Shakuni Character Analysis 1 – The mind rationalizes selfishness as selflessness

[Seminar at ISKCON, Brisbane]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
And today and tomorrow, I’ll discuss on character analysis of Shakuni, and how we can learn lessons about processing negative events in our life. How, I’ll talk about various themes, but how unjustified expectations lead to frustration, and they lead to destruction. So, in the Mahabharata, there are multiple characters who are at various shades of white and black.
So, among the the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the Kauravas are broadly the villainous characters, but even among them, there is a spectrum. There is Dhritarashtra, who is like the passive villain. Then there is Duryodhana, who is the active villain.
And then there is Shakuni, who is the instigating villain. So, I’ll talk briefly about the, anyway, is it audible to all of you? No problem. That’s okay.
So, I’ll talk a little bit about the story of the background of Shakuni. And then we will, as the incidents move forward, we’ll discuss some lessons from it. So, it seems this mic is too humble.
That’s okay. It’s fine now. It’s fine.
So, Shakuni is the prince of Gandhar. Gandhar is Khandahar, is a part of what is one India is, one South Asia is Afghanistan. And Bhishma is the grandsire of the Kuru dynasty.
The Kuru dynasty is, at that time, the most powerful dynasty. And although he himself is a celibate, he is not a renowned celibate. He is a politically administratively involved celibate.
And because there is no other father figure in the Kuru family, so he takes up the responsibility of arranging for the marriages of the two sons who are going to, of the people who are going to become the next ruling dynasty. So, that is Udhrashtra and Pandu. So, while looking for rice for these two princes, he comes to Gandhar and he asks the Gandhar king for his daughter as a wife for the Kuru prince.
They’re delighted, they’re honoured. And then Shakuni comes with Gandhari and naturally because he’s approached first Gandhari. So, Gandhari is the first princess that is approached by Bhishma.
Later on, he approaches the Madra king for Madri and for Parvratha also. But here, at this particular point, he offers Gandhari in marriage to Udhrashtra and this outrages Shakuni. Shakuni feels as if his sister’s life has been ruined.
He expected that when Bhishma came with the proposal for marriage, he expected that my sister will become the queen of the reigning king of the Kuru dynasty. But Bhishma did not specify that. Bhishma did not promise that.
Bhishma said that it’s time for our dynasty sons to get married and he asked for that. So, now Gandhari was gracious. She accepted it gracefully and she became a faithful, devout, chaste wife of Udhrashtra and she did get royal privileges.
She lived in royal luxury. But Shakuni felt that Bhishma had scorned, mocked their dynasty and had ruined the life of Gandhari and from that time, his animosity towards Bhishma started and he was always looking for an opportunity to get back at Bhishma. Bhishma was the patriarch of the family and being the patriarch, he wanted that everyone be well taken care of.
So, at that time or soon after that time, soon after their marriage, Pandu was cursed for a particular reason and then he decided to take the retired order of life and he started living in the mountains. So, he completely cut himself off from the world. Nowadays, even if a relative goes somewhere, we have mobiles and phones.
Practically every hour we can give update where we are. Sometimes we have now with Google location or WhatsApp location. We can see practically where the person is at what time, if they are driving or whatever.
At that time when Pandu left home, there was no way to know where he was and there was no way to know even whether he was going to come back. Pandu had been cursed that if he ever united with his wives, he would die. So, it was presumed that he would not have any children and eventually Pandu had the Nyoga ritual performed.
Nyoga ritual was the idea that for continuation of dynasty, a qualified male can impregnate women and then that’s how the dynasty continued. So, that’s how the Pandavas were born through the gods and then still Pandu was living in the forest and because Duryodhana was the eldest among the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra and he was expected to become the king because that Pandu had sons. This news also came very late and whether Pandu’s sons were going to come back or not, that was also not known.
So, Duryodhana became like the sinosure of all eyes because he was expected to become the king and he became a child of privilege. He developed an entitlement mentality. Eventually when Pandu unfortunately passed away, the sages in the forest told Kunti that now you should go back to your family and stay with Bhishma.
The sages themselves came with Kunti because there could have been some question about the parentage of her sons. So, the sages told that Pandu had consulted us and based on our consultation, he had the gods have the children through Kunti. So, Bhishma was delighted.
Not only had his come back but also now he had grandsons and the Pandavas were Kshatriyas but especially Yudhishthira as the eldest had lived for the longest time among the brahminical sages in the forest and because of that he had a very brahminical gentle disposition. In general, all the brahmins, all the Pandavas were very courteous, very respectful. Although Bhishma is sometimes seen as short-tempered and impetuous, still he too was actually very respectful to everyone especially the elders.
