while Arjuna happily chose Krishna, Duryodhana was worried all the time that he might choose Krishna’s army, as he himself would have done instantly given the first choice to him. For Duryodhana, Krishna is of no value.

Greed is truly a gate that leads to hell. Greed makes us forget no amount of wealth, no amount of power, no position, nothing we can acquire from the world is going to make us joyous, nothing is going to help us live our life in utsava bhava, the spirit of festivity and celebration, as life is meant to be lived.

One of my favourite passages from Kahlil Gibran is a conversation between the serpent and the lark:

Said the serpent to the lark, “Thou flyest, yet thou canst not visit the recesses of the earth where the sap of life moveth in perfect silence.”

And the lark answered, “Aye, thou knowest over much, nay thou art wiser than all things wise – pity thou canst not fly.”

And as if he did not hear, the serpent said, “Thou canst not see the secrets of the deep, nor move among the treasures of the hidden empire. It was but yesterday I lay in a cave of rubies. It is like the heart of a ripe pomegranate, and the faintest ray of light turns it into a flame-rose. Who but me can behold such marvels?”

And the lark said, “None, none but thee can lie among the crystal memories of the cycles: pity thou canst not sing.”

And the serpent said, “I know a plant whose root descends to the bowels of the earth, and he who eats of that root becomes fairer than Ashtarte.”

And the lark said, “No one, no one but thee could unveil the magic thought of the earth – pity thou canst not fly.”

And the serpent said, “There is a purple stream that runneth under a mountain, and he who drinketh of it shall become immortal even as the gods. Surely no bird or beast can discover that purple stream.”

And the lark answered, “If thou willest thou canst become deathless even as the gods – pity thou canst not sing.”

And the serpent said, “I know a buried temple, which I visit once a moon: It was built by a forgotten race of giants, and upon its walls are graven the secrets of time and space, and he who reads them shall understand that which passeth all understanding.”

And the lark said, “Verily, if thou so desirest thou canst encircle with thy pliant body all knowledge of time and space – pity thou canst not fly.”

Then the serpent was disgusted, and as he turned and entered into his hole he muttered, “Empty-headed songster!”

And the lark flew away singing, “Pity thou canst not sing. Pity, pity, my wise one, thou canst not fly.”

Greed is a curse. Where there is greed, there is no joy. One of the most joyless men I have come across is a rich man I once knew who lived for making money. He was my neighbour and I would hear him talking loudly over the phone from five in the morning till ten or eleven in the night every day. He had only one topic: how to make more money through investment in shares and the business of gold, diamonds and real estate.

Tibetan culture speaks of accursed beings they call the hungry ghosts – ghosts, pishachas, surrounded by all kinds of delicacies, but with such tiny mouths, like that of anteaters, they can eat no more than the tiniest morsels and remain hungry forever. 

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In the 1987 movie classic Wall Street, the Michael Doughlas character Gordon Gekko says: “Greed...is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” This is the philosophy that has dominated the world, particularly the industrial western world, for quite some time and we can see all round us what greed has done to us. In his book Is the American Dream Killing You? Paul Stiles speaks of the power of the greed-driven market: “The ability of the Market to overcome the most important human bonds, the natural bonds between man and woman, and between parents and children, and to subvert traditions that have arisen out of millions of years of biological and social evolution, in a short fifty years, is stark testimony to the power of the Market in modern life. That power has now placed us in a position where we are serving the Market from birth, rather than having it serve us.”

A 1909 cartoon shows the inside of a huge boat where a large number of children are rowing oars like galley slaves and a muscular man stands overseeing them which a whip in his hand. The writing on his clothes reads: GREED.  

That is what happens when greed takes over the world and we say greed is good!

A Psychology Today article on greed says:

“Greed is also associated with negative psychological states such as stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and despair, and with maladaptive behaviours such as gambling, scavenging, hoarding trickery and theft. By overriding reason, compassion and love, greed loosens family and community ties and undermines the bonds and values upon which society is built.

“Greed may drive the economy, but as recent history has made all too clear, unfettered greed can also precipitate a deep and long-lasting economic recession. What’s more, our consumer culture continues to inflict severe damage on the environment, resulting in, among others, deforestation, desertification, ocean acidification, species extinctions, and more frequent and severe extreme weather events. There is a question about whether such greed can be sustainable in the short term, never mind the long term.”

