Duryodhana character analysis 1 – How the entitlement mentality degrades
Hare Krishna thank all of you for coming today evening and I'll speak today about the life lessons that we can learn from the Mahabharata specifically from the main villain in the Mahabharata that is Duryodhana Madhvacharya, one of our most prominent Acharyas in the Vaishnava tradition explains that the epics they can be understood at three levels literal ethical I'll give brief outlines so the Mahabharata is a story where there are two sets of brothers Pandavas and Kauravas and the central character among the Kauravas is Duryodhana we are going to study about him he was notoriously obstinate and we will discuss how this obstinacy arises and how it misleads Duryodhana's father was Dhritarashtra who was blind and so he could not become the king younger brother Pandu became the king but he was quite detached and he renounced the world and went with his wives to a forest so now whether he was going to have children or not it is also not clear so when Dhritarashtra had a child that first child was Duryodhana so he was pampered and treated like royalty because he was a member of the royalty but he was expected to become the king so he was the apple of the eye for everyone and eventually because of an unfortunate incident Pandu passed away and then the Pandavas the sons of Pandu came back when they came back at that time they had lived in the sages with the brahmana they had lived in the forest with the sages and they were very gentle, courteous respectful and their behaviour contrasted with the abrasive, arrogant behaviour of Duryodhana and his brothers and naturally the affection of all the courtiers as well as the citizens started shifting from Duryodhana to Yudhishthir and his brothers, Yudhishthir was the eldest of the Pandavas so because of this Duryodhana started becoming immensely envious and he felt that the Pandavas are taking away that which was meant for him so Duryodhana had what we could call in today's language as the entitlement mentality he felt that I am entitled to all this and this entitlement, if somebody feels I am entitled to something and that entitled thing is taken away one does not feel grateful that I had it one feels outraged, how dare it be taken away so there is recently a study done about parenting a comparative parenting styles in say, in the western world and in traditional world, they compare with Africa, so they found that there are young kids they compare America and Africa so in America, kids when they grow up, they are pampered from childhood whatever they want, they are provided and when they grow up, they may have 100 things, but if the 101st thing is not provided for them, they become infuriated so on the other hand, the same set of researchers, they went to Africa and they they were going on a safari in Africa and there was a young girl who joined the safari and when she joined the safari at that time, nobody she was just a small girl 10 or 11, nobody told her to do anything, but on her own when they would settle down at a particular place she would find something to do she would maybe lay the mats clean up the pots, clean up the floor, she would herself do something without anyone telling her to do it so this this psychologist, he said that in America, even if you tell the kids they will not do it but here, she was doing it without being told so what was the reason for this? the reason is not necessarily that children in Africa are good and children in America are bad it is that children are children everywhere but the way they are treated not just the way they are treated, but more than that two children may be treated in the same way, but they may respond differently so it is, A, if somebody gets an entitlement mentality and B, if they feel that I deserve all the comforts and if somebody doesn't provide me the comforts, then they are to be blamed the Pandavas they had lived in simplicity so it is an oversimplification you could say Duryodhana was somebody like living in America, the Pandavas were somebody like living in Africa so the Pandavas, when they lived in the forest they had no servants, they had no assistants, so from their childhood they saw that we have to help in doing things, and they grew up with that ethos, so even when they came to the kingdom, they accepted the royal opulence, but that royal opulence did not lead to arrogance and they remained humble, they remained cultured Duryodhana could not bear this and he started plotting how can I get the better of the Pandavas now Duryodhana was was a person who had been especially pampered by his father Dhritarashtra Dhritarashtra had been born blind and he wanted to fulfil his desire for kingship vicariously through his son I cannot become the king, so let you become the king sometimes this is what the parents desire, oh I couldn't achieve this I couldn't enjoy this, you should enjoy this, so that wanting to give the best to the children is fine, but when wanting to give the best to the children, what values we create in the children that is also important so because Dhritarashtra was so attached to Duryodhana so the result of that was he couldn't tolerate even the smallest pain or displeasure or even the tantrum of Duryodhana and then Duryodhana knew how to, even from his childhood he could see that I can control my father so Dhritarashtra in this way he was a king in name only from the early youth Duryodhana started manipulating Duryodhana so he felt that my father is on the chair but actually I am I am going to be the king and even now I am in power so for us all of us have been given certain things in life now the things which we have been given often we tend to take them for granted and something which we have been given it is taken away we feel outraged, why was this taken away so the entitlement mentality is actually the opposite of humility and gratitude entitlement is I deserve it and rather than being grateful that I have been given I think who dare take it away from me so with this entitlement now it is to some extent natural if something which we have been habituated to throughout our life then it is natural that ok this is what I am used to somebody has been always living in