So, soon the courtiers and the citizens could see the contrast between the courteousness of the Pandavas and the arrogance and brashness of the Kauravas and slowly the affection of all the courteous citizens started shifting from Duryodhana to Yudhishthira. As if this was not bad enough for Duryodhana, on one side, he lost the position of being the centre of affection. On the other side, at least among all his brothers, he was the strongest and he had the Kshatriya pride and I am the strongest.
But he found out that he was no match to Bhima. When they would play in the river, sometimes Bhima would just nonchalantly pick Duryodhana and throw him off. Bhima would do it guilelessly but he infuriated Duryodhana and that’s how his end came.
He felt that the Pandavas were usurping that which belonged to him. The privilege of being the prince, of being the next heir, of being the centre of the royal family, all this which he had enjoyed since birth through his early childhood into his early teens, he suddenly lost it all and he started becoming enormously angry and Shakuni saw this and he decided to exploit it. So Shakuni could also see that although at one level, Bhishma tried to be equal towards both the Kauravas and the Pandavas because both in a sense were his grandsons.
But still, he naturally felt more protective towards the Pandavas for multiple reasons. First, of course, was that he felt that he had missed that whole childhood, especially if their grandparents and they love to have their grandchildren with them and if they feel the grandchildren have been away for 10 years and then they come with them, he showered their affection. So naturally because he felt that the Kauravas were always with him, the Pandavas were not.
So he showed some special affection on the Pandavas. Additionally, he felt a greater sense of responsibility towards them because the Pandavas did not have a father, whereas the Kauravas had a father. In those days, just to not have a father was almost seen to be like an orphan.
Even the mother was there. So he felt that protective instinct greater towards them. And thirdly, they were much more cultured, much more respectful and that also endeared them to his heart.
So when Shakuni, who was a very shrewd and cunning person, observed that on one side Bhishma is so affectionate to the Pandavas. On the other side, Duryodhana is so antagonistic towards the Pandavas. He saw that this was a fissure in the Kuru dynasty, which he could exploit.
And by exploiting this fissure, he could break havoc in the dynasty. And in this way, he hoped that he would cause pain to Bhishma because Bhishma on one side loved the Pandavas, on the other side, he also wanted the Kuru dynasty to be together. So if the Kuru dynasty broke apart, that would cause great pain to the heart of Bhishma.
And thus, he set apart, systematically poisoning the mind of Duryodhana. So Duryodhana himself was quite evil, but on top of that, what Shakuni did was, he poisoned him further. And especially, he poisoned him not just with negative thoughts, but also with negative ideas of various conspiratorial schemes of what he could do.
Now when we are attached, it’s a great illusion that whenever we are attached, our attachment transfers whatever power we have to the object of our attachment. But we think that we are in control. So actually, there was this triple level.
Dhritarashtra was the officiating king and everybody respected him as the king. But he was irrationally attached to Duryodhana. And he just could not tolerate Duryodhana being in any way displeased.
And Duryodhana could make Dhritarashtra dance to his tune by just expressing this pleasure. And Duryodhana thought that my father is on the throne, but I am in power. But actually, Duryodhana’s mind was very manipulable by Shakuni.
And thus, Shakuni was pulling the strings and Duryodhana was dancing accordingly. And Duryodhana was pulling the strings and Dhritarashtra was dancing accordingly. So in this way, to say there was a parampara of attachment, the chain of attachment and Shakuni was controlling.
And Shakuni was actually thinking that he was doing all this for his sister. He thought that if she could not become the queen, although she actually became the queen, but not exactly, because it was Bhishma who took care of most of the administrative work. Although Dhritarashtra sat on the throne, he felt if she could not become the queen of the king, at least she should become the queen mother.
And of course, he felt that he himself would have power. Being in Gandhar, he had some level of power. That is a small kingdom.
But here, if he could control the Kuru kingdom, he would have far far greater power. So normally in a family, even if it’s a joint family, the maternal uncle does not stay at the house for very long. He comes to see his sister, see the family and goes back.
And it’s normally said that the maternal uncle is very affectionate to the children of his sister. So that was naturally there. But he stayed on because Duryodhana got attached to him.
And he also stayed on thinking that by being here, I will control things. So actually, when we get attached, as I said, actually, attachment is something that makes us powerless. If somebody is attached to alcohol, then they may think I am free, I can go here, I can go there.
But wherever they go, the desire for alcohol is there. And it drags them. A person may go from Australia to America, from Australia to India, from India to Russia, but wherever they go, they are tied to the bar.
They will be pulled to a bar. So attachment controls us. It takes away our power.
That is when the attachment is to an object. When the attachment is to a person, then what happens? Then we become controlled by that person. However, when it is a person, things become more complicated.
Because that person is not just one unit. Everyone has their own mind, their own senses, their own intelligence, their own ego. And of course, we have our own senses, mind, intelligence, ego.
And in this whole combination, when we become attached to someone, we become controlled by that person. And then their moods, their whims, their ideas, they make us very constricted in our choices. At least an alcoholic will be bound, but alcoholic is predictably bound.
