Why did Vidura not instruct Dhritrashtra to apologize to the Pandavas and to thereby become offense-free for practicing bhakti?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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Question, why did Vidura not instruct Dhritarashtra in the process of bhakti which could have taken him to the highest elevation? If it was because of his offense to the Pandavas, then why didn’t Vidura tell him to apologize to the Pandavas? Answer, the Bhagavatam depicts a tension between paradharma and aparadharma. So, paradharma is a dharma of devotion to the Supreme, to Krishna and aparadharma is the dharma of our material responsibilities and material obligations, material duties.
So, often the Bhagavatam depicts how the paradharma, for doing the paradharma, aparadharma has to be given up. That means the gopis leave their families caring for whom is their duty so that they can care for Krishna when he calls them to perform darshan. So, this is the Bhagavatam stressing the paradharma but at the same time the Bhagavatam also gives due respect to aparadharma.
That means although I’m stressing the gopis devotion, it is said that they leave everything for Krishna’s sake but then when they return, it is described in the last chapter of the Ras Panchayat, that their husbands are not resentful because to them it appears as if their wives actually did not go because Yogmaya arranged for other forms to be there of the gopis so that the husbands thought that the wives were with them in their homes only. So, basically through this the Bhagavatam illustrates that it cares even for aparadharma not just for paradharma and similarly if you see in a hierarchy in a hierarchical society generally the elders very rarely apologize to their juniors and there is no incident anywhere where the Pandavas got an apology from Yudhishthira. Generally, hierarchical cultures are face-saving cultures where if a senior has committed a mistake also, the senior is not expected to apologize nor are the juniors expected to demand an apology from the juniors, from the seniors.
Now, this is of course descriptive. This is not prescriptive. It doesn’t mean that no senior should apologize to the junior.
Today, we don’t exactly have a of the traditional culture and we have to see what works but the point is that it would have been very very difficult for Dhritarashtra to apologize to the Pandavas and especially to Bhima who had towards him who had a special acrimony because Bhima had been responsible for killing of his hundred sons and so we see that Dhritarashtra was so attached that he was still living on the Pandavas parasitically almost. Then Vidura had to speak extremely strong words just to get him to leave the kingdom. So, that itself would have been difficult for Dhritarashtra but on top of it, he had to apologize to his juniors.
That would have been incredibly difficult and as far as why Vidura did not instruct him in Bhakti, we have to understand that not everybody is always ready for Bhakti. There are different spiritual paths and different people according to the levels of their consciousness, according to the level of their particular spiritual evolution, they will be inclined towards different paths and the Bhagavatam, for example, is quite comfortable with describing that Shamik Rishi was an impersonalist and doesn’t try to somehow either justify his impersonalism or rectify it. He just accepts it.
So, we have to understand that at different stages of spiritual evolution, different paths may be the best suited for different people. So, Vidura knew Dhritarashtra well and if Dhritarashtra, even after having seen the Vishwaroop of Krishna, had not changed his heart and had not become devotional, inclined towards Krishna, it’s unlikely that he would have been able to do it now. So, generally speaking, the Bhagavatam focuses on the process of meditation for elevation.
Even Yudhishthira also, when it’s described his departure, he also does meditation as a means for cutting himself off from the world and absorbing himself in transcendence. Now, of course, because he has been a devotee throughout his life, so his meditation also is devotion, but still the point is that he meditates. So, the Bhagavatam frequently depicts devotion, meditation as a means towards elevation and meditation as a means that we sometimes we adopted even by devotees to intensify their meditation, their absorption in the Supreme and sometimes it may describe directly a Vaikunthaya, the Bhagavatam may describe a Vaikunthaya plane coming to elevate Dhruva Maharaj and take him to perfection.
So, we don’t have to obsess over specifics. The point is that when Yudhishthira was elevated and how high he went and which path was chosen, that’s best understood by the Lord and the representatives of the Lord who are guiding a particular soul. So, based on the level of consciousness, based on the hierarchical culture which Yudhishthira was a part of and based on the fact that the Pandavas were junior to Yudhishthira as well as based on the fact that Yudhishthira had never been inclined devotionally, it’s quite unlikely that he could have accepted the devotional path and Vidura accordingly guided him towards the path of meditation.
Thank you.