By the laws and traditions of the day that governed royal succession, Duryodhana had no right over the kingdom of the Kurus, as both his father Dhritarashtra and his mother Gandhari tell him openly in royal assembly during discussions on the subject in the Udyoga Parva of the epic. But in spite of that when he usurps power through crooked means, the kingdom is divided and the Pandavas, the rightful heirs to the throne, are sent to the wilderness of Khandava Prastha, which they soon turn to the most glorious kingdom on earth. And when that happens, Duryodhana’s greed for power and wealth once again makes him snatch from the Pandavas their kingdom and wealth. It is this greed of Duryodhana for wealth and power and his refusal to give the Pandavas so much as five villages that make the Mahabharata war necessary. And what Arjuna  tells Krishna now is that even though Duryodhana is deprived of his intelligence because of his greed, we should not fight the war because Duryodhana is after all his cousin.

The first commitment of a kshatriya, of all leaders of men, should be to righteous ways of living. You cannot condone because the perpetrator is your own cousin. A kshatriya is bound to destroy adharma wherever he finds it, going beyond relationships. When he condones adharma because it was done by his own people, he is failing in his basic duty as a protector of dharma.

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Modern psychology tells us that the human mind does not take decisions based on reason; instead it first takes decisions and then seeks reasons to justify those decisions. The actual decision makers are our feelings and emotions, not our reason.  This is true whether it is an individual who is taking the decision or a group. The individual in a shop trying to decide whether to buy a shirt or not and the marketing group in a corporate meeting trying to decide what marketing strategy to adopt take decisions based on their emotions and feelings, though they not be aware of this.

Arjuna has made up his mind not to fight – that was an impulsive, instant decision taken under the impact of his emotional hijack he suffered when he saw his people standing in the battlefield ready to slaughter each other and realized that he will have to kill, among others, his own beloved grandfather and revered guru to win the war. Now he is giving Krishna reasons to justify that decision.

But in truth the reasons are sought less for Krishna’s sake and more for himself.  These reasons are the ways of his ego to defend itself – in his own eyes and in the eyes of the others. The first and the last concern of the ego under all circumstances is to save itself. But unfortunately, the ego is our greatest enemy. In fact it is our only enemy. It is the enemy of our happiness, the enemy of spiritual welfare, the one thing that separates us from the joyfulness that life should be. And spirituality is the process of starving the ego and feeding the soul so that we can wake up from the illusions we are suffering from and live life as it should be lived.

For the ego the only thing that matters is that it wins. Losing is one thing that the ego cannot accept – it has to win under all circumstances. So Arjuna’s ego tries to turn even abandoning the war and running away from it too into a victory.

Arjuna says however bad they are, if they are his own people he will not do anything against them because doing anything against one’s own people is wrong. Which is exactly what a corrupt politician practices today, though he does not openly say that because that is bad publicity.

Political organizations thrust incompetent leaders on people because they are their swajana. Numerous organizations and business houses have fallen because of this tendency to impose swajana on people, whether they are good or bad, competent or not. In politics, as in industry and business to a smaller extent, it is a common practice to promote one’s own people however ignorant, unethical and incompetent they are. And nations have to pay huge prices for this. 

Arjuna says taking actions against swajana is a sin – papa.  The opposite is true: not taking actions against one’s own people if they are evil is the sin. The most important reason why the Mahabharata war had to be fought was because Dhritarashtra failed to take action against his son who kept sinking lower and lower into the quicksand of adharma. When you do not take actions against the wrong deeds of your people over whom you have authority, you are not only condoning their wrong deeds but also encouraging them.  

Arjuna is among the most virtue-conscious people of the Mahabharata. But because of the impact of the emotional hijack, his buddhi has for the time being taken over by tamas and because of that he sees everything as the opposite of what it is. At this moment what is right is wrong for him and what is wrong is right for him.  Speaking of tamasic buddhi, the Gita says:  

adharmam dharmam iti yaa manyate tamasaavritaa

sarvaarthaan vipareetaamshcha buddhih saa paartha taamasee

The intelligence that regards adharma as dharma and views all things in a distorted light because it is enveloped by darkness – that intelligence, Arjuna, is tamasic. BG 18.32

Like everything else in existence, intelligence too can be sattvic, rajasic and tamasic.

