Living Bhagavad Gita 33: No More than Discarding Used Clothes

 

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.]

na jaayate mriyate vaa kadaachin

naayam bhootwaa bhavitaa vaa na bhooyah

ajo nityah shaashwato'yam puraano

na hanyate hanyamaane shareere // 2.20 //

vedaavinaashinam nityam ya enam ajam avyayam

katham sa purushah paartha kam ghaatayati hanti kam // 2.21 //

vaasaamsi jeernaani yathaa vihaaya

navaani grihnaati naro'paraani

tathaa shareeraani vihaaya jeernaany

anyaani samyaati navaani dehee // 2.22 //

“It was never born nor will it ever die; having come into existence, it does not ever cease to be. Birthless, eternal, changeless and ancient, it is not killed when the body dies. Knowing it to be indestructible, eternal, unborn and immutable, how can you, Arjuna, kill it or be the cause of its death? Just as a man casts off used clothes and puts on new ones, so does the self cast off used bodies and enter new ones.”  BG 2.20-22

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The great declaration of India: Death is no more than casting off used clothes. Krishna says it, Buddha says it, Mahavira says it, Guru Nanak says it, Kabir says it, Gorakhnath says it, Adi Shankaracharya says it, Vyasa says it, a thousand rishis of yore have said it,  all based on their own personal experiences. As when Krishna tells Arjuna, “Many times I have been born, and so have you. All those lives I remember, but not you.” As the more than 500 birth stories of the  Buddha, the Jataka Tales, tell us.

As far as the true you are considered, death cannot touch you. You are never born nor do you ever die. You are unborn, eternal, changeless and beyond time. Time was yet to be born when you came into being. And you exist in dimensions where time does not exist.

This is a truth you can experience yourself. It is not something you have to learn from others, nor from books. And you are not something subject to powers greater than yourself, for there are no powers greater than yourself. You are the greatest power in existence.

That is why Rumi says he is the wind and the surf, that he is the mast, the rudder, the helmsman and keel, that he is the tree with a parrot perched on its branches, that he is the rose and the nightingale lost in its fragrance, that he is silence and thought and voice, that he is all orders of being, that he is the galaxy, that he is all that is and is what isn’t.

That is why Vagambhrini of the Rig Veda says she moves with the Rudras and the Vasus, that she walks with the sun and Varuna and Indra and the Ashwins, that she is the one who gives wealth to the nations, she is the first among those to whom sacrifices are offered, that when Rudra pulls his bow it is she who stretches it for him, that she exists throughout the universe, that she has given birth to the progenitor of the universe.

And that is why Truishanku the thrice-cursed ancient man who turned into a seer could say his fame is as tall as the peak of the mountain, that it is he who gives life to the tree of the universe.

We are that which is not killed when the body is killed.

At the same time each one of us lives in a body that is subject to birth and growth, that gives birth to other bodies, that ages and dies. But that death is not the final end. It is not the final end to anything other than the body itself. Everything else continues to be, continues to exist even after what we call death, as every man andwoman who has ever existed has experienced, though they may not remember that.

Dr Brian Weiss had graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia University and had received his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. He had been a professor at several prestigious university medical schools and had had published over forty scientific papers in the fields of psychopharmacology, brain chemistry, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety states, substance abuse disorders and Alzheimer’s disease when his life changed completely through his fist encounter with a past life experience of one of his patients.

Dr Weiss was treating a patient of his in her late twenties called Catherine who suffered from fears, phobias, paralyzing panic attacks, depression, and recurrent nightmares. Her symptoms had been life-long and the doctor observed they were worsening in spite of treatments. In one of her hypnotherapy sessions, Dr Weiss gave her the suggestion to go back to the time from which her symptoms arose and, instead of going back to her childhood as she usually did, she went back to a lifetime of hers long, long ago. In Dr Weiss’s words, “she flipped back about four thousand years into an ancient near-Eastern lifetime, one in which she had a different face and body, different hair, a different name. She remembered details of topography, clothes, and everyday items from that time. She recalled events in that lifetime until ultimately she drowned in a flood or tidal wave, as her baby was torn from her arms by the force of the water.”

It is this experience with Catherine that piqued Dr Weiss’s interest in past life regression to such an extent that he became the world’s foremost authority on past life regression and the author of such bestsellers as Many Lives, Many Masters and Through Time into Healing.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, originally called Bardo Thodal, is a roughly twelve hundred year old book by Tibet’s greatest yogi Padmasambhava that was first translated into English by W. Y. Evans-Wentz in 1924. In his Foreword to the English translation by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., later added to the book, Lopez says: “Buddhism, like several other Indian traditions, does not see death as the cessation of consciousness. Instead, death marks the dissolution of the physical elements of the person. The mental elements, generally referred to as consciousness, persist, to once again take physical form through the process of rebirth. The question arose in Indian Buddhism as to whether consciousness moves immediately to a new lifetime after death, or whether there is some intervening period. Certain schools postulated the existence of an intermediate state between the moment of death and moment of conception in the next lifetime; according to some formulations the intermediate state could last as little as an instant or as long as forty-nine days.”  It is this intermediate state or states that is  known as the bardo or the bardos and Bardo Thodal is about what happens in the Bardos and what the intelligent thing to do is in the bardos, a Tibetan word meaning in between or between two.

The bardo or the bardos are thus our experiences in the bodiless state and these experiences are decided by our mental life while we are in the body, that is to say by life as we know it. The quality of life after death is thus decided by our life before death. If we have lived a life based on daivi sampada, positive virtues, then our life after death and after our rebirth will be pleasant and happy and if we live a life dominated by asuri sampada, negative qualities, then these will be hellish.

In fact talking of asuri people, Krishna says, “These cruel haters, the worst among men in the world, I hurl them forever into evil wombs.’ Krishna does not mean he selects such people for hellish lives and the good people for heavenly life. What he means is that evil people are led to evil life, both present and future, by their karmas/ life scripts, and good people are lad to good life, present and future, by their good karmas or daivi sampada.

Daivi sampada, the qualities that lead to happy life according to Krishna, are: Fearlessness, absence of anger, absence of crookedness, absence of covetousness, absence of hatred and absence of pride; harmlessness, purity of heart, steadfastness in knowledge, steadfastness in yoga, charity, control of the senses, the attitude of sacrifice, study of scriptures, austerity, truthfulness , renunciation, peacefulness, compassion towards all beings, gentleness, modesty, vigor, forgiveness, fortitude and purity of the heart and body.

In contrast to these are the asuri sampada. negative qualities that make our life hell while living, after death and in our future lifetimes. In his list of asuri sampada in Chapter 16 of the Gita, Krishna mentions only a few qualities:  hypocrisy, arrogance, self-conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance, but his discussion of asuri sampada is very thorough. After listing the asuri sampada, Krishna continues by saying that they lead to bondage. He says the asuri people know neither pravritti nor nivritti – they know neither the path of action nor the path of withdrawal from action. The path of action is the path leading to worldly good and the path of withdrawal is the path that leads to inner growth, to spirituality and mastery over oneself, over one’s mind, and to awakening. They know not how to make true achievements in the world, nor how to make spiritual progress.