Whenever there is a bar, alcoholic will go towards that. But when we are attached to someone, because that person has their own moods, and we can’t tolerate seeing that person displeased. So based on their moods, which are often unpredictable, our actions also become unpredictable.
So Duryodhana was the person who knew which buttons to press, so that he could get Dhritarashtra to do whatever he wanted. In all relationships, affection is essential. There is bondage that can happen through relationships.
And there is bonding that can happen through relationships. We want bonding, we don’t want bondage. So the difference is in very many different ways.
But primarily, the difference between attachment and affection is based on whether we are concerned about the other person’s well-being first, or we are concerned about the other person’s pleasure first. Normally, the well-being and the pleasure, they need not be two non-intersecting circles. There can be an intersection also.
But if you have to choose, say for example, a mother naturally loves the child. Now if the child has eaten too many chocolates, and the teeth are getting problems, and the child says, Mummy, I want chocolates. He says no.
The child starts crying. I can’t see you cry. You take chocolates.
Now what is happening? Giving pleasure to the child, but that pleasure is against the welfare of the child. So if you consider welfare to be one circle, pleasure to be another circle. Normally, the relationship would be where the pleasure and the welfare come together.
That is the stable position for the relationship. But sometimes, for the welfare of the other person, we may need to do something that may be displeasing to them. And sometimes, that’s what we will do if we are truly affectionate.
On the other hand, if we do that which gives them pleasure, although it is not good for them, then that is where the relationship goes in the zone of attack. So Dhritarashtra, he himself, as I said, was not an active being. He was a passive being.
And ultimately, if you look at when people act badly, when people do bad things, it, at a foundational level, comes from an inability to accept reality. An inability to accept reality. That means, Dhritarashtra, he never could reconcile the fact that because I’m blind, I can’t be the king.
He wanted to be the king. And when he said, I can’t be the king, I’ll make sure that my son becomes the king. And this wanting one’s son to prosper is natural.
But this cannot blind one to morality. This cannot blind one to sensitivity. Later on, Vidura, when he speaks strongly against Duryodhana, and he tells Dhritarashtra to stop Duryodhana from antagonising the Pandavas.
So, Dhritarashtra gets furious with Vidura. And he tells him, get lost. He says, I don’t want you.
And he practically banishes Vidura. And Vidura goes to the forest and joins the Kauravas, the Pandavas who had already been exiled. And then the next morning, when Dhritarashtra wakes up, he says, what did I do? Vidura was my well-wisher, he was my friend, he was a person so close to me.
Vishnu was also his well-wisher, but Vishnu was one generation above. So he tells Sanjay, no, please go and call Vidura back. And then Sanjay goes and when he calls Vidura back, Vidura still has hope that maybe Dhritarashtra can be relieved.
And so he gets Dhritarashtra back, he comes back. At that time, Vidura tells him, Dhritarashtra tries to rationalise the action. He says, you know, I naturally love my son.
And when you criticised him, I couldn’t bear it. So I spoke harshly to you. He says, I couldn’t tolerate that you always speak favourably about Pandu’s sons and speak unfavourably about my sons.
So Vidura says, you know, I am the uncle for both of them. And I, I care for both of them. But Dhritarashtra, you are not able to see what is good for both of them, what is good for your son.
When knowledge comes in our heart, knowledge can act like light or knowledge can act like lightning. Lightning means illumination, but only for a few moments. And then it goes off.
So knowledge comes as light for those who are not blinded by their attachment. But for those who are blinded by attachment, the knowledge comes as a lightning. It is there for a few moments and it goes off.
So Dhritarashtra could recognise occasionally that he was actually attached to Dhritarashtra and he was doing wrong to his sons, to Pandu’s sons, who were his nephews and who treated him like their own father. They respected him like that, but he just couldn’t accept it. He just couldn’t continue with that understanding.
So here, the difference between attachment and affection is seen when there is a conflict between the other person’s pleasure and the other person’s welfare. So if we choose that other person’s welfare, that indicates that we have affection. Mother says, no, I will not give you chocolates.
I’ll cry, the grandmother will cry, but still, no, I’ll not give you chocolates. Now with respect to chocolates, it’s so easy to understand. As respect to a mother and a child is small, we understand that the mother has to be responsible.
But as we grow up, several things become more problematic. Sometimes what is actually for the welfare of the other person may not be so clear. And sometimes we also have our agendas.
In every relationship, there are often unresolved tensions. And sometimes we do something not just because it is for their other person’s welfare, but also we know that they don’t like it. And making them do something that they don’t like to do, we gain a sense of controllership.
So when that comes into the picture, then what happens? When some idea comes from our ego, then it triggers the other person’s ego. So if somebody, you know, I say, I have got diabetes and I shouldn’t take sugar. And then I want to take sugar, don’t take it.
