Ask a Hare Krsna – Episode 13 – Understanding Karma by Analyzing Mahabharata P1

Audio Podcast

Hare Krishna.
Welcome to our show, Ask the Hare Krishna. It is said that knowledge is having the right answer and intelligence is asking the right questions. We have many intelligent questions with us and also the expert to give such knowledgeable answers.
Today, we have one of the renowned speaker who is famous as spiritual scientist to answer our viewers’ question. Please welcome His Grace Chaitanya Charan Prabhu. Chaitanya Charan Prabhu is a monk and spiritual author.
He has done his electronic and telecommunication engineering from the Government College of Engineering, Pune, India. Chaitanya Charan Prabhu is a disciple of His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj, who is a senior disciple of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He is practicing Krishna Consciousness for the last 25 years.
He is a member of ISKCON’s leading intellectual body, the Shastric Advisory Council, and is the associate editor of ISKCON’s global magazine, Back to Godhead. He is the author of the verse-only Gita daily feature, wherein he writes daily a 300-word inspirational reflection on a verse from the Bhagavad Gita. Till now, he has written over 1700 Gita meditations that are posted on GitaDaily.com and are read through daily feeds by thousands from all over the world.
He also answers questions by speakers on his website, thespiritualscientist.com, where over 3500 audio answers and several hundred articles are available. Till now, he has written over 1700 Gita meditations and he is the author of 16 books and many more on its way. He travels all over the world from Australia to America giving talks on spiritual subjects in temples, universities, and companies.
We are happy to have him in our show. Mr. Rakesh Gudla, working as a software developer in Hyderabad, had asked these questions in the series, Understanding Karma by Analyzing Mahabharata. Hi Krishnababu, this is Rakesh Kumar from Hyderabad.
Why do we accuse Kauravas and Karma for doing wrong and always support Pandavas? It’s very surprising. Now, the main question is, if Krishna has planned everything so that no one can use their free will and even if they want to, it’s not going to work because he has already planned. So, where is the Karma and free will? And moreover, I think what we are I think what about Vaisnav is the best scriptwriter and the best marketing manager this whole U.S. has ever seen because he has written which is very, you know, which we cannot even think in this yuga because, you know, he has written Mahabharata which we cannot, we can assume things but we cannot verify not even one fact because there is no one alive to verify and even and if he has written with this and even, you know, if he has written with his own understanding and, you know, own assumptions, then now we also understand that Mahabharata is based on, I mean, in today’s case, we understand Mahabharata based on our own assumption and based on our circumstances.
Do you think that we can ever relate what has written to the current world? Moreover, Mahabharata has happened, you know, in some of the different yugas and how can we even compare those characters and examples to the current world which I think is irrelevant. Hare Krishna. Question.
When the Mahabharata occurred at an entirely different time in a different yuga with circumstances very different, is it even relevant now? Answer. The Mahabharata actually embodies timeless values. Every book has a driving question and the driving question of the Mahabharata is kahadharma.
What is dharma? That is the question whose answer all the characters in the Mahabharata are seeking and this is a universal question. The specifics of the situations may vary, say, as compared to today’s times, there may be no mystic weapons available, there may not be the gods and the demons whom we see today, but the essential human decisions that we all have to take. What is the right thing to do? What is the wrong thing to do? What is it that we are meant to live for? If we look at the whole Mahabharata, we can easily relate with the situations and we can see there is virtue, there is greed, there is envy, there is commitment, there is betrayal, there is faithfulness.
So the whole panorama of human emotions and human interaction that we see in today’s world, they are present at that time also. So the Mahabharata’s relevance is because its focus is on understanding the right course of action. What is it that we are meant to do? What is the right thing to do? And for this world, this is a question which everybody all time has and that driving question of the Mahabharata is what makes it universal.
So even if you feel that some circumstances are different, those circumstances, they alone don’t determine the decisions of the characters. Decisions the characters take, they are based on sound ethical considerations which are universal. And we see that Duryodhana has envy for his cousins and we see that even today, there are families in which one set of siblings is envious of another set of siblings.
And we see that sometimes some people, despite being having differences, they stay united. The five Pandavas stay united despite their differences because they had a common purpose. They were all devoted to Krishna.
So we can see that also a higher cause uniting some group of diverse people. The essential values that drive the characters, be they good or be they bad, they are something which you can see across time, place, circumstance. So although the Mahabharata is spoken in a distant age, but as far as the essential driving decisions that the characters take and the values that drive those decisions, those are something which are similar to what we face and that’s how we can learn from the Mahabharata.