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The Mahabharata tells us how Karna sacrifices his loyalty to Duryodhana immediately before the war at the altar of the victory of dharma – loyalty that had sustained him all his life. Right from his childhood, he had been loyal to Duryodhana but eventually the light that Duryodhana is evil penetrates his mind in spite of that loyalty. Just before the war Krishna offers him the entire kingdom asking him to join the Pandava side and telling him he is really the eldest son of Kunti and hence the eldest of the Pandavas. He rejects the offer saying he does not want the kingdom to go to Duryodhana who does not deserve it because he evil and if Krishna gave the kingdom to him, he would give it to Duryodhana out of his friendship with him. Against the interests of Duryodhana, Karna also gives away his divine armour and earrings that made him invincible in war, thus causing damage to Duryodhana. Not only that, he promises his mother Kunti that he would not kill any Pandava other than Arjuna, a promise that he keeps though he defeats each one of them in the war.   

Yudhishthira makes a great sacrifice by agreeing to tell the lie that Ashwatthama has been killed so that Drona would lay down his weapons and then he could be killed. In one of the two narrations of the incident found in the epic, there is no equivocation on his part, his words are not blown away by Krishna’s conch sound; he really tells Drona in so many words that his son Ashwatthama has been killed.  Yudhishthira thus sacrifices his lifelong truthfulness at the altar of dharma – knowing well he is lying, initially refusing to do so, but finally persuaded by Krishna.

Krishna makes a sacrifice by agreeing to be a mere driver in the war, though he is without a doubt the greatest warrior of the age and the most respected man.

Now it is time for Arjuna to make a sacrifice of his own by agreeing to kill those two pillars of Durdyodhana’s evil empire, both of whom he loves and reveres: Bhishma and Drona.  Which is what his ego is refusing to do at this moment.

There are times in our lives when we all feel the call to greatness too tough a challenge to accept. In the movie Saala Khadoos, we see that the wrestler Madhi [Mati] at one stage in her life is so crushed by darkness that she feels the life she was living as a fish seller in the market is preferable and thinks of abandoning the challenge of becoming world wrestling champion.. That would have been choosing preyas over shreyas, the easy path over the right but tough path. Fortunately in the movie she finds the right guru – her inspiring and tireless boxing coach Prabhu. 

Happy are the ones who find a guru. The right guru.

Arjuna is lucky to find the right guru in Krishna. Krishna helps him  make that sacrifice and journey into the world of true greatness.

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Living Bhagavad Gita 015: Cowards Worship Destiny

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.]

I see evil omens, Krishna. And I do not see any good in killing kinsmen in war. I have no desire for victory, Krishna, or for the kingdom or pleasures. What good is the kingdom, Krishna, or pleasures, or life itself? Those for whose sake we desire kingdoms, enjoyments and pleasures, they stand here before me staking their wealth and life in the war – teachers, fathers, sons, grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law and other kinsmen. I do not want to kill them, Krishna, even if they kill me – no, not even for all the three worlds, what to speak of this land.  BG 1.31-35

Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win, goes a popular saying. That may be true with regard to a particular venture, but in life that is not how things work. To win a war, sometimes you have to lose battles. People who never give up a single battle frequently end up by losing the war. However that may be, one sure way to lose, whether it is a battle or a war, or an argument or a negotiation, is to give up before it begins.

And that is exactly what Arjuna is doing here. The war conches have just been blown, Arjuna asks Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies so that he can see those assembled for the war. He takes a good look at them and straight away begins speaking of giving up the war.

Arjuna is a loser in no sense of the term. One of his names is Vijaya, meaning victory, and that name is absolutely appropriate for him. He is a consistent winner, has been so from his earliest days. He was only a little boy in Drona’s gurukula when he beat his own guru in a mean game the master was playing and won Drona’s heart.

This is how it happened. As in all other gurukulas, it was part of the education to do some menial work for the gurukula whoever you are. One of the errands the royal pupils of Drona had to do was to fetch water for the ashram every morning. For this work Drona gave small pots to all the students and a much larger pot to his son Ashwatthama who too studied along with the princes. Since his pot was bigger, Ashwatthama had to make fewer trips and finished fetching his share of water earlier than the other students. As soon as he did that, Drona started giving him lessons, and these lessons were more advanced than the lessons the others received.   Arjuna understood what was happening and with the help of the varuna astra started finishing his errand at the same time as Ashwatthama. Drona was left with no option but to give him too the lessons he gave his son.

The Mahabharata tells us that one day Drona gave an order to the gurukula cook never to serve a meal to Arjuna in the dark. The instruction was specifically about Arjuna and when we read it we are puzzled – why should the guru give his cook such an instruction?. But the mystery is solved as we are told the rest of the story. One day as the students were having their supper the wind blew out the lamps and Arjuna continued eating. Later that night, Drona was woken up from his sleep by the booming sound of the bow string being released. It was Arjuna practicing shooting in the dark! From eating in the dark, Arjuna had learnt that just as you can eat without seeing, you can also shoot without seeing.