Now somebody may tell me out of concern for me. But there will be also the desire, you know, I’m going to control you. I want to tell you what to do.
So things become very subtle. But in the case of Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana and Shakuni, things were not that subtle. Duryodhana was making schemes at the instigation of Shakuni to destroy the Pandavas, to have them burnt alive.
It was not just a small accident or a covert attack. When the Pandavas started becoming very popular, at that time, Duryodhana just could not tolerate it. And then Shakuni came up with the idea.
He says, the way the Pandavas are, the way they’re conquering the hearts of everyone, Duryodhana, you will be left in a corner as a footnote in the history of the Kuru dynasty. Unless you take action, you will be relegated to the dustbin of history. What should I do? Now he slowly instigated.
See what Duryodhana observed and what caused Duryodhana pain, Shakuni verbalised it. See how they didn’t care for you here, they didn’t care for you here, they didn’t care for you here. Actually he was cared for according to his position.
But because there was no other, no one else, earlier he had got more than what was due for his position. It’s like in a family, if the parents have only one child, then that child gets the full attention of the parents. When the parents have a second child, sometimes the first child becomes a little jealous.
The parents were always for me. Now, not only is their attention going to the second child, it’s going more to that child than to me. Something like that happened in a far more malevolent degree to Duryodhana.
Because it was not just his parents’ attention, it was, he thought, a matter of prestige and eventually royal succession. So it’s normally, if we have wounds, if we have boils in our body or if we have some wounds, now the wounds need to be healed. But if somebody comes and just pinches the wounds, ah, it feels so much pain.
So Shakuni, while acting as a well-wisher of Duryodhana, was actually pinching his wounds, reminding, see, you did not get this over here. You did not get that over here. You did not get over here.
And in this way, Shakuni controlled Duryodhana. And finally, Duryodhana said, what should I do now? Tell me that. I can see all that is happening, what you’re telling me.
What should I do? And this way, when Duryodhana had come to a level of irrational, vengeful rage, then Shakuni planted him. Send them to Vazhnavath and have a palace of lac built over there. Lac is an inflammable material.
And then have them, they’re burned, they will not come back. This was no small conspiracy. First of all, he had to months before send Virochan, one of his trustworthy assistants there to supervise the building of the palace.
And he had to make sure that the palace was built in such a way that it looked very attractive. It looked majestic. And not many people came to know that it was made only of lac.
And then after that, he had to persuade his father to send the Pandavas there. And so he did a whole manipulation and Shakuni was there behind, making him do all this. Sometimes people say that actually when we become detached, when we become detached, then we become hard hearted.
We don’t care for others. It’s possible. But actually, quite often, it is attachment that makes us hard hearted.
When we become attached, our emotions get locked in the object of our attachment. And we become desensitised, we become super sensitised to the emotions of our object of attachment. But we become desensitised to the emotions of everyone else.
So because Dhritarashtra was so attached to Duryodhana, so he was super sensitised to the emotions of Duryodhana. And even a small pain Duryodhana might have, but in the process, he put his own nephews who were supposed to be, who were meant to be like his sons, he subjected to the pain of practically killing them or attempting to kill them. So it’s attachment that makes us hard hearted to whatever threatens our object of attachment.
It’s completely desensitised. Now, for Shakuni, there was no love lost towards the Pandavas. He saw the Pandavas as visible representatives of all that his sister had lost.
And by extension, he himself had lost. Oh, they are getting the popularity, they’re getting the acclaim. This is what my sons, my nephew should have got, my sister’s son should have got.
So for him, there was no immediate blood relation between him and the Pandavas. And yes, Dhritarashtra, for Duryodhana also, not much affection towards the Pandavas, but Dhritarashtra was expected to have some parental affection. But he was completely desensitised.
So when Shakuni started manipulating in this way, so Shakuni, he had his own agenda. Eventually, we see that Shakuni’s actions cause great distress, even to Gandhari. He thought that I’m doing all this for Gandhari.
I’m doing all this to give her what actually belonged to her. But it didn’t work out like that. So the nature of the mind is, once the mind comes up with a particular scheme, then it reimagines all of reality, so that it supports its scheme.
That means that, I’ll take another example to illustrate this point. In the Ramayana also, there was a similar conspiracy. And in that conspiracy, we have not the maternal uncle, but we have a maidservant.
Who is that? Mantara. So Mantara poisons the mind of Kaikeyi. And then Kaikeyi has Ram banished.
Now while she’s doing all this, she is somehow convinced that I am doing this for, she feels that Bharat should become the king. Now, at that time, there was a system of primogeniture. Primogeniture means the eldest son becomes the successor.
So Ram was naturally expected to be the successor. But because Kaikeyi was the king’s favourite queen, she expected that my son should become the successor. And she imagined that all that she was doing, it was not for her sake.
