International Journal of Gita Dhyan Sadhna Jan-March 2012

A Quarterly Publication Volume Two Issue 1 January March 2012
International Journal
Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana
A quarterly publication An International Journal Of GITA DHYAN SADHANA
Mystical Insights into Bhagavad Gita

An International Journal of GITA DHYAN SADHANA and
Taoshobuddha Meditations
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Editorial Staff: Trinidad - Taoshobuddha India Anil Sohoni, Sadhak Sri Chinmaya Mission Hemant Moghe, Mumbai, India
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Contents
Title Editorial Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre The Parashurama Legend Prelude to Bhagavad Gita Dhristrashtra Duryodhana Krishna and his uniqueness Krishna and Mahabharata
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Editorial
The Bhagavad Gita is considered the cream of the cream of Indias venerated Vedic philosophy. All the countless Vedic tomes written over the millennium are distilled into this celestial song of the great epic, the Mahabharata. While Vedic literature comes from India and the Hindu religion, the teachings are really describing universal laws of nature (i.e., universal codes of conduct and ways to live in tune with natures harmony) and experiences common to people of all faiths. It was only conquering Britain that labelled the Indus valley people Indus and called their culture the Indu religion because they could not conceive of a culture that did not distinguish between life and spirit. The fact is, as in many ancient, indigenous cultures, there was no separate concept of religion, because humans did not perceive themselves as separate from spirit; there is only sacred life. A cursory review of cultures and religions will find many similarities at their essence. There is a verse from the Rig Veda Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti there are many paths, but one goal. India is a country that celebrates all paths to God. Even for those who dont believe in God, but believe in nature, or ethics, this too is accepted and celebrated. Anything positive is worshipped. In India you will find walls with drawings of Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. Such is the love and acceptance of the many paths leading to the one Supreme and Ultimate Goal. This is not to suggest that all religions are the same: each has its own set of rituals, rites, and beliefs. But the essence of religionsone eternal God and God is loveis the same. Bhagavad Gita discusses the celebration of the Divine bliss of God as it applies to a personal relationship with God in each persons daily life. How does a sincere person balance worldly and divine spheres? How can one be a helpful servant in the midst of obstacles and stresses? This is one of the great values of the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita that remains as relevant today as in ancient times. Yet, many people do not see much from this ancient song that can be applied to their lives. This International Journal of Gita Dhyan Sadhana attempts to discuss the insights from the Gita as they apply to modern-day life, regardless of ones spiritual choices. Swami Anand Neelambar Chief Editor International Journal of Gita Dhyan Sadhana and Meditation Times
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GITA DHYAN SADHANA
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Dharmkshetre, Kurukshetre are two very significant words used by the blind king Dhritrashtra. This is the only sutra that the blind king spoke in the entire Bhagvad Gita. Many commentators have spoken differently on the sutras of Bhagvad Gita and in the process have missed the very significance of this sutra. Swami Chinmayananda takes the first syllable Dharma of the first word and the last word Mama to explain the essence of the message of Bhagvad Gita. Thus using these two words he explains that Bhagvad Gita bridges these two words mama dharma - my religion. Bhagvad Gita accordingly teaches you the essential religion. He is right in many ways and indeed it essential for the transformation. Sage Veda Vyas has used these two words very meticulously. The first word is Dharmakshetre. It comes from two separate words Dharma and Kshetre. The words Dharma does not mean religion. It resembles Buddhas Dhama. Dhamma in Pali: or Dharma in Sanskrit: .
It refers to the state of Nature as it is ywa -Ut yath bhta. It refers to the Laws of Nature considered collectively. There is is a cosmic law that upholds everything that is or is happening. Nanak calls this Hukum the cosmic law or the synergistic harmony. This is what Aurobindo calls as Power beyond our Knowing. We are all bound by it. This has nothing to do with religion as you know it. The teaching of the Buddha as an exposition of the Natural Law applied to the problem of human suffering.
These two words Dharmakshatre and Kurukshatre emerging out of the blind Kuru King Dhritrashtra signify that even those who are propagating unrighteousness in their moments of unconsciousness sometimes and somewhere deep within remain aware of their atrocities and unrighteousness. Thus the sage poet has left the opportunity of atonement for them.
Etymology and Linguistic variants

Dharma is derived from the Tamil word of the Dharmam, meaning that which is established, law, duty, right. The derived Prakrit word is Dhamma In East Asia, the character for Dharma is , pronounced f in Mandarin Chinese, h in Japanese and beop in Korean. The Tibetan complete English translation of this term is chos.
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Etymologically, the word Dhamma or Sanskrit: Dharma is derived from the root dham, meaning to uphold or to support, and the commentary further explains that it is that which upholds or supports the practitioner (of Dhamma) and prevents him or her from falling into states of misery or birth in a woeful
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana existence. Of all Buddhist terminology, the word Dhamma commands the widest, most comprehensive meaning. Dharma is to cultivate the knowledge and practice of laws and principles that holds together the fabric of reality, natural phenomena and personality of human beings in dynamic interdependence and harmony. Sage Veda Vyas uses the word Dharma to connote the law that upholds the nature of human beings and also the fabric of the society. As the prelude to Bhagvad Gita this law was falling apart because of the ego, desire, ignorance, greed, and negation of truth. In the hands of Kauravas including the King Dhritrashtra, and the prince Duryodhana this law was falling apart. Social and moral values were declining. The principle to uphold was waning. Atrocities were rising. The trends of Adharma have set it. It was therefore essential that someone has to incarnate to resurrect the value as one coherent sutra. Krishna sets his feet on the soil of Hastinapur. Even his efforts failed to restore and uphold the Dharma. The old values and the structure had become dilapidated. It must come to an end the conflict that was brewing slowly and slowly had gained momentum. The seeds of adharma that were growing had grown as bushes. For the destruction of the wicked, for the protection of sage and for the establishment of righteousness war was inevitable. Krishna assumes the complete command of the war of Mahabharata. Remember whenever righteousness is on decline it is the supreme principle that has to set the trends of righteousness once again in motion. For the trends of righteousness war had become inevitable. Krishna took the vow of not to raise arms instead agreed to be the charioteer of Arjuna the Pandava Warrior. He will remain active in the war yet he will remain the witness. This is significant to understand. Witness implies neutral approach. In the war of Mahabharata Krishna is catalyst. Catalyst is something that is responsible for the entire chemical reaction however it remains inactive and not the part of the reaction. Krishna knows how to remain unaffected. This is the quality of someone who is aware and enlightened. This is the first message that as seeker you should aspire to learn from the Bhagavad Gita. It does not matter how many sutras you know by heart. That is mechanical. The CD can repeat each sutra without any fault. But CD cannot be transformed. The seeds of adharma had already grown. Conflict had become explosion. All alternatives of peace and reconciliation are closed.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana The war conchs had been blown. The two armies had gathered in the battle field. The Kuru King enquires from his charioteer Sanjaya about the proceedings of the war and thus began the poetic description of the sage. The sound of the conchs had declared the war. The two armies gathered in the battlefield of KURUKSHETRA are facing one another. When the war is inevitable why did sage begin the message of Bhagavad Gita with the word DHARMAKSHETRE? The moment conflict is set in relationship or between two factions it is no more dharma. Sage is also called Krishna Dwapana and incarnation of Krishna. And he began the Divine Song with the words Dharmakshetre the field of Dharma.
On the surface this seems right. However when you go deeper into the word then you will realize something mystical in the use of this word. There is a vast difference of the consciousness and understanding of sage poet and you. You are trying to understand the subtle thing with your mind. Sage has used the word Dharma for a specific reason. It is true when conflict has set in the dharma fails to sustain it. The forces of unrighteousness are gaining momentum.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Then why did the sage used the word dharma? Hindus speak of four Purusharthas: To understand this first you have understand the nature of these four-fold purusharthas and then especially the significance of dharma. 1. 2. 3. 4. Dharma - righteousness Artha - wealth Kama desire and Moksha salvation or liberation
The word purushartha comes from two words Purusha meaning the male guiding principle or God or Human Being. And Artha means an object. Thus Purusharthas imply objectives of human beings. Purusha does not mean male in the physical sense. Instead, it refers to any soul in its differentiated aspect. So the purusharthas are applicable to both men and women equality. The purusharthas serve as pointers in the life of a human being. They are based on the vision of God which is evident in the creation He manifested and which can be followed by man to be part of that vision and in harmony with his aims. The worlds are established on the principles of dharma. They are filled with abundance of material and spiritual beings and energies, who seek fulfillment by achieving their desires and liberation. Since man is God in his microcosmic aspect, he too should emulate God and manifest the same reality in his own little world. He should pursue the same aims, experience life in its fullness and be an instrument of God by serving the purpose for which he has been created. Purusharthas means that for which a person strives for. It implies our goals of life. It is extremely important that our goals of life should be very clear. Just as before starting a journey we should be very clear about our destination, so also before starting any worldly or spiritual effort, we should very clear as to what we are trying to achieve, what is our goal. The scriptures also before talking about the various Sadhana - the means, first tell us about the Sadhya - the end. As it is the lack of knowledge of goal which results in absence of enthusiasm to take up any Sadhana, so it is very important to know our goals of life, our purusharthas. To understand our goals of life we should not look outside, as to where the world is going, instead should look within, as to what do I really aspire and want. For this we should ask ourselves a very fundamental question - What is that attaining which I will be fully satisfied? There is no need to be in a hurry, take your own time and discover the answer to this important question. You will find that most of our so called goals are only means for some other end and they do not really come under the category of goals. We find that very few people have clarity about this fundamental thing. They may say that they are modern educated people and do not blindly follow anyone, but this is what they are doing, blindly following others, for the simple reason that they themselves are not clear as to what do they really
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana want. They join some rat race and in the end realize that they have been on a meaningless trip, by then it is too late. So let us pause and try to know what is it that which I really want, what is that attaining which I will certainly quench my thirst. Let us look within, introspect and then discover. The knowledge of Self starts with such fundamental questions. The scriptures do not ask us to blindly follow someone but only help us conduct this inquiry. This is called the inquiry into Purusharthas of life.
Dharma conscious or righteous living:

