Can you clarify the character and past-life history of Karna?
Or outer battle many authors have tried to champion Karna because he was apparently wronged and in spite of being wronged he fought on and he tried to become big despite being subjected to injustices so he sometimes his life and story may resonate with the lives of many people who feel that they are being unjustly treated in life so now yes it is true we can say at one level that Karna was unjustly treated and before going into his next life to understand why he was unjustly treated let us focus even on this life if we look at Karna yes he was unjustly treated in the sense that although he was a Kshatriya he was called as a charioteer he was a son and he did not get the respect that was due to a Kshatriya but then if we look at the Mahabharata even Yudhishthira and the Pandavas were subjected to injustice even they had to suffer all kinds of atrocities although they were virtuous they became orphans lost their father then when they came back to the kingdom of Hastinapur then they were persecuted due to this wickedness of Duryodhana and the weakness of Dhritarashtra can you imagine going to a friend's house and being poisoned over there that's how Duryodhana tried to poison Bhima can you imagine being in a house and a cousin trying to burn you alive in the house so now again the Pandavas did not do anything wrong but just the greed and the envy of Duryodhana made them subject to so much injustice so the point is if we want to learn from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is not that there is suffering that there is injustice in this world the point that we learn from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana is that how virtuous people in spite of injustice respond virtuously so Lord Ram himself had to suffer in one sense the injustice of being exiled for no fault of his now Lord Ram is God and he has absolutely no past life's bad karma because of which he has to suffer but even he had to be exiled but what does the Ramayana teach us how he responded to injustice with morality, with integrity with dignity so that is the essential lesson, yes life may treat us wrong but do we respond wrong or do we respond right so the Mahabharata is in one sense theologically more evolved than the Ramayana in the sense that in the Ramayana the contours of good and evil are very clear, Ram is virtuous and Ravana is vicious but the Mahabharata in order to take us to a deeper understanding also shows us shades of grey so at one level Yudhishthira is virtuous and Duryodhana is vicious but what about Karna the case of Karna makes us go deeper and think more seriously about the right and wrong courses of action so yes at one level all of us will face some situations when we are wronged by life when we will feel that we have been dealt with unjustly but how do we respond so Karna responded unfortunately by instead of sticking to the path of virtue he decided to side with and stick with a person who was dedicated to the path of vice that was Duryodhana so you can also hear the other answer about why Karna was called Sutaputra to understand the full history of Karna here I will focus on the intuitive or emotional appeal that Karna's story generates for some people because it seems that he was wrong as they also feel they are wronged in their life yes even when we are wrong we should respond in the right way not in the wrong way so let us look at Karna's character he was very charitable he was very expert in archery and yet he made several blunders serious blunders he always hand in glove hand in glove means he was always a co-conspirator for Duryodhana and all his schemes it was he who suggested that Draupadi be disrobed after she had been lost by Yudhishthira in a rigged gambling match and it was he who also went along with the whole evil gambling match and exhibited a sadistic evil delight in the humiliation of the Pandavas now in spite of his having caused so much pain and suffering to the Pandavas and in fact Karna was the bastion or the stronghold of Duryodhana's confidence without Karna Duryodhana would not have dared to challenge the Pandavas to a war or to accept their challenge to a war by refusing to give them any land and although Karna had so grievously hurt the Pandavas still Krishna offered him to let everything be forgiven first Krishna went very humbly to Duryodhana to request him for peace when Duryodhana in his arrogance said I will not even give enough land it will allow a tip of a needle to pass through then Krishna tried his very best to avoid war by trying to make Karna see sense Duryodhana when he was not ready to see sense Krishna felt that if Karna saw sense and Karna decided not to fight in the war against the Pandavas then Duryodhana would also be saved from his course of self-destruction and world destruction which is what the Brukshetra war eventually became so at that time just before Krishna left Hastinapur he asked to meet Karna and at that time Krishna told Karna his true identity and he also told him that being the eldest Pandava you can be the king why do you want to fight in this terrible war if you fight you know because you are virtuous you know that virtue triumphs and because you are siding with a vicious person you will have to suffer and die so Karna had already been told that about his being the older brother of the Pandavas by Kunti and Karna replied I know the truth of what you are saying Krishna yesterday I had a dream in which I saw that Duryodhana was sitting on a cart drawn by donkeys dressed in black Duryodhana was dressed in black had a shaven head and he was being dragged down to the lower regions this imagery indicated his defeat and death on the other hand Yudhishthira was seated on a magnificent chariot drawn by white horses Yudhishthira himself was dressed in sparkling white with a crown and he was being led upwards this indicated his victory and he says that the dice we have cast against the Pandavas through Shakuni will come back to us as the arrows of Arjuna's Gandiva and that will kill me and Bhima will kill Duryodhana when he spoke