​Is choosing not to fight some battles like Bhishma-Drona’s silence in the Kuru silence?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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so is it choosing not to fight some battles does that mean we become like Drona and Bhishma who sanction the wrong such as robberies, disrobing or something like that no when we say we should choose our battles that means that we choose what we focus on but that doesn’t mean by choosing to focus on something we deliberately allow untruth to be spoken so I will give you three different examples for this say if I am giving a class on 5th Kanto Cosmology so I may choose not to go too much into the contradictions between the two and focus on the purpose what is there so now this is where I am choosing the thrust of my focus but if after the class somebody rises 5th Kanto Cosmology is all mythology I will say I will choose my battle and I will stay silent that is wrong because that person has come to our forum and most people who have come here they are hearing from us so we won’t stress the conflicting or the contradictory aspects within scripture and current world view or whatever but if somebody flouts scriptural truth counters scriptural truth in our forum then we will have to counter it no it is not mythology this is how we can understand it and this is why people think it is mythology but that is not thinking is not correct so basically we choose what truth to focus on what aspect of truth what aspect of our message to focus on but if some untruth is directly being spoken we can’t just passively hear it we do counter it but we ourselves may not bring up that subject necessarily but suppose there is some other forum say if I go for a science spirituality conference and there somebody says oh this Puranic cosmology it is the mythical imagining of the prehistoric Indians or whatever we talk about that now I may have a particular message to give over here about now if because that person has spoken that say in an interfaith conference we all have 10 minutes to speak or 15 minutes to speak now I may have decided I am going to speak 15 minutes and I may just neglect what that person has spoken now that is not our forum people who are there people already have different beliefs and they are already quite sceptical it is not that just by taking that person’s idea I will be able to counter that in 10 minutes, 15 minutes and everybody will accept better let me focus on something which people will find intelligible which I am well prepared for so at that if it is somebody else’s forum then they may speak what they want to speak and we don’t have to counter it all the time we may focus on giving what is the message important for this so just because it is spoken when I was present but it is not our function it is not that that is the place where Vaishno Siddhant is being taught even in scripture we see this that everything that is taught in scripture everything that is in scripture is not the teaching of scripture so for example we have even Krishna himself in the 10th canto in chapter 23 in chapter 24, 24-25 he speaks about Karma Vimamsa and so even the absolute truth doesn’t always speak absolute truth Krishna speaks Karma Vimamsa and Acharya accepts that in this context he is speaking this just to provoke Indra and he leaves it at that so we have to recognize the context at particular points we may just leave it at that so this is a completely one is if in our own forum we should contradict if that comes up in somebody else’s forum we may just leave it aside third is if we are just informally meeting with some friends, sitting and talking maybe some colleagues in office or some relatives at home now at that particular time they may have certain conceptions we may have to decide at that time whether by getting into the debate over there there is a realistic chance that they will be changed or otherwise they may just have that opinion and we leave it at that and we focus on trying to have a proper cordial relationship with them and later on as their relationship with us improves their appreciation for us improves later on they may become more open to understanding this so we see when we say that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu heard from Sarvam Bhattacharya for 7 days for 7 days actually he was giving impersonalist commentary and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu heard not at first out of impersonalism Chaitanya Mahaprabhu exploded and contradicted that no he heard for 7 days I am not saying we should hear Mayawad for 7 days definitely not I am simply making the point that it is not that every place has to be made into a battle ground for establishing the truth there are places where it is just some casual conversation somebody says no everything is one ok now even that person is just making it as an intellectual argument they don’t take it very seriously other relatives don’t take it very seriously don’t bother about it so we have to especially in places where we are representatives of the Vaishnava Sampradaya and we are meant to establish Siddhanta at that time if some Apasiddhanta comes we do have to contradict it but we don’t have to necessarily bring about the Apasiddhanta and contradict it it is because there are so many misconceptions in the world and sometimes it happens that for Ramayana, Mahabharata so many people write so many things so many people who come to our movement they are mostly faithful people so many times we learn more about the misconceptions about the Ramayana and Mahabharata from devotees than from outside you know this author has said like this, this serial source like that that may not be required it’s like you know people have come to watch a boxing match and we drag a spectator in and start beating the spectator we don’t have to do that but if somebody deliberately brings about Apasiddhanta which is widespread we have to contradict that so choosing the battle doesn’t mean that we just sanction the speaking of untruth but on our forum we make sure that the focus is on truth and untruth needs to be contradicted in the case of Draupadi, Draupadi is being disrobed, actually Drona and especially Bhishma they may not have had the political power Bhishma was not the king but still they had the power of seniority Drona had the power of ramanical position and they could and should have intervened over there but there may be certain forums where we may not have that power so it’s both a matter of recognition of the circumstance and the recognition of what is best for getting people to come closer to Krishna does that answer the question? thank you very much