Although this is the third purushartha still Dharma is always mentioned first whenever the scriptures talk about the four purusharthas. This is because of its all-round and far reaching benefits to help bring about an ideal disposition which facilitates attainment of all other purusharthas. The word Dharma has wide implications, and no English word does full justice to it, yet in the context of our discussion we can say that Dharma implies a conscious, orderly and holistic living. Man is a social being, he lives amongst his own kind, in group, and every person has to attain his or her purusharthas of artha and kama. This being the case it is necessary to frame some ground rules in the spirit to live and let live. That is the spirit behind Dharma. It makes us sensitive to others, makes us care for others it brings necessary magnanimity to look at others as part of one whole. It helps us to expand our family, brings about a holistic vision. The moment we see the whole world as one organic whole, we also become sensitive to a supreme intelligence, who has not only created this beautiful world and cosmos, but is also running as the synergistic harmony. As no effect is possible without a cause, we infer the existence of a creator when we see this beautiful creation. If creation is so beautiful, how will the creator be? Dharma thus wakes us up to the existence of God and understanding of godliness as the essential principle. Dharma does not make us afraid of God, but rather shows that he is someone who deserves our greatest love and reverence. We are his creation, act as per his dictates, will live as long as he likes and will leave when he so wishes. We cannot influence his wishes but should know his ways and means and live accordingly, in a spirit of surrender and love. The basic spirit of science is to conquer nature while dharma motivates us to respect it and live in tune with it. Science, even though says that there can be no effect without a cause yet does not accept any intelligent cause of the creation. They prefer to say it was all an accident, a big bang that started this whole process.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Dharma on the other hand says that the creation is so orderly, beautiful and purposeful that we cannot in our wildest dreams think that this is all a product of an accident. We are simple minded people, who on seeing a creation believe in the presence of a creator, and plan out our lives accordingly by keeping him into account, always. We look upon the whole creation as a great, grand orchestra which is already presenting a beautiful music. And now we have just joined the orchestra and should be sensitive to the harmony and tune ourselves to it. Just as only that person can enjoy the music that becomes sensitive to it, so also only that person can enjoy the holistic living that sees a basic harmony and order around. The benefits of turning our attention on God, being sensitive to his ways and means, the order and harmony etc. are so great that even if God was not there we would have loved to invent him. But as he is very much there so the question also does not arise. When we accept the existence of someone who is an embodiment of awareness, force, love, compassion and holistic vision, then anyone who loves and reveres such a being will not only be free from various self-imposed problems, but will also start being an embodiment of all what God represents. The train is already moving we unload ourselves and live life fully, without worries. Acceptance of the cosmic law the synergistic harmony as the guiding force and principle behind the entire cosmos is the essence of Dharma. This not only helps us become a better person here but also helps us to attain our Artha and Kama in a better way too. Not only has this but acceptance of this prepared us for our final or real goal of life, called Moksha. The principle of dharma is the essence or the backbone of all other purusharthas. Artha, kama, and moksha all have to be fulfilled dharma or righteousness or the cosmic principle that upholds the cosmos and the consciousness of the each individual. This is indeed very important. Pandavas signify the righteousness and the principle of dharma even in the moments of conflict and war. However the Kauravas followed the way of unrighteousness and techniques to win the war. With an exception of the grandsire Bhishma all in the Kaurava camp symbolized unrighteousness and negated the principles of dharma. Bhishma as commander made the rules for the war that each day the war will begin with sunrise and cease with sunset. Thereafter the people were free to go to the camps on the other side and many other such rules of war. However with the exit of Bhishma as the commander the principles of unrighteousness came into practice. Sage poet had envisioned this and as a result he began the message of absolute consciousness with the word Dharma. A man of awareness or enlightenment does not deviate from dharma the essential nature of bliss, and synergistic harmony. No matter whatever be the situation or
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana circumstances he never forgets the essential nature. This is exhibited by those on the Pandava side with an exception of Krishna who was there to establish righteousness by resurrecting the declining values. He used certain devices to establish righteousness. He showed that means are not as important as the goals the ultimate. Only a man of awareness can really differentiate between the means and ends. With this in mind the sage poet began with the word Dharmakshetre. He already knew that the forces of unrighteousness that were brewing all the while had now reached to crescendo. Thus he gives a solemn message that no matter whatever be the circumstance or situation never forget your essential nature that we all are part of one synergistic harmony. Two people may be sworn enemies facing one another but will still be sharing this common bond of harmony through breathing, light. The unrighteousness remains unaware of this while those who follow the path of righteousness remain fully aware of this. They never lose their compassion under any circumstances. Thus it was the field of righteousness amidst unrighteousness. Now present day wars and conflicts are nothing but the field of unrighteousness amidst unrighteousness. The second word Kurukshetre has much significance. It has nothing to do with the kuru dynasty or the Kauravas. Karuavas were following the path of unrighteousness sage poet was aware of this. He could not have used this word in that sense. The entire message of Bhagavad Gita is to uphold the righteousness thus the message cannot begin with the connotation of unrighteousness that Kauravas embodied. It relates to Parashurama the previous sixth incarnation of Vishnu and the current incarnation of Vishnu and the chief architect of the war of Mahabharata Krishna. I must take you into the legend of Parashurama to understand this word Kurukshetre. Parashurama , is the sixth avatar of Vishnu and belongs to the treta yuga. He was born to the parentage of a Brahmin Jamadagni and Renuka. He is considered one of the seven immortal - Chiranjeevi human. He received an axe after undertaking a terrible penance to please Shiva, from whom he learned the methods of warfare and other skills. He fought back the advancing seas thus saving the lands of Konkan and Malabar. The coastal area of Kerala State along with the Konkan region, which is the coastal region of Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra States, is also sometimes called Parashurama Kshetra or Parashuramas country. Parashurama is said to be a Brahmakshatriya or warrior
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Brahman, the first warrior saint. Parashurama is worshiped as a Founder - Mool Purush of Chitpavan and Daivadnya Brahmin Communities.
The Parashurama Legend

There was a king named Gadhi. His daughter was name Satyavati. Satyavati was married to the sage Richika. Richika arranged for a spectacular sacrifice. Some rice pudding was obtained from the yajna and Richika gave it to his wife Satyavati. He then told her to Split this rice pudding into two halves. Eat half yourself and give the remaining half to her mother. Thus Richika divided the pudding. This is your half and that is your mothers. We are brahmanas. So we will have a son who will display the traits of a brahmana. Your father is a kshatriya and your mother will have a son who will behave like a kshatriya. Saying this Richika gave the pudding to Satyavati. Saying this, Richika went off to meditate in the forest. But mother and daughter managed to mix up their halves. In the course of his meditations, Richika realized that Satyavati was going to give birth to a brahmana son who would display kshatriya traits. Through his energy field, he managed to deffer this birth by a generation. So Satyavati gave birth to Jamadagni. It was Jamadagnis son Parashurama who exhibited all the kshatriya like characteristics. Gadhis son was Vishvamitra. Vishvamitra was born a kshatriya. But because of the mixing up of the rice pudding, Vishvamitra turned out to be brahmana-like. There was a king of the Haihaya dynasty named Arjuna. He had a thousand arms. He had also obtained the boon that flaming fire itself would be perpetually present on the tip of his arrow. Whenever he shot an arrow, the fire from the tip of the arrow burnt up the target. In this fashion, Arjuna used to burn up villages, cities and forests. He once burnt up the hermitages of sages. And one of the sages cursed Arjuna that he would killed by Parashurama. Parashurama learnt the art of fighting from Shiva himself. While Parashurama was away to learn the art of warfare, Arjuna arrived in Jamadagnis hermitage. Jamadagni had a wonderful cow (dhenu), known as a kamadhenu because it produced whatever objects one asked (Kama) from it. Using this kamadhenu, Jamadagni treated Arjuna and his entire retinue to a royal feast. Arjuna asked Jamadangi to give him this cow, but the sage refused. Arjuna then asked his soldiers to forcibly take away the cow. But just as this was going on, Parashurama arrived. He killed Arjuna, slicing off Arjunas thousand arms in the process.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Having disposed of Arjuna, Parashurama went off to meditate and pay another visit to Shiva. Taking advantage of Parashuramas absence, Arjunas sons invaded Jamadagnis hermitage. They killed Jamadagni. When Parashurama returned, he exacted vengeance for this evil deed. He killed Arjunas sons. Since Arjuna and his sons happened to be kshatriyas, Parashurama also killed all the kshatriyas in the world. He did this not once, but twenty-one times over. Why twenty-one times? The reason was that there were twenty-one weapon-marks on the dead Jamadagnis body. But killing was a crime and Parashurama had committed a sin. As penance, Parashurama donated cows and performed a lot of tapasya. He also arranged an ashvamedha yajna. All this did not prove to be atonement enough. To complete the penance, Parashurama sought the advice of the sage Kashyapa. Kashyapa told him to perform the donation that is known as tulapurusha. A tula or tuladanda is a pair of scales. The person or purusha who is performing the donation is placed on one side of the weighing scale. On the other side are placed objects like honey, clarified butter, molasses, clothing and gold. The weight of the objects being donated has to be equal to the weight of the person performing the donation. This is known as tulapurusha. Parashurama performed tulapurusha and was freed from his sin.
Haihaya-Kshatriya Background
Parashurama belonged to Srivatsa Gotra. It appears that the Haihayas may have been enemies and at war with several groups including other Kshatriyas. For example the Haihayas sacked Kashi during the reigns of King Haryaswa and King Sudeva whom they killed, King Divodas and his son Pratarddana who finally expelled them outside of the Vatsa Kingdom. All these kings were born in the Solar Dynasty and the Haihayas were a Lunar Dynasty. The hostile Haihaya King Kartavirya Arjuna defeated the Nga Kshatiryas who were led by Karkotaka Naga. Kartavirya made Mahishmati present day Maheshwar the capital of his own kingdom. According to numerous Puranas, the military corporations of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Pahlavas and Paradas, known as five hordes - pnca-ganah, had militarily supported the Haihaya and Talajunga Kshatriyas in depriving Ikshvaku King Bahu - the 7th king in descent from Harishchandra of his Ayodhya kingdom.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana A generation later, Bahus son, Sagara recaptured Ayodhya after totally destroying the Haihaya and Talajangha Kshatriyas in the battle. King Sagara had punished these foreign hordes by ordering their heads shaved - a common practice used to humiliate and shame the enemy in the ancient world) and turning them into degraded Kshatriyas.
Extermination of the Haihaya-kshatriya caste

Parashurama is said to have cut off 1,000 of King Kartavirya Arjunas arms. The enmity between the Haihaya and the Bhargavas is mentioned in the Mahabharata Hindu text numerous times. In the Bhagvad Purana SB 9.8.5-6, the Haihaya are mentioned as the uncivilized. Once, when Parashurama returned home, he found his mother crying hysterically. When asked why she was crying, she said his father had been killed mercilessly by Kartavirya Arjuna. She beat her chest 21 times in sorrow and anguishes at her husbands death. In a rage, Parashurama vowed to exterminate the worlds Kshatriyas 21 times. He killed the entire clan of Kartavirya Arjuna or Sahasrarjuna and then conquered the entire earth. He then conducted the Ashvamedha sacrifice, done only by sovereign kings, and gave the entire land he owned to the head-priest who performed at the yagya, viz. Kashyapa. Parashurama then became responsible for killing the worlds corrupted Haihaya kings and warriors who came to attack him in revenge for the killing of Kartavirya Arjuna, to prevent a Brahmin from being emperor and threatening their position. The Ashvamedha demanded that the kings either submit to Parashuramas imperial position or thwart the sacrifice by defeating him in battle. They did neither and were killed. Parashurama exterminated the worlds Haihaya-Kshatriyas 21 times, thus fulfilling his vow.
Legends
According to one legend Parashurama also went to visit Shiva but the way was blocked by Ganesha. Parashurama threw the axe at him and Ganesha, knowing it had been given by Shiva, allowed to cut off one of his tusks. The goddess Parvati wife of Shiva, on finding her sons tusk being cut, filled with rage and declared that if Parashuramas thirst for Kshatriya's blood was still not over, she would put a stop to it and teach him a final lesson; she would sever both of his arms and kill him. The Goddess Parvati then took a form of Shakti (the Goddess Durga) and thus became the ultimate source of Power who no other divine power could resist
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana or match. Luckily, Shiva arrived at the scene and pacified Parvati after convincing not to harm Parashurama as he is also like her son in a way and she should forgive him as a Mother should forgive her childs mistake. Parashurama also asked for her forgiveness. Parvati finally forgives Parashurama at the request of Ganesha. Parashurama then gave his divine axe to Ganesha and blessed him. There is another interesting legend with regards to Parashuramas beating back the seas. It is said that he fired an arrow from his mythical bow that landed in Goa, at a place called Benaulim or Banavali or creating what is known locally as Salkache Tollem, literally meaning lotus Lake. There is an interesting side to Parashuramas conquest of Kshatriyas. After one of his conquests, he returns to Aihole - Badami Taluka, Bagalkot district in Karnataka which, some say was where he lived. The river Malaprabha does a near 180 degree turn there. While Parashurama washed his blood soaked axe upriver, beyond the bend, there were village belles washing clothes downriver. The axe was so bloody that it turned the entire river red. This, the women washing clothes saw and exclaimed Ai hole! - oh, what a river!. The name stuck and the village is now known as Aihole. There is another legend that the Nairs and the Bunts (Nagas) of Kerala and Tulunadu removed their sacred thread and hid in the forests to avoid Parashuramas revenge upon the Kshatriyas. Parashurama donated the land to the Nambuthiri Brahmins and the Nambuthiris in turn denied the Nairs and Bunts Kshatriya status though they did Kshatriya duties and though some of the royal houses in Kerala arise from them.
Evidence in the Mahabharata of conflict spanning generations

Reflections of Aurva, the Great-Grandfather of Parashurama - Mahabharata, Book 1, Chapter 182 While lying unborn, I heard the doleful cries of my mother and other women of the Bhrigu race who were then being exterminated by the Kshatriyas. When those Kshatriyas began to exterminate the Bhrigus together with unborn children of their race, it was then that wrath filled my soul. My mother and the other women of our race, each in an advanced state of pregnancy, and my father, while terribly alarmed, found not in all the worlds a single protector. Then when the Bhrigu women found not a single protector, my mother held me in one of her thighs. Mahabharata, Book 13, Chapter 153 The mighty Kshatriya Talajangala was destroyed by a single Brahmana Aurva.
(Mahabharata, Book 1, Chapter 2)
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana In the interval between the Treta and Dwapara Yugas, Rama (the son of Jamadagni) great among all who have borne arms, urged by impatience of wrongs, repeatedly smote the noble race of Kshatriyas. And when that fiery meteor, by his own valor, annihilated the entire tribe of the Kshatriyas, he formed at Samanta-panchaka five lakes of blood. (Mahabharata, Book 1, Chapter 64) The son of Jamadagni - Parashurama), after twenty-one times making the earth bereft of Kshatriyas wended to that best of mountains Mahendra and there began his ascetic penances. Mahendra Mountains are in central India, the northern end of the Eastern Ghats of India, situated in the western part of Orissa. (Mahabharata,
Book 1, Chapter 104)
In olden days, Rama, the son of Jamadagni, in anger at the death of his father, slew with his battle axe the king of the Haihayas. Haiheya was a central Indian kingdom in Madhya Pradesh of India, on the banks of Narmada River. Its capital was Mahishmati, the modern day town named Maheswar. (Mahabharata, Book 3,
Chapter 85)
One proceeds to Surparaka, where Jamadagnis son (Parashurama) had formerly dwelt. Surparaka also is in western India, Maharashtra with the modern name Sopara. (Mahabharata, Book 3, Chapter 115) Akritavrana - a disciple of Parashurama said, With pleasure shall I recite that excellent history, of the godlike deeds of Rama, the son of Jamadagni, who traced his origin to Bhrigus race. I shall also relate the achievements of the great ruler of the Haihaya tribe. That king, Arjuna by name, the mighty lord of the Haihaya tribe was killed by Rama. By the favour of Dattatreya he had a celestial car made of gold. (Mahabharata, Book 3, Chapter 117) Parashurama the leader thrice smote down all the Kashatriya followers of Kartaviryas sons. And seven times did that powerful lord exterminate the military tribes of the earth. Thus there was a conflict between the Bhargavas and the Kshatriyas spanning at least four generations.
Shivas Bow and Meeting of Rama and Parashurama