The unique teaching of Krishna is the combining of the worldly with the spiritual. He combines pravritti and nivritti, blends the two into one. He teaches how the path leading to worldly achievements itself can lead to spiritual achievements, provided pravritti itself is practiced with spiritual awakening as your goal. Swakarmana tam abhyarchya siddhim vindati maanavah, teaches Krishna:. by worshipping Him through one’s actions, man attains the supreme. Our actions can be the path leading to fasting the ego and feasting the soul, the path leading to starving the ego and feeding the soul, teaches he.

But instead of fasting the ego and feasting the soul, instead of starving the ego and feeding the soul, the asuri people do the opposite. They starve the soul and feed their ego, making their own life hell and also making hell for everyone around them. For the asuri people, we are the body; born of the sexual union of the male and the female, and the mind and consciousness are by products of the body. For them we exist neither before birth nor after death – life begins in the mother’s womb and ends in the cremation ground. Bhasmee-bhootasya dehasya  punar aagamanam kutah, they ask rhetorically: Where does the body return from once it has been reduced to ashes?  For them nothing exists beyond the grave. So they live lives that lead to their own destruction and to the destruction of the world – the life of nourishing the ego, and starving the soul. Kaamam aashritya dushpooram dambha-maana-madaanvitaah mohaad griheetvaa asad-graahaan pravartante‘huchivrataah, Krishna says about them: “They are full of insatiable desires and hypocrisy and filled with pride and arrogance; holding on to evil ideas through delusion, they tread the path of evil, since their desires are evil.”

Our desires are important. The nature of our desires is important. “As a man's desire is, so is his destiny. For as his desire is, so is his will; and as his will is, so is his deed; and as his deed is, so is his reward, whether good or bad,’ says the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, one of the oldest  and the largest of Upanishads. The Upanishad adds, “' A man acts according to the desires to which he clings. After death he goes to the next world bearing in his mind the subtle impressions of his deeds; and, after reaping there the harvest of his deeds, he returns again to this world of action.”

The subtle impressions the Upanishad speaks of is what India calls karmas and modern western psychology calls life scripts. Our current and future life is determined by these impressions, they give direction to our life, they steer us in this world and the next world. So what desires we entertain and how we react to the incidents life brings us is vitally important for us.

It is for this reason that the ancient acharyas ask us to live our life intelligently. Desires are fine, but don’t be a slave to them, they tell us. For Krishna, desires are sacred, so long as they are not against  dharma, the common good, the good of others: dharma-aviruddho bhooteshu kaamosmi bharatarshabha, he tells Arjuna in the Gita, speaking of himself as divinity, as God: “I am desire in all – desire that is not against dharma.” Wealth is fine, they tell us, they even tell us to make us as much wealth as possible, and they teach us to worship wealth as the most beautiful of goddesses – Lakshmi, Shri. And they tell us power is good, so long as that power is not used against lokasngraha, the common good.

Instead of  living  in happiness and contentment with the wealth and power we have, instead of sharing them with others joyously in the spirit of sacrifice spreading joy all around, the asuri people live lives of more acquisitions, of competing with others, of destroying others, finding pleasure in harming others, in giving them pain. What motivates them is greed and power hunger. And just as good people find pleasure in giving away wealth and in using their power in doing good to others, the wicked ones find pleasure in the display of wealth and in oppressing others through their power. They say, in the words of Krishna, “I have destroyed this enemy and also I shall slay the others too. I am a lord. I enjoy thoroughly the pleasures of the world. I am perfect in every way. I am powerful. I am happy. I am rich. Who is equal to me? I perform grand sacrifices. I give away great wealth in charity. Who is as happy as I am?”

Deluded fools, Krishna calls them. Accursed to live hell here on earth and hereafter, Krishna calls them. Bound to suffer anger, jealousy, greed, lust and other insatiable passions life after life, Krishna tells about them.

In the language of the Harry potter books, possessed by the dementors,condemned to live in worlds of darkness.

They too do have their moments of joy – when others suffer, when others praise them... when they have many followers on the social media! But what they are denied is the joyfulness that is  our nature, the ocean of ananda that is in our heart, the kind of joyfulness that makes great masters sing nandati nandati nandatyeva – he rejoices, rejoices, and rejoices,

Give up the constant desire for more and more wealth, says Shankaracharya. Instead enjoy the wealth that comes through your work. Shift the focus, says the acharya, from acquiring more and more wealth  to enjoying the wealth we already have. Many of us become so obsessed with wealth, that we have no time for enjoying it. Our life itself becomes for collecting more and more wealth, mountains of wealth. There is no life more useless than the one spent in acquiring wealth. Na vittena tarpaneeyo manushyah, says Indian wisdom, wealth can never satisfy you.  It is anala, something for which nothing is ever enough.

Producing wealth is good, but living for acquiring wealth that you do not use is an accused life. Greed is not good. Wealth should be used – for oneself, for one’s family, for the good of others.

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Chogyam Trungpa in his classic Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior speaks about two differing lifestyles – one guided by the vision of the great eastern sun and the other guided by the vision of the setting sun, one guided by the vision that life is everlasting, death is no end to living, life continues even after death and every death is followed by rebirth; and the other guided by the erroneous belief that death is the end of everything, that there is only one lifetime, ‘we live only once’ and whatever we want to do we have to do fast, in this lifetime itself, we have to be constantly in a hurry, like a tourist on a conducted tour who is given a limited time for each place to visit, and a list of things to achieve within each day.

According to this latter vision, we have to make choices in life, decide what is important each moment, and ignore what is not important.  Since life is a constant journey from one destination to another, our focus should always be on the next destination, and we should never waste time on the sights on the way, should rush from one destination to the next. Hurry, hurry is the constant watchword.

When the Industrial Revolution began in the west, futurologists of the day predicted the age of leisure will arrive soon since machines will take over all production. They also predicted that soon words like hurry and haste would disappear from our languages. But we all know what happened – we are living now in a world of unprecedented haste and hurry, with no leisure available to us, people forced to work more hours than ever before.

The Japanese have a new word in their language now, a recent addition – karoshi, which means death from overwork. Instead of haste and hurry, the words that have disappeared from life are words like leisure and idle hours. I believe it is Carl Honore, the author of In Praise of Slowness, who pointed it out that his son’s first words in life were “hurry up!” We are living in the age of leisure and the predictions were words like hurry and haste would disappear from language and his son’s first words in life were ‘hurry up’, the words he hears most in his home!

That is the way of the setting sun, the philosophy that guides the west. To west every moment unoccupied is a waste, every moment spent in leisure is a waste. Successful people have to show that they are constantly busy, even when they are not!

