How can we explain Krishna’s conspiracies in the Mahabharata?

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Transcript

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How can we justify the conspiracies made by Krishna in the Mahabharata war? The Mahabharata demonstrates one fundamental principle that morality is not categorical, it is contextual, morality means right and wrong, to say that morality is categorical means this is the category of right and this is the category of wrong and whatever is in this category is right, whatever is in this category is wrong, so morality is not categorical, morality is contextual, what does that mean? Simple example, to speak truthfully is a virtue but suppose there are some riots going on and a friend of yours is being threatened and he is coming to your house and he is hiding in your house and the rioter is coming, is he in your house? Should we speak the truth at that time? In fact, for speaking truth would be not just far from right, it would be terribly wrong at that time, it would cause a loss of life, so normally truthfulness is a virtue but we can’t make truthfulness into an absolute categorical virtue, morality is not categorical, it is contextual, so this is the principle that Krishna repeatedly teaches in the Mahabharata by apparently using some kind of immoral activities, now if we go into the specifics of various issues we will find that there is abandoned reason for using that kind of thing, but the principle Krishna illustrates over here, let’s see Arjuna before the Kurukshetra war single-handedly defeated all the Kauravas and why could Arjuna not have defeated the Kauravas in the Kurukshetra war, he could have done that but Krishna wants it to be that illustrates that with the cunning be cunning, we may have to be cunning with the cunning, so it’s not that we want to be cunning, the Pandavas did not initiate immorality at any time, but the Pandavas did respond in kind when others initiated immorality, the Kauravas acted immorally, the Pandavas reciprocated in kind, so the Mahabharata essential lesson is it’s a very realistic book, it’s not idealistic book, so realistically it teaches us that morality is contextual, not categorical, I have written several articles on my website, especially relating Karna and his whole lecture on addressing Mahabharata controversies, you can find more about the specifics over there, but the underlying principle is this.