Arjuna Vishaada Yoga
Chapter 1, Verses 8-9
bhavan bhiṣmaśca karnaśca
kṛpaśca samitiñjayaḥ
aśvatthāmā vikarṇaśca
saumadattas tathaiva ca
anye ca bahavaḥ śūrā
madarthe tyakta-jivitāḥ
nānā-śāstra praharaṇāḥ
sarve yuddha-viśāradāḥ
Yourself, Bhishma and Karna and Kripacharya, the victorious in battle, Ashvatthama, Vikarna, and Saumadatti also; and many other heroes have renounced their life for my sake, they are all armed with diverse weapons and missiles and all well-skilled in war.
Here Duryodhan was saying, “You are also great!” naming him first in the verse. “You are not the greatest, yet you are great.” Then he praised Bhishma, who was the great-uncle of the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Bhishma represents the ego. He was very powerful. He was considered the greatest of all in the Kuru dynasty. He was very virtuous. He had value. He was a renunciant. He had endurance, forgiveness, compassion, tranquillity, self- control, truthfulness, non-violence. He had contentment, equanimity, strength, righteousness, majesty, great humility, large-heartedness, popularity, correct words in speech, courage, continence, indifference to worldly attachment. He was very knowledgeable. He had great wisdom. He was very devoted to his parents. He knew about the scriptures. He was devoted to his teachers. Above all, he was very dedicated to God. This was a great ego; ego is also in man. It can or cannot change.
When Krishna was going to kill him, Bhishma said, “I am very virtuous; have renounced everything.” All of his life, he possessed all these qualities that I have just told you about. Krishna said, “No, no, no, My dear. You have all these qualities, yes! You can talk about them. You can show people that you have these qualities. But on the spiritual path, it doesn’t mean anything. If you have not gone above all these qualities, if you still hang onto these qualities how does this help you?” Krishna pointed to him and said, “Look, you always talk about all these things, yet you are so attached to the seat of Hastinapur! You have virtue, compassion, tranquillity, self-control, all this; but what is this attachment to the seat of Hastinapur? That doesn’t mean anything.” Bhishma said, “Well, I have done everything for the sake of the kingdom.” Then Krishna said, “A true knowledgeable person is one who can have the knowledge and renounce that knowledge in one second. That’s what knowledge is. If you are hanging onto your knowledge, if you are holding tight to that knowledge, what knowledge are you talking about? How virtuous can you be? True knowledge means that whatever you have, you can renounce it. That’s the true renunciant. Yes, you have all these virtuous qualities, but you have not renounced anything!” Bhishma said, “Yes, I was always doing what was right for the seat of Hastinapur, for the kingdom, for the throne of Hastinapur.”
That’s how the ego makes you think and feel, that you are the best among men. You are the most knowledgeable of all. You have knowledge of everything. And that blinds you. Even if you have many good qualities, if you are egoistic, all these good qualities are nothing – because it is all self- centred.
Duryodhan said, “We have Karna,” who was the eldest son of Kunti. Karna represents the unsettled mind, which doesn’t know where it belongs, whether on the right side or the left side. Sometimes it is on both sides! It is also the mind that pushes people, pushes one to do evil, to excite evilness.
Because Karna was this unsettled mind, Krishna went to him before the war, to remind him that he was not a charioteer’s son, he was not Radheya, he was not the son of Radha. (This Radha was not the ‘Radha, Radha’ we sing of; Radha was a common name at that time.) He was Kaunteya, Kunti’s son. Krishna reminded Karna of this and said, “Karna, I will tell you the truth. You are always unsettled. Who are you really? Nobody knows who you are. They all know that you are not the direct son of the family who found you when you were small; this is a common story.
Who are you really? Where can you find yourself? In which context can you focus yourself? Look, you are Kaunteya. You were born from Kunti. You were born from royalty. You can turn to your royal lineage and claim it.”
You see, when the mind is unsettled, you will always make the wrong decision. Even if somebody is telling you a good thing, you won’t hear it. Even if you know that something is wrong, you will always accept it, because it is more pleasing. That’s why Krishna went and tried to settle him down and told him, “Listen, Karna, you are not one of the Kauravas. You are the son of Kunti. Being the son of Kunti, you are the elder brother of the Pandavas. Come and join us! Come! Change! Join the Pandavas and focus yourself!”
When the mind is unsettled, you can focus it. Through your sadhana, through your spiritual practices, you learn to focus it. But until the mind is settled properly, you battle, no? When you start on the spiritual path, your mind is always unsettled and asking, “What am I doing? Am I really on the right path? Am I following the right Master? Am I doing right? What will my friends say? What will my parents say? What is this? What is that? And how is this and how is that?” There is so much jumping, jumping, jumping. But when the Master came, when the Guru came, when Lord Krishna came to him He came to remind him of who he was. “Kunti embodies the power of dispassion. You are born of dispassion. You can also become focused.” But when the mind is jumping around, it will not listen, even if you give good advice. You have seen that when somebody is angry and you try to reason with the person, what happens? You make it worse. It was like this. Here Lord Krishna was reminding him, “Calm down! Oh, Karna, you can belong to the right side. You don’t need to be on the left side. Because of this unsettledness – who are you? Where do you belong? You can decide. There is still hope. The hope of change!”