So in our train compartments we do not see people sitting idle, watching the sights you pass through. I once took a series of photographs during a train journey and called it India by the railside. Most of India is fascinatingly beautiful as seen from a train, be it the thickets of wild bamboo, my favourite, or the paddy fields, palm clusters, the thick jungles or whatever. I remember watching an entire evening of sunset as the train  sped for miles and miles at high speed across vast plains of North Karnataka, where red chilies were either growing and spread out to dry! I was on my first trip to Hubli in Karnataka, travelling all alone some half a century ago and I still remember the magical spell of the occasion.

But today you don’t see children or young people, or even old people doing that – everyone is busy with one electronic gadget or the other in their hand. The world outside, the wonderful places they are passing through, the vast empty plains of India and the crowded cities and towns, the sleepy villages, the mountains and rivers each of which has a thousand of legend and myths to tell us, do not exist to them anymore.

That is the life of the setting sun.

In the vision of the eastern sun, traffic delays are not delays but opportunities life provides us to enjoy the roadside views. And side trips are not distractions, not wastes of time, but invitations from the unknown to hitherto unknown realities, frequently of splendor and magic. If we look back leisurely we find that most of the beautiful things that happened to us happened on these side trips, we have never regretted a single side trip we made. In the vision of the rising sun we enjoy the journey itself; destinations are important, but not so important as to ignore the journeys.

One of the most beautiful movies I have seen in many years is the 2005 Malayalam movie Charlie. The two central characters in the movie, Tessa and Charlie, live from moment to moment, meeting life’s challenges as they come, enjoying the beauty of every moment, going where the winds of life take them – and their lives are filled with pure magic. They meet by pure chance, fall in love with each other by pure chance and become each other’s by pure chance.  At the beginning of the movie Tessa is asked by her brother, “What is your plan?” and she replies, “My current plan is to see how to live without any plans.”

Yes it is a risky way of living, and not all of us is ready for that. But that is the way of living by the vision of the eastern sun. That is the way Krishna taught, that is the way the Buddha and Mahavira taught, that is the way Jesus taught, that is the way Bodhidharma and Laozi taught, that is the way Zarathhustra and Meera and Andal taught, the way Adi Shankara taught when he sang in the 18^th shloka of Bhaja Govindam:

sura-mandira-taru-moola-nivaasah’ shayyaa bhootalam ajinam vaasah; sarva-parigraha-bhoga-tyaagah, kasya sukham na karoti viraagah

“Life under a temple tree, the earth for your bed, barks of trees for clothes, giving up all possessions and all sensory pleasures – this is vairagya and who does it not give pleasure to?”

Bhagavan Shankara does not mean you have to give up your home and only then you will be happy. He does not mean that to be happy you have to live under a tree, give up your comfortable bed and sleep on the earth, wear bark clothes, walk away from all your possessions and pleasures. If you can be happy only under these conditions, then you are bound by them, your happiness s dependent on these; it is not absolute happiness, happiness that is your nature, it is something you achieve under some conditions and not others. As Bhagavan Shankara himself points out in Jivan-muktananda-lahari, the external conditions do not matter. The wise man, the enlightened man, is equally happy in the forest and the palace, in the city and on river bank, in the company of the rich and of the poor, in the company of the wise and of fools, in the middle of crowds and in solitude.

Just as Bhagavan Shankara teaches us, what Krishna teaches too, both through his life and the Gita, is that we can be in the middle of these things and yet be unattached to these things, not cling to these things. We can possess a house and yet not be possessed by it, we can possess wealth and yet not be possessed by wealth, possess a wife or husband and children but yet not be possessed by these.

For Krishna the ideal is the lotus leaf in water – padma-patram iva ambhasaa. Be in water like a lotus leaf and yet be untouched by water. Krishna calls this anasakti yoga.  This is what India has always called sannyasa, but came to be misunderstood later. So Krishna clarifies beyond any doubt that a true sannyasi is not one who physically gives up possessions and actions, na niragnir na cha akriyah, but performs all his life calls him to do and yet remains unattached. Krishna takes the name of Janaka, a king surrounded by all kinds of power, possessions, comforts and pleasures and yet remains unattached to all these, as an example for a sannyasi.

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Death is inevitable, all of us are bound to die, there is no escape from that, and it is no more than discarding worn out clothes and getting new ones. And as inevitable as death is rebirth – tatha deha-antara-praapti, attaining a new body. Therefore live intelligently knowing this truth, says our timeless wisdom.

Do not be obsessed with wealth – give up the constant desire for more and more wealth, jaheehi dhana-agama-trshnaam. And enjoy whatever comes to you through your honest work – yal-labhase nija karmopaattam vittam tena vinodaya chitttam. Do not be obsessed with sensuality – enjoy them but do not be a slave to them. The beautiful body of a woman, her full breasts and deep naval, seeing these do not become slaves to them – naaree-stana-bhara-naabhee-desham  drshtvaa maa gaa mohaavesham. Or the handsome male body, for that matter.

Do not be a slave to any sense object – the pleasure you get from enjoying them is actually your own ananda, your own essential nature. You desire these and the desire makes your mind restless and you lose the stillness of your mind, lose contact with your own nature. You get those things, enjoy them, for a few minutes your mind becomes still again and  the still mind reflects the ananda that is your true nature – that is all there is to sensory pleasures and all else we pursue in life. We are like the dog that picks up a dry bone and chews it. The bone wounds its mouth, blood oozes out and the dog enjoys it thinking the bone is giving it pleasure, whereas the truth is that  it is its own blood the dog enjoys.

Realizing this truth and living in the world as a master is wisdom. A master means not a slave to our desires, not a slave to external events. That is what Krishna means when he says such a one is a man is rooted in consciousness, a sthitah-prajna, who does not run after the desires in his mind but is happy with himself, whose mind is not shaken by situations of grief or happiness; who is without raga, bhaya, or krodha, without longings, fears, or anger, who is content with himself.

Wisdom is living what you are, being what you are, untouched by whatever life  brings to you; accepting all with gratitude but at the same time remaining rooted in your own nature. Like a tree on the hilltop, a mighty tree with branches reaching out to the sky, dancing with the wind, subject to the change of seasons, but at the same its root sunk deep in the womb of earth, drawing its nourishment from that earth, not letting anything that goes on outside touch its heart, its soul, transforming the very seasons into opportunities for its growth, transforming thundershowers and burning sun and freezing cold and the violent storms as opportunities for growth.

Be part of nature and yet live above it, live untouched by it, singing your own song, dancing your own dance.

Though you are a tree that grows on the earth, that draws its nourishment from the earth, you are in fact a tree whose roots are elsewhere, somewhere far above, in some other dimension: oordhva-moolam adhah-shaakham ashwattham which ancients called avyayam, changeless while changing, growing and perishing while remaining imperishable. 