In the Ramayana, Parashurama came to the betrothal ceremony of the seventh Avatar, Rama, to the princess Sita. As a test of worthiness the suitors were required to lift and string the bow of Shiva, given to the King Janaka by Parashurama. Rama successfully strung the bow, but in the process it broke in two, producing a tremendous noise that reached the ears of Parashurama.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana In one such version, played in Ramlilas across India, Parashurama arrived after hearing the sound of the bow of Shiva breaking. The Kshatriyas were advised by Brahmarishi Vasistha not to confront the sage, but Sita approached the sage. He blessed her, saying Dheergha Sumangali bhavah, literally meaning you will have your husband alive for your lifetime, you would not see his death. So when he turned to confront Rama, the destroyer of Shivas bow, he could not pick up his axe to do so as he pacifies by the brilliance of Rama. This was also because, as he blessed Sita with good luck, he could not cause any harm to her husband which was a part of his own (Shri Vishnu). After recognizing Rama for what he truly was, namely the avatar of Vishnu, as his bow went flying in the hands of Lord Rama.
The Mahabharata
There is an important legend in Mahabharata about Parashurama too. When Amba, one of the three daughters of Kashi King came to Parashurama for help because Bhishma refused to marry her he decided to slay Bhishma and fought with him for twenty three days. It was a long and fierce fight between the two greatest warriors of the age. Bhishma had knowledge of the divine deadly weapon: Parshwapastra. Parashurama had no knowledge of this weapon. When Bhishma was about to use it against Parashurama, all Gods rushed to Bhishma and requested him not to use this weapon against Parshurama as it will humiliate Parshurama. Bhishma refrained from using it. Parashuramas father, Jamadagni and grandfather, Richika, then appeared before Parashurama ordering, O son, never again engage in battle with Bhishma or any other Kshatriya. Heroism and courage in battle are the qualities of a warrior (Kshatriya), and study of the Vedas and the practice of austerities are the wealth of the brahmanas. Previously you took up weapons to protect the brahmanas, but this is not the case now. Let this battle with Bhishma be your last. The sages once again spoke to parashurama, O son of the Bhrigu race, it is not possible to defeat Bhishma. In the end Pitris appeared on the scene and obstructed the chariot of parashurama. They forbade him to fight any longer. In the end, all Gods and Parshurama himself showered praise on Bhishma and acknowledged that Bhishma is truly invincible. Parshurama then told Amba:
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana I have done all that I could and I have failed. Throw yourself on the mercy of Bhishma. That is the only course left to you. Parashurama was giving away his earning and wealth of a lifetime to brahmanas, Drona approached him. Unfortunately by the time Drona arrived, Parashurama had given away all his belongings to other brahmanas. Taking pity upon the plight of Drona, Parashurama said You can choose any of my weapons, which one would you like to have? The clever Drona said I will like to have your weapons with their mantras as and when I need them. Parashurama accepted. Drona decided to impart his knowledge of combat which made him supreme in the science of arms. In the Mahabharata, Parashurama was the instructor of the warrior Karna, born to a Kshatriya mother but raised as the son of a charioteer, or lower class of Kshatriyas. Karna came to Parashurama after being rejected from the school of Drona, who taught the five Pandava and one hundred Kaurava princes. Parashurama agreed to teach Karna, who said he was a brahmin, and gave him the knowledge of the extremely powerful Brahmastra weapon. But an incident would render the Brahmastra almost useless to Karna. One day, Parashurama was sleeping with his head resting on Karnas thigh, when a scorpion crawled up and bit Karnas thigh, boring into it. In spite of the bleeding and the pain, he neither flinched nor uttered a cry so that his master could continue his rest. However, the blood trickled down, reaching Parashurama and awakening him. Convinced that only a Kshatriya could have borne such pain in silence and that Karna had therefore lied in order to receive instruction, he cursed Karna that his knowledge of the Brahmastra would fail him when he needed it most. Later, during the Kurukshetra war, Karna had a dream at night when he thought of his guru and asked him to take back the curse he had warranted years back. Parashurama explained that he knew that the day would come; he knew that Karna was a Kshatriya, but deemed him to be a worthy student and instructed him nevertheless. However, the outcome of the war would have left the world in ruins if Duryodhana were to rule, as opposed to Yudhishthira. For that reason, Parashurama requested that Karna accept the curse and fall at the hands of Arjuna, inadvertently saving the world. In the later part of his life Parashurama gave up violence, became an ascetic and practiced penances, mainly on the Mahendra Mountains. The territories he received from the Kshatriyas he slew were distributed among a clan of Brahmins called the Bhumihar. They ruled these lands for many centuries. The Kingdoms
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana like the Cheras, Pandyas, Dravida, Mushika, Karnata and Konkana were among them. Parashurama also beat back the advancing sea to retrieve a stretch of coastal-area between the foothills of the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, giving rise to the myth of Parashurama, saving a part of the land of Kerala from the sea. This had happened in Surparaka Kingdom the Coastal Area Maharasthra. Also it is said that from here the myth spread to Kerala, by migration. However, Kerala is also said to be given to Brahmin rulers. Dattatreya initiated Parasurama into Tantric worship and their conversations gave rise to Tripura-rahasya, a treatise on Advaita Vedanta. At last, Parasurama attained the liberation from the cycles of birth and death with the help of Guru Dattatreya.
The Sixth Avatara

The purpose of the sixth incarnation of Vishnu is considered by religious scholars to be to relieve the Earths burden by exterminating the sinful, destructive and irreligious monarchs that pillaged its resources, and neglected their duties as kings. Parashurama is of a martial Shraman ascetic. However unlike all other avatars Parashurama still lives on earth, even today according to Hindu belief. Therefore unlike Rama and Krishna Parashurama is not worshipped. But in South India, at the holy place Pajaka near Udupi, there exists one major temple commemorating Parashurama. Parshurama, the savior of the Konkan coast, is also worshipped in a temple at Parashurama, Chiplun in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district. The people of the Konkan call their land Parshurama Bhoomi or the land of Parashurama in accordance with the legend that the sage reclaimed the land from the sea. There are several Parashurama temples throughout the western coast of India as well as North India, but especially more in the coastal areas from Bharuch (ancient name of Bharuch is Bhrugu Kutchchh) in the western Indian state of Gujarat right up to Kerala, the southern tip of India. One can see a Parashurama Temple with an Agni Mandir in Shivpuri - Akkalkot, Khopoli in Maharashtra and Fort Songadh in Gujarat. A temple of Parashurama is also situated at Akhnoor, 18 km away from Jammu city. Every year, in the month of May, an enormous festival in the form of a parade, referred as Parshurama Jayanti, with hundreds of tableaux, thronged
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana through the main city of Jammu. Local community leaders and followers arrange for the celebrations and it is celebrated with great enthusiasm. The Kalki Purana states Parashurama will be the martial guru of Sri Kalki, the 10 th and final avatar of Lord Vishnu. It is he who instructs Kalki to perform a long penance to Shiva to receive celestial weaponry. After slaying the Kshatriyas twenty one times the blood was collected Samantapanchaka five lakes of blood Parashurama took the vow not to lift the arms against Kshatriya as part of his atonement. These five lakes of blood came to be known as KURUKSHETRA and during Mahabharata this Hasty commentators have place became the venue for the battle between Kaurava and Pandavas. Parashurama killed erroneously related the those Kshatriyas for the unrighteous atrocities word KURUKSHATRE to and now for the same atrocities and Kuru Dynasty. A sage with unrighteousness of Kauravas Pandavas have arrayed in the battlefield. Krishna was aware of the awareness of Veda the vow of Parashurama of not raising arms Vyasa cannot use the word against Kshatriyas therefore he decided in the in its ordinary meaning. This beginning of the battle that he will remain the witness and catalytic presence in the battle is why I said earlier however he will not raise arms. Hasty commentators have erroneously related the word KURUKSHATRE to Kuru Dynasty. A sage with the awareness of Veda Vyasa cannot use the word in its ordinary meaning. This is why I said earlier Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagvad Purana are mystical. You cannot understand these on the surface with all your intellect. If the word is used in that surface meaning that would mean Mahabharata was the battle of unrighteousness instead.
These two words Dharmakshetre and Kurukshetre emerging out of the blind Kuru King Dhritrashtra signify that even those who are propagating unrighteousness even in their moments of unconsciousness sometimes remain aware of their atrocities. Thus the sage poet has left the opportunity of atonement for them.
Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagvad Purana are mystical. You cannot understand these on the surface with all your intellect. If the word is used in that surface meaning that would mean Mahabharata was the battle of unrighteousness instead.
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Dhritrashtra is born blind physically. However being blind does not mean that desires vanish as well. Desires have nothing to do with eyes. Desires arise through the mind. Even if anyone destroys ones eyes or is born blind, there is no end to desire. Had Surdas remembered Dhritrashtra then he would have no need to destroy his eyes knowingly? Surdas destroyed his eyes so that all desires may vanish. Desire does not arise because of eyes instead these arise out of mind and its nature. The story of Bhagvad Gita is strange and unique because it begins with the desire and anxiety of the blind person. In the world all stories will end if man is not blind anymore. The life and all its stories begin because of this blindness. The blind want to see that he cannot see. The deaf wants to hear all that he cannot hear otherwise. Even if all organs of perception and action vanish the tendencies of the mind and its desiring never comes to an end. Dhritrashtra is blind physically and is sitting far away from the battle field in his palace. Yet still he is anxious to know all that is happening on the battlefield. Not only is he anxious he is suffering from the agony and deep anxiety and nervousness as well. Secondly it is also important that Dhritrashtras one hundred sons being the offspring of the blind couple can never have eyes. If you have only outer eyes then inner eye is impossible. All the children born out of this blind couple are acting blindly. They have outer eyes but not the inner. Blindness can only give birth to blindness.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Still the father wants to know all that is happening on the battlefield. Dhritrashtra begins his enquiry as he is anxious to know about those who have gathered in Kuru land of Dharma or righteousness. The day one has to gather in the field of Dharma for battle out of conflict Dharmakshetra does not remain unaffected. And with this all possibilities of righteousness vanish. The day we have to enter the battle for religion that day Dharmakshetra the field of religion the domain of religion cannot remain unaffected. The day fight enters the field of religion it will be very difficult to save righteousness. Maybe that was the domain of religion. But not now! Today each is ready to destroy one another. They have gathered to fight among themselves. The world could become the field of dharms the day dharmakshetra will be established in reality and all wars will vanish from earth. There is possibility of war and the dharmakshetra is also involved in war then we cannot blame adharma. There has been less war in the field of adharma. Always wars have been happening in the field of dharma and if we are to analyze because of wars and blood shed the dharma kshetra appears to be more adharma kshetra. The Bhagvad Gita begins with the desire of the blind king. In fact all scriptures begin with the desire of blindness. The day there will be not blindness there will be no need for scriptures. In reality the domain of religion or Dharmakshetra has not been established on earth yet. Because when religiousness happens and man experiences unity among various religions! When the religions of body, mind intellect dissolve there will simply be pure religiousness. No man made or man controlled religion or the religion controlled by vested interest will be there. Such a phenomenon cannot happen collectively. This understanding of unity among diverse religions is an individual happening. Incarnations, prophets come and go but the world still remains a sad affair of conflict, disharmony, and discord. No prophet or incarnation was able to do this in the past or will be able to do it in future. This is your choice. Only you can and no one else. In the field of religion fight is inevitable. Everyone considers his religion to be the only religion and true as well. Allah is the only God for Muslims. Things like this happen in wholesale. It seems we are only interested in such things. If such is the case of religions then what right do we have to criticize the activities other that religion. Truth is that the number of wars in the name of religions and religious ignorance far exceeds the wars than in other fields. And if we really think we will realize the truth of what I am saying.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana It may seem a joke, but it is reality. Today the temples, churches, mosques and other religious places have reduced to be mere centers or cold war or real war. It will be wrong to say the times earlier were more religious than now as has been propagated by religious custodians and the meaning that has been given by such custodians about Satayuga, Dwaper, Treta, Kaliyuga is the outcome of ignorance. Even at the time of Krishna, people have gathered in the dharmakshetra, kurukshetra desirous to fight. Deep down the desire for destruction fight or war exists in each man. This you can see on a day to day basis. The wars become more dangerous when there is religious support. In the name of religion all such activities are justified.
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In the Mahabharata, Dhritrashtra , was King of Hastinapur at the time of the Kurukshetra War. He was born as the son of Vichitraviryas first wife Ambika, however he was fathered by Veda Vyasa as Vichitavirya had already died. He was blind from birth, and became father to a hundred children by his wife Gandhari who had assumed voluntary blindness. Out of this couple one hundred children, including the eldest son Duryodhana were born who came to be known as the Kauravas. Dhritrashtra was half-brother of Pandu, and was uncle to the five Pandavas, with whom his sons fought the Kurukshetra War. He appears in Mahabharata, and most notably the Bhagavad Gita, whose sutra opens the message of sage Veda Vyasa.
Birth
After Vichitraviryas death, his mother Satyavati sent for her first born son, Vyasa (son of Satyavati and sage Parashar). According to his mothers wishes, he visited both the wives of Vichitravirya to grant them a son with his yogic powers. When Vyasa visited Ambika, she saw his dreadful and forbidding appearance with burning eyes. In her frightened state, she closed her eyes and dared not open them. Hence her son, Dhritarashtra, was born blind. His brother Pandu, the son of Vichitraviryas second wife Ambalika, got the crown of Hastinapur and after the death of Pandu no one could agree on the selection of a king. However Duryodhana became the crown prince of Hastinapur and Yudhishthira became the emperor of Indraprastha.
Birth of Duryodhana
At the birth of his first son Duryodhana, Dhritrashtra was advised by Vidura and Bhishma to abandon the child due to bad omens surrounding him, but Dhritrashtras love stopped him. Dhritrashtra was advised by his elders to be fair to the Pandavas, who were returning from the forest with their mother, Kunti but he paid heed to none. His second son was Dushasana.
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The succession crisis