air conditioning then suddenly if they go to a place where there is no air conditioning they feel very uncomfortable so at one level to become habituated to what we are normally having and to expect it is a reasonable expectation but at another level if we look at our life growing in life is essentially growing in selflessness when a baby is born the baby does nothing for anyone the baby just cries and everyone does things for the baby but as the baby grows up child says ok even if I cry everything that I want is not going to be provided for me and I am also meant to do some things so I have to study as the child grows up into a huge I have to take to some work at home I have to take up responsibilities as a young person grows up further rather than my parents doing something for me I need to do something for them I need to share their burden I need to take their burden so essentially the biological growth happens automatically but this growth in terms of selflessness it does not happen automatically it has to be done intentionally and if that does not happen then we stay emotionally immature emotionally malformed and because of now if somebody is physically malformed it is very easily visible ok this person one finger is missing or this scar is there on the face or whatever but when people are emotionally malformed that is not so easy to see but so so emotionally malformed means that we never grow out of the entitlement mentality yes and I am used to AC ok if I need air conditioning that's fine but then I have to work for it I have to earn the money then I can have it so I need some facility but along with the facility comes some responsibility which I have to discharge so Duryodhana never got this point that actually the attention and affection of others needs to be earned he saw that now I was getting all this and other Pandavas have taken it now how dare they take it from me so rather than thinking that I should do something to earn that affection back that I should make my behaviour more gentle more cultured more respectful no he thought the Pandavas are obstacles in my way the nature of the human mind is to always look for problems out there rather than thinking that the problem may be in here the mind's reflex action is ok the problem is out there the problem is in that person the problem is in that situation the problem is in that particular event so because of that we lose the opportunity for improvement now yes the problem may be out there the problem may be in here we have to objectively evaluate quite often the problem is both the problem is out there also and the problem is in here also but for Duryodhana he did not see that he was losing the attention and affection not because the Pandavas were intentionally usurping it from him but just that by their behaviour by their conduct by their character they were attracting him attracting others so he could have improved his behaviour he could have changed his conduct he could have developed his character but instead of doing that he started plotting to put the Pandavas down so competition is a fact of life we live in a world where the resources are limited and whether it is in a school where the number one is going to be only one person whether it is a competitive exam for entry into a college where the number of people are going to enter are finite or it's getting a job where hundred people are interviewed and only five are going to be selected competition is a fact of life but competition can be constructive or competition can be destructive so constructive competition means the presence of others inspires me to improve destructive competition means that I want to destroy the others so that I can succeed so Duryodhana had the mentality of destructive competition and when he was just barely entering into his teens at that time he came up with a whole conspiracy to kill one of his own cousins to kill Bhima now among the five Pandavas Yudhishthir was the eldest and in the sense Yudhishthir was the competitor to Duryodhana either who would become the king would be the eldest among the Kauravas or the eldest among the Pandavas see we all have you could say inside us a scale of envy some people we feel a little envious of some people we feel much more envious of some people we feel hugely envious of but some people are so good that they just go out of our scale of envy I can't compete with this person only some people are so good we just give up I don't want to compete with this person so in terms of character and behaviour Yudhishthir was so virtuous that Duryodhana realised I can't compete with him so he wanted the wealth he wanted the kingdom and later on when Yudhishthir got a lot of wealth he felt envious but Duryodhana felt my strength my strength is my physical strength he was the eldest and the strongest among the Kauravas and he felt most challenged by the strongest among the Pandavas that was Bhima so Bhima came directly into his envy metre and Bhima was playful because he had a lot of strength he would like to exhibit his strength he would do it without any malice so later on in the forest at one time when they were fleeing all the Pandavas got tired so Bhima was just one among the Pandavas but Bhima actually carried Kunti Yudhishthir, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva on his body and he ran they were all tired but he was tireless such was his strength at one time in the forest Pandu and Kunti had been sitting and they had been chatting and they were sitting on top of a cliff in the forest in the mountain they were chatting and looking at the scenery and Kunti had dozed off at that time suddenly in the distance a tiger roared in the tiger roar Kunti got up and she got up with a start and Bhima was in her lap and Bhima flew off her lap and he fell down the cliff Kunti screamed in horror and in great alarm Pandu rushed down the cliff as fast as he could and by the time he reached down he found that Bhima had fallen on a rock and the rock had broken apart so such was the strength of Bhima so when they would play in the water Bhima would just playfully he would just pick people and throw them away deeper into the water so when he did this with his brothers they didn't mind he was