For years in the ashram where I lived, our lunch every day began with this shloka that opens the fifteenth chapter of the Gita.

What an amazing shloka in an amazing book by an amazing teacher!

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Photo courtesy: Unknown artist

Bhagavad Gita and Asuri Sampada: “Who on Earth is my Equal?”

The Bhagavad Gita classifies people into two groups – those born with daivi sampada and those born with asuri sampada. Daivi sampada are positive virtues like fearlessness, purity of mind, and so on, twenty-nine of which the Gita lists. And then it moves on to the asuri sampada – negative qualities like pride, haughtiness, anger and so on, the list of which is small but which is discussed in greater details.

Krishna states here that people are born either with daivi sampada or with asuri sampada. Though Krishna does not expressly state this, since none of us is entirely positive or negative and all of us are grey, we must assume that he is speaking of our basic dispositions – some of us are basically disposed towards negativity and others towards positive virtues, just as in terms of modern psychology some of us are basically optimists and others are basically pessimists. Even the darkest people like Duryodhana in the Mahabharata, for instance, shows some good qualities and even the most positive ones, like Yudhishthira shows some negative qualities.

Krishna knows, as the whole east knows, that life does not begin at birth or conception – we all have had innumerable past lives and every time we take a new birth, we are born with our past gunas, karmas, vasanas and samskaras. We are all born with memories of our past lives lying buried just beneath the surface of our consciousness, becoming visible sometimes on their own and at other times when we peep beneath the surface, as during past life regression or deep meditation. It is these memories, gunas, karmas, vasanas and samskaras that make us daivi or asuri.

Describing people with asuri sampada, negative qualities, Krishna says each one of them thinks:

“I am the lord of all. I am a great bhogi who enjoys the best things in life. I am a siddha, a man of great power and achievements; balavan, a man of immense strength; sukhee, living a life of contentment and bliss. Of noble birth am I, master of heaps of wealth, famous everywhere. I conduct grand sacrificial rituals where wealth flows endlessly, I give in charity boundlessly, I revel in pleasures, I make merry, feast and celebrate.  Tell me, who on earth is my equal? Self-centered, willful, filled with all the insolence of wealth and bloated with the adulation they receive, arrogant, haughty, full of rage and lust, these people cling to their mighty egos, and lord it over everyone.”  BG Ch. 16

When I think of such people, a person who used to stay close to my house some years ago comes to my mind. Every word he spoke, every step he took, every breath of his, the way he sat and stood, the way he treated all except those who were his superiors, spoke of his boundless arrogance. The poor and the powerless were no better than worms that crawled in the gutter for him and he crushed them under his foot every chance he had. He owned a fairly big house in an affluent locality and walked as though he was the master of everything under the sun.

In his case it was money that made them so arrogant. Power can give us the same arrogance, fame can give us the same arrogance, victories can give us the same arrogance.

Most people get bloated up with pride even when their achievements are puny. The wisdom of ancient India understood that arrogance is unhealthy for us even when our achievements are big because they feed the ego and starve the soul. Healthy living requires that you feed your ego and starve the soul. That is wisdom in the truest sense of the term. 

Hell is the destiny of people with asuri sampada – hell not only for themselves, but for everyone around them too. One Hitler created hell for the six million Jews he killed in the concentration camps and the millions of soldiers and civilians killed in WW II. It is for this reason that their asuri sampada has to be destroyed and if that proves impossible, then they themselves have to destroyed, so that they could be saved from themselves and others could be saved from them.   

The Brahmavaivarta Purana tells us an amazing story of how a god of great achievements was taught humility and the asuri sampada in him was destroyed.

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The story begins with Indra slaying the mighty serpent dragon Vritra lying crouched on the high mountains in the shapeless shape of a massive cloud. Indra frees the waters Vritra had blocked making the world parch for want of water. With the monster’s death, the freed waters burst forth from the mountains joyously, nourishing the earth and quenching the thirst of all living creatures making them sing in delight and praise Indra as the mightiest hero ever. Much of the Rig Veda is the rapturous praises thus sung by the inspired poets of the ancient world. Here is one Vedic poet singing of Indra: 

I will declare the manly deeds of Indra,

the first that he achieved, the Thunder-wielder.
He slew the Dragon, then disclosed the waters,

and cleft the channels of the mountain torrents.
He slew the Dragon lying on the mountain:

his heavenly bolt of thunder Tvaṣṭar-fashioned.
Like lowing kine in rapid flow descending

the waters glided downward to the ocean

[From Rig Veda Mandala 1, Hymn XXXII. Griffith trans.] 

Indra killed the monster who had misappropriated what belonged to all and freed living water to benefit the plants and trees, the birds, beasts and humans, making mother earth throb with life once again. Earth turned green once again, birds soared up into the skies, animals roamed the jungles that sprang up everywhere and man was happy.  Clouds started raining from the skies again.

Indra destroyed the ninety-nine cities that belonged to Vritra, cities of repression and oppression. Saviour, savior, everyone called him. Truly, he had made life and light possible by destroying darkness and bondage. Now he wanted to rebuild the cities of the gods, cities of freedom and light, of joyfulness and celebration and a palace for himself.   

Indra instructed Vishwakarma to build the magnificent palace for himself. The palatial gardens should have streams running through it, Indra told him, and lakes teeming with waterfowl, divine trees everywhere, and everything else he could imagine. Vishwakarma was making great progress and as the first year neared its end and work was nearing completion, Indra started making frequent visits to see the work in progress. Which was fine with Vishwakarma, but every time he made a visit, he would ask the celestial architect to modify something or the other, micromanaging things and interfering the Vishwakarma’s work, making progress slow, putting him in unendurable stress, making sleep impossible to him, driving him nuts.

Indra had ceased to be the mighty hero and liberating leader he was earlier. Instead, with his own importance gone to his head, he had become an intolerable boss, always grumpy, always complaining, always looking for faults, insisting that his way alone was right, constantly insulting the intelligence and imagination of Vishwakarma in his attempt to show he was superior. It was possible that he was jealous of the miraculous powers of Vishwakarma as an architect. Frequently when a boss becomes jealous of his subordinate, he tries to ‘show him his place’ by trying to show he has better ideas about everything, even in subjects about which he has no knowledge. He refuses to see people as people, and instead sees them as his subordinates whom he can order about. And as an architect there was no equal to Vishwakarma who turned everything he touched into pure wonder, whose creations were beauty solidified. But Indra wanted him to do things Indra’s way. Life became hell for the celestial architect.

Vishwakarma just did not know what to do. He was the most creative architect, but, as it often happens, he did not know how to play games to outsmart his boss. That was not his area of expertise – he was a simple creative genius and not a politician. He decided to seek help and secretly went to Brahma, the Creator. Brahma listened to him patiently, assured him his troubles would soon come to an end and sent him back a relaxed man, or rather a relaxed god. 