That is Arjuna, the winner.

That night Drona moved by Arjuna’s commitment and dedication to dhanurvidya hugged his young disciple and promised that from now he would make sure that Arjuna became the best archer in the world!

Arjuna is not a loser in any sense of the term, but right now, standing between the two armies, he is behaving like a typical loser by giving up the war even before it begins. And one of the reasons he gives for giving up the war is that he is seeing evil omens.

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The Mahabharata does talk about omens and omens have a decisive role in some important incidents in the epic. Dhritarashtra frees Draupadi and the Pandava brothers staked and lost to Duryodhana in the dice game because, the epic narrator tell us, following the failed attempt to disrobe Draupadi in the royal hall ominous portents appear everywhere. But the epic is primarily a book for kshatriyas, for ambitious men of action, like most of us are today. It was written by Sage Vyasa keeping in mind primarily such men of action, the Kshatriyas, and is primarily about kshatriyas. And the Bhagavad Gita too is primarily for men of action, for leaders of men, as Krishna himself says in the opening verses of chapter four of the Gita.

Men of action believe in action, in the power of action to make things happen, in what is called purushartha in Sanskrit. They do not believe in giving up – and certainly not in giving up before the battle begins.

In the Shanti Parva of the epic, one of the questions the newly crowned King Yudhishthira asks grandsire Bhishma lying on the bed of arrows is what is more powerful: daiva or purushartha? As he always does, Bhishma gives a beautiful answer and then concludes his reply with three words: daivam kleebaa upaasate. These three words, I believe, sum up the spirit of the men and women of the epic. Translated literally, the three words mean: Eunuchs worship destiny. The word used by the epic that I have translated as destiny is daiva, which is not exactly destiny but for the time we can take it to mean destiny. And the word eunuch also does not mean a eunuch but is the Mahabharata word for a coward. These three words that sum up the spirit of the epic and of its men and women actually means: It is cowards that bend their knees before powers greater than themselves.

The men and women of the epic do not give any powers in the universe the authority to decide their destiny. They fight destiny and carve out their lives through that fight, just as men and women who decide the destiny of nations and organizations do today. No leader of a nation can today say that he leaves it all to destiny. Nor can the leader of a political party, a multinational corporation, a small industry or a department in an industry or a business house today can afford to say I leave it all to destiny. Which is one of the most important reasons why the Gita and the Mahabharata are so completely relevant to us today.  

Let us take the example of Karna. Abandoned at birth, he is a foundling brought up by a driver – albeit the driver of the king, his charioteer, a suta. In a world of kshatriyas, he grows up as an outsider, a non-kshatriya. He was not really a low caste man in the Mahabharata world as we commonly assume today because in social status the sutas stood just beneath the kshatriyas and above the vaishyas. But they were certainly not equal to the kshatriyas in that world and that lower caste status and social position were constant obstacles on Karna’s path. But through his competence and purushartha, his efforts, overcoming all kinds of obstacles, he becomes arguably the best warrior of the day. He becomes a king in his own right and ultimately the commander-in-chief of the entire Kaurava army. A powerful king like Shalya, the king of Madra and uncle of Nakula and Sahadeva, has to submit himself, albeit unwillingly, albeit after a flat refusal, to become his driver. The rules of the day said that Karna should live his life as a driver since he was a driver’s son, but he refuses to accept that role and rises to such a position that he commands an army of powerful kings and kshatriyas of the day. Karna’s is the story of the victory of purushartha over daiva, or destiny. This is what Bhishma means when he tells Yudhishthira daivam kleebaa upaasate, it is cowards who worship destiny.      

