If Karna chose wrongly because of attachment, didn’t Bhishma do the same?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
roaming, isn’t Bhishma also culpable? Yes, Bhishma is also culpable at one level, but Bhishma was not the instigator, it is Karna who was the instigator. So essentially, the way the sequence of events happened is that Dhritarashtra was persuaded by Shakuni and Duryodhana that let us have the gambling match. Vidura, Bhishma, all of them opposed it, but Dhritarashtra was the king.
So his will prevailed. And when the gambling match took place, Shakuni kept inciting Yudhishthira to gamble more and more. And eventually, he gambled and lost his brother, then he lost himself, and then Shakuni instigated him to gamble Draupadi also.
And Yudhishthira, he was horrified. What have I done? I could have lost everything. He knew that Shakuni was a better gambling player than him.
And right at the beginning only, he had opposed. Why did he opposed? Shakuni had made gambling practically like his profession. So, you know, say in some sports like, say boxing, or even tennis, there are amateur tennis players and there are professional tennis players.
So, amateurs play with amateurs and professionals play with professionals. So, actually, the original gambling match was supposed to be between Yudhishthira and Duryodhana. So, to have Yudhishthira pitted against Shakuni, that itself was like having an amateur play with a professional.
It is unfair. And another point was that further, it was wrong in the sense that, it was not just okay, an amateur playing against a professional is also okay. Sometimes it may happen like that.
But here it was a match between amateurs and the professional playing instead of the amateur. So, it is like, you know, two friends decide that let us have a boxing match. And these friends come here.
And suddenly one of the friends, you know, there he gets somebody like Mike Taxon over there, in his place to fight. So, that would be a rigged match. So, Yudhishthira objected.
And then the Kauravas, they just jeered and said, if you are afraid to play with us, do not play with us. You do not need to play. But Yudhishthira s point was not that a matter of fear, it was a matter of what is right or wrong.
But throughout it all, Dhritarashtra remained silent. And then when Draupadi was gambled and lost, at that time Draupadi, she raised the question that if Yudhishthira had already gambled himself and lost himself, how can he gamble me? If he is not his own master, then how can he be my master to gamble me? And at that time, when she raised this question, the question should have been answered by Dhritarashtra. And Dhritarashtra, he remained silent.
So, then the responsibility fell on Bhishma. Now Bhishma, he replied that, oh Draupadi, that amidst such a crisis, you are recollecting Dharma and you are reminding this assembly of the principles of Dharma. This shows how glorious your character is.
He appreciated her at that time. And then he said, actually, there are two principles here and I am unable to decide which is the higher principle. The first principle is that a person who has lost himself does not own anything.
So, that person cannot gamble anything. At the same time, this is the husband, the wife belongs to the husband. So, I do not know which is the higher principle.
That is why I cannot give an answer. And nobody else spoke over there. So, from the, in the scriptures itself, there is a mistake or a blemish which is called as Niyamagraha.
Niyamagraha means sticking to the letter of the law while forgetting the spirit of the law. So, actually, Draupadi, she was somehow, she used a technicality to try to put off a travesty, put off something which is atrocity. So, it was not whether Dhrishti was his own master or not.
It was that how could a whole assembly not see something wrong in the dishonoring of an honorable woman like that. So, Bhishma definitely was at flaw over there. But the magnitude of the flaw was not that much because he never instigated anything.
So, he, because he had chosen long ago that he would remain faithful to the monarch. So, that he remained faithful. Now, was it wrong? Yes, it was wrong.
But again, there is a wrong of which we are a part and there is a wrong of which we are a cause. So, the two are different. So, Bhishma did commit an error over there, his error of judgment, but he was a part of it.
Whereas, Karna was practically the cause of it. He suggested Draupadi with this role. And so, this is from the point of view of ethics.
From another perspective, this whole pastime was done by, was arranged by Krishna to demonstrate how in this world, we have no protector ultimately except Krishna. So, Draupadi, she had five protectors and yet she was rendered helpless. So, life is so complex in this world that no matter how many material arrangements of protection we may make, it is our duty to make material arrangements for protection.
But no matter how many arrangements we may make, still things can go wrong. And we have ultimately no protector apart from Krishna. So, that is the lesson through which is taught through this pastime.
That is from the transcendental perspective. And for teaching this lesson, Krishna arranged for the characters to act in particular ways. So, otherwise, how did Yudhishthira gamble so much? Now, how could Bhishma, who is so learned in morality, how did he get caught in the technicality? How did he not understand the basic principle being violated over there? So, that is from the transcendental perspective.
So, we can, when there are great characters involved, we do not judge them as right or wrong. We focus on what we learn from them. So, for a character like Bhishma, who is a great devotee, we understand that Krishna orchestrated him.
But still, what was done over there from a circumstantial perspective was definitely not right. Does that answer your question? Thank you. You had one more question? Yeah.