Read THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 Online
Authors: Ramesh Menon
THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 (26 page)
In the chariot between the two armies frozen in time by the Dark One’s power, Krishna said to Arjuna, “In this world, the Avatara dons the five senses of nature and the sixth, of the mind: the garment of prakriti!
When I take a body and leave it, these come and go like the scent of flowers on the wind. I enjoy the senses, Arjuna, as you do and suffer by them as well. But they do not delude me. The splendor of the sun, the moon and fire are my own.
I nourish the world while I am in it. Then, as the moon, as precious Soma, I bring sap and water to the living world of plant and herb; as the fire of life, I nurture the bodies of animals. All the foods of this earth I consume and make inner and outward breath of them.
I am the heart of every man who lives. I am the source of memory and knowledge and their loss as well. I am the Vedas, the Vedanta and the knower of the Vedas, too.
Arjuna, there are just two beings in this world: the dying and the undying. The one who dies is all these changing lives and the undying one is changeless. But beyond both these the supreme Spirit, the Lord, pervades the three worlds and sustains them.
I am beyond both the dying and the undying beings. I am the supreme person, in the world and in the Veda. Blameless Arjuna, he who knows me becomes truly wise,” said Krishna.
“If you want to understand this war, you must know the two different kinds of men who fight it.
Pure, fearless, wise, generous, self-controlled and sacrificing, knowing the scriptures, austere and honest;
Non-violent, truthful, relinquishing, serene, never finding fault, compassionate to all the living, free from greed, gentle, humble and steady;
Energetic, forgiving, patient, above arrogance and malice: this is the man with the divine nature.
Ostentation, vanity, rage, harshness and ignorance: Arjuna, these are the qualities of the demonic man.
The man with the divine nature finds deliverance and the demoniacal one is bound in darkness.”
Arjuna looked up anxiously at Krishna, who laid a hand on his head. “Don’t be afraid, Pandava, your nature is divine and so is your destiny. But let me tell you about the evil ones. They know nothing of the paths of karma or renunciation. They know nothing of purity, truth, or dharma.
They say the world is unreal, without a basis, without a Creator. These ruthless men of feeble understanding rise as the enemies of the earth to destroy her.
They are full of hypocrisy, vanity and delusion and abandon themselves to insatiable desire. They live in ceaseless lust and foolish cares, which end only when they die. Their single mission is to amass all the wealth they can, by the vilest means.
‘I am the lord, the great one,’ they think. ‘This is mine and the other shall be mine, as well. I am mighty, successful and happy. I am rich and wellborn; who is there like me? I shall sacrifice, I shall be bounteous, I shall always be joyful!’ Yes, so they think, deluded.
Bewildered by a dark jungle of thoughts, entangled helplessly, they fall into hell. Conceited, obstinate, arrogant with wealth and power, they perform hollow yagnas, with much ostentation and no regard to the inner content. Given completely to lust, anger and violence, they hate me in others and in themselves, too.
These ruthless spirits I cast again and again into dark wombs, in the great cycle of deaths and rebirths. And fallen into demon wombs, birth after birth, the malignant ones never rise to me, but devolve to the lowest, bestial state.
Three-fold is the gateway to hell, three-fold the way to the ruin of the soul: lust, greed and anger. The man who is free from these naturally does what is best for his soul and attains perfect bliss, the changeless condition.
But he who discards the scriptures and follows his baser nature’s call, he does not come to perfection or joy, or the highest peace.
Arjuna, in this world, let the scripture be your guide; it is sacred, it comes from me.”
Arjuna asked, “Those who don’t regard the scripture, but sacrifice to God in faith, what place have they? In sattva, rajas or tamas?”
Krishna said, “Each man believes according to his nature and he is what he believes.
Sattvic men worship the Gods, rajasic men worship wealth and power and men of tamas worship the spirits of the dead. They make gods of their ancestors’ ghosts.
Because vanity and lust fill them with egotism, the demonic ones mortify their bodies with violent austerities, which the scriptures do not ordain. These fools weaken their organs of sense and outrage me, who dwell in them.