She felt, I am simply protecting the rights of Bharat. So the kingdom that was meant for him, has been deprived of it. And therefore she said, I will do all this.
She felt as if Ashrath was misunderstanding her. The courtiers were misunderstanding her. They were maligning her while she was acting out of selfless love for her son.
So she created an imaginary Bharat in her mind, who would actually support whatever he was doing. By the way, I’m assuming that most of you know the basic storyline of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. If that is not the case, maybe I can recap the story a little bit.
How many of you would prefer that I recap the story a little bit? So in the Ramayana, Ram is meant to be the prince who is going to become the king. But Kaikeyi conspires and has Ram sent to the forest so that Bharat, her son can become the king. So now while she does all this, she is imagining that when Bharat comes back, he will approve what I have done.
And he will actually congratulate me how expertly you protected my rights. So she has created an imaginary Bharat in her mind. And then when Bharat comes back, he sees that all of Ayodhya has become like a ghost town.
And at that time, he comes to his palace, his parents’ palace, his mother’s palace. Normally, Dashrath was quite affectionate to her. He thought Dashrath would also be there.
He says, no king over there. His mother is there. And he offers his respects to her mother and asks, where is my Bharat? And she tells him, after bestowing the kingdom on you, the king has departed from this world.
Oh, son, the whole kingdom waits for you. Shocked, she says, what happened? And she starts telling him the whole story. And Bharat hears it.
He is horrified. He just can’t believe that his mother could do all this. First of all, he can’t believe that all this happened.
His father has died and his son, his brother has been exiled. He can’t believe that his mother made, caused the cause of all these things. And from the way his mother is speaking, his mother is clearly thinking that she’s done all this for him.
He can’t believe that she could have thought that he would be pleased by this. One shock after another shock for him. The first word that he says, they burst the balloon of the imaginary Bharat that Kaikeyi’s mind has created.
He says to Kaikeyi, you cannot be my mother. You must be the goddess of destruction incarnated into our family to destroy our whole dynasty. And as Bharat keeps censuring her, that imaginary Bharat that she has conceived collides with the real Bharat and that imaginary Bharat disappears.
Ram has already been exiled. Ashwath is already dead. So similarly, Shakuni creates an imaginary Gandhari.
He thinks I am doing this for her to give her her rights. But she was satisfied. Naturally, she as a mother would have wanted her son to become a king, but she had a sense of ethics.
She had a sense of morality and she could see that the Pandavas were much more virtuous than her sons. So here we see the insidious way in which the mind works that nobody ever feels or very few people actually feel that they did anything wrong. Even their hardcore criminals in jails ask them, why did they do a crime? They say, this happened, that happened.
They will blame their circumstances. Yes, circumstances may have been bad, but the nature of the mind is that it somehow tries to justify whatever wrong it does. And one of the easiest ways to justify the wrong is by claiming that it is being done for someone else.
If I am doing something which is bad, but then how do I justify it? By saying that I’m doing this for someone else. I’m doing this for your sake. So when we come to believe that, then it becomes very difficult for us to overcome the illusion.
Because we all have a sense of morality, but when that sense of morality gets covered by some higher morality or by something which claims to be a higher morality, then we get into trouble. That is when we start getting deluded. So basically for all of us, there is, we have a sense of morality which tells us this is right, this is wrong.
And when we are to do something wrong, how do we do it? We have to desensitise our conscious. Our conscious is actually quite remarkable in how it works. Our conscious is like our inner security device.
Now, if say in our house, we have some security device, then with that device, we may have trained in such a way that if we or our family members come, it doesn’t get set off. It allows us in. But if some unfamiliar member, unfamiliar person comes in, immediately it gets set off.
So similarly for us, according to conscience, there are certain things which we know are right. And we just do it normally. There’s no alarm that is set off.
But we know that there are certain things which are wrong. And normally, as soon as we are tempted to do things, this conscious sets off an alarm. No, this is bad.
You cannot do this. You should not do this. Now, when this happens, when the conscious sets off an alarm like that, we have a choice whether we listen to that alarm and we stop doing that or we turn off the alarm.
So for example, say the alarm has been set when someone has come. If I know this person is actually a friend and then we set it off, then if that friend comes second time, third time, fourth time, then most of these security systems, they also have some kind of artificial learning that they do. So if once, twice, thrice in the presence of that person, the alarm is set off, then the alarm may get customised so that the alarm is set off.
It doesn’t turn on. So same way for us. When we do something which is wrong, first time when we do it, there’s a strong alarm.
Don’t do this. This is not right. Don’t do it.
For example, if there’s a butcher and the butcher is training his son to kill animals, then first time when the butcher’s son takes a knife to kill an animal, the hand trembles. It’s his life. How can I kill it? But the butcher’s son does that.
Second time, he’s still trembling, but less. Fifth time, tenth time, he does it nonchalantly. I was once going to Mayapur in Bengal.