Brahma informed Vishnu of the whole affair who instantly made a plan to solve the problem. Such things should not happen in the celestial world, Vishnu knew. Time had come for the lord of the gods to be shown his place.

India has always loved telling human stories in the name of the gods. Or let’s say, stories of gods as though they were human beings, subject to the same anger that men are subject to, the same jealousy and greed, the same intolerance and hostility, the same ignorance and narrow-mindedness, the same lust and illusions and delusions. These are teaching stories, stories told to teach men and women wisdom, to teach us that whoever we are, however powerful we are, we are all subject to the games the mind plays with us.

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It is a Purana that tells us this story – the Brahmavaivarta Purana. Indra in Vedic literature is different from Indra in the Puranas. In Vedic literature, Indra is the symbol of the enlightened mind, mind that has become still and empty, the yogic mind, the meditator’s mind, the free mind, the ‘mindless mind’, what Zen calls the no-mind, mushin, mind that is one with pure consciousness, mind that soars in the limitless skies of consciousness like Garutman, the eagle of the Vedas on whom Vishnu, the all-pervading being, travels. Whereas in the Puranas, he is the symbol of the ordinary human mind, the mind about which Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita complaints to Krishna: chanchalam hi manah krishna, pramaathi balavad drdham tasyaaham nigraham manye vayor iva sudushkaram – “The mind, Krishna, is restless, turbulent, strong and stubborn. I consider that it is as difficult to control as the wind itself.”

In the modern spiritual classic The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche speaks of the two completely different minds, or aspects of the mind: sem and rigpa. Sem, says Rinpoche, “is the mind that thinks, plots, desires, manipulates, that flares up in anger, that creates and indulges in waves of negative emotions and thoughts, that has to go on and on asserting, validating, and confirming its "existence" by fragmenting, conceptualizing, and solidifying experience. The ordinary mind is the ceaselessly shifting and shiftless prey of external influences, habitual tendencies, and conditioning. The masters liken sem to a candle flame in an open doorway, vulnerable to all the winds of circumstance.”

The higher mind, or the enlightened mind, the awakened mind, is the “primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.” The Vedic Indra stands for this mind, for rigpa.

The Indra of the Puranas, books written after the glorious age of the Vedas had come to an end and the worship and understanding of the Vedic gods had declined giving rise to the Pauranic gods in their place, is the symbol of sem, the ordinary mind. 

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Early next morning a radiant young brahmana traveler with brilliant eyes that spoke of his serene intelligence appeared at the gate of Indra. He was immediately received in great honour and given the traditional offerings of water, honey, milk and fruits made to brahmanas on arrival. Politely enquired of the purpose of his visit, the boy said he had heard of the great palace Indra was building and had come to see it. When the young boy spoke, his voice was rich, deep and soft. Indra’s hairs stood on their ends as he listened to the traveler.

“It is great that you are building this splendorous palace,” said the boy. “How long will it take for the work to be completed?” The boy paused and a gentle smile appeared on his lips as he added, “No other Indra of the past has completed a more magnificent palace.”

Indra too smiled at the comment. How conceited of the little boy to assume he has known the Indras before him and the palaces they had built! Was the boy mocking at him, ridiculing him? Or was he just being presumptuous? With the indulgent smile of an elder towards a child the lord of the gods asked him, making sure his voice remained polite, “Have you then known other Indras? Seen the palaces they built?” 

“Yes,” the boy replied calmly with no change in his serene voice. “I have seen numerous Indras and Vishwakarms and the many palaces they built.” There was no mockery in that steady voice, no boasting. “Vatsa,” said the boy addressing Indra as though the lord of the gods was no more than a toddler, “I have known your father, Maharshi Kashyapa, and his father, Maharshi Marichi. And I also know Brahma, whose son Marichi is, and, Lord of the Gods, I know Vishnu too, from whose naval lotus Brahma was born.”

“I have known the dissolution of universes. I have seen it happening again and again, and again and again new worlds coming into being form the cosmic waters of consciousness without end. I have seen that state in which all was one. How many times have I seen this happening? No one can count that.  Universe after universe is born endlessly and every one of them dissolves into the nothingness from which they come.  And right at this moment, King of the Gods, who can count the number of universes that exist simultaneously, each with its own Indras and Vishwakarmas. Who can count the grains of sand on the beaches of world?”  

      

Indra had grown completely silent listening to what the boy was saying. There was no doubt the wandering brahmana child was speaking the truth. There was the power of authenticity to every word he spoke. The bemused smile on the face of Indra had disappeared long ago. Without blinking his eyes, he was watching the miraculous being that had appeared before him that morning in the guise of a young pilgrim and wondering who it was. All arrogance had left him and his head that he haughtily held high was now bent in humility before the speaker whose words he was listening to holding his breath. He was about to ask him who he was when he noticed a procession of ants that had appeared in the royal chamber where they were seated. Indra saw the procession was almost as wide as the large hall itself and the ants were slowly moving towards them.

The young boy’s eyes too were on the ants now, watching them with curiosity and deep interest. All on a sudden the child burst out laughing – sparkling spontaneous, mirth filled, wondrous laughter the like of which Indra had never heard before. As the laughter died out, Indra got up from his seat, stood humbly before his guest, bowed deeply to him and asked, “Bhagavan, who are you? I have never met anyone like you and I never knew someone like you existed. Your brilliance surpasses that of a thousand suns simultaneously rising up, you look like a child but seem to be more ancient than time itself. Who are you, please tell me. And also tell me why you laughed at the parade of ants. You terrify me, though you exude nothing but love.”

“Let me tell you why I laughed, Lord of the Gods,” said the boy. “When I saw the parade of the ants I couldn’t control my laughter. But why the sight of the procession of the ants made me laugh is a secret that cannot be revealed to anyone who is not ready for it. It is the great secret of secrets, which very few even among great saints know. The axe of this secret destroys at a single stroke the mighty tree with its roots above and branches below, the tree that has existed from times without beginning, the tree that the wise speak of as eternal.”

The boy had become silent after he spoke these words, so silent as though he had never spoken at all. Indra fell at his feet and begged him to reveal the secret to him and the little boy knew that the lord of the gods is ready for the highest knowledge, the highest secret.

And in a long discourse the little boy who was none other than Vishnu himself told him the secret of karma which controls us from lifetime to lifetime, the result of our karmas which cannot be escaped even in a million lifetimes, and also how to free ourselves from the bondage of karma and become liberated. The little boy told him how every time we perform an action with the sense of I, we create a karma and these karmas accumulated become life scripts for future births and bind us. He also told Indra in great detail how to act without the I-sense, how to be the non-doer even when doing all kinds of actions. He taught Indra the secret of become asanga, unattached, to not only the results of one’s actions but also to the actions themselves. He taught Indra how to perform actions for the good of the world, as he had done when he had slain the snake monster Vritra and dedicate the results to the Divine.