The sattvic sacrifice is scriptural; it seeks no reward. The rajasic one is all for show and gain and the sacrifice of tamas distributes no food, no hymns are sung and it is faithless.
Worship of the Gods, of rishis and gurus, purity, uprightness, continence and non-violence: these are the tapasya of the body. Sweet words that offend no-one, but are truthful and kind and the charity of the Veda are the tapasya of speech. Serenity of mind, gentleness, integrity of purpose, self-control and silence are the tapasya of mind. Together, these are the three-fold tapasya of sattva.
The rajasic tapasya is done out of pride, seeking fame, for the sake of exhibition. The obstinate penance, performed for the lust of pain, or to hurt someone, is the tamasic tapasya.
The sattvic charity is dutiful, made to the deserving, at an auspicious moment and place and seeks nothing in return. The rajasic gift is always made with a selfish purpose, for some gain. And the tamasic gift is a contemptuous one, made without regard for time and place and neither for the one that receives it.
AUM TAT SAT is the three-fold symbol of Brahman. The brahmanas, the Vedas and the yagnas were ordained, of old, by this.
AUM say the bhaktas of Brahman at sacrifice, penance and charity. TAT they say at sacrifice, penance and charity. SAT means the Absolute, Arjuna, everything that is auspicious, good and true. All penance, sacrifice and charity are called SAT.
But if a man perform any of these without faith in Brahman, it is asat, unreal, of no account here or hereafter.”
Near the end of the dwapara yuga, between two armies, the Pandava warrior Arjuna said to his cousin, the Avatara, “Krishna, tell me about renunciation and relinquishment and the difference between the two.”
The kali yuga yawning before him, the Dark One of Dwaraka said, “Renunciation is when you abandon karma out of desire. Relinquishment is when you act, but abandon the fruit of what you do.
The karma of sacrifice, penance and charity must be performed; these are the purifiers of the wise. But they should be done with no attachment for their results.
The tamasic renunciation is through ignorance, the rajasic through fear. But if a man does his duty, forsaking its outcome to me, his relinquishment is sattvic.
The sage of relinquishment does not doubt; his nature is sattvic. He does not shrink from what is unpleasant, nor is he drawn to the pleasant. No embodied being can renounce karma entirely, but he who relinquishes the fruit of his work is enlightened.
The consequences of karma are pleasant, unpleasant and mixed, each in its season. But those who are detached reap no consequence at all, in this world or the next.
The Vedanta says there are five participants in any deed: the body, the ego, the senses, the motions of life in the body and providence the fifth. All karma, of speech, of body or mind, good or evil, is caused by these five. He who thinks that he is the one that acts, is deluded. But the man who is unattached, untainted by egotism, who acts naturally, perfectly: no karma binds him with any bond. Though he kill thousands, he is no killer.
Arjuna, there are three kinds of conscience and three kinds of happiness, too.
The sattvic conscience knows right from wrong, what is safe and what dangerous. It knows discrimination and relinquishment, what binds the spirit and what frees it. The rajasic conscience cannot distinguish wrong from right, what to do and what not to. And when a man’s conscience tells him wrong is right, that evil is goodness and distorts the world, it is tamasic.
So, too, with happiness. The man who knows the atman has the joy of pure knowledge, like poison at first and ambrosial finally: the joy of sattva, the end of sorrow. The joy of rajas is of the senses uniting with the objects of sense: sweet in the beginning, deadly at last. The warped pleasure, which deludes the soul at both beginning and end, bestial satisfaction born of stupor, sloth or cruelty, is of tamas, always fatal.
There is no being on earth, none among the Devas of heaven, who is free of the gunas of prakriti. Every man’s inner nature ordains his dharma; brahmana and kshatriya, vaishya and sudra, each has his innate, natural dharma.
The brahmana’s dharma is to know the atman, to be serene, restrained and pure; the kshatriya’s is to be battle-skilled, fearless, generous and resolute; the vaishya’s is to breed cattle, to till the earth, to trade; and to serve all men is the dharma of the sudra.