Duryodhana was focused on making sure that the he would be the next heir for the kingdom. The king himself wanted his son to be his heir but he was also forced to consider the eldest Pandava, Yudhishthira who was older than Duryodhana. Against his will, Dhritrashtra named Yudhishthira his heir which left Duryodhana frustrated. As a solution Bhishma suggested the partition of Hastinapur. Trying to maintain peace, Dhritrashtra gave Yudhishthira half the Kuru kingdom, albeit the lands which were arid, unprosperous and scantily populated, known as Khandavaprastha. He purposely kept the better half of the kingdom for himself so that his son may one day rule his half of the kingdom.
The dice game

Dhritrashtra was one of the many men present when Yudhishthira lost the dice game against Shakuni, Duryodhana, Dushasana and Karna. With each throw, the King Yudhishthira lost everything gambling away his kingdom, his wealth, his brothers and finally his wife. Dhritrashtra was silent when Dushasana tried to disrobe Draupadi - the Pandavas wife in front of the court. Finally, the blind monarchs conscience was stirred, in part fearing the wrath of Pandavas against his sons and also fearing retribution from the five brothers he returned all the things they lost in the dice game. However, Shakuni challenged Yudhishthira one more time, and Yudhishthira once more lost. This time, he, his brothers and his wife were forced to discharge the debt by spending thirteen years in exile in the forest before they could reclaim their kingdom. Dhritrashtra was warned by many that the Pandavas will not forget
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana their humiliation. He was constantly told by many that he needed to remember that his responsibilities as king must be placed before his affection as a father.
Battle of Kurukshetra
Sanjaya, Dhritrashtras charioteer was blessed by Sage Vyasa with Divine Vision the ability to see the past, present and the future Sanjaya narrated important events of the Kurukshetra war, a war fought between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, to the blind king. However Dhritarashtras sorrow increased day by day as an ever increasing number of his sons were slain by Bhima. He frequently bemoaned his ineffectiveness in preventing Duryodhana from going to war. Sanjaya often consoled the bereaved king but reminded him every time that dharma was on the Pandava side and a war against Krishna and Arjuna could not be humanly won regardless of the strength of the opposing force.
Crushing of Bhimas Metal Statue

At the end of the great battle, Dhritrashtra was overcome with grief and rage at the loss of his hundred sons. When the blind king met the Pandavas who had come to seek his blessing prior to ascending the throne, he embraced all of them. When it was Bhimas turn, Krishna knew that the king was blind and possessed the strength of a hundred thousand elephants from the boon granted by Vyasa. He was quick to move Bhima aside and push an iron figure of Bhima into Dhritrashtras embrace. When the thought entered Dhritrashtras mind that the man in his embrace had killed every one of his hundred sons without mercy, his anger rose to such a pitch that the metal statue was crushed into powder. Thus, Bhima was saved and Dhritrashtra composed himself and gave the Pandavas his blessing.
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Later years and death

After the war was over with victory to Pandavas Kunti led Dhritrashtra and Gandhari to the forest in exile. Yudhisthira was crowned king of both Indraprastha and Hastinapura. The war had killed many great warriors and soldiers on each side. Yudhishthira once again showed his kindness when he decided that the king of the city of Hastinapura should be Dhritrashtra. He offered the blind king complete respect and deference as an elder, despite his misdeeds and the evil of his dead sons. After many years as the ruler of Hastinapura, Dhritrashtra along with Gandhari, Kunti and Vidura left for their final journey into the forest. They died in a forest fire in the Himalayas. The first stanza of the Bhagavad Gita is a question from Dhritrashtra to Sanjaya asking him to recount the Kurukshetra war.
Dhritrashtras blindness
After the Mahabharata war was over, Dhritrashtra upset over death of his hundred sons, asked Krishna the reason for his blindness despite the fact that he was a kind and just king. Krishna asked him to meditate and after meditating he realized that it was the law of Karma that was in action. Dhritrashtra in his earlier reincarnation was a tyrant king, who one day while walking on the lake side saw a swan bird surrounded by hundred cygnets. He ordered to remove the swan birds eyes and kill all the hundred cygnets just for his passing fancy. Therefore, in this birth he was born blind and all his sons were killed in the war. Sanjaya was given the divine power by Sage Veda Vyasa to watch the great Mahabharata War and recite the events to Dhritrashtra, the blind father of Kaurava brothers. The Bhagvad Gita actually starts with Dhritrashtra asking Sanjaya, Tell me Sanjaya, what did my sons (Kauravas) and Pandus sons (Pandavas) did in the battle field where they had gone with the intention of fierce battle? The short poem below by Prof Rajiv K Saxena describes the mental status of Dhritrashtra on the evening of the first day of battle, awaiting Sanjayas return with all information:
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In the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, Duryodhana Duryodhana, difficult to fight with, is the eldest son of the blind king Dhritrashtra by Queen Gandhari. His real name was Suyodhana and he was the eldest of the one hundred Kaurava brothers. He is said to be an Avatar of the demon Kali which means he was incredibly powerful man who had created his own people to fight for him and die for his defense.
Birth
When Gandharis pregnancy continued for an unusually long period of time, she beat her womb in frustration, in envy of Kunti, the queen of Pandu who had given birth to Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava. Due to actions of Gandhari, a hardened mass of grey-colored flesh issued from her womb. Gandhari was very shocked and upset. She implored Vyasa, the great sage who had blessed her with one hundred sons, to redeem his words. Vyasa divided the ball of flesh into one hundred and one equal pieces, and put them in pots of ghee, which were sealed and buried into the earth for one year. At the end of the year, the first pot was opened, and Duryodhana emerged.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Duryodhana was actually named Suyodhan which means Great Warrior, but he changed his name to Duryodhana which means the unconquerable one or difficult to fight with; many people hold the misconception that he was called Duryodhana because of his misdeeds. Literally, Duryodhana means hard to conquer. His chariot bore a flag depicting a hooded cobra.
Development
Duryodhanas body is said to be made out of lightning, and he is extremely strong, second only to Bhima. He is revered by his younger brothers, especially Dushasana. Learning martial skills from his gurus, Kripa and Drona, he proved to be extremely skilled with the mace. He then went to specialize in mace fighting under Balarama and went on to become his favorite pupil. With the mace he was equal to the much stronger Bhima.
Karna
At the martial exhibition where the Kaurava and Pandava princes demonstrate their skills before their elders, their guru Drona and the people of the kingdom, the great effulgent warrior Karna appears and challenges Arjuna, who is considered by Drona to be the best of the warrior princes. But Karna is humiliated when Kripa asks him to ascertain his caste, as it would be inappropriate for unequals to compete. Duryodhana immediately defends Karna, and makes him king of Anga so that he is regarded as Arjunas equal. Karna pledges his allegiance and friendship to Duryodhana, as Duryodhana had rescued him from a source of continuing humiliation and hardship. Neither of them knew that Karna is in fact Kuntis oldest son, born to Surya the sun-god. A very intense bond of friendship develops between the two, and Duryodhana becomes very close to Karna. It is held that if there was one good quality in Duryodhana, it was his deep affection for his friend Karna. In the Kurukshetra War, Karna is Duryodhanas greatest hope for victory. He truly believes that Karna is superior to Arjuna, and will inevitably destroy him and his four brothers. When Karna is killed, Duryodhana mourns his death intensely, even more than the death of his brothers.
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Tendencies and schemes

Although loved by all his family, Duryodhana and most of his brothers are not seen on the same level as the Pandavas in their adherence to virtue, duty, and respect of elders. Duryodhana is mentored by his maternal uncle Shakuni, who desires the elevation of his sisters children at the expense of the Pandavas. Shakuni masterminds most of Duryodhanas plots to humiliate and kill the Pandavas. Duryodhanas hatred for the Pandava brothers stems from his sincere belief that he - being the son of the eldest brother - is the heir apparent to the throne of Hastinapura. His father, in spite of being the eldest son, had to renounce the throne in favor of Pandu because of his blindness. Duryodhana deeply believed that what was rightfully his was being given away to his elder cousin Yudhishthira. Duryodhana also felt the Pandavas were sons of Kunti, not of Pandu. He never believed in their divine origin. On many occasions He questions this, and always calls them the Kaunteya, meaning the sons of Kunti. He also bore a deep hatred of Bhima, who dominates his brothers in sport and skill with his immense physical capability and strength. Duryodhana attempted to murder Bhima by feeding him a poisoned feast, but Bhima survived due to his immense physical capacity and blessings from celestial Nagas. Duryodhana then participated in a plot by Shakuni involving an architect Purochana who built an inflammable house by incorporating lacquer, animal fat, hay and various other fuels into the walls, and set it on fire when the Pandavas were staying in it during a visit to participate in festive celebrations at Varnavata. However, Purochana was himself killed in the fire, and the Pandavas managed to escape thanks to a brilliant counter-scheme by Vidura.
Seizing the kingdom

When the princes come of age, Yudhishthira is given half the kingdom and made king of Indraprastha, so as to avoid a clash with the Kaurava princes over the whole Kuru kingdom. Duryodhana becomes the prince regent of Hastinapura, and owing to the age and blindness of his father, he accumulates much control and influence, managing the state affairs himself with a group of his advisors that include his uncle Shakuni, brother Dushasana and friend Karna. But Duryodhanas jealousy of Yudhisthira continued to rise, because Indraprasthas prosperity and fame exceeding even Hastinapuras. When Yudhisthira performed the Rajasuya sacrifice that makes him emperor of the
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana World, Duryodhana is unable to contain his anger, which is intensified when Yudhisthiras queen Draupadi arrogantly taunts him, and his fathers blindness, when he slips into a pool of water in the court.
The dice plot, and Draupadis humiliation

Knowing that an all-out war with the Pandavas may not lead to definitive success, Shakuni devises a scheme to rob Yudhishthira of his kingdom and wealth by defeating him in a game of dice, which Shakuni is an expert at and Yudhishthira a complete novice. Unable to resist the challenge, Yudhishthira gambles away his entire kingdom, his wealth, his four brothers and even his wife, in a series of gambits to retrieve one by staking another. Karna encourages Duryodhanas brother Dushasana to drag Draupadi into the court and disrobe her, as she is Duryodhanas property after Yudhishthira had gambled everything away to him. Dushasana attempts to strip Draupadi, who is mystically protected by Krishna, who makes her sari inexhaustible. Dushasana exhausts all his might, pulling the sari which never finishes. Nevertheless, due to this action Bhima swears, he would break Duryodhanas thigh because Duryodhana asked Draupadi to sit on his thigh. The first time the king Dhritrashtra and Vidura made Duryodhana re-establish Yudhishthira. But then the plot is repeated, and for this game of dice Shakuni sets the condition that upon losing, Yudhishthira and his brothers must spend thirteen years in exile in the forest before they may reclaim their kingdom. The thirteenth year must be passed incognito, or else the term of exile would be repeated.
World emperor
During the exile, Duryodhana attempts to humiliate Yudhishthira by flashing his wealth and prowess in their forest of exile. He is however caught in a conflict with the Gandharva king Chitrasena, who captures him. Yudhishthira asks Arjuna and Bhima to rescue Duryodhana, who is humiliated. Setting his mind to die, Duryodhana pledges to fast unto death. He is pacified by Karna, who vows he will kill Arjuna in battle and vows never to drink wine until he slays Arjuna. Karna now embarks upon a worldwide military campaign to subjugate kings and impose Duryodhanas imperial authority over them. Bringing tribute and allegiance from all the worlds kings, Karna helps Duryodhana perform the Vaishnava
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana sacrifice to please Vishnu, and crowns himself emperor of the World, as Yudhishthira did with the Rajasuya.
The Kurukshetra War