The boy explained to Indra that each ant in the parade was once an Indra like him, from which Indra got visible proof, pratyaksha, that there had been endless number of Indras before him.  As Indras, the boy told him, prompted by their ego and arrogance, each one of them had asked the same question: Who in the universe is equal to me? This asuri sampada had led them to lower births and in their lower births too they had continued with asuri sampada until each of them had ended up an ant after countless lifetimes.

A little later an old wandering ascetic appeared on the scene wearing a deerskin as his loincloth, his hair matted, and taught Indra the same wisdom in different words. When the teaching was over and the ascetic disappeared on the spot, it became clear that he was none other than Lord Shiva. Following Shiva, the little boy too disappeared, revealing to Indra that he was none other than Lord Vishnu.

Indra now moved to the other extreme, like a pendulum, losing all interest in life, denying himself all joys, saying no to his wife, to all pleasures, to his responsibilities, saying no to life itself. A horrified Indrani, his queen, rushed to Brihaspati, the guru of the gods, who came and taught Indra how to balance between the extremes, how to remain in the world doing all that is expected of him, including his commitment to his wife and son and others, and yet remain free from karmas that bind us.

And yes, of course, he let Vishwakarma complete the palace without more micromanaging and constant squabbling. One other thing came to an end: he no more asked kon’yosti sadrisho mayaa, “Who on earth is my equal?” Every time the thought came to him, he remembered the parade of ants.

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One question that arises here is if a man with asuri qualities can become Indra, a position that according to Pauranic Indian tradition goes to the one who has done the highest number of powerful religious rites and asceticism. Well, as I said earlier, please keep in mind we are not discussing here the Vedic Indra, symbol of the enlightened mind, but the Pauranic Indra, who stands for the ordinary mind, sem. The ordinary mind can feel haughtiness, arrogance and pride in its achievements – success can go to the head of a man with such a mind. He can be proud of the rites themselves, of his asceticism, as it happened with Jajali. Second, though the Gita says we are all born either predominantly asuri or predominantly daivi, our qualities are subject to change from moment from moment. A man who is wicked now can become good later and vice verse.  

The Saptashloki  Durga says: jnaaninaam api chetaamsi devee bhagavatee his saa balaad aakrshya mohaaya mahaamayaa prayacchati. Even the minds of enlightened men, she, the Goddess, the Mahamaya, draws by force and leads to delusion.  

It is like moss on the surface of water, says the wisdom tradition of India. You clear it with your hands to drink the water and a moment later, it is back again, covering the surface. So you have to be constantly on the alert. The famous story of the great yogi Matsyendranath tells us of how he became infatuated with the queen of Sri Lanka long after his enlightenment and his disciple Gorakhnath had to go to him and awaken him by saying those words that have since become legendary: Jaag macchandar gorakh aayaa – Wake up, Matsyendra, Gorakh has come. 

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Living Bhagavad Gita 008: Duryodhana and Asuri Leadership

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for busy, stressed people living and working in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times. This scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully and achieve excellence in whatever we do.

[Continued from the previous post]

Then, O Lord of the earth, seeing Duryodhana's men in position and the armies about to clash, Arjuna, raising his bow, told Krishna, “O Krishna, take my chariot between the two armies. I want to see the warriors I am about to fight. I want to have a look at those gathered here for battle wishing to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra”. BG 1.20-23

The Mahabharata tells us that a year after the princes completed their studies under Drona and Arjuna gave him the guru dakshina he wanted in the form of Drupada defeated, captured, tied up and brought to him, Yudhishthira was appointed the crown prince of Hastinapura. He was the rightful heir of the throne as the son of the previous king, Pandu, and had impeccable ethical integrity, apart from total commitment to the welfare of his people, great self-mastery, steadfastness, determination, firmness, fortitude, patience, benevolence, and scores of other qualities that were considered essential in a king in those days. The Mahabharata tells us that this was done ‘moved by kindness to the people’, bhrityaanaam anukampaarthe, perhaps a way of saying that this was done in response to the desire of the people. He started ruling the kingdom with the help of his four brothers. His brothers subdued more kings than their father Pandu had done and soon his fame exceeded that of his celebrated father who was adored by the people.

Dhritarashtra is now filled with jealousy towards the Pandavas. Constantly thinking and worrying about them, according to the epic, “he could not sleep in the nights,” – sa chintaaparamo raajan na nidraam alabhan nishi.

One day he calls his minister Kanika and confesses to him of his jealousy. “The Pandavas are growing in fame every day,” he tells him, “and, O Brahmana, I am jealous of them “utsiktaah paandavaa nityam tebhyo’sooye dvijottama. He seeks Kanika’s advice about what to do promising he would do whatever Kanika asks him to. Kanika apologizes to him in advance for the evil nature of what he is going to say, seeks his protection in advance, and then gives him such dark lessons in grabbing power and retaining it that dwarf even Machiavilli in evil.

Kanika tells the blind king to use speech as a tool for deception. “Vaangmaatreṇa vineetah syaad, hridayena yathaa kshurah,” he tells him: Confine your sweetness to your words. In your heart, be like the dagger. He asks Dhritarashtra to be ruthless. “Putro vaa yadi vaa bhraataa pitaa vaa yadi vaa suhrd, arthasya vighnam kurvaaṇaa hantavyaa bhootivardhanaiḥ,” Kanika tells him: Kill the person who stands in the  way of your attaining goals even if he is your son, brother, father, or friend. The minister advices him to turn cruelty into an art, as the fisherman does. “Naahatvaa matsyaghaateeva praapnoti paramaaṁ shriyam.”  Without piercing the very vitals of others, without accomplishing many stern deeds, without slaughtering after the manner of the fisherman, one cannot acquire great prosperity. Another advice Kanika gives his king is to follow the ways of the razor. “Kshuro bhootvaa haret praanaan, nishitah kaalasaadhanah; pratichhanno lomahaari, dvishataam parikartanah,” he tells Dhritarashtra. “In the matter of destroying their enemies, kings should forever resemble razors in every particular; pitiless and sharp, hiding their intents as razors hide in leather scabbards, they should strike when the opportunity arises as daggers are used when the occasion demands, sweeping off their foes with all their allies and dependents as daggers shave the head or the chin without leaving a single hair.” 

After he finishes his teachings, Kanika winds up what he had to say by telling a fable.

Once there lived a jackal in the forest with his four friends: a tiger, a mouse, a wolf and a mongoose. There was a large herd of deer in the jungle and their leader was a male deer in the prime of its youth, big as a bull and faster than a tiger. Tempted by the majestic deer the five friends chased him several times but every time the swift deer outran its chasers. Even the tiger, fastest among the friends, failed repeatedly. Eventually, they sat together and devised a plan, elemental in its simplicity: when the deer sleeps, the mouse will crawl up to it and bite its leg. After that the deer will not be able to run at his normal speed. At that time the tiger can chase and kill it.