But all men are born equal and equally for perfection and each shall find it if he follows his nature’s dharma.
A man worships God when he performs his prakritic dharma and so he finds perfection. It is better to perform one’s own dharma, however imperfectly, than the dharma of another flawlessly. For there is no sin in following one’s own true nature.
As to imperfection, all karma is clouded with imperfection, as fire is with smoke. But that is no cause to give up one’s natural duty, no reason to stop worshipping God, or seeking Him.
Listen, Arjuna, to how the perfected man is one with Brahman.
His mind and heart are free of delusion, full of compassion. His senses are subdued, naturally, by a steady will, without regret. He seeks solitude, eats little, speaks less and is always absorbed in the Brahman, the truth.
Vanity has gone from him, pride, violence, lust, anger and so have all his possessions, that once possessed him. Entirely serene, he is fit to be with Brahman. And he who is with Brahman, past sorrow, beyond craving, all beings the same to him, he loves me most dearly.
To love me is to know the inmost truth that I am; knowing me is to enter my being. Everything that man does is offered to me in surrender and my grace is upon him. He finds the eternal, the place unchanging.”
Krishna felt a great war won within himself: the worst over, evil overcome, retreating. Arjuna, radiant with faith, said to him, “You have removed my fear. I feel I have already triumphed in all my battles. I know that whatever you have said to me is true; but Krishna, I want to see your divine form. Lord, if you think I deserve that revelation, show me your imperishable self.”
The armies vanished from Kurukshetra; the world vanished from Kurukshetra. Only Krishna, the Blue God, stood smiling and tremendous before Arjuna.
“You cannot see me with your human eyes, but I will give you other sight. Behold, Arjuna, my forms: a hundred, a thousand, endless. See the Adityas, the Vasus, the Rudras, the Asvins and the Maruts. See the hidden realms, the Universe and whatever you care to see. Arjuna, behold Me!”
And Krishna stood transformed before his bhakta: speaking from many mouths, seeing with numberless eyes, carrying countless weapons, wearing divine raiment and garlands, heavenly perfumes, of endless visions and marvels, irradiant, boundless. His face was turned everywhere, the nebulae were his ornaments. If a thousand suns rose together into the sky, their light might approach the splendor of that Being.
It was the vision he had shown a shadow of in the sabha of Hastinapura; now it was complete, refulgent. Arjuna saw the universe with his gifted sight, all its eternity gathered in One, in the body of the God of Gods. His hair stood on end, he folded his hands in awe and the Pandava fell on his knees. “Oh, Lord, I see the Gods and their hosts in you! I see Brahma on his lotus throne and all the rishis and heaven’s nagas. I see you with numberless arms, bellies, mouths and eyes, but I do not see your end, your middle or your beginning, O cosmic, infinite One!
I see you with your crown, mace and wheel of fire. You are the light of lights, incomparable!” cried Arjuna in ecstasy and terror verging on death. “The sun and the moon are your eyes, your face is an eternal fire whose brilliance lights the universe. The void of space between the stars is full of you. The three worlds are in awe of this Form of yours and I tremble seeing you shouldering the sky, blazing in more colors than I had dreamt could be. Oh, Vishnu, this vision makes my soul weak with fear. I see your endless mouths, dreadful with tusks, full of Time’s devouring flames and I quail. Be gracious, Lord of Gods, sanctuary of the galaxies!
I see not just my enemies and friends, but all men and women, humankind, fly like moths into your flaming jaws. Lord, I see the earth and the constellations spinning into your fanged mouths and you licking them up. Have mercy, O Godhead, I know nothing of thee!”
God said in thunder, “Time am I, waster of worlds. Fight or stay your hand, no matter: these kshatriyas will die in me. For that I am come. So, take up your weapons! Win glory by killing your enemies and enjoy a kingdom, O ambidextrous bowman. I have already slain your enemies; you are only my instrument. Kill Drona, Bheeshma, Jayadratha, Karna and the rest, whom I have damned. Fear nothing, fight and you will conquer.”