At the end of the exile term, Duryodhana refuses to return Yudhishthiras kingdom, despite the counsel of Bhishma, Drona, Vidura and even Krishna, whom he attempted to arrest. Although Dhritrashtra criticizes his son, he tacitly desires that Duryodhana, and not Yudhishthira remain Emperor. Making war inevitable, Duryodhana gathers support from powerful kings and armies. The most legendary warriors - Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Kripa, Ashwathama, Shalya, even though most of them were critical of him - are forced to fight for Duryodhana. He ends up amassing an army larger than his rivals. In the war, Duryodhana repeatedly incites on the invincible Bhishma and Drona to forward his cause, even though his main hope is Karna. He asks Drona to capture Yudhishthira alive, so that he may blackmail the Pandavas into surrender, or force Yudhishthira to gamble again. He also participates in the brutal and unethical killing of Arjunas son Abhimanyu. But he is repeatedly frustrated when the Pandavas succeed in defeating the two Kuru legends, and is emotionally distraught when Arjuna kills Jayadratha, the king of Sindhu to avenge Abhimanyu. And all along, Bhima is steadily slaying his brothers, increasing his misery and bringing him closer to defeat. It is said that, Duryodhana never shed a single tear for any of his real brothers who were killed in the battlefield, but when his beloved friend Karna was slain, he was inconsolable. Duryodhana's hopes are finally shattered when Karna is felled by Arjuna as Karna was attacked by Arjuna when he was defenseless and removing the wheel of his chariot, the same way Karna killed Arjunas son Abhimanyu. He cools his body by entering a lake, all hope of winning lost, yet he prepares for his final battle; for a
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana death befitting a warrior on the battle field and hoping to reunite with his friends and relations in the afterlife. He re-emerges from the lake after Ashwathama and Kripa counsel him to face his destiny with courage.
The fight with Bhima