The brilliant plan was put into practice and the five friends sat around the killed deer to feast upon its delicious meat. The jackal now asked all his friends to go and have a bath and come back for the meal. He would guard it in the meantime, he told them.

The tiger came back first. The jackal incited him saying the mouse was laughing at the tiger’s strength. The tiger left the meal and went away saying he did not want any part of a meal caught with the help of a mouse. The mouse came next and the jackal incited him saying the mongoose has said the meat is poisoned because it has been bitten by the tiger and so he wouldn’t touch it. Instead, he would eat the mouse. The scared mouse retreated to its hole. When the wolf came next, the jackal told him the tiger was furious with him and had gone to fetch his wife and together they had plans upon him, hearing which the scared wolf ran away. The mongoose was the next to come. The jackal told him that he had driven away all the other animals with his strength and if he dared he should fight him, the jackal. A scared mongoose too ran away. And the jackal had the entire deer the size of a bull all for himself.

This is how the minister sums up his teachings to Dhritarashtra, the heart of which is to let no values stand in the way of fulfilling your selfish ambitions and to grab what you want without a thought of others.

And that is exactly how Duryodhana behaves with the Pandavas, showing them no sympathy or pity. He tries to destroy them again and again, refuses to give them even as much land as a needle tip though Yudhishthira was the rightful heir to the Bharata throne. He even goes to the jungle to eliminate the Pandavas while they are living there for twelve years following the foul game of dice he played with Yudhishthira.

We learn what we want to learn, what appeals to our heart. Numerous rishis and wise men try to teach Duryodhana dharma throughout his life, Vyasa himself tries it, his own mother and father try to on so many occasions, Vidura tries repeatedly, but he refuses to learn. What he learns and practices is what Kanika teaches his father, because his teachings appeal to him instantly, just as the ways of Shakuni appeals to him. During his peace negotiations, as requested by Dhritarashtra, Krishna tries to teach him what is right and what is wrong and that too has no effect on him.

Because Duryodhana is asuri by nature, only asuri teachings appeal to him.

Our sanskaras, vasanas and karmas that we bring with us into this life from our former existences decide what we are influenced by and practice in life, just as they decide whether we are born asuri or daivi. Krishna tells Arjuna in the sixteenth chapter of the Gita that he is born daivi: maa shuchah  sampadam daiveem abhijaatosi paandava – Do not grieve Arjuna, you are born with daivi sampada. But Duryodhana’s case is just the opposite.

In the Mahabharata war Yudhishthira is persuaded to do one single wrong – tell a lie about the death of Ashwatthama – and he feels guilty about it all his life. But Duryodhana commits wickedness after wickedness and he feels no guilt about it. Before telling Krishna in the Kuru assembly that he would not give the Pandavas as much land as the size of a needle tip, the speech Duryodhana gives Krishna is highly revealing. He does not see that he has done any wrong against the Pandavas in their entire life! What he has done is no more than practicing the ways of the kshatriyas as taught by the rishis, he believes. His asuri nature makes him blind to his own evil nature and evil deeds. Perhaps this is the reason why Krishna despairs in the Gita later, prakritim yaanti bhootaani nigrahaḥ kim kariṣhyati – all beings follow their own nature, what can suppression do? [BG 3.33]. Being blind to one’s own evil nature and being insensitive to other’s sufferings is part of being asuri in nature.

“You must speak, Krishna, after reflecting on all circumstances,” says Duryodhana in the Kuru Sabha. “You find fault with me alone and address me in harsh words without any reason, just because the Pandavas give you much respect. But before censuring me, have you assessed the strengths and weaknesses of both sides? [Duryodhana here equates strength with being right and weakness with being wrong!] You, Kshatri [Vidura], the king [Dhritarashtra], the acharya, and the grandsire all reproach me alone all the time, never another person. However, I DO NOT FIND THE LEAST FAULT IN MYSELF. And yet all of you hate me – and that includes my own father! I have been reflecting and reflecting on this and yet I DO NOT FIND ANY SERIOUS FAULT IN ME, NOR DO I FIND ANY SMALL FAULT IN ME. Not even the minutest!”

That is Duryodhana, the evil minded son of Dhritarashtra, the durbiddhi, as Arjuna refers to him while asking Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies.      

Duryodhana is proud of everything he has done in his life and believes and asserts proudly he has never erred from kshatra dharma, the way of the kshatriyas. But he forgets that kshatra dharma does not teach cheating, betrayal, treachery, lying, poisoning people, setting fire to their houses, and violating the dignity of women. 

Unfortunately, that he learnt and practiced the ways of Kanika and Shakuni and of no one else was not just his tragedy and the tragedy of the Pandavas, but the tragedy of all the kshatriyas born in India in his age, of this sacred land itself.

No culture gave more importance to leadership than ancient India did. Speaking of leadership India said raja yugam uchyate – the king is called the four ages. The Mahabharata says whether it is Satya Yuga in a country or Treta, Dwapara or Kali, depends on the king. When the king is what he should be, a man of integrity and other virtues, and does what is expected of him, we have Satya Yuga, the age of perfection, in his country. And we have Treta Yuga or Dwapara Yuga or Kali Yuga in the country, depending on to what extent the king comes near the ideals set for him. When the king fails miserably in being what he should be and doing what he should do, we have the Age of Kali.

During a lesson Yudhishthira receives from Bhishma in the Shanti Parva of the epic, the dharma king asks his grandsire whether the leader creates the age or the age creates the leader. And Bhishma says: kalo vaa kaaranam raajnah raajaa vaa kaalakaaranam iti te samshayo maa bhoot, raajaa kaalasya kaaranam. “Let there be no doubt in your mind as to whether the king makes the age or the age makes the king: The king makes the age.”

Whether it was in the past or today, whether it is in a kingdom or a family or an organization, the leader makes the age. Put in today’s terms:  Let there be no doubt in your mind as to whether the leader makes the age or the age makes the leader: The leader makes the age

I once worked for an institution in which the leadership changed and with it, almost overnight, the institutional climate changed too. Under the old leadership, if the institution was in Satya Yuga, under the new leadership it entered the Kali Yuga. The changes were instant and total and the only change that had happened was the change in leadership.

It is not that the asuri leadership principles Kanika taught Dhritarashtra do not work – they work, but only for a short time, and ultimately it destroys. It destroys those who practice it. Their effectiveness is short lived and eventually they backfire, as we see in the Mahabharata itself. That is why the Katha Upanishad speaks of the path of short term good as the path of preyas and the road widely travelled; and the path of long time good as the path of shreyas and the road less travelled. Speaking of these two paths, the Upanishad says:

shreyas cha preyas cha manushyam etas tau sampareetya vivinakti dheerah; shreyo hi dheero’bhipreyaso vrineete preyo mando yogakshemaad vrineete // - Katha  Upanishad, 1/2/2

Translated loosely, the mantra means that as man walks on the path of life, both shreyas and preyas appear before him and the intelligent man, differentiating between the two, chooses shreyas for lasting good, whereas the fool chooses preyas for immediate gains.