Of course, when you tell good things to somebody, they will always do the opposite. When Karna was alone and nobody was with him, who sided with him? Duryodhan! When you are not settled, you’ll always have someone who will flatter you and try to get you. Karna didn’t have the support of the good ones, so he had the support of the bad ones. He gave his loyalty to the bad ones, and fell into the Kauravas’ side. As Bhishma Pitamah knew who Karna was, he didn’t allow him to participate in the war. Karna joined the army only on the eleventh day. He had been there before, but he only went on the battlefield on the eleventh day.
Then there was Kripa, Kripacharya, the brother-in-law of Dronacharya. During the time Kripacharya was staying with Dronacharya, he became very good friends with Bhishma. Bhishma put him in charge of the training of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Kripacharya didn’t really participate in the war because he was always considered to be an outsider. He was second to Dronacharya. He was always behind Dronacharya. Kripacharya represents envy. He was quiet. As we say, “Be aware of the calmness of the water. Because when the water is calm, you don’t know what may come out of it, or how deep it is.” Here the verse says, “Kripacharya, the victorious.” Kripacharya was a great archer and was always victorious wherever he went to fight. It’s funny! Kripa means Grace. He had Grace. But how did he use Grace? This is very important! He was a great scholar in the Vedas. Kripacharya was not killed in the Mahabharat war. Kripacharya is one of the immortals from that time who is still alive today. And the funny thing is that he is still around Kurukshetra.
Then Duryodhan said that there was Ashvatthama, the son of Dronacharya. Ashvatthama represents rage, wrath. He is also one of the immortals – he is still alive. But he is not alive through Grace. He is still alive because he was
cursed. And he is alive…well, somewhere.
There was also Vikarna. Vikarna was one of the sons of Dhritharastra. Why was Vikarna mentioned in this verse and not the other sons of Dhritharastra? Vikarna is mentioned because during the time when they tried to remove the clothes from Draupadi in the court – apart from Vidura, who was against it and who had raised his voice and said, “No! You stupid, don’t do that!” – Vikarna was the other one who said to Duryodhan, “It is wrong what you are doing! Even if you have won everything through gambling, what you are doing is wrong!” He stood against his own brother. That’s why Duryodhan mentioned him in this verse, to show that he was always opposed to Duryodhan. But he was not only good! He was also bad! He represents the cruel mind which – even if it uses good words – will dagger you. He will say, “Please come! You are my dear one. I love you very much. Come, come.” But he will put a dagger in your back.
Duryodhan continued, “There are many more heroes who have sacrificed their lives for my sake.” You see, pride has many friends, and most of these friends have qualities similar to him. Because of his arrogance, Duryodhan attracted similar people with similar qualities. Most of these qualities, which were supporting him, were in the form of his own ninety-nine brothers.
Dushasana: his name itself says everything. If you translate the name, if you break the name in two, what does it mean? ‘Dush’ means evil, evil- minded and ‘asana’ means ‘the seat’; Dushasana was ‘the seat of evil. He was always aggressive. These are the hundred qualities which were present in the hundred sons of Dhritharastra: aggressive, aloof, arrogant, belligerent, big-headed, bitchy, boastful, bone-idle, boring, bossy, callous, cantankerous, careless, changeable, clinging, compulsive, conservative, cowardly, cruel, cunning, cynical, deceitful, detached, dishonest, dogmatic, domineering. evil-minded, finicky, flirtatious, foolish, foolhardy, fussy, greedy, grumpy, gullible, harsh, impatient, impolite, impulsive, inconsiderate, inconsistent, indecisive, indiscreet, inflexible, interfering, intolerant, irresponsible, jealous, lazy, machiavellian, materialistic, mean, miserly, moody, narrow-minded, nasty, naughty, nervous, obsessive, obstinate, over-critical, over-emotional, parsimonious, patronizing, perverse, pessimistic, pompous, possessive, pusillanimous, quarrelsome, quick-tempered, resentful, rude, ruthless, sarcastic, secretive, selfish, self-centred, self-indulgent, silly, sneaky, stingy, stubborn, stupid, superficial, tactless, timid, touchy, thoughtless, truculent, unkind, unpredictable, unreliable, untidy, untrustworthy, vague, vain, vengeful, vulgar, weak-willed.
Duryodhan said, “There are other heroes who have renounced their lives for my sake; they are all armed with diverse weapons and missiles, and are all well-skilled in war.” So the Kauravas were not alone. They had numerous mighty armies. Many similar-minded kings had come with big armies to support this evil-minded person. He was like a magnet.
Bhagavad Gita
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