I was just seen in the bus. There was a boy who was just 15 years old, 12 years old, something. He was just chatting with his friends and he was catching chicken.
Like we cut sabjis while chatting with people. Just cutting animals like that. So what had happened was completely, you could see the horror in the eyes of the chicken, see the struggling, and obviously he was catching them.
So he could feel their struggle in terms of feeling their movement, but there’s no emotion, completely decentralised. So when we do this something again and again, our conscience gets desensitised to it. So just as if somebody comes again and again into our house, our alarm gets desensitised, and then if we do the same activity again and again, then our conscience gets desensitised to it.
Now this desensitisation is not easy, especially when we know that something is wrong. So one of the ways in which the conscience is desensitised by the mind is that the mind makes us feel that actually this is bad, I know that, but this is for a higher good. Now whether it is for a higher good or not, that is debatable.
So Kaikeyi was imagining that this is for Bharat. So although I’m hurting Ram, but actually it is for Bharat. So like that Shakuni was imagining that I’m doing all this for Gandhari.
Gandhari was wronged by Bhishma, and I am going to correct those wrongs. So sometimes the mind sets agendas which have no basis in reality. Now Gandhari did not want any such kind of devastation of her family, any disruption of the unity of her family, but Shakuni kept doing that.
So when Shakuni acted in this way, he acted, he was thinking that I am doing this for Duryodhana, I am doing this for Gandhari. Of course he knew he was also doing it to get back at Bhishma. And through it all, what was happening, that is a small conflict.
Envy is almost always natural among families, two brothers, who is doing better, who is earning more, who has a bigger house, that kind of things are natural. But for that to rise to the level where one brother wants to kill another brother, that’s quite a serious thing. So that was the effect that Shakuni had on Duryodhana.
So as I made the point earlier that whenever we do wrong, it is largely because we don’t accept, we are unable to accept reality. All perversity, all immorality comes from an inability to accept reality. So for Shakuni, if it is acceptable reality, okay.
My sister is the queen of Dhritarashtra, not of Pandu. She is not going to be the reigning queen. And actually she was in some ways the reigning queen also for a long time.
But he just held on to that hurt and he used it to do his vengeful agenda. Sometimes when somebody hurts us, there are slights which happen in life. Some people insult us in some ways, some people disrespect us in some ways, some people disappoint us in some ways.
Intelligence means to keep slights slight. It’s slight, don’t make it a big issue. Intelligence means to keep the slights slight.
But the mind replays the slight on a hundred feet screen. And not just once, twice, it keeps replaying it. And thus we become resentful.
So this resentment is an entirely different topic, which I will discuss tomorrow. We will talk about how Shakuni’s resentment led him to revengefulness and that backfired and caused his and his family’s, Azhar Durjana’s family’s destruction. But I’ll summarise what I spoke today.
So I spoke about how the Shakuni, in the Mahabharata, how Shakuni worked against the Pandavas, against Bhishma, because he felt that his sister had been slighted by Bhishma. And I talked about how attachment makes us feel that we are in control, but it takes away our control. It makes us attach, come under control of the object to which we are attached to.
And if it’s a person, then we get controlled by this person’s unpredictable moods and whims. So Dhritarashtra was attached to Durjana and Durjana became attached to Shakuni. So Shakuni became like a mentor for him.
And I’ll talk tomorrow more about how from the older generation, there was Shakuni and there was Dhritarashtra. So Durjana came much more under the control of Shakuni and he tried to control Dhritarashtra. But Shakuni had, so there is a difference between attachment and affection is primarily in terms of when there is the other person’s welfare and the other person’s pleasure.
Normally, we try to bring both together. But when we are attached, we want that person’s pleasure, even if it is at the cost of the welfare. When we are affectionate, then we’ll see the other person’s welfare, even if it is at the cost of pleasure.
It’s like a mother will not give chocolates to a child, even if the child cries. When we grow older, then we may want other people’s welfare, but we also have our ego. I’ll make you do the right thing.
And what actions emerge from our ego, they trigger the ego of the person. And then that makes things complicated. And I talked about also how, when we are going to do some wrong, how do we do it? Our mind imagines that I’m doing it for someone else.
Kaikeyi created an imaginary Bharata, for whose sake she was doing all the conspiracy. Shakuni created an imaginary Gandhari, for whose sake she was doing all this. And thus, she justified what he was doing.
So our conscience is like a customisable security setting. And the more we do a particular activity, the conscience becomes desensitised to it. And when we become desensitised, then that which would have been earlier, unconscionable, unimaginable for us, we may end up doing it nonchalantly.
So that Duryodhana, he made a whole conspiracy, which took him more than a year to execute, by which he wanted to have the Pandavas burnt alive. So how this whole conspiracy backfired against Duryodhana and against Shakuni, we’ll discuss in tomorrow’s session. So are there any questions or comments? So, Gandhari, she covered her eyes when she got married to Dhritarashtra.
