Gita 02.36 – Behave respectably to bring respectability to Krishna’s message

Which will give people reason to think that you have acted out of cowardice. Thank you. Unspeakable words, words which should not be spoken, like that many such words, they will speak, those who desire your ahita, those who are your enemies, nindantas tava samarthyam, they will criticize your samarthya, your ability.

What can be more painful for you than that? So, Krishna makes this argument on fame and ends it with a rhetorical question. Krishna is explaining to why he should continue in the fight, why he should not desist from the fight and he is using the argument that giving up the fight will cause you infamy and he is telling about how people will perceive that you fled because of fear, bhayatranadupartham and they will call you a coward, they will call you by various bad names. Now, in every human culture, there are fear words, that is not necessarily, that is not a good part of the culture, but it is just a part of culture.

No matter how good a culture is, there are people who are going to be degraded and there are going to be low-class people and those low-class people are going to use low-class words. So, there are severe words, there are curse words, there are many bad words and cultured people avoid those words, but at the same time, people do not speak those words, do not hear those words, but still there are uncultured people or there are people, even cultured people, when they see some particularly uncultured behavior, they may succumb to the temptation and use bad words and those bad words can hurt terribly when they are used. So, there are many bad words which are in each language and sometimes there can be, if one bad word is used by one community's leader against another community, that can cause scandal and violence and whole uproar.

So, so words which are unspeakable, that means words which should not be spoken, they will be spoken. So, actually those who are enemies, they want to hurt us and if our enemies want to hurt us, how will they hurt us? They can hurt either by using weapons and attacking and overpowering and stripping and even killing, depriving and even killing us, but another more insidious way in which they can hurt is by spreading vicious rumors about us. Now, those vicious rumors may be true, may not be true, but often rumors ruin reputation and when the rumors start getting circulated, then they acquire a life and a momentum of their own and it can become, they can become unstoppable.

So, there are, Krishna is warning Arjuna, there are enemies, you have many enemies, all the Kauravas, they are your enemies and even now, for the Pandavas, when they were insulted and their wife was insulted, those words of insult, they kept ringing in their ears for a long time. Bhima was called as a cow. Now, we may consider a cow is a very sacred animal and a Kshatriya to be compared to a cow, is that an insult? But the point is for a Kshatriya to be called a cow, that is definitely not flattering, it is infuriating.

Why? Because cow is not a very aggressive, assertive, powerful animal. Now, Kshatriya is, if at all Kshatriya has to be compared to a bull, Rishabha can actually mean king and Rishabha also means bull because a bull is considered to be like the king among domestic animals, it is so majestic, so powerful. So, Kshatriya has to be compared to anyone, he has to be compared to a bull, not a cow.

So, when Duryodhana, after Bhima and the Pandavas had been exiled and they were going out of the palace, he walked next to Bhima, imitating his gait and calling him cow, cow, cow and Karna also said that, oh, actually Draupadi, Karna also insulted Draupadi as a harlot, as a prostitute. So, the Pandavas had been called all kinds of bad names and those bad names have been extremely painful and Krishna is encouraging her that you will get a bad name which you never got and that is a coward. Now, coward is a very, very derogatory word for a person who has been honoured for heroism, for chivalry, for bravery.

Now, in general, cowardice is painful for anyone, there is a tradition saying a coward dies a thousand times before his death. Why? Because the act of cowardice kills the consciousness of the person, kills the person internally and the act of cowardice creates a perception in society, a terrible dark reputation in society that also works to hurt people, that also works to ruin people and so, therefore, the important thing is to recognize that we are all capable of being hurt by terrible, terrible words and here Krishna is telling Arjuna that they will use such words towards you. So, the words of insult the Kauravas had used against the Pandavas when they had been exiled, they would sometimes still ring in the ears of the Kauravas, of the Pandavas, especially Bhima because Duryodhana had especially delighted in insulting and infuriating Bhima.

So, just before the war had started, the previous night Duryodhana had sent Uluka, the son of Shakuni to basically incite the Kauravas by insulting all of them. Now, he had said, oh, just see my power, you think that you are going to fight with me, but what is my power? I reduced Bhima to a cook, an ordinary servant in Virata's kitchen. Now, what happened to his great luster and bravado? And Arjuna had thought such a great warrior, I reduced him to a eunuch and what happened to his power? Like that, he insulted every one of them and the Pandava assembly, where Uluka had come to give the message, was in uproar and exploded and Uluka was so scared that he just walked backwards and fled.

And of course, the Pandavas gave their message. At that time, Arjuna had been so angry, he said, I will answer with my Gandiva tomorrow and he became silent. But then again, he was so angry, not satisfied, he gave further words, as heavy words he spoke, but they were all outraged to hear those insulting words.

So, what he had done is, Duryodhana had distorted the story in such a way as to make Pandavas look pathetic and him look heroic. So, that is how people are going to twist, twist the truth. So, Arjuna, do not give people a chance to hurt you like this.

It will be extremely painful. So, what can be more painful than this for you? Now, we hear that, that do not expect honor and give honor to others. That is the principle that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught.

But then we also see that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took sannyas. And not only did he take sannyas, he took sannyas from Mayavada Sampradaya. And both his taking sannyas was, his taking sannyas was because he found that his peers, the other brahmanas in Navadvip, were not offering him adequate honor and respect, by which they could submissively receive his propagation of the glories of the holy name.

So, in order to give adequate respect to his message, he had to himself acquire a respectable position. And so, he took sannyas, we could say, to get honor. And not only that, just for the sake of honor, he went to such an extreme position that he actually took sannyas from Mayavada Sampradaya.

Mayavada is philosophically not just different from, but opposed to Vaishnavism. And still Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took sannyas from there, because at that time, the Advaita Sampradaya was considered to be very respectable. And a sannyas in the Advaita Sampradaya would be widely respected in society.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu used that respect to share, to bring respectability to the message of Bhakti Yoga that he was going to share with people. So, the important thing to recognize here again is that we don't want honor for ourselves. But now we are no longer ourselves.

We are actually connected with Krishna. And whether we want it or not, we are representing Krishna. And we have to act in honorable ways so that we can present Krishna's message from an honorable position.

And so, that's why devotees, if they're going to enter into the material field, we cannot just be incompetent and irresponsible. Because people will not see what we have to say spiritually unless they see some basic caliber and competence material. So, if we are studying, if we are doing a job, we are doing some profession, we should strive to do it as well as we can and we can use the respect that comes from that profession to present Krishna's message.

And that way we can bring respectability to Krishna, not by seeking reputation for our own sake, but for Krishna's sake. So, here Krishna is telling Arjuna, you are actually celebrated as a dharmic warrior. And you will, if you will be dishonored, it will be painful to you.

And it is not only just painful to you, actually, you are also going away from the path of dharma. So, here Krishna with a rhetorical question and saying that when people speak unspeakable, intolerable, insufferable words, how will you live Arjuna? You will suffer so much. And therefore, do not do something which will cause you such suffering.

That is the subtext and that it will come explicitly in the next verse, which we will discuss in our next session.