just playful but when he did this with Duryodhana it was unbearable for him I am the next king and you pick me up and throw me away and in front of everyone in front of all those who considered me to be the greatest he just couldn't bear it and he at that time made a plan just decided to kill Bhima see all of us can have negative emotions within us sometimes we feel angry sometimes we feel envious sometimes we feel lusty sometimes we feel greedy now these negative emotions come within us now how much we act on those negative emotions that depends on our upbringing on our association and on our past life impressions so somebody may be greedy and some child might be greedy and the mother is told take one cookie the child goes at night and looks at the fridge and picks up few more cookies and eats quietly it's a small thing somebody else may be greedy and they may go to a shop and they may sneakily shoplift steal something from there somebody else may be greedy and they may break into a house and steal from there somebody else may be so greedy but these people just break into a house and nobody is there and they will steal from there but they will not hurt anyone some thieves may be so greedy that they want to steal and for stealing if somebody comes in the way they will even kill that person so greed is there in all of them but the extent to which greed is expressed whether it is simply taking something from one's house we are not going to take or to kill someone and steal that variation in expression of the greed that depends on one's past impressions and one's upbringing and of course Gaunatai Bhagwan ki jai Gaunatai Bhagwan ki jai of course it also depends on one's association but here Duryodhana was just a small child, a teenager a teenager basically and as a teenager he came with a whole conspiracy to have Bhima poisoned so that indicates that he not only had envy but his envy was malicious malicious to the extent of being murderous that's why we can say that all greed or all envy or all lust or all anger they are not born equal and the anger in person A and person B are not the same because person A's character or conscience is different from person B's and A will express that anger in a particular way B may express it in an entirely different way or in a far greater degree now for Duryodhana he made the plan he just acted very affectionate and he told the Pandavas and he called his brothers also let's go to the river and enjoy we will have picnic over there and I will arrange food for you and we will have a feast so they went and they played and then when the food was being served he pretended to be very affectionate to Bhima he said Bhima I know you have a huge appetite so I have prepared a special feast for you he said I will personally serve the feast to you and acting very affectionate he started serving the feast and the Pandavas had lived among the sages and the sages had not been manipulative or deceptive they were just simple sages who had renounced the world and had been focussing on transcendence so Bhima was guileless and unsuspecting and he just ate the food Duryodhana kept serving him more he kept eating and then they all went to play Bhima just fell asleep the poison started having it's effect the poison started having it's effect and he fell asleep then Duryodhana called some of his brothers the eldest among them and he had Bhima tied totally and after he had his hands and legs tied then he picked him up and just as the way Bhima had playfully thrown him in the water now he threw him into the water but here this was not playful because Bhima was sleeping, was unconscious and he was tied up so the plan was that even if he somehow comes back to consciousness still being tied he will sink so when Bhima hit the water he started drowning but as he went deeper and deeper into the water there were some snakes over there and thought who is this person intruding into our territory so they started tak tak biting him now whom Krishna protects nobody can destroy the Pandavas were virtuous and devoted so Krishna as the super soul arranged for Bhima to choose a particular poison to put in the food and that poison was such that when the snakes bit Bhima the snake's poison acted as an antidote for the poison in the food and in this way Bhima by being bit by the poison of the snakes actually came back to consciousness and when he came back to consciousness he looked around where am I snakes biting him just picked up the snakes started hurling them away one by one by one no human being had survived their stings or to speak of flinging them away like this they just went to they just swam and went to their king and they told him this this frightening human being has come into our territory now their king the god of the waters he Varuna was familiar with the hierarchy and the administration on the earth so he recognised oh this must be Bhima when Bhishma had been in the heavens they had been friends because this is the descendant of Bhishma there were many connections he had so oh this must be Bhima he said his messengers please go and call him and when Bhima came they welcomed him and honoured him and after talking with him Bhima said he said you know we have got some special celestial nectar if you drink it those who drink it become extremely strong so nowadays some people take some drinks which they say some energy drinks or something like that you are tired take some drink suddenly as if energy comes back to you so this was not just an energy drink it was like a body building drink so the best of the most strongest of the warriors among those celestial beings they could drink one pot Bhima just took he drank one full pot and then he looked around picked another pot and as he was drinking the second pot the mouths of all the residents of the court started falling apart took a third pot he took a fourth pot and just drank it, kept drinking it like that he drank ten pots nine of those serpent kingdom warriors had ever drunk more than one pot and now if you drink if you drink a lot of drink or eat a lot of food what is the next thing we do yeah eat a lot yeah but if you eat too much we get a bit tired and we go to sleep thank you so that's what happened they