When Duryodhana faces the Pandava brothers and Krishna alone, Yudhishthira makes him an offer that he may pick any of the Pandava brothers to fight against one-to-one with a weapon of his choice, and that if he defeats that Pandava, Duryodhana shall be deemed the victor of the war. Duryodhana picks his arch enemy Bhima over the other Pandava brothers whom he could have effortlessly overwhelmed with his skill at fighting with the mace, to ensure a fair fight. Both possessed exceptional physical strength and had been trained by Balarama in mace fighting and wrestling to equal degrees of prowess. After a long and brutal battle stretching many days, Duryodhana begins to exhaust Bhima. At this point, Krishna, observing the fight, calls out to Bhima and signals him by repeatedly clapping his own thigh with his hand. To others it would appear like applauding the fight, but as Krishna intended, Bhima was reminded of an oath he had taken after the game of dice to crush Duryodhanas groin as revenge for insults to Draupadi. Bhima viciously attacks Duryodhana with a mace and strikes his groin, and Duryodhana finally falls in battle, mortally wounded. Although Duryodhana bemoans that he was slain by unfair means, given that it was illegal to attack below the waist according to the rules of mace-fighting, Krishna points out to the dying prince that his insults of Draupadi, murder plots and cheating against the Pandavas and the unethical killing of Abhimanyu too had neither complied with dharma nor with the rules laid down for the war. It was useless thus, for Duryodhana to hope that moral grounds and values would come to his rescue, after he had dishonored them throughout his life. Duryodhana cries out, I have no interest in becoming a king now, I have lost all interests in this world which is fake and temporary, slain in battle I shall spend the rest of my after life in heaven in the company of my friends, relatives and well-wishers. You defeated us by cheating and trickery, otherwise the likes of Bhishma, Drona, and Karna amongst others were unconquerable. The victory which you obtained is not true victory and your names will bear black stains in the future. I have always been a good son, loyal friend, caring brother, and terrible enemy, while I lived I stamped
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana my foot on the heads of those who dared oppose me in anyway, I am happy to have died fighting and thank everyone who laid his life down for me, I die happy. It was each Kauravas aim to protect Duryodhana till his last breath and so everyone had vowed that they would fight for him till the end of their lives, so when Duryodhana died, it was after all those who had protected him; he had millions of people protecting him, yet he lost the war. Duryodhana was always going to be the last person to die. Krishna said Yes, these men truly were invincible, while fought against fairly, but I had to uphold dharma.
Declaration of War
tasya sanjanayan harsam, kuru-vrddhah pitamahah simha-nadam vinadyoccaih, sankham dadhmau pratapavan Then Bhisma, the great valiant grandsire of the Kuru dynasty, the grandfather of the fighters, blew his conch shell very loudly like the sound of a lion, giving Duryodhana joy. [1:12]
tatah sankhas ca bheryas ca, panavanaka-gomukhah sahasaivabhyahanyanta, sa sabdas tumulo 'bhavat After that, the conchshells, bugles, trumpets, drums and horns were all suddenly sounded, and the combined sound was tumultuous. [1:13] When human mind is plagued with inferiority complex he considers him inferior. Then he begins praising him in many ways. Or one who suffers from such complex always praises him. All such conversations begin with self-praise. And when it is
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana not so or we say the person is not suffering from inferiority complex he begins to praise others. Duryodhanas description of Panadava army to Bhishma is significant. Generally one does not begin the conversation with the praise of the enemy. However Duryodhana does this. He gives elaborate description of Panadava army to the grand sire Bhishma. Look grand-sire the Pandava army arrayed under the command of Dhristdhyum the son of wise Drupada. Whatever be the faults of Duryodhana one thing is clear. He is not suffering from inferiority complex. And if he was suffering from inferiority complex there could be no one worse than him. All along the path there had been one basic difference. Both god and bad people always exist. And this does not mean the number of bad ones has increased now. Or that of the good ones has reduced. Then what is the difference? But the religious persons continue to propagate that earlier there used to be good persons and now this number is reducing. This thinking is basically wrong. Good and bad persons had always been there. The difference is not on the surface instead it is eternal. Earlier bad person was suffering from inferiority complex. And today even the good person suffers from inferiority complex. Today a good persons goodness is only on the surface. One who does not trust him his goodness is only skin deep. And adverse situation and goodness will vanish. I consider this very significant that even a bad person like Duryodhana begins his description in a very auspicious manner. First he explains the qualities of his enemy and then describes his own warriors. Now there is another significant point although entire Bhagvad Gita revolves around Arjuna as the warrior but Duryodhana does not think so. He describes the Pandava army as protected by Bhima and Kaurava army protected by Bhishma. Does this not mean that Duryodhana considers Bhima as his main enemy? This point is significant to understand. Entire Bhagvad Gita revolves round Arjuna and each commentator extols this. But Duryodhanas description of the two armies explains the Pandava army to be protected by Bhima and the Kaurava army protected by Bhishma. These sentiments of Duryodhana have been endorsed by the sage poet Veda Vyasa in Sutras 1:10; 1:11
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The first line of the sutra explains the army protected by Bhishma seems insufficient in valor and strength while the army protected by Bhima seems sufficiently overflowing strength and valor. However Duryodhana confirms that our army protected by Bhishma is invincible and is capable of winning over the army protected by Bhima. Therefore the duty of each of the warrior is to protect Bhishma from all sides.
In sutra 1:11 Duryodhana concludes his analysis and strategy talk with Dronacharya. As Duryodhan a finishes his analysis Bhishma blew the concshell to declare the war. So far the war was still a possibility, it was probable however now it was official. It is understandable that Bhishma was the one to start the declaration. He was the most respected amongst both the Kauravas and the Pandavas. He was the General appointed by Duryodhana and most of all was an invincible warrior. What is more interesting is the fact that Duryodhana was delighted with this declaration of the war. This is very disturbing but is not only true in the times of Mahabharata but it holds true even today. The moot and debatable question is does war give pleasure to any one? And if it does, then is there need for a reason for a given war? And, how do you find friends and enroll others in such an act. Obviously, Duryodhana is happy that ultimately he got the war going. The showdown time has come. He has the stronger army. He has a stronger General. He thinks that his side will definitely win. Once he wins, he will have an unopposed kingdom. There will be no one to challenge him. All these things must be going through his mind to give him the pleasure that showed on his face when the war was declared.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Indeed there are people who enjoy, wars. They derive some sort of pleasure from killing. It is true even today, may be more so today than in those times. How else can you justify the current day terrorism? How else can you explain killing of innocent villagers? How else can you explain hijacking and blowing up of planes? There are people who cherish violence for violence sake. They do not see the human aspect of the war. They are so blinded by their pleasure out of the war that they forget what havoc it causes to the people involved. And this leads them down the slippery path. Once the desire takes over, it feeds on itself. It is crucial to understand the phenomenon of enjoying violence, because of how subtle the functioning of the mind is. Most of the time, we find a reason why we are upset. Buddha or Krishna will look at it differently they will say that you are the problem. You are upset first and you find a reason to justify your upset mood later. Duryodhana wanted a war; it is obvious from his happiness shown at the declaration of the war. He kept closing all doors to peace one by one and the Pandavas were dragged to this situation. In fact, Pandavas had many more reasons to fight when compared to Duryodhana. However they did not want it as they derived no pleasure from conflicts. People of very high caliber surrounded Duryodhana. There were wise people like Bhishma, Drona and others. But who were his close associates indeed? Mama Shakuni was a crook and he was the closest friend and advisor that Duryodhana had. It is not difficult to find friends in any situation. His slippery slope started with his mode of thinking and it accelerated with the company he kept. With the declaration of war it just gathered more momentum. There is much to learn from these Sutras. Whenever you start enjoying a torture or a punishment, there is something wrong. It is easy to be judgmental and say how bad Duryodhana was in Mahabharata. But, we should not forget that every one of us has part of that Duryodhana in us. All it takes is the start of the slippery slope. You are angry with your son. He dares to object to what you said. You have a choice of using your love and understanding here. You choose to hit your adult son. And the slippery slope starts. There are several examples on individual levels and on public levels in the current world. How come Pakistan continues to support terrorism? The same slippery slope is evident here. And once the slope starts, there is no stopping. It is important to understand this. Once you take this path, you face the consequences of that path. And, there is a certain momentum that establishes in the process. The way to get out is to change the path completely; stop and take a fresh look at the situation.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana The war has been declared from the Kauravas side. Some are happy while others are unhappy. A response is expected from the Pandava side. Many in the Kurukshetra might be still thinking as to what Pandavas will do. Will they accept the challenge or will they decide not to fight. There had been several occasions where the Pandavas could have picked up a fight, but they decided not to. But now the inevitable is there the war is imminent.
Krishna the harbinger and the catalyst of the Mahabharata war is the incarnation of Vishnu. He no more the blue boy from the banks of Kalindi River the flute bearer or the solace of Radha the Krishna of Mahabharata is totally different and unattached enlightened one. Krishna of Mahabharata is totally incomparable to any of his previous roles in Mathura or Vrindavan. He is unique. His uniqueness lies in the fact although he happened in the past yet his awareness belongs to the future. May be in future man may be capable to understand Krishna totally. Krishna is the only being in the entire history of human consciousness who reached the absolute height and depth of religion, and yet he is not at all serious and sad, not in tears. By and large, the chief characteristic of a religious person has been that he is somber, serious and sadlooking like one vanquished in the battle of life, like a renegade from life. In the long line of such sages it is Krishna alone who comes dancing, singing and laughing.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Religions of the past were all life-denying suffering as great virtues. If you set aside religion of the past presented a sad and religion that accepts life in its totality is yet and masochistic, extolling sorrow and Krishnas vision of religion, then every sorrowful face. A laughing religion, a to be born.
And it is good that the old religions are dead, along with them, that the old God, the God of our old concepts is dead too t is said of Jesus that he never laughed. It was perhaps his sad look and the picture of his physical form on the cross that became the focal point of at traction for people, most of whom are themselves unhappy and miserable. In a deep sense Mahavira and Buddha are against life too. They are in favor of some other life in some other world; they support a kind of liberation from this life. Every religion, up to now, has divided life into two parts, and while they accept one part they deny the other, Krishna alone accepts the whole of life. Acceptance of life in its totality has attained full fruition in Krishna. That is why India held him to be a perfect incarnation of God, while all other incarnations were assessed as imperfect and incomplete. Even Rama is described as an incomplete incarnation of God. But Krishna is the whole of God. And there is a reason for saying so. The reason is that Krishna has accepted and absorbed everything that life is. Albert Schweitzer made a signicant remark in criticism of the Indian religion. He said that the religion of this country is life negative. This remark is correct to a large extent, if Krishna is left out. But it is utterly wrong in the context of Krishna. If Schweitzer had tried to understand Krishna he would never have said so. But it was unfortunate that we did not allow Krishna to inuence our life in a broad way. He remains a lonely dancing island in the vast ocean of sorrow and miser y that is our life. Or, we can say he is a small oasis of joyous dancing and celebration in the huge desert of sadness and negativity, of suppression and condemnation that we really are. Krishna could not inuence the whole spectrum of our life, and for this we are alone to blame. Krishna is not in the least responsible for it. We were not that worthy, that deserving, to have him, to imbibe him, to absorb him. Up to now, mans mind has thought of and looked at life in fragments and thought dialectically. The religious man denies the body and accepts the soul. And what is worse, he creates a conict, a dichotomy between the body and spirit. He denies this world, he accepts the other world, and thus creates a state of hostility between the two. Naturally our life is going to be sad and miserable if we deny the body, because all our lifes juice its health and vitality, its sensitivities and beauty, all its music has its source in the body. So a religion that denies and denounces the body is bound to be anemic and ill, it has to be lackluster. Such a
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana religion is going to be as pale and lifeless as a dry leaf fallen from a tree. And the people who follow such a religion, who allow themselves to be inuenced and conditioned by it, will be as anemic and prone to death as these leaves are. Krishna alone accepts the body in its totality. And he accepts it not in any selected dimension but in all its dimensions. Apart from Krishna, Zarathustra is another. About him it is said he was born laughing. Ever y child enters this world crying. Only one child in all of history laughed at the time of his birth, and that was Zarathustra. And this is an index an index of the fact that a happy and laughing humanity is yet to be born. And only a joyful and laughing humanity can accept Krishna. Krishna has a great future. After Freud the world of religion is not going to be the same as it was before him. Freud stands as a watershed between the religions of the past and the religion of the future. With Freud a great revolution has taken place and mans consciousness has achieved a breakthrough. We shall never be the same again after Freud. A new peak of consciousness has been touched and a new understanding, an altogether new perspective, a new vision of life has come into being. And it is essential to understand it rightly. The old religions taught suppression as the way to God. Man was asked to suppress everything his sex, his anger, his greed, his attachments and then alone would he nd his soul, would he attain to God. This war of man against himself has continued long enough. And in the history of thousands of years of this war, barely a handful of people, whose names can be counted on ones ngers, can be said to have found God. So in a sense we lost this war, because down the centuries billions of people died without nding their souls, without meeting God. Undoubtedly there must be some basic aw, some fundamental mistake in the very foundation of these religions. It is as if a gardener has planted fty thousand trees and out of them only one tree owers and yet we accept his scripture on gardening on the plea that at least one tree has blossomed. But we fail to take into consideration that this single tree might have been an exception to the rule that it might have blossomed not because of the gardener, but in spite of him. The rest of the fty thousand trees, those that remained stunted and barren, are enough proof the gardener was not worth his salt. If a Buddha, a Mahavira or a Christ attains to God in spite of these fragmentary and conict-ridden religions, it is no testimony to the success of these religions as such. The success of religion, or let us say the success of the gardener, should be acclaimed only when all fty thousand trees of his garden, with the exception of one or two, achieve owering. Then the blame could be laid at the foot of the one
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana tree for its failure to bloom. Then it could be said that this tree remained stunted and barren in spite of the gardener. With Freud a new kind of awareness has dawned on man: that suppression is wrong, that suppression brings with it nothing but self-pity and anguish. If a man ghts with himself he can only ruin and destroy him. If I make my left hand ght with my right hand, neither is going to win, but in the end the contest will certainly destroy me. While my two hands ght with them, I and I alone will be destroyed in the process. That is how, through denial and suppression of his natural instincts and emotions, man became suicidal and killed himself. Krishna alone seems to be relevant to the new awareness, to the new understanding that came to man in the wake of Freud and his ndings. It is so because in the whole history of the old humanity Krishna alone is against repression. He accepts life in all its facets, in all its climates and colors. He alone does not choose he accepts life unconditionally. He does not shun love; being a man he does not run away from women. As one who has known and experienced God, he alone does not turn his face from war. He is full of love and compassion, and yet he has the courage to accept and ght a war. His heart is utterly nonviolent, yet he plunges into the re and fury of violence when it becomes unavoidable. He accepts the nectar, and yet he is not afraid of poison. In fact, one who knows the deathless should be free of the fear of death. And of what worth is that nectar which is afraid of death? One who knows the secret of non-violence should cease to fear violence. What kind of non-violence is it that is scared of violence? And how can the spirit, the soul, fear the body and run away from it? And what is the meaning of God if he cannot take the whole of this world in his embrace? Krishna accepts the duality the dialectics of life altogether and therefore transcends duality. What we call transcendence is not possible so long as you are in conict, so long as you choose one par t and reject the other. Transcendence is only possible when you choicelessly accept both parts together, when you accept the whole. That is why Krishna has great signicance for the future. And his signicance will continue to grow with the passage of time. When the glow and the glamor of all other godmen and messiahs has dimmed, when the suppressive religions of the world have been consigned to the wastebasket of history, Krishnas ame will be heading towards its peak, moving towards the pinnacle of its brilliance. It will be so because, for the rst time, man will be able to comprehend him, to understand