this there was hope for still avoiding the war but then Karna said although I know that I will die if I fight for Duryodhana how can I abandon Duryodhana it is because of him that I have been the ruler of this Angadesh it is he who has given me honour it is he who has given me respect when nobody else gave me that the Mahabharata describes that Karna was a victim of misdirected loyalty some people may glorify Karna's devotion to Duryodhana or his friendship and loyalty to Duryodhana but both from a practical and a philosophical level is it really so glorious if a man if a person like Duryodhana is ready to strip naked and abuse a woman in public then somebody who supports that person faithfully is that faithfulness glorious isn't that something like honesty among thieves if a terrorist is going around killing thousands of people and some other terrorist decides to lay down his life for that terrorist who is a killer of thousands of people is that loyalty of the second terrorist to the first terrorist glorious even from a normal ethical point of view Karna made a serious blunder and from a more philosophical point of view Karna said that Duryodhana had given me the Angadesh but then let us think was the kingdom that Duryodhana gave his own to give actually Duryodhana had stolen that kingdom from the Pandavas it belonged not primarily to the Pandavas so the inability to see backwards to the reality he saw only Duryodhana's role and he did not see the true reality and beyond the ownership of the Pandavas of the kingdom the ultimate owner of everything is the Supreme Lord and Krishna was requesting him fight on the side of virtue so unfortunately Karna could not see the wisdom of what Krishna is saying now some commentators may say that Krishna was very diplomatic and he was afraid of Karna and that is why he tried to weaken Karna now actually if you look at the Mahabharata in total there are at least two occasions when explicitly Arjuna bests Karna bests means Arjuna overpowers Karna first is during the Virat Yudha when Arjuna single-handedly fought against all the Kaurava warriors and Karna was there and Karna was defeated, wounded and he fled away from the battlefield the second time was earlier when they were in the Kambia when Duryodhana tried to humiliate the Pandavas he went there and then the Gandharvas it's a long story but the sense is that the Gandharvas defeated Kauravas including Karna and Karna fled and then Arjuna came and Arjuna single-handedly defeated Arjuna and Bhima, they defeated the Gandharvas, it was Arjuna who primarily fought with the Gandharva Angaraparan and defeated him so Arjuna defeated the Gandharvas who had defeated Karna even when he was backed by a full army and Arjuna was single-handed and similarly Arjuna defeated Karna when he was backed by the whole Kaurava army so in military might certainly Karna was not superior to Arjuna and Krishna's motivation in trying to make Karna see sense was not just fear of Karna it was compassion to avoid an unnecessary and self-destructive bloodshed so Karna unfortunately did not take Krishna's good counsel so Krishna told him oh Karna you know the truth of what is going to happen but if you do not take my counsel then you will have to meet death when the time of destruction comes one's intelligence works in an unintelligent or anti-intelligent way that is what happened with Karna and ultimately his misdirected loyalty led to his death in the Kurukshetra war so from this life's point of view we can see that the Pandavas were wrong they were victimized in many ways they were insulted in many ways Karna was wrong, Karna was victimized Karna was insulted in many ways but the Pandavas responded by sticking to virtue Karna responded by sticking to vice in spite of having his own virtue so even from their this life's perspective we see that Karna made serious wrong choices and had to bear the consequences now if we go backward into the previous lives the Puranas describe that Karna was a demon in his previous life named Sahasra Kavacha Sahasra Kavacha was a very powerful demon who had a thousand Kavachas, thousand armors on his body and he was going on a rampage of irreligion and destruction of religion, so at that time Narnara and Rishis they had a he went and challenged them and there was a fight and at that time 999 of his Kavachas were destroyed and only when all of his Kavachas would be destroyed would he die but just when 999 Kavachas of his were destroyed he fled and he escaped and he went to the sun for shelter the sun actually did not want to shelter a demon but at the same time Vivasvan being a god who also plays the role of a Kshatriya had to offer shelter to somebody who surrendered to him so because he had sought shelter he gave him shelter but at the same time he knew his undesirable character traits and that's why at the first opportunity that he got, the sun god sent Karna back to the earth so and then that's why when Kunti was playfully chanting the mantra that the Roasa had given him Surya immediately came and gave that demon, now in the form of an infant now in the form of a new body now at first as an embryo but then as an infant to Kunti so therefore if you look from his antecedents he was a demoniac person and even from this point of view he made seriously wrong choices of sticking with those who were demoniac so to summarize, Karna as I started by telling that in Mahabharata the black and white are at one level clear but at another level the lines become hazy with respect to some characters so that haziness is seen in Karna's case to some extent he has some virtuous qualities as I said he was charitable, he was chivalrous but then his one vice which spoiled all his good qualities was his loyalty for a evil cause loyalty towards an evil person so Karna demonstrates how a good person can become bad because of association and attachment to a bad person so that is the essential lesson we learn from Karna that a person can be noble and virtuous but when he becomes attached to an evil person he becomes spoiled he becomes forced to tread the path of evil and then bear the consequences.