saw that he was getting tired they offered him a bed and Bhima slept for one full week and after he woke up his body had become like thunderbolt each pot of celestial drink that he had taken it had infused him with strength of hundreds of elephants I mean it was ten pots hugely powerfully became and in the meanwhile Duryodhana was congratulating himself yes operation successful Bhima died now of course he was a politician so externally making a show my dear friend Bhima what happened to him where did he go the whole palace was struck by grief and he was also pretending as if he was also grieving but internally he was joyous then after one week suddenly Bhima just emerged out of the water and came running back to the palace and he went straight to Yudhishthir and to his mother Kunti Kunti was beside herself with grief her husband had died she had been a single mother taking care of her sons and she didn't know where where had he gone she came back she hugged him literally bathed him with her tears and then she asked him what happened and she heard because Bhima he was also very shrewd he understood what had happened and Varuna also told him that he had been poisoned and he had been saved so when he told the whole story Kunti was horrified this is what her own nephew had done to her son Yudhishthir became very grave and Bhima was so furious Bhima felt right now I'll go and pummel this Duryodhana how dare he try something like this but Yudhishthir said no right now we've just come from the forest to here we've been here for a short while and we don't know whose loyalties lie where if we go against the Kauravas even if if our accusation is true that accusation will cause a big disruption in the family and what will be the result of that we can't know so he said this is a family matter let's keep it in the family tolerate it, we'll all be more cautious but let's not bring it in the public and he just made some story and it went on now when Duryodhana saw Bhima back his worst nightmare had come true again what happened, I thought I was successful and this person is back and then as they went to Dronacharya's martial academy and he saw that Bhima had become much stronger than earlier this was even worse for them not only is my nemesis back but my nemesis is stronger than before so here his scheme completely backfired, rather than destroying his opponent the scheme ended up strengthening his opponent and as he applied himself, he said I'm going to become good, so his strength was in mace fighting and he developed immense skill in mace fighting Bhima was also very good at mace fighting Bhima was also very skilful but in terms of skill Duryodhana was better but in terms of strength Bhima was better and both of them were excellent mace fighters overall and often in the gurukul also they would repeatedly get into conflicts and sometimes there are exhibition matches, but sometimes exhibition matches would become earnest matches so then others would intervene and stop them, but Duryodhana's anger and envy was going further and further within him and expressing itself without so for us all of us we have certain negative emotions within us and these are just inevitable in the course of life, we sometimes feel envy, sometimes feel anger these negative emotions just come because life brings up various kinds of stimuli before us and they trigger certain kind of responses within us so when the responses that trigger within us, they go beyond healthy limits then we need to become strong and address them if we don't address them then they are going to get aggravated the emotions within us are often like a snowball a snowball at the top of a mountain is tiny as it keeps moving downward, downward, downward it starts becoming stronger and stronger and stronger and by the time the snowball has come to the bottom of the mountain it can knock down a fully grown up person that same person at the top of the mountain could have just with a flip of the toe cracked the snowball but that person's body may be cracked by the snowball at the bottom similarly when negative emotions start rising within us if we can deal with them at the early stage that's like breaking the snowball at the top but once we let it come down down down then it becomes almost impossible to break it Duryodhana, there was nobody whose counsel he could hear as far as his father was concerned he felt that my father he doesn't know anything I am the real boss and I'll control my father so he never openly disrespected his father but he manipulated his father so he was in no position to taking instruction from his father this is the paradox that sometimes when we our intention is to show our affection but if there is only affection without discipline then the result of it is that that the person grows up undisciplined and that person starts taking the affection for granted so he couldn't hear from he couldn't learn anything about Dhritarashtra and then as far as other elders like Bhishma and Vidura and Drona were concerned Duryodhana soon became convinced that all of them are partial to the Pandavas Bhishma he is too affectionate to the Pandavas Drona Drona loves Arjuna so much that's why Arjuna is such a good archer and he has pleased him so he is partial and same with Vidura Vidura he was the strongest so in this way what happened is he cut himself off from anyone who could have stopped the snowball from moving down so one is that when the negative emotions start coming within us we stop it ourselves the other is if we can't stop it we at least have well-wishers around us who tell us this is going too far you have to check yourself but if we start we start thinking that these well-wishers are not actually well-wishers we start thinking of them suspiciously and negatively then we cut ourselves off from their advice and most damagingly for Duryodhana he opened himself to the malefied advice from Shakuni Shakuni had his own axe to grind when Shakuni was Shakuni was the maternal uncle of Duryodhana he was the brother of his mother Gandhari now when Bhishma himself was a celibate because he was a father figure he took the responsibility of getting the marriages of Dhritarashtra and Pandudana so he went to the kingdom of Gandhara