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana him and to imbibe him. And it will be so because, for the rst time, men will really deserve him and his blessings. It is really arduous to understand Krishna. It is easy to understand that a man should r un away from the world if he wants to nd peace, but it is really difcult to accept that one can nd peace in the thick of the market place. It is understandable that a man can attain to purity of mind if he breaks away from his attachments, but it is really difcult to realize that one can remain unattached and innocent in the very midst of relationships and attachments, that one can remain calm and still live at the very center of the cyclone. There is no difculty in accepting that the ame of a candle will remain steady and still in a place well secluded from winds and storms, but how can you believe that a candle can keep burning steadily even in the midst of raging storms and hurricanes? So it is difcult even for those who are close to Krishna to understand him. For the rst time in his long history man has attempted a great and bold experiment through Krishna. For the rst time, through Krishna, man has tested, and tested fully his own strength and intelligence. It has been tested and found that man can remain, like a lotus in water, untouched and unattached while living in the throes of relationship. It has been discovered that man can hold to his love and compassion even on the battleeld that he can continue to love with his whole being while wielding a sword in his hand. It is this paradox that makes Krishna difcult to understand. Therefore, people who have loved and worshipped him have done so by dividing him into parts, and they have worshipped his different fragments, those of their liking. No one has accepted and worshipped the whole of Krishna, no one has embraced him in his entirety. Poet Surdas sings superb hymns of praise to the Krishna of his childhood, Bal. Krishna. Surdas Krishna never grows up, because there is a danger with a grown-up Krishna which Surdas cannot take. There is not much trouble with a boy Krishna irting with the young women of his village, but it will be too much if a grown-up Krishna does the same. Then it will be difcult to understand him. After all, we can understand something on our own plane, on our own level. There is no way to understand something on a plane other than ours. So for their adoration of Krishna, different people have chosen different facets of his life. Those who love the Gita will simply ignore the BHAGWAD, because the Krishna of the GITA is so different from the Krishna of the Sri Mad Bhagwad Similarly, those who love the Bhagwad will avoid getting involved with the Gita. While the Krishna of the GITA stands on a battleeld surrounded by violence and war, the Krishna of the BHAGWAD is dancing, singing and celebrating. There is seemingly no meeting-point whatsoever between the two.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana There is perhaps no one like Krishna, no one who can accept and absorb in himself all the contradictions of life, all the seemingly great contradictions of life. Day and night, summer and winter, peace and war, love and violence, life and death all walk hand in hand with him. That is why everyone who loves him has chosen a particular aspect of Krishnas life that appealed to him and quietly dropped the rest. Gandhi calls the GITA his mother, and yet he cannot absorb it, because his creed of non-violence conicts with the grim inevitability of war as seen in the GITA. So Gandhi nds ways to rationalize the violence of the GITA: he says the war of Mahabharata is only a metaphor that it did not actually happen. This war, Gandhi says over and over again, represents the inner war between good and evil that goes on inside a man. The Kurushetra of the GITA, according to Gandhi, is not a real battleeld located somewhere on this earth, nor is the Mahabharata an actual war. It is not that Krishna incites Arjuna to ght a real Mahabharata, Mahabharata only symbolizes the inner conict and war of man, and so it is just a parable. Gandhi has his own difculty. The way Gandhis mind is Arjuna will be much more in accord with him than Krishna. A great upsurge of non-violence has arisen in the mind of Arjuna, and he seems to be strongly protesting against war. He is prepared to run away from the battleeld and his arguments seem to be compelling and logical. He says it is no use ghting and killing ones own family and relatives. For him, wealth, power and fame, won through so much violence and bloodshed, have no value whatsoever. He would rather be a beggar than a king, if kingship costs so much blood and tears. He calls war an evil and violence a sin and wants to shun it at all costs. Naturally Arjuna has a great appeal for Gandhi. How can he then understand Krishna? Krishna very strongly urges Arjuna to drop his cowardice and ght like a true warrior. And his arguments in support of war are beautiful, rare and unique. Never before in history have such unique and superb arguments been advanced in favor of ghting, in support of war. Only a man of supreme non-violence could give such support to war. Krishna tells Arjuna, So long as you believe you can kill someone, you are not a man with a soul; you are not a religious man. So long as you think that one dies, you dont know that which is within us, that which has never died and will never die. If you think you can kill someone you are under a great illusion, you are betraying your ignorance. The concept of killing and dying is materialistic; only a materialist can believe so. There is no dying, no death for one who really knows. So Krishna exhorts Arjuna over and over again in the GITA, This is all play-acting; killing or dying is only a drama.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana In this context it is necessary to understand why we call the life of Rama a characterization, a story, a biography, and not a play, a leela. It is because Rama is very serious. But we describe the life of Krishna as his leela, his play-acting, because Krishna is not serious at all. Rama is bounded, he is limited. He is bound, limited by his ideals and principles. Scriptures call him the greatest idealist: he is circumscribed by the rules of conduct and character. He will never step out of his limits; he will sacrice everything for his principles, for his character. Krishnas life, on the other hand, accepts no limitations. It is not bound by any rules of conduct, it is unlimited and vast. Krishna is free, limitlessly free. There is no ground he cannot tread; no point where his steps can fear and falter, no limits he cannot transcend. And this freedom, this vastness of Krishna, stems from his experience of self-knowledge. It is the ultimate fruit of his enlightenment. For this reason the question of violence has become meaningless in Krishnas life. Now, violence is just not possible. And where violence is meaningless, nonviolence loses its relevance too. Nonviolence has meaning only in relation to violence. The moment you accept that violence is possible, non-violence becomes relevant at once. In fact, both violence and non-violence are two sides of the same coin. And it is a materialistic coin. It is materialistic to think that one is violent or non-violent. He is a materialist who believes he can kill someone, and he too is a materialist who thinks he is not going to kill anyone. One thing is common to them: they believe someone can be really killed. Spirituality rejects both violence and non-violence. It accepts the immortality of the soul. And such spirituality turns even war into play. Spirituality or religion accepts, and unreservedly accepts, all the dimensions of life. It accepts sex and attachment together, relationship and indulgence, love and devotion, yoga and meditation, and everything there is to life. And the possibility of the understanding and acceptance of this philosophy of totality is growing ever y day because now we have come to know a few truths we never knew in the past. Krishna, however, has undoubtedly known them. For instance, we now know that the body and soul are not separate, that they are two poles of the same phenomenon. The visible part of the soul is known as the body, and the invisible part of the body is called the soul. God and the world are not two separate entities; there is absolutely no conict between God and nature. Nature is the visible, the gross aspect of God, and God is the invisible, the subtle aspect of nature. There is no such point in the cosmos where nature ends and God begins. It is nature itself that, through a subtle process of its dissolution, turns into God, and it is God himself who, through a subtle process of his manifestation, turns into nature. Nature is manifest God, and God is unmanifest nature. And that is what Advait means, what the principle of one without the other means.
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We can understand Krishna only if we clearly understand this concept of Advait, that only one is one without the other. You can call him God or Brahman or what you like. We also have to understand why Krishna is going to be increasingly signicant for the future and how he is going to become closer and closer to man. It will be so, because the days when suppression and repression ruled the roost are gone. After a lengthy struggle and a long spell of inquiry and investigation we have learned that the forces we have been ghting are our own forces. In reality we are those forces, and it is utter madness to ght them. We have also learned we become prisoners of the forces we oppose and ght, and then it becomes impossible to free ourselves from them. And now we also know that we can never transform them if we treat them as inimical forces, if we resist and repress them. For instance, if someone ghts with sex, he will never attain to brahmacharya, to celibacy in his life. There is only one way to celibacy and that is through the transformation of the sex energy itself. So we dont have to ght with the energy of sex; on the contrary, we should understand it and cooperate with it. We need to make friends with sex rather than make an enemy of it, as we have been doing for so long. The truth is, we can only change our friends; the question of changing those we treat as enemies simply does not arise. There is no way to even understand our enemies; it is just impossible. To understand something it is essential to be friendly with it. Let us clearly understand that what we think to be the lowest is the other pole of the highest. The peak of a mountain and the valley around its base are not two separate things, they are part and parcel of the same phenomenon. The deep valley has been caused by the rising mountain, and in the same way the mountain has been possible because of the valley, One cannot be without the other. Or can it? Linguistically the mountain and the valley are two, but existentially they are two poles of the same thing. Nietzsche has a very signicant maxim. He says a tree that longs to reach the heights of heaven must sink its roots to the bottom of the ear th. A tree that is afraid to do so should abandon its longing to reach the heavens. Really, the higher a tree the deeper its roots go. If you want to ascend to the skies you will have to descend into the abyss as well. Height and depth are not different things they are two dimensions of the same thing. And their proportions are always the same. M0ans mind has always wanted to choose between the seeming opposites. He wants to preserve heaven and do away with hell. He wants to have peace and escape tension. He desires to protect good and destroy evil. He longs to accept light and deny darkness. He craves to cling to pleasure and to shun pain. His mind
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana has always divided existence into two parts and chosen one part against the other. And from choice arises duality, which brings conict and pain. Krishna symbolizes acceptance of the opposites together. And he alone can be whole who accepts the contradictions together. One who chooses will always be incomplete, less than the whole, because the part he chooses will continue to delude him and the part he denies will continue to pursue and haunt him. He can never be r id of what he rejects and represses. The mind of the man who rejects and represses sex becomes increasingly sexual. So a culture, a religion that teaches suppression of sex ends up creating nothing but sexuality; it becomes obsessed with sex. Up to now we have stubbornly denied the Krishna who accepts sex; we accept him only in fragments. But now it will be quite possible to accept him totally, because we are beginning to understand that it is the energy of sex itself that is transformed into the highest kind of celibacy, into brahmacharya through the process of its upward journey to the sahasrar, to the ultimate center in the head. We are beginning to learn that nothing in life has to be denied its place and given up, that we have to accept and live life in its totality. And he who lives wholly attains to lifes wholeness. And he alone is holy who is whole. Therefore I say that Krishna has immense signicance for our future. And that future, when Krishnas image will shine in all its brilliance, is increasingly close. And whenever a laughing, singing and dancing religion comes into being it will certainly have Krishnas stone in its foundation. Source: Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho
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Krishna could have averted the battle of Mahabharata and thus avoid the destruction and death of so many people. It is the same with war and peace. Here too, we choose. We want to keep peace and eliminate conict and struggle. It seems we cannot act without choosing. But the world is a unity of contradictions and dialectics. The world is an orchestra of opposite notes, it cannot be a solo. I have heard that once someone was playing a musical instrument. He played a single note on a single string at a single point, and he played it for hours on end. Not only his family, even the neighborhood felt disturbed by it. Finally a group of people came and said to him, We have heard any number of musicians and they all play a number of different notes. How come you are stuck with a single note? The man answered, I have found the right note; others are still searching for it. That is why I stick to the right spot. I need not search anymore. Our minds would like to choose a single note of life and deny all others. But only in death can one nd a single note. As far as life is concerned, it is composed of different and contradictory notes. If you have seen an arched door in some old building, you might have noticed that, to construct it, opposite kinds of bricks are laid side by side. And it is the opposite kinds of bricks, placed together, that hold the heavy burden of the house on their shoulders. Can you conceive of using the same kinds of bricks in the construction of an archway? Then the house cannot be constructed; it will collapse then and there. The entire structure of our life is held together by the tension of its opposites and war is a part of the tension that is life. And those who think that war is totally harmful and destructive are wrong; their vision is fragmentary, myopic. If we try to understand the course of development that man and his civilization have followed, we will realize that war plays the largest share in its growth. Whatever man has today all the good things of life were found primarily through the medium of war. If we nd today that the whole ear th is covered with roads and highways, the credit should go to war and to preparations for war. These roads and highways were rst constructed for the sake of waging war, for the purpose of dispatching armies to distant lands. They did not come into being for the sake of two friends meeting or for a man and a woman belonging to two distant towns to
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana marry. The fact is, they came into being for the encounter of two enemies, for the pur pose of war. We see big buildings all over. They all came in the wake of castles. And castles were the products of war. The rst high walls on this ear th were built with a view to keep out the enemies, and then other high walls and buildings followed. And now we have skyscrapers in all the big cities of the world. But it is difcult to think that these high rises are the progenies of war. All of mans modern afuence, backed by scientic inventions and high technology indeed all his achievements basically owe their existence to war. In fact, war creates such a state of tension in the mind of man and presents such challenges, that our dormant energies are shaken to their roots and, as a result, they awaken and act. We can afford to be lazy and lethargic in times of peace, but moments of war are quite different. War provokes our dynamism. Confronted with extraordinary challenges, our sleeping energies have to awaken and assert them. That is why, during a war, we function as extraordinary people; we simply cease to be the ordinary people that we are. Confronted with the challenge of war, mans brain begins to function at its highest level and capacity. In times of war mans intelligence takes a great leap forward, one it would ordinarily take centuries to make. Many people think that if Krishna had pre vented the war of Mahabharata, India would have attained to great afuence she would have touched high peaks of growth and greatness. But the truth is just the opposite. If we had had a few more people of Krishnas caliber and had fought more wars like the Mahabharata, we would have been at the pinnacle of our growth today. About ve thousand years have passed since the Mahabharata, and for these ve thousand years we have not fought a single major war. The wars we have had since then were baby wars in comparison with that epic war of the Kurukshetra. They have been quite petty and insignicant. Indeed it would be wrong to even call them wars they were petty ghts and skirmishes. Had we only fought some major wars we would be the richest and most advanced country on this planet today. But our present state of affairs is just the opposite: we are at the bottom of the ladder. The countries that fought great wars are at the pinnacle of development and prosperity today. At the end of the First World War people thought Germany was destroyed, debilitated for good. But in just twenty years, in the Second World War, Germany emerged as an innitely more powerful country than the Germany of the First World War. No one could have even dreamed this country could ght another war after she was so badly beaten in the rst. Seemingly, there was no possibility for Germany to go to war for hundreds of years. But just in twenty years time the miracle happened and Germany emerged as a giant world power. Why because
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana with will and vigor this country utilized the energies released by the First World War. With the conclusion of the Second World War it seemed that there might be no more wars in the world. But, so soon, the powers that fought it are ready for a much deadlier and dreadful war than the last. And the two countries Germany and Japan that suffered the worst destruction and defeat in the last war have emerged, amazingly, as two of the most afuent countries in the world. Who can say, after visiting todays Japan that only twenty years ago atom bombs fell on this country? Of course, after visiting present-day India, one could say that this country has been subjected to recurring atomic bombardments. One look at our wretched state can make one think that, down the ages, we have been through unending destruction brought about by war after war. The Mahabharata is not responsible for Indias degradation and misery. The long line of teachers that came in the shadow of that war was all against war, and they used the Mahabharata to further their anti-war stance. Pointing to that Great War they said, What a terrible war! What appalling violence! No, no more of such wars! No more of such bloodshed! It was unfortunate we failed to produce a line of people of the caliber of Krishna and also failed to ght more Mahabharatas. Had it been so, we would have reached, in every succeeding war, a peak of consciousness much higher than the one reached during the Mahabharata. And, undoubtedly, today we would be the most prosperous and developed society on this earth. There is another side of war which deserves consideration. A war like the Mahabharata does not happen in a poor and backward society; it needs riches to wage a great war. At the same time war is needed to create wealth and prosperity, because war is a time of great challenges. If only we had many more wars like the one Krishna led! Let us look at this thing from another angle. Today the West has achieved the same height of growth that India had achieved at the time of the Mahabharata. Almost all the highly sophisticated weapons of war that we now possess were used in the Mahabharata in some for m or other. It was a highly developed, intelligent and scientic peak that India had scaled at the time of that historic war. And it was not the war that harmed us. Something else harmed us. What really harmed us was the t of frustration that came over us in the wake of the war, and its exploitation by the teachers of those times. The same t of frustration has now seized the West, and the West is frightened. And if the West falls, the pacists will be held responsible for it. And its fall is certain if the West follows the pacists. Then the West will be in the same mess that India found herself in after the Mahabharata.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana India listened to her pacists and had to suffer for it for ve thousand years. So this matter needs to be considered fully. Krishna is not a hawk, not a supporter of war for wars sake. He, however, treats war as part of lifes game. But he is not a war monger. He has no desire whatsoever to destroy anyone; he does not want to hurt anyone. He has made every effort to avoid war, but he is certainly not prepared to escape war at any cost at the cost of life and truth and religion itself. After all, there should be a limit to our efforts to avoid war, or anything else for that matter. We want to avoid war just for so it does not hurt and harm life. But what if life itself is hurt and harmed by preventing war? Then its prevention has no meaning. Even the pacist wants to prevent war so that peace is preserved. But what sense is there in preventing a war if peace suffers because of it? In that case, we certainly need to have the strength and ability to wage a clear war, a decisive war. Krishna is not a hawk, but he is not a frightened escapist either. He says it is good to avoid war, but if it becomes unavoidable it is better to accept it bravely and joyfully than to run away from it. Running away would be really cowardly and sinful. If a moment comes when, for the good of mankind, war becomes necessary and such moments do come then it should be accepted gracefully and happily. Then it is really bad to be dragged into it and to ght it with a reluctant and heavy heart. Those who go to war with dragging feet just to defend themselves court defeat and disaster. A defensive mind, a mind that is always on the defensive, cannot gather that strength and enthusiasm necessary to win a war. Such a mind will always be on the defensive, and will go on shrinking in ever y way. Therefore Krishna tells you to turn even ghting into a joyful, blissful affair. It is not a question of hurting others. In life there is always a choice of proportions, a choice between the proportion of good and of evil. And it is not necessary that war bring only evil. Sometimes the avoidance of war can result in evil. Our country was enslaved for a full thousand years just because of our incapacity to ght a war. Similarly, our ve-thousand-year old poverty and degradation is nothing but the result of a lack of courage and fearlessness in our lives, a lack of expansiveness in our hear ts and minds. We suffered not because of Krishna. On the contrary, we suffered because we failed to continue the line of Krishna, because we ceased to produce more Krishnas after him. Of course, it was natural that after Krishnas war a note of pessimism, of defeatism, became prominent in our life it always happens in the wake of wars and that a row of defeatist teachers successfully used this opportunity to tell us that war is an unmitigated evil to be shunned at all costs. And this defeatist teaching took root, deep in our minds. So for ve thousand years we have been a frightened people, frightened for our lives. And a community that is afraid of death, afraid of war, eventually begins, deep down in its being, to be afraid of life