Let’s take another example from the epic, that of a woman this time, Empress Satyavati, the mother of Sage Vyasa, the greatest sage this land of sages has known, a man of ceaseless action himself. She was born the illegitimate daughter of a glorious king through what the epic ambiguously calls jimha, sin, in the context of a very confusing story that covers up more things than it reveals. When brought to her father after her birth along with her twin, a boy, the king rejects her because she was a girl and gives her back to the fisherman who had brought her to him, Dasharaja, and keeps the boy. She grows up as a fisher girl, her body exuding the foul smell of dry fish for miles around. This girl engaged by her loving father in ferrying people across the Yamuna eventually bargains with a scholar-sage and gets rid of her foul body smell before surrendering her body to him to give birth to the sage whose birthday we still celebrate all over the country five thousand years after his death as guru purnima, teacher’s day.  She marries the most powerful emperor of the day after taking from him a promise that after his death the crown would go to his first son born to her. She thus becomes the empress and gives birth to two sons one of whom becomes an emperor who inherits the crown from his father. Satyavati, brought up as a fisher girl, carves out for herself an unsurpassed destiny and presides over the fortunes of the vast land of Bharatavarsha as its most powerful woman. Crowned heads from all over the land bow before her. All this she achieves through her purushartha.

That is the spirit of the men and women of the Mahabharata.

You can of course argue that whatever happens is destiny, that they should use purushartha and achieve these things was their destiny. That is the kind of argument that silences all arguments, an argument against which no arguments are possible.  It is like asking if God is all powerful can he make a stone so heavy that he himself cannot lift it. In the language of logic, we call it a fallacy. 

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It is one of the most brilliant men of this age of heroic men of action, perhaps the most brilliant man of the age barring Krishna, who is now talking of abandoning the war just before it begins, at the very last possible moment, with the armies standing face to face in Kurukshetra.  As we saw, one of the arguments he gives is he is seeing evil omens around.

That statement about evil omens speaks of the failure of Arjuna’s will to act as clearly as the shivering of his body, the drying up of his mouth, the burning of his skin, the reeling of his mind and the slipping of the Gandiva from his hand speak of it. It is in moments of weakness that we turn to the adrishta, powers not known to us and over which we have no control. Omens fall in this category. It is in moments of weakness we start worrying about such things – when are strong from within, they have no power over us.

During an important battle, says a Zen story, a Japanese general decided to attack his powerful enemy. He was confident they would win, but his men were filled with doubt because their army was weak. They happened to pass a holy Buddhist shrine on their way and the army stopped there to pray and take a short rest. The general looked into the eyes of his soldiers and knew what they needed was confidence more than anything else and nothing he would say would give them that confidence. So he took out a coin from his wallet and said, "I shall now toss this coin. If it is heads, we shall win. And if it is tails, we shall lose. Destiny will now reveal itself."

He threw the coin into the air and all watched intently as it landed. It was heads. Instantly the soldiers felt energy coursing through their veins. Filled with confidence and enthusiasm, the attacked the enemy and won.

After the battle was over one of his lieutenants, laughing happily, told the general, "No one can change destiny, Sir."

"Quite right," was the general’s reply. And then he showed the lieutenant the coin. It had heads on both sides!

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It has been said that Arjuna was overcome by great pity – kripaya paraya aavishtah. But is kripa the real reason behind what is happening to him?

Behind everything we do, there is a real reason and a good reason. The real reason of course is just that – the real reason. And the good reason is the reason that is acceptable to the society, to other people. It is also the reason that is acceptable to ourselves, a reason that does not pose psychological threats to our egos. The pity that Arjuna feels is not the real reason behind his reactions, but the good reason. He would be tormented by guilt for the rest of his days and nights if he killed his guru and grandfather Bhishma and other kinsmen and he wants to avoid it. The kripa Arjuna feels is his route of escape from the conflict he is in.

Arjuna wants to win back his kingdom from Duryodhana who has usurped it, he wants to fight the war for Dharma that Krishna wants him to fight, but he does not want to lose his name and fame as a highly ethical person, as someone who will not do anything wrong. He does not want anyone to say that he killed his grandsire and his guru, or that he was responsible for their death.

Arjuna, like all of us and unlike Krishna, is very much a prisoner of his ego. He does not want to be blamed for going out of his maryadas, the ethical limits his society and its culture has set for him. He wants to remain a maryada purusha.

Krishna has no such compunctions. For the sake of dharma, if no other means are available, he does not mind occasionally stepping outside the Lakshman rekhas set by society. Thus in order to avoid the war and save innumerable human lives, he does not mind taking Karna away from everyone and in solitude trying to tempt him with power and with Draupadi. Krishna knows what he is doing is wrong, but he would go ahead and do that for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of lives he can save through it. As for the disgrace that would be his for doing it, well, that did not bother him. Krishna never cared for his name and fame. The only thing he ever cared for was for doing good to the people, as when he abandoned Mathura and took his people to Dwaraka safely away from Jarasandha, an action that gave him the name Ranchhod, a run way from war, a coward.