Much of the tragedy the world is facing today is because we have been ignoring shreyas and choosing preyas at the individual, at the family, at the community and at the national level, leading to dissatisfaction, frustration and unhappiness. Modern industry and business inspired by western models have for a while now been consistently choosing preyas over shreyas, which explains much of the tragedy in our world today, in spite of the great advances in science and technology, and why we our planet is on the brink of destroyed.

Power should not be in the hands of durbuddhis, nor should our leaders and leadership be of asuri nature.    

O0O

Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

Thank you in advance for your questions and comments. 

Living Bhagavad Gita 007: Duryodhana the Durbuddhi

A series of short articles on the Bhagavad Gita for busy, stressed people living and working in these volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times. The only scripture born in a battlefield teaches us how to face our challenges, live our life fully and achieve excellence in whatever we do.

[Continued from the previous post]

Then, O Lord of the earth, seeing Duryodhana's men in position and the armies about to clash, Arjuna, raising his bow, told Krishna, “O Krishna, take my chariot between the two armies. I want to see the warriors I am about to fight. I want to have a look at those gathered here for battle wishing to please the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra”. BG 1.20-23

Arjuna here calls Duryodhana the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra. The word he uses for Duryodhana is durbuddhi – dhaartaraashtrasya durbuddheh.

Sage Vyasa meets Dhritarashtra the night before the Kurukshetra war begins in a last minute attempt to avoid the slaughter of millions. He asks his son to stop the war and the blind king says he has no power over Duryodhana, he is helpless. Hearing these words Vyasa concentrates his mind using his yogic power and meditates for a short while. Coming out of his meditation he again tells Dhritarashtra he has the power to avoid the slaughter of the war by restraining his sons and asks him to do that. Of course Dhritarashtra does nothing of the sort because though he does have authority as king and as father, he had no real power over his son because of his weakness for him and the free reins he has given him throughout his life.

Dhritarashtra here is a warning for all of us who overindulge his children. Just as constantly criticizing and punishing children is bad, never restraining them when they start walking on evil paths too is bad. Love is not overindulgence. It is not freedom for licentiousness. Children have to learn from the beginning that they are responsible for their actions, that their freedom comes with responsibilities.  

Duryodhana’s story is also a warning to mothers who neglect their responsibilities as mothers and give those responsibilities over to others who do their job not out of love but for payment. Gandhari neglected her responsibilities as a wife – towards the end of his life Dhritarashtra bitterly complains about this in strong, emotion-filled words, saying how different things would have been had she been a good, caring wife for him, had she been his eyes for him. For all we know, she neglected her children too – unlike Kunti who lived for her children. The popular story in which she removes her blindfold and using her spiritual power and transforms Duryodhana’s naked body into vajra, makes it diamond-like, all of it except the part below his waste where he had worn a piece of cloth, has no place in the Sanskrit Mahabharata and is in fact against the spirit of the epic. She lives all her married life and eventually dies with those blindfolds on – without ever having taken one look at any of her sons, except once through the divine vision given her by Vyasa after the war. There is no substitute for a mother; there are certain things a child should get directly from its mother, like love, affection, care, the physical touch and so on. When the mother neglects these responsibilities, for whatever reason, calamities ensue. Modern sociology bewails what would happen to the generation of children now growing up in societies where mothers have no time or energy for their children.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of this the Mahabharata tells us:

evaṁ duryodhanaḥ karṇaḥ shakunis chaapi saubalaḥ

anekair abhyupaayais taan jighaamsanti sma paaṇḍavaan

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

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

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

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

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The sixteenth chapter of the Gita is a short chapter that discusses just one single idea: daivi sampada vs. asuri sampada. Among daivi sampada, noble or divine virtues, Krishna lists twenty-six qualities such as fearlessness, purity of heart, self mastery, tapas, straightforwardness, and so on. The list of asuri sampada or demonic qualities Krishna gives us is shorter, though it is the asuri sampada that he discusses in greater detail. The short list consists of just six qualities: hypocrisy, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance, but the discussion of the asuri people only begins with this list. The asuri people are slaves to hundreds of desires, he continues, and, given over to lust and anger, they constantly strive to amass wealth by unjust means and hoard it for sensual enjoyment. They are driven by power hunger, lust, anger and jealousy and are slaves to egoism and pride.  

Of course, Duryodhana is not all evil – no one in the Mahabharata is. The Mahabharata is not written in black and white, but in grey colours. There are positive qualities in him too, like courage  and so on which he displays on many occasions in his life. But if we look at Duryodhana’s life from his birth to his death, at his life as a whole, the description of people with asuri sampada Krishna gives in the sixteenth chapter of the Gita seems to fit him perfectly.

Such people create hell for themselves wherever they are and live in that hell perpetually. Because a man with endless desires in his mind, with constantly burning anger in his heart and filled with insatiable greed lives constantly in hell. Hell is not a geographical place, but a psychological state in which you are constantly haunted by desire, anger and greed, by hatred and the need for vengeance. The light of the joys of life is denied for them, he sees no beauty in the sunrise or the sunset, the cool wind does not blow for him, clouds do not shower rains for him, and when flowers bloom him do not see any beauty in it, nor does he see the beauty of a child’s smile. The Ishavasya Upanishad says: asooryaa naama te lokaa andhena tamasaavrtaah taams te pretya abhigacchanti ye ke chaatmahano janaah – Sunless indeed are called those worlds, steeped in blinding darkness. And whoever kills their own selves, they enter those worlds.

To kill oneself is to live a life without joyfulness, denying the ananda which is our true nature. Rather than living in the present moment, in the now, where alone all joy is, all happiness is, all ananda is, when we are constantly on the run seeking it, constantly living in the future, we are killing our selves.  This is the suicidal life that the Upanishad speaks about    

Today’s world is encouraging this kind of life. That is why there is less and less peace in the world, less and less joy. Stress dominates our life and we seem to be constantly on the run, to reach where nobody knows. The strange thing is that even after knowing we get nothing from all this running, we still keep running.

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Modern Psychology and Organizational Behaviour speak of the Type A Personality. Type A people are highly competitive and lack the sense of joy in their life. They get easily wound up, tend to overreact, live with a sense of desperate urgency and are impatient with delays. Easily aroused to anger and hostility, they see only the negative side of others. They are full of envy and lack compassion. Hostile towards people in general, highly aggressive, they bully everyone over whom they have power. Restless, bulldozing through life, they drive people around them insane, spreading stress and unhappiness all around.

That reads like a description of Duryodhana.

Woe to you if you have someone in power around you like him, like a boss, your spouse or a parent. I know someone who had a boss like that. After three years of every day abuses, humiliations, threats, bullying, conflicts and tensions he finally resigned and left, moving into a new profession in which he was his own master.    

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Photo courtesy: Devender Malhotra

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