and he said that I would like to have the hand of your daughter in marriage for the Kuru prince so Gandhari came and said I am honoured and then when she came along with that Shakuni also came and then because Dhritarashtra was the elder son, elder among the two, so Bhishma had Gandhari married to Dhritarashtra and then he had Kunti married to Pandu now Shakuni he had expected that his sister would become the queen and he felt that Bhishma had slighted their family and Gandhari by having her married to a blind man and he felt that because Bhishma had done this he became antagonistic to Bhishma and he wanted to get back at Bhishma so Gandhari accepted it but Shakuni felt that she has been treated unfairly and I have to get back to her and with this agenda in mind, he was looking around, how can I get back at Bhishma and Duryodhana became a ready puppet in his hands he saw that Duryodhana was already antagonistic to Bhishma and if he could influence Duryodhana then he could get to hurt Bhishma terribly and more than that he also felt that if Duryodhana became the king, then at least Gandhari can become the queen mother and of course if Gandhari becomes the queen brother then I'll become the brother of the queen mother and I'll also get power so he had his own axe to grind and because of that he started manipulating Duryodhana and whereas Duryodhana earlier was doing some small conspiracies on his own with Shakuni he started making huge conspiracies so for us also we all have certain desires, certain weaknesses certain negative desires and negative emotions come within us and when they come within us their coming to some extent is unavoidable because they're just natural reactions we see somebody doing something and we feel angry, we see somebody achieving something and we feel angry these emotions come up but how we respond to them that is our choice if we fan them, if we contemplate them oh you know this person why should he be so praised, I'm much better why is nobody recognising me why is everybody praising that person so that if we keep contemplating it more and more then that's like we are letting the snowball move down the mountain further if somebody counsels us we all may have our own situations in our life where we certain situations trigger negative emotions within us, certain people trigger negative emotions within us when that happens we have to be intelligent enough to check those emotions and we need some friends who will warn us, who will guide us we need at least one friend in our life whose words we trust more than we trust the words of our mind normally anybody speaks something to us, sometimes somebody is very nice with us, we start thinking what does this person want from me there must be some agenda, that's why he is being so nice to me it could be that person has an agenda, it could be that person is normally courteous, we don't know but we look at people through the filter of our mind and this way whatever is our world view, we project it on others, that means when I want something from someone I am very nice to that person then this person will be nice to me that means they also want something from me it could be true, it may not be true so normally we look at everyone from the filter of our mind but if we have someone in our life who we do not look through the filter of our mind but rather we look at our mind and we look at them and then we evaluate the mind through what that person is saying then at least we have some possibility of resisting the mind but if such a person who tells us something which is different from what our mind is saying and then we reject that person as envious, as foolish as being from some other group, other party I am not concerned, then we make ourselves more and more vulnerable to be misled by the mind and then worst of all if we associate with someone who also has the same anartha that we have the same malicious mentality that we have if we associate with that person then our negativity can become even worse so it is like normally 1 plus 1 becomes 2 but in the case of anarthas 1 and 1 can become 11 it can just multiply enormously so in that case the negativity just multiplies and we may end up doing things which we normally never have done so in devotee association also it is not that everyone is a serious devotee we have to see what is the effect of that devotee association on me is that devotee association bringing out my higher side or is it bringing out my lower side so if it is bringing out my lower side then I don't have to judge that devotee, the person is chanting, practising bhakti, I respect them but from a distance Vishwanath Chakravarthy says that if a devotee's behaviour is not proper keep a distance from them, respect them from a distance we have to associate with those devotees who will help us grow, who will help us improve our character the devotee association is like a hospital when we go to a hospital there is the cure available over there but there are also many other patients who have many other diseases also about 15 years 13-14 years ago when I was in Pune I had got some very severe flu so I was admitted to a public hospital over there and when I was admitted to that hospital that flu got cured in 3 days but in the hospital I got TB and that TB lasted for 1 year so sometimes we may go to the hospital to get cured but we may get infected in the hospital so similarly in devotee association we may come but if we are not careful we may have some small unorthodoxy we are trying to overcome but we associate indiscriminately with someone and from them we may have some lust, we may have some greed but somebody may have envy somebody may have maliciousness, somebody may have hunger for power, whatever different devotees, they are all being treated by Krishna but if we are not careful we may get infected so we have to be careful that our association it nourishes our strengths not our weaknesses so for Duryodhana he rejected the association that nourished his strengths and he embraced the association that fanned his lower side and thus he was he propelled himself down the path of not just immorality but brutality how that brutality manifested itself we'll discuss in tomorrow's class I'll summarise.