One of my favourite Kahlil Gibran stories is about a sheet of snow-white paper:

“Said a sheet of snow-white paper, "Pure was I created, and pure will I remain for ever. I would rather be burnt and turn to white ashes than suffer darkness to touch me or the unclean to come near me."

“The ink-bottle heard what the paper was saying, and it laughed in its dark heart; but it never dared to approach her. And the multicoloured pencils heard her also, and they too never came near her.

“And the snow-white sheet of paper did remain pure and chaste for ever. Pure and chaste -- and empty.”

Arjuna is now behaving like that sheet of snow-white paper.

The physical and mental symptoms Arjuna is speaking about are the symptoms of his reluctance to come out of social conventions – even for lokasangraha, for the common good.

Ethics is without a doubt one of man’s greatest strengths. But it should remain our strength and not become our weakness. It becomes our weakness when it limits us, binds us, prevents us from doing good to others, becomes shackles on our hands and legs. There are occasions that ask of us to go beyond ethics for the good of the world and on such occasions we should do good by going beyond ethics.

Speaking of ethics, the psychologist Abraham Maslow said that self-actualized individuals are ethical, but their ethics is not the ethics dictated by the society, by the masses, but born of their own enlightened mind. There come occasions in everyone’s life when he or she will have to rise to the level of enlightened ethics, where decisions will have to be taken as guided by the light in our heart.

That is why Krishna boldly declares in the Mahabharata satyaad jyeyo’nritam vachah: a lie is [sometimes] superior to the truth. A lie that saves is superior to the truth that kills, a lie that does good is superior to the truth that harms.

Doing good is more important than being right.

India makes a clear distinction between satyam and tathyam – truth and facts. The two are not the same, says India. And India defines satyam as whatever is of the highest good of the people: yal-lokahitam atyantam tat satyam,

Arjuna is now called upon to sacrifice his feelings of love and reverence to his guru and Grandfather Bhishma and others at the altar of dharma, the good of the world. It is a terrible thing to have to do that, but he has no choice. Deserting the war and surrendering Bharatavarsha to powers of adharma is not a choice. But that is what he will be doing if he abandons the war and goes away to become a monk who lives on alms.

Just as there are many forms of courage, there are many kinds of cowardliness too. The cowardliness to act because the action will be against the people you love and revere too is a form of cowardliness – ethical cowardliness. And no leader worth his name can afford to do that. If Arjuna refuses to act now because that action will be against Bhishma and Drona, he will then be no different from blind Dhritarashtra who refused to take actions against Duryodhana because he was his son and he loved him. There were a thousand occasions when Dhritarashtra should have acted against his son – beginning with the elaborately planned poisoning of Bhima at Pramanakoti done when Duryodhana was still a child. But Dhritarashtra acts against his son not once in his entire life, which is in fact what leads the Mahabharata war.

Not acting against corrupt people because they are one’s own people, swajana, is something we come across every day in politics and in organizational culture these days. Corruption is an asuri pravritti and all asuri pravrittis have to be acted against, particularly if you are in a leadership position. Failing to do so encourages and empowers asuri powers and that destroys the world.     

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The Mahabharata tells us an interesting story about Drona and Arjuna that happened years before the war when Arjuna still received lessons from Drona. One day Drona told Arjuna in the presence of his other disciples about a weapon called Brahmashira. The acharya said that the weapon had no equal in the world, it had the power of lightning and was capable of reducing the world to ashes instantly. Drona told Arjuna that he was going to give Brahmashira Astra to him but he would have to first promise that he would give him whatever he asked for as his gurudakshina for it. Arjuna touched Drona’s feet and made the promise. And after he did it, Drona gave Arjuna the astra and then asked for his gurudakshina. Arjuna then asked him what he wanted. Drona wanted him a promise from Arjuna: “You must fight with me when I fight with you.”

Perhaps Drona had the intuition that one day the two of them would stand face to face in the battlefield and when that happened Arjuna would refuse to fight his guru. It is this possibility that Drona wanted to avoid through the promise he took from his beloved disciple..   

Nine days after Krishna teaches the Gita to Arjuna in the battlefield, on the night after the ninth day of the war, Bhishma begs Arjuna to put an end to his life and suffering by killing him in battle the next day. Weeping he says that he is tired of fighting for the evil Duryodhana all his life and does not want to do it anymore. It is after this request for death that Arjuna mortally wounds him on the tenth day of the war and he falls in the battlefield pierced by a thousand arrows.

Sometimes killing is kindness too.

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