And more importantly, this is from the ethical perspective. From the spiritual perspective, the Mahabharata is not just a set of stories. It is a set of stories where God Himself, the omnipotent, all-purifying Supreme Krishna manifests in this world.
And when He manifests and when He performs His Gila, at that time just hearing about Him purifies us. So because Krishna is present and because everybody in this world at all times needs to become purified, needs to become uplifted in their consciousness, and hearing about Krishna is a fundamental way to become purified. So therefore, both from the ethical perspective and the spiritual perspective, the Mahabharata has perennial relevance.
Next question. Has Vyasdev written such a perfect, he’s a perfect stage manager, he’s written a perfect script that it is impossible to verify whether it is true or not. It’s such a beautiful drama that we enter into it.
We get absorbed in it and we don’t even understand whether it is real or not. Is there any way to verify what is described in the Mahabharata, whether it is true or not? The answer, when we talk about truth, we have to understand that this fact, this obsession with facts, this happened at this time, at this place, exact geography, exact history, this obsession with facts is, in terms of human history, a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in the post-Newtonian times, since Isaac Newton started measuring, he started the age of science, when measurements became paramount.
So, it is from that time onwards that history became a tool for literal fact keeping, for recording numbers and facts and figures. But before that, not just in India, but all over the world, if you look at the historians in the West, the Greek historians, the Roman historians, and the way they wrote history, they were not so obsessed with facts. History was seen, not just as a means for factual record keeping, history was seen as a means for moral instruction.
So, who did what and what were the consequences and what can we learn from it? That was the primary purpose. So, therefore, when the method of historiography that we use today was something which is not just present in the world, in the past. So, to try to ask for historical evidence through the prism of modern historiography is like, it’s like asking to see one thing, it’s like asking to see the love in the heart of a person by taking an X-ray of their heart.
The instrument and the object to be seen are not compatible. And this does not mean that what is told in the Mahabharata is not historical, it is just that it is a different kind of history. So, having said that, geographically, Kurukshetra is even now existing.
In various parts of the country, for example, especially in Dwarka, there have been many seals and other artifacts found which indicate the historicity of Krishna. He was a historical person who lived and he lived in the same place called Dwarka. Of course, this is not the Dwarka city that we have.
It is the underwater remains of an ancient city and it is a magnificent city that he described. Further, if we consider many of the astrological formation, astronomical formations that are described in the Mahabharata at the time, so for example, the war started at that time. It is said that the war started at this particular time when the nakshatras were like this, when the celestial objects were in this particular way.
Then on the 13th day, this particular astrological event happened, say an eclipse occurred. And so now there are historians who have actually looked at the skies and now we have software by which we can measure map backwards and find out, okay, this eclipse happened at this time, this cosmological formation, star formation was like this. So, when did this happen? And historians have found out that actually the astronomical formations that are described in the Mahabharata, they are actually factual.
They happened thousands of years ago. This is an emerging field of study called as archaeoastronomy. Archaeology is a study of the past primarily through fossils, looking down into the earth.
Astronomy is looking up at the sky. Archaeoastronomy means to know the past by looking up at the sky, instead of looking down into the ground. So, archaeoastronomy is an emerging field, quite a strong field and through it, it has been found that there are many celestial formations described in the Mahabharata which actually occurred thousands of years ago.
So, there are research papers published on this also. So, basically this is a whole different field. But the important thing again is that even if there are certain elements in the Mahabharata which seem difficult for us to believe, say somebody having a mystical weapon by which fire is produced or some celestial beings such as the gods or the demons being there in the Mahabharata, they are characters in the Mahabharata.
But the essential storyline of the Mahabharata is not affected by who is present and who is not present. The essential storyline is about universal human interests, universal human weaknesses and universal human strengths. Therefore, what Vyasdev has written is something from which, is a story from which we all can learn at all times.
And if we just open our minds to understand that the world is not as limited, as simple as we think it to be, then we’ll understand that many more things are possible. If the progress of science has taught us anything, it has taught us humility. That the world is much more complicated than what we think is possible.
So, when just a few months ago I was in Dayton, that is the place where the Wright brothers first flew the airplane. And when they came up with the idea that we’ll have a flying machine, people just laughed at them. They said, it’s not possible.
You cannot defy gravity. But they did that. So, what was thought of as impossible before then, now it’s just a routine fact of life.
So, we have certain conceptions of what is possible and what is not possible. But our conceptions are limited and the reality is far more complicated than what our conceptions are teaching us. So, quantum physics is such a complicated field that a prominent scientist said that if you are not confused by quantum physics, then you have not understood it.
And if you understand it, you’ll be confused by it. So, that means reality is far more complex than what we think about it. So, rather than being close-minded and thinking that just because particular beings or particular powers don’t fit into our worldview, so we think it’s all imaginary.