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana itself. And we are that community afraid of living. We are really trembling with fear. We are neither alive nor dead, we are just in limbo. In my view, mankind will suffer if they accept what Bertrand Russell and Gandhi say. There is no need to be afraid of war. It is true, however, that our earth is now too small for a modern war. A war, in fact, needs space too. Our instruments of war are now so gigantic that, obviously, war on this planet is simply not possible. But it is so, not because what the pacists say is right and has to be accepted out of fear, but because the earth is now too small for the huge means of war science and technology have put into our hands. So war on this planet has become meaningless. Now the shape of war is going to change and its scope, escalate. New wars will be fought on the moon and Mars, on other planets and satellites. Scientists say there are at least fty thousand planets in the universe where life exists. And if we accept the counsel of despair, if we listen to those who are frightened of nuclear weaponry, we will prevent the great adventure which man is now going to make into the vast innity of space. But it is true we have reached a point where war on this earth has become meaningless. But why it is so has to be clearly understood. War has become meaningless not because what the pacists say has struck home with us war has lost its meaning because the science of war has attained perfection, because now a total war can be a reality. And to ght a total war on this earth will be a self-defeating exercise. War is meaningful so long as one side wins and another loses, but in a nuclear war, if and when it takes place, there will be no victor and no vanquished both will simply disappears from the earth. So war on this earth has become irrelevant. And for this reason I can see the whole world coming together as one world. Now the world will be no more than a global village. The earth has become as small as a village even smaller than a village. It now takes less time to go around the world than it took to go from one village to another in the past. So this world has become too small for a total kind of war; it would be sheer stupidity to wage a war here. This does not mean there should be no wars, nor does it mean there will be no wars in the future. War will continue to take place, but now it will take place on newer grounds, on other planets. Now man will go on newer adventures, newer incursions and greater campaigns. In spite of what the pacists said and did war could not be abolished. It cannot be abolished because it is a part of life. It makes an interesting story if we assess the gains we have had from war. A careful observation will reveal that all our cooperative efforts and institutions are the products of war. It is called cooperation for conict: we cooperate to ght. And with the disappearance of war, cooperation will disappear.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana So it is extremely important to understand Krishna. Krishna is neither a pacist nor a hawk. He has nothing to do with any ism. In fact, an ism means choice that we choose one of the opposites. Krishna is non-ism. He says that if good comes through peace, we should welcome peace and that if good ows from war then war is equally welcome. Do you understand what I mean? Krishna says, and I say the same, that whatever brings bliss and benediction and helps the growth of religion is welcome. We should welcome it. We would not have been that impotent if our country had understood Krishna rightly. But we have covered all our ugliness with beautiful words. Our cowardice is hiding behind our talk of non-violence; our fear of death is disguised by our opposition to war. But war is not going to end because we refuse to go to war. Our refusal will simply become an invitation to others to wage war on us. War will not disappear just because we refuse to ght: our refusal will only result in our slavery. And this is what has actually happened. It is so ironic that, despite our opposition to war, we have been dragged into war over and over again. First we refused to ght, then some external power attacked and occupied our country and made us into slaves, and then we were made to join our masters armies and ght in our masters wars. Wars were continuously waged, and we were continuously dragged into them. Sometimes we fought as soldiers of the Huns, then as soldiers of the Turks and the Moghuls and nally as soldiers of the British. Instead of ghting for our own life and liberty we fought for the sake of our alien rulers and oppressors. We really fought for the sake of our slavery; we fought to prolong our enslavement. We spilled our blood and gave our lives only to defend our bondage, to continue to live in servitude. This has been the painful consequence of all our opposition to violence and war. But the Mahabharata is not responsible for it, nor is Krishna responsible. Our lack of courage to ght another Mahabharata is at the root of all our misfortunes. Therefore I say it is really difcult to understand Krishna. It is very easy to understand a pacist, because he has clearly chosen one side of the coin of truth. It is also easy to understand war mongers like Genghis, Tambur laine, Hitler and Mussolini, because they believe in war as the only way of life. Pacists like Gandhi and Russell believe that peace alone is the right way. Both doves and hawks are simplistic in their approach to life and living. Krishna is altogether different from both of them, and that is what makes him so difcult to understand. He says that life passes through both doors, through the door of peace and also through the door of war. And he says that if man wants to maintain peace, he needs to have the strength and ability to ght a war and win it. And he asserts that in order to ght a war well, it is necessary, simultaneously, to make due preparations for peace.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana War and peace are twin limbs of life, and we cannot do without either of them. We will simply be lame and crippled if we try to manage with only one of our two legs. So hawks like Hitler and Mussolini and doves like Gandhi and Russell are equally crippled, lopsided, useless. How can a man walk on one leg alone? No progress is possible. When we have men like Hitler and Gandhi, each with one leg, we nd them taking turns, just like passing fashions. For a while Hitler is stage-center, and then Gandhi appears and dominates the stage. For a while we take one step with Hitlers leg and then another step with Gandhis leg. So in a way they again make for a pair of legs. After Genghis, Hitler and Stalin are nished with their war and bloodshed Gandhi and Russell begin to impress us with their talk of peace and non-violence. The pacists dominate the scene for ten to fteen years enough time to tire their single leg, and necessitate the use of another. Then again a hawk like Mao comes with a sten gun in his hands. And thus the drama is kept on going. Krishna has his two legs intact; he is not lame. And I maintain that everyone should have both legs intact one for peace and another for war. A person who cannot ght is certainly lacking in something. And a person who cannot ght is incapable of being rightly peaceful. And one who is incapable of being peaceful is also crippled, and will soon lose his sanity. And a restless mind is incapable of ghting, because even when one has to ght a kind of peace is needed. So even from this point of view Krishna is going to be signicant for our future. n regard to our future we need to have a very clear and decisive mind. Do we want a pacist world in the future? If so, it will be a lifeless and lackluster world, which is neither desirable nor possible. And no one will accept it either. In fact, life goes its own way. While the doves y in the sky, the hawks continue to prepare for war. And in the way of fashions, the pacists will be popular for a while and then the war mongers will take their turn, becoming popular with the people. Really, the two work like partners in a common enterprise. Krishna stands for an integrated life, a total life; his vision is wholly whole. And if we rightly understand this vision, we need not give up either. Of course, the levels of war will change. They always change. Krishna is not a Genghis; he is not fond of destroying others, of hurting others. So the levels of war will certainly change. And we can see historically how the levels of war change from time to time. When men dont have to ght among themselves, they gather together and begin to ght with nature. It is remarkable that the communities that developed science and technology are the same that are given to ghting wars. It is so because they possess the ghting potential. So when they dont ght among themselves, they turn their energies towards ghting with nature.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana After the Mahabharata, India ceased to ght with nature simply because she turned her back on ghting. We did nothing to control oods and droughts or to tame our rivers and mountains, and consequently we failed, utterly, to develop science and technology. We can develop science only if we ght nature. And if man continues to ght he will rst discover the secrets of this earth by ghting its nature. And then he will discover the secrets of space and other planets by ghting their nature. His adventure, his campaign will never stop. Remember, the society that fought and won a war was the rst to land its men on the moon. We could not do it; the pacists could not do it. And the moon is going to exert tremendous signicance on war in the future. Those who own the moon will own this earth, because in the coming war they will set up their missiles on the moon and conquer this earth for themselves. This earth will cease to be the locale for war. The so-called wars that are currently being fought between Vietnam and Cambodia, between India and Pakistan, are nothing more than play-ghts to keep the fools busy here. Real war has begun on another plane. The present race for the moon has a deeper signicance. Its objective is other than what it seems to be. The power that will control the moon tomorrow will become invulnerable on this earth; there will be no way to challenge it. They will no longer need to send their planes to different countries to bomb them; this job will be done more easily and quickly from the moon. They will set up their missiles on the moon, warheads directed toward the earth rotating a full circle in its orbit each twenty-four hours. And that is how each country on this earth will be available, every day, to be bombed from the moon. This is the secret of the great competition between the world powers to reach the moon rst. And that is why the world powers are spending enormous amounts of money on the exploration of space. America spent about two billion dollars just to land one man on the moon. This was done not for the fun of it; there was a great objective behind this effort. The real question was who reaches the moon rst? This contest for space is similar to another historical contest that happened about three hundred years ago when the countries of Europe were rushing towards Asia. Merchant ships of Portugal, Spain, Holland, France and Britain were all sailing towards the countries of Asia because occupation of Asia had become immensely important for the expansionist powers of Europe. But now it has no importance whatsoever, and so, soon after the Second World War, they left Asia. The people of Asia believe they won their freedom through their nationalist struggles, but it is only a half-truth. The other half of the truth is quite different. In the context of the modern technology of warfare, the occupation of Asia in the old way has become meaningless; that chapter is closed forever. Now a new struggle for the conquest of lands altogether different and distant from this earth
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana has begun. Man has raised his sights to the distant stars, to the moon and Mars and even beyond. Now war will be fought in the vastness of space. Life is an adventure, an adventure of energy. And people who lag behind in this adventure, for lack of energy and courage, eventually have to die and disappear from the scene. Perhaps we are such a dead people. In this context also, Krishnas message has assumed special signicance. And it is signicant not only for us, but for the whole world. In my view, the West has reached a point where it will, once again, have to wage a decisive war, which of course will not take place on the planet Earth. Even if the contestants belong to this earth, the actual operation of the war will take place elsewhere, either on the moon or on Mars. Now there is no sense ghting a war on the earth. If it takes place here it will result in the total destruction of both the aggressor and the aggressed. So a great war in the future will be fought and decided somewhere far away from here. And what would be the result? In a way, the world is facing near ly the same situation India faced during the Mahabharata war. There were two camps, or two classes, at the time of the Mahabharata. One of them was out-and-out materialist; they did not accept anything beyond the body or matter. They did not know anything except the indulgence of their senses; they did not have any idea of yoga or of spiritual discipline. For them the existence of the soul did not matter in the least; for them life was just a playground of star k indulgence, of exploitation and predatory wars. Life beyond the senses and their indulgence held no importance for them. This was the class against which the war of Mahabharata was waged. And Krishna had to opt for this war and lead it, because it had become imperative. It had become imperative so that the forces of good and virtue could stand squarely against the forces of materialism and evil, so that they were not rendered weak and impotent. Approximately the same situation has arisen on a worldwide scale, and in twenty years time a full replica, a scenario of the Mahabharata will be upon us. On one side will be all the forces of materialism and on the other will be the weaker forces of good and righteousness. Goodness suffers from a basic weakness: it wants to keep away from conicts and wars. Arjuna of the Mahabharata is a good man. The word arjuna in Sanskrit means the simple, the straightforward, and clean. Arjuna means that which is not crooked. Arjuna is a simple and good man, a man with a clean mind and a kind hear t. He does not want to get involved in any conict and strife; he wants to with draw.
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana Krishna is still more simple and good; his simplicity, his goodness knows no limits. But his simplicity, his goodness does not admit to any weakness and escape from reality. His feet are set rmly on the ground; he is a realist, and he is not going to allow Arjuna to run away from the battleeld. Perhaps the world is once again being divided into two classes, into two camps. It happens often enough when a decisive moment comes and war becomes inevitable. Men like Gandhi and Russell will be of no use in this eventuality. In a sense they are all Arjunas. They will again say that war should be shunned at all costs, that it is better to be killed than to kill others. A Krishna will again be needed, one who can clearly say that the forces of good must ght, that they must have the courage to handle a gun and ght a war. When goodness ghts then, only goodness ows from it. It is incapable of harming anyone. Even when it ghts a war it becomes, in its hands, a holy war. Goodness does not ght for the sake of ghting, it ghts simply to prevent evil from winning. By and by the world will soon be divided into two camps. One camp will stand for materialism and all that it means, and the other camp will stand for freedom and democracy, for the sovereignty of the individual and other higher values of life. But is it possible that this camp representing good will nd a Krishna to again lead it? It is quite possible. When mans state of affairs, when his destiny comes to a point where a decisive event becomes imminent, the same destiny summons and sends forth the intelligence, the genius that is supremely needed to lead the event. And a right person, a Krishna appears on the scene. The decisive event brings with it the decisive man too. It is for this also that I say Krishna has great signicance for the future. There are times when the voices of those who are good, simple and gentle cease to be effective, because people inclined to evil dont hear them, dont fear them, and blindly go their own way. In fact, as good people shrink back just out of goodness, in the same measure the mischief makers become bold, feel like having a eld day. India had many such good people after the Mahabharata, like Buddha and Mahavira. Nothing was lacking in their goodness; their goodness was innite. In fact, it was too much so much that the countrys mind shrank under the weight of this goodness. The result was that the aggressors of the whole world set loose their hordes on India. It is not only that some people invade others there are people who invite invasion on themselves. You are not only responsible when you hit others you are also responsible when others hit you. If you slap someones face, your responsibility for this act is only fty percent, the other fty percent of the responsibility should go to the person who invited and attracted your slap, who took it passively, without
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Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana resistance. Know well that when someone slaps you, half the responsibility rests with you, because your being weak and passive becomes an invitation for him to hurt you. A long succession of good people, of absolutely good people, was responsible for constricting and enfeebling the mind of India, for making it weak and passive. And this became a kind of invitation to aggressors around the world. And, responding to this invitation, they came, almost with walking sticks in their hands, and subjugated us, enslaved us. For long spells of time they ruled over us and oppressed us. And when they left, they did this on their own; we did not throw them out. What is unfortunate is that we continue to be a shrunken people, suppressed and enfeebled in our minds and hearts. And we can again invite some aggressor to enslave us. If tomorrow Mao overruns his country, he alone will not be responsible. Years back, Lenin predicted that communisms road to London lay through Peking and Calcutta. His prediction seems to be correct. Communism has already arrived in Peking, and the noise of its footsteps is being heard in Calcutta. And so London is not far off. It will not be difcult for communism to reach Calcutta, because Indias mind is still shrunken, still suppressed and stricken with fear. Communism will come, and by accepting it, this country will go down the drain. That is why I say that India should do some serious rethinking about Krishna. Source: Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho
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International Journal of Gita Dhyan Sadhna Jan-March 2012

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International Journal of Gita Dhyan Sadhna Jan-March 2012

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A Quarterly Publication Volume Two Issue 1 January March 2012

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

A quarterly publication An International Journal Of GITA DHYAN SADHANA

Mystical Insights into Bhagavad Gita

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GITA DHYAN SADHANA

Etymology and Linguistic variants

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Dharma conscious or righteous living:

The Parashurama Legend

Extermination of the Haihaya-kshatriya caste

Evidence in the Mahabharata of conflict spanning generations

Shivas Bow and Meeting of Rama and Parashurama

The Sixth Avatara

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

The succession crisis

The dice game

Crushing of Bhimas Metal Statue

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Later years and death

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Tendencies and schemes

Seizing the kingdom

The dice plot, and Draupadis humiliation

The Kurukshetra War

The fight with Bhima

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

Quarterly International Journal Gita Dhyan Sadhana

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