What does it mean when it is said Yudhishthira’s gambling was orchestrated by Krishna – why would Krishna cause so much distress and destruction?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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it is said that Yudhishthira’s gambling was actually orchestrated by Krishna what does that actually mean? does it mean that Krishna has is making Yudhishthira do such things and causing so much distress and then eventually destruction as happened in the Kurukshetra war so why would Krishna do such a thing to teach some lesson? answer there are two distinct things going on over here which we need to clearly separate if we are to be able to move forward in our lives constructively that means each one of us should be able to perceive that history itself is seen at multiple levels or events themselves are seen at multiple levels we understand at one level that whatever happens is there are individual people making individual choices which result in things happening in a particular way simultaneously when those individuals are also great devotees of the lord and when they do things which are which to our eyes seem morally objectionable and to anyone it’s questionable that how can a virtuous person do something like this so then we need to look at a broader context for this in a higher sense history is his story history is unfolding of God’s will now when we say it’s unfolding of God’s will that doesn’t literally mean that everything that everyone does is orchestrated by God and people are just like puppets what it essentially means is that Krishna pursues his plans through the actions of various characters and Krishna’s plan is resilient enough that no matter what happens he can pursue his plan even through the missteps and mistakes of different people so is it that Krishna himself deliberately wanted Yudhishthir to do something wrong did Krishna want Duryodhana to do wrong not exactly, Duryodhana had a desire to do wrong and Krishna utilized that, we can clearly see that Krishna himself did not want Duryodhana to do any wrong and that’s why Krishna went as Shanti Doodh to ask Duryodhana to desist from wrong choices and to make healthier choices but unfortunately Duryodhana didn’t listen so it’s not that we see that it is Krishna making people do wrong things it is more that people use their free will and Krishna uses people’s use of free will to take things forward in terms of furthering his plan so Krishna’s intelligence in that sense is superlative just like say there is a drama happening and sometimes some characters it’s a children’s drama, sometimes some characters might not be able to they might speak the wrong lines they might slip and stutter but an expert director will be able to accommodate oh you spoke like that, still doesn’t matter so he’ll use that to make sure that the characters that still the further plan is pursued that the drama still goes on despite the lapses done by someone just like say, we might take a wrong turn while driving but then Google Maps still tells us, from here you take a right turn and move on so now this brings us to a further differentiation so that means any living being, however they use their free will Krishna can use it to further his plan having said that how does he specifically use different people’s free will so now the devotees have a desire to serve the Lord and in our tradition we have the concept of Yoga Maya and Mahamaya so there is an illusion in which a devotee is put by the plan of the Lord by his personal agency and then you could say there is an official agency his official agency is Yoga Maya so sometimes when the devotees do something which is wrong as say the Gopis do when they leave their homes to go out and search for Krishna to have Raftila with him that is out of their love for him from a material level it could be objectionable but from a spiritual level it is transcendental and demonstrative of extraordinary surrender then beyond that further if we consider that so Yudhishthira’s actions are in some ways like Gopi’s actions now Duryodhana’s actions are not like that Duryodhana is himself filled with lust and greed he is filled with especially envy and arrogance and so that is his own free will being abused and Krishna using that abuse of free will to pursue his purposes so Yudhishthira being orchestrated means that Krishna has a plan and sometimes the devotee might make some missteps but Krishna uses those missteps and why does the devotee make those missteps? because Krishna wants the devotee to use Krishna wants to teach that ultimately there are various reasons that even great people can sometimes commit some mistakes and even if we commit mistakes the lord doesn’t forsake us so that is an opportunity for us to still learn and grow forward so basically there can be devotees like Yudhishthira can be seen at different levels and some devotees consider that because Yudhishthira is a pure devotee he can never commit any mistake and if that is the view that is prevalent in certain people in the tradition then to explain how he could have done something like this we say that yes it was orchestrated by the lord so beyond that you could also put it in another way that actually Yudhishthira at that time so there is a Bhagavatam’s vision of Yudhishthira where he is said to be a pure devotee and whatever he is doing is orchestrated by the lord the Mahabharata’s vision is that in the Mahabharata Yudhishthira admits to to Drupadi that and to the Pandavas that during the gambling match he got carried away by the heat of the gambling of the movement of the gambling and then he gambled excessively some people might say that this is just his humility speaking and that is also one explanation so basically we could see it even if we see it as a mistake that mistake we see it is within the plan of the lord and that is Yogamaya means it is an illusion created by the lord so that the devotee can learn so that the lord’s purpose can be served now did the lord want to cause distress and devastation well the lord doesn’t want to cause distress and devastation but what it means is that in this world everyone, good people have bad things happening to them and how do they respond to it, how do they learn from it and when bad people do bad things how they eventually get a lesson for it how they eventually suffer for it, that is gradually taught in the long run so that way we understand the situation that it is orchestration of the lord that is the ultimate purpose of teaching some lessons that the lord has and those are served by the lord through the actions of his devotees so orchestration is not the suppression of free will but the accommodation of free will within a divine plan by the lord’s expertise by which the lord externally responds and internally guides so that everything works ultimately to serve the lessons that he wishes to teach and the purpose he wishes to achieve