So women were expected to do just whatever the men told them to do. So this is not right. And was it that men were in control and women had no choices in the Vedic literature? Every culture has its own nuances.
And when we superimpose our perspective on another culture, it becomes very, it’s actually unfair. What I mean by this is that we live in a culture today, where there is, where there has been exploitation of women. And actually, because of that, women have tried to, and have succeeded in many ways, in gaining power and autonomy over their lives.
If you consider traditionally, there is a natural complementarity, complementation among the genders. And each gender is specially equipped to do certain things. If there is, say, a group of 10 small children, five, six year old, there’s one man or one woman.
Now, who is likely to be better able to control those 10 kids? It’s naturally a woman. So there is, by nature’s arrangement, women have been given certain strengths, men have been given certain strengths. And there is a division of labour.
So women were quite often the controllers of the homes. I grew up in a traditional Indian Brahminical family. And I saw, not just my father, but my parents, grandparents, their generation.
Yes, the husband would earn the money and the husband would have a lot of say in the world outside. But the home, the wife would be the would be the controller. So there was a division of power, which harmonised with the natural strengths of each gender.
This is a whole big subject. I don’t want to get involved in that subject. But I’ll just broadly answer your question.
Yes, in that system, men did have more power than women. But then at that time, men were also chivalrous, men were protective. But over a period of time, as the age changed, as Kali Yuga came up, then one result of that, that men, instead of being protective, started becoming exploitative, started becoming dominated.
And when that happened, naturally, women were controlled because of that. And then women reacted to it. So one side of the coin is male chauvinism.
The other side of the coin is feminism. Feminism, aggressive feminism is actually a reaction to male chauvinism. And from today’s perspective, when we look back at history, we may see history simply as as largely being male chauvinistic.
But that’s not the case. At least in the Vedic culture, there’s a clear understanding that we are not the body, we are the soul. So the soul who is in a male’s body today can go in a female’s body tomorrow.
So the bodies that we have are temporary. But based on the body that we have, there are particular roles that we are meant to play. And if we work cooperatively, we all play our roles.
If we think that worldly prosperity, worldly power, worldly success is life’s ultimate goal, then it will appear as if yes, men had more power, more control, more position, and women were deprived. But then men were also expected to renounce the world, they were expected to take sannyas. And the important thing is that if we see the Vedic culture from the bodily perspective, we’ll misunderstand it.
The point was that we are not men, we are not women, we are souls. And all of us have to use the bodily vehicle we have in the best possible way for making both social contribution and spiritual evolution. One of the defining differences between pre-modern times and modern times is that in the modern times, the idea that there is some world beyond this world, which is life’s ultimate destination, that was rejected.
This world is all that is, or this world is all that matters. When we make this world as the measure of everything, then a worldview which was centred on pursuing another world as life’s most important goal, that just becomes incomprehensible. So the idea that a woman should follow her husband, that did not mean that the husband was the controller and the woman was the servant.
No, the husband was meant to follow the guru. The guru is meant to follow Krishna. So it’s a chain where everybody is led spiritually upwards.
Now today we have rejected Krishna. Society may not be officially atheistic, but it is functionally non-atheistic. It is functionally non-atheistic.
God is a non-entity for most people. So in such a worldview, a worldview where God was life’s ultimate goal doesn’t make sense. So we have to see if we want to actually understand the Vedic worldview, if we see it through the worldview of the filter of feminism, it will appear as chauvinistic.
But that’s not the purpose. The purpose was that because there’s an understanding that they’re not the body, they’re the soul, that spiritual realisation is the ultimate goal of life. So in the female body, playing the domestic role was the most congenial way by which the females, the soul in the female body could make an invaluable social contribution while also pursue spiritual evolution.
Now in today’s world, because that spiritual goal was forgotten both by men and by women. So when men forgot it, they think that, okay, we are here, we want to enjoy and control women and try to enjoy. Women say, why should we be controlled? So then the society that we have today has its own issues.
Many times children are neglected because both husband and wife are working and women sometimes they have to work and take care of home. The pressure on them becomes too much. I’m not in favour or against any of this.
That’s not my point here. My point here, I’m simply making here is that we cannot view, evaluate the traditional Vedic worldview, which was based on the foundation understanding that another world is life’s ultimate goal, that the relationship with God is the most important relationship, that we are essentially souls. We cannot evaluate it with the filter of gender roles as we have envisioned in today’s world through feminism, by through the categories of feminism or male chauvinism.
So both husband and wife, man and woman, are meant to work cooperatively. Now exactly how that cooperative role will work, that will vary depending on time, place, circumstances. So in today’s world, the world is much more different from what it was in the past.
So we, every society, every family will have to find out its own way in which both can work cooperatively. As I said, two aspects, social contribution, we play our role in this family, society, and we progress in our spiritual evolution. Does that answer your question? Any other questions or comments? Yeah.