Rather than that, we’ll be humble, we’ll be open-minded. The world is much more complex than what we know and people can have powers and beings can exist beyond what is our current conception of the world. So, with this open-mindedness, we can see that the Mahabharata is a thrilling story.
But more than a thrilling story, it is an uplifting story. It is a story that can guide us in our life, in our day-to-day decisions now in this world. If Krishna has arranged everything in the Mahabharata, if everything is happening by Krishna’s plan, then why do we blame the Kauravas and Karna? They had no free will.
They just were acting according to Krishna’s plan. There is a fundamental misunderstanding in this question that when we talk about everything is arranged by Krishna, Krishna does not control us. Krishna never takes away our free will.
It is when things have happened, we can see them as Krishna’s plan and make the best out of them. Krishna is so expert that even when bad things happen, He can bring good out of them. But that does not mean that there is no bad and no good.
Actually, certain actions are right, certain actions are wrong. And we see, every one of us has free will. So, we could take it in a simple way.
First is that scriptures themselves contain guidelines. Do this and don’t do this. And now, if we had no free will, then what would be the point in scriptures telling us, do this and don’t do this? In the Vedanta Sutra commentaries, the Acharyas, Vande Vidya Bhushan and before him Ramanacharya, they all point this out that actually, the very presence of instructions in scripture about what we should do and what we should not do, it presumes and it establishes the existence of free will, without which there will be no meaning to the instructions.
So, we all have free will. And we see in the Mahabharata, it is not that characters are acting passively thinking, everything is ordained. All the characters are thinking seriously.
At least, the Pandavas are thinking, should we be doing this? Should we be doing that? Should we be fighting this war? Should we not be fighting this war? Even Arjuna, he is thinking seriously and that’s why the Bhagavad Gita is spoken because he is thinking deliberately and then Krishna tells Arjuna that deliberate further and decide what you want to do at the end of the Gita. So, Krishna also acknowledges Arjuna’s free will. Yathe Siddha Kuru 18.63 says, you deliberate and do as you desire.
So, the free will is definitely a fact of life. Now, there are statements in the Mahabharata where it is said that ultimately everything was the arrangement of destiny. But when are the statements made, that when Dhritarashtra has lost all his hundred sons and then he is in grievous lamentation, at that time, Vyasa comes to him and tells him, okay, not lament that the war was arranged by destiny.
But we see, before the war, that same Vyasadeva has come and he has tried vigorously to persuade Duryodhana and Dhritarashtra to not be so obstinate, to give the Pandavas their rightful share, to avoid the war. So, why is that? That means at that time, the whole purpose was to help them to make a right choice. The right choice, the responsible choice was to give up their greed, give up their envy and live amicably with the Pandava cousins.
So, Vyasadeva, Parashuram, many-many great sages came, the Maitreya Muni and of course, Krishna Himself came. So, they all tried to instruct, inspire, encourage, persuade Gauravas and of course, Karna to make the right choice. But they did not make the right choice.
Like before that, when Vidura is trying to persuade Dhritarashtra to make the right choice, to stop Duryodhana from his suicidal course, at that time, Dhritarashtra tries to say that, if it is the will of destiny that our kingdom be destroyed, our dynasty be destroyed, then what can a tiny mortal do in front of almighty destiny? Vidura cuts through his rationalization and he says, okay, destiny determines the consequences of our actions, not our actions themselves. So, you have the choice and the responsibility to act virtuously. So, the philosophy is spoken in a way that initially, before the war, there is time and time repeated instruction given so that they can make the right choice.
But later, after the wrong choice has been made, then instead of letting Dhritarashtra stay sunk in lamentation, oh, why did this happen? Why did this happen? To get Dhritarashtra to forget the past and to move forward. Now that the war has happened, now that his sons have been killed, now he can just keep beating himself up with blame and feel self-pity and self-mortification and just keep suffering. But now, life has to move on.
He says, okay, what has happened has happened. It was the will of destiny. Now, you move on.
Now, you focus on spirituality. Now, you make your healthy choices. Now, you grow.
So, the philosophy is presented in a way by which, at different times, the characters can make right choices. So, when we say something is happening by destiny, that does not mean that we have no power. That means we also have to be responsible to make the right choices.
So, Karna, Kaurava, Dhritarashtra, they all had their freedom and despite getting good advice from many, many sources, they rejected their good advice and that is why they are considered culpable. Thank you for watching our show, Ask a Hare Krishna. If you have any spiritual questions, then kindly send your question as audio or video by WhatsApp to 9987060606 or you can even mail us at askhktv at the realgmail.com.