In the start you said, when we get attached to an object or a person, the power gets transferred to that person, effectively. In that context, just looking at how Duryodhana was and how Dhritarashtra was, Duryodhana could not see that whatever Shakuni was doing was actually causing detriment to him, whereas Dhritarashtra could see at certain points of time but chose not to act on it. So Duryodhana could not see that what Shakuni was doing was to his detriment, whereas Dhritarashtra could see but chose not to act on it.
Dhritarashtra had some amount of moral sense within him. For Dhritarashtra, his moral sense was almost entirely deadened. So he felt that actually Shakuni is like a mentor for what I want to achieve, Shakuni is giving me ideas how to do it.
Whereas for Dhritarashtra, his primary desire was that I want my son to become the king and I want my son to be happy. So whatever it takes, I’ll do it. But he had the ethical sense.
So basically, now when we have attachment, how much that attachment blinds us, how much it blurs or blinds our ethical sense, that depends most importantly on our own basic consciousness. So for example, there are some doctors while they’re doing the medical profession, they may sometimes prescribe some extra tests so that they can get some commissions from those who are doing the tests and they can earn some more money. That is you could say at one level exploiting a patient.
But there are some doctors who now everybody wants money. Some people may get it ethically. Some people may push some ethical limits.
But how far? Some people may just ask the patient to do some more tests. Some doctors may go to the extent that they may complicate a patient’s disease so that the patient keeps coming to. Some doctors may go in worse and they will steal a patient’s organs.
So now what determines this? It is not just the temptation, it is also one’s innate constitution. We are all an ongoing product of our past. Basically our actions are determined by four broad factors.
So our actions are determined by four broad factors. One is our past karma, which creates samskaras, which creates impressions in our mind. And in modern science, sometimes this is said our genes, different people are genetically predisposed in particular ways.
So we are prompted to act in particular. Sometimes parents may have two children and one child will be like gentle, nice and other child will just be noisy, crying, domineering. So that’s just the same parents, but the souls are different.
Souls have different samskaras coming from previous lives. So our past impressions is the first thing. Second is our upbringing.
If children grow up seeing their parents smoking and drinking, for them that becomes a normal part of their life. If they see their parents going to temples and doing some holy activities, then also they are probably prompted to do that. Now all these, when you say these shape our actions, they don’t determine our actions.
They prompt us in particular directions. Our past impressions, our upbringing. Third is our association.
Somebody may be in very pure upbringing, but if they associate with people who are into bad habits, they themselves develop bad habits. So beyond these is our free will. Our free will is prompted or pushed by these three factors, but it is we who choose.
And of course, the ultimate transformative principle is Krishna’s mercy. Krishna’s mercy, the effects, negative effects of our past impressions, our upbringing, our association, all of it can be countered. But broadly speaking, when we make a choice, we make a choice based on our free will as well as our impressions, our upbringing, our association.
So Duryodhana, the Mahabharata describes, was actually, he was like an incarnation of Kali. He was a person who was meant to bring about Kalaha, bring about conflict. In fact, later on in the Mahabharata it is said that the daityas and dhanavas, the ungodly demoniac beings, they performed great sacrifices because they wanted to take over the earth.
And they performed sacrifices and through the fruit of their sacrifice, Duryodhana was born. So in that sense, Duryodhana had an evil disposition within him coming from the past. So along with that, he had his upbringing, which was not evil, but it was pampered.
Dhritarashtra’s upbringing was more of deprived. Not so much. He was also in the royal family, but he was not exactly pampered.
So Dhritarashtra was not exactly being poisoned by Shakuni. See, traditional societies are quite hierarchical. So Shakuni, in a sense, was at a subordinate position to Dhritarashtra.
So he could not influence Dhritarashtra, but he could influence Duryodhana. So in all three ways, from the past impressions, from the upbringing, and from the association, Duryodhana had many things going bad for him. And that’s why Duryodhana’s conscience was desensitised.
Dhritarashtra, on the other hand, was attached. So Duryodhana could not even see that I am doing something wrong. In fact, later on, when the sages try to chastise him for acting so viciously, he says, he comes up with various rationalisations.
He says at one point that even after great introspection, I don’t see anything wrong in what I have done. And then he says, I have simply acted according to my nature. If anyone is to be blamed, the creator who made my nature should be blamed.
We’ll discuss this argument more tomorrow. But the point here is that he was desensitised completely. But Dhritarashtra was not so desensitised.
That’s why Dhritarashtra could feel the pinch of conscience, because his upbringing was better. He had the good association of Vidura. He had the good association of Bhishma also.
So that’s why he eventually was redeemed. Eventually, when Vidura enlightened me, he was redeemed. But Duryodhana was incorrigible.
So any other questions? I have not read anything about Shakuni’s past life and decedents.