Is heaven attained by any warrior who fights a war in obedience to authority and dies?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
that answer your question? Shall we stop here? Question. Would all the warriors and soldiers who fought in the Kurukshetra war attain heaven irrespective of whose side they fought on? If they are fighting on the side of Adharma, will they still rise to heaven? Answer. Is it that because they are following their authority, that alone is enough? Or do they also have to use their intelligence and are they also responsible for their actions? Answer.
These are complicated questions. We have to look at situations where different dharmas apply at different times. And sometimes there is dharmasamudha-jita that two dharmas may come in contradiction against each other.
So, at one level, it is said the death, they will be elevated to the heavens. Those who give up their life in a heroic fight. So, that was what gave the warriors and soldiers at that time confidence to be able to lay down their lives.
At the same time, this principle of fighting fearlessly, or this principle of being elevated, which is meant to aid Kshatriyas in fostering fearlessness in them and to avoid cowardice in the face of warfare and death. This is not an absolute principle. This is for fighting heroically in an honorable cause.
If somebody is satisfying viciously or satisfying for a disvulnerable cause, then will they on dying on the battlefield get elevated? Not necessarily. Say, if a king is chasing after a criminal who is a murderer or a king is choosing after another, chasing another say bandit or bandit king who has plundered many villages and the bandit king, the leader of the bandit gang, if you want to call him the king, maybe it is too vulnerable a word to use for him, or whatever, the leader of the bandit group, while he is being chased by the king, turns around and fights and is killed by the king. Now, if that person has lived a life of banditry, of decoity, of criminality throughout their life and just they happen to die while fighting, obviously, they will not get elevated.
They will have to account for their actions. So, when statements are given in scripture, we cannot divorce them from their context and absolutize them. It’s like it is said that if you remember Krishna, at the time of our death, we will attain Krishna.
But that doesn’t mean that a person can live whatever way they want and then they just if somebody lives sensually and then decides to commit suicide when they’re fed or have sensual enjoyment because of age or disease and they chant Hare Krishna while committing suicide. Will they attain Krishna? Certainly not. The point of remembering Krishna at the time of death is meant that we should become so attached to Krishna by practicing throughout our life that we also remember Krishna at the time of death as our greatest shelter, as the only shelter who can shelter us at the time of death.
So, he is not a shelter from death, but he is a shelter beyond death. Nobody can, nothing can stop us from dying, from the body from dying, but the soul can become elevated. So, therefore, it is important that we recognize that there are no absolutes in this.
No statement is an absolute. If there is no absolute like that for bhakti, then what to speak of for punya. If somebody has lived dishonorably throughout their lives, will they still go to heaven? Not necessarily.
Of course, if somebody has lived sensually or sinfully throughout their life, they still somehow remember Krishna at the time of death. That is a matter of fortune and that may elevate them, but that is not going to determine their ultimate destiny. So, the whole point of statements like this that a Kshatriya who dies honorably, who dies heroically in a battlefield without turning or running away, the point is to instill fearlessness in the face of death among Kshatriyas.
But it is not meant to instill recklessness or even wickedness, certainly not wickedness that whatever I do throughout my life, if I fight and die, I will attain heavens. So, we have to, the Kshatriyas have to follow Kshatriya Dharma throughout their lives and beyond that, they also have to be honorable, heroic at the time of death. So, now even if somebody, we can say that the act of dying on the war field is so heroic that somebody goes to heaven for that.
Well, then we have to understand that heaven is temporary and after their period in heaven, they will again come down and they will have to account for the misdeeds that they have done. So, the good deed that they may have done, including the good deed of dying heroically in a war field may elevate them to heaven, but even that won’t be permanent. So, that’s what you can say applies to people like Duryodhana and Karna, who are said to have gone, Duryodhana especially, who are said to have gone to heaven after dying in the Kurukshetra war.
Of course, there the dynamic is significantly different because Krishna himself is present. But still, even if somebody attains heaven because of a particular deed, a particular good deed, a heroic deed of dying fearlessly in the face of death, that result is not going to counter all their bad karma. That result, that action may give them a good result and other results will also come.
So, just as this principle of responsibility throughout our life, throughout the life of Kshatriya is required, including responsibility to Kshatriya during the time of death. So, the same principle applies to Kshatriya soldiers also. They have to live honorably and they have to die honorably.
A part of living honorably is obedience to authority. But another part of Kshatriya responsibility is also using one’s intelligence. Is the person alone who said, I am fighting virtuous? Is that fight, is that person vicious? Of course, in the world of real politic, not everyone makes decisions simply based on dharma, on virtue or vice.
There’s also always the consideration of what is, what’s in it for me. So, if while fighting, if somebody somehow chooses to fight on the side of Adharma, if they die heroically, they’ll get elevated for that, for that heroic activity. But the previous choice of heroic death, sorry, of fighting for Adharma will also have its consequences.
There’s a big difference between the conception of heaven, say Jannat in the Islamic tradition, where people believe that if they die during Jihad, they will get to heaven. There, heaven is considered to be eternal and is considered a place of sensuality, with so many virgins with whom one can enjoy. But in the Bhakti, but in the Dharmic traditions, even heaven is temporary.
And it is heaven by piety. So, the bad, the wrong choice, the indiscreet or the wrong choice of fighting for Adharma will have its own consequence. And the heroic act of dying on the war field will also have its good consequence.
Now, having said that, Kshatriyas are meant to fight responsibly, or rather responsibly means fight according to Kshatriya codes. They cannot be indiscriminately violent against anyone and everyone. So, Ashwatthama, for example, in the Mahabharata war, was anointed as the commander by Duryodhana, as the last commander.
And with the authority of Duryodhana, Ashwatthama decided to launch a last attack on the Kauravas, on the Pandavas rather. But the fact that the way in which Ashwatthama attacked, instead of an honourable fight with the opponent’s alert, he attacked the opponents when they were sleeping and slaughtered them, that was reprehensible, that was universally condemned. And for that he himself was cursed by none other than Krishna.
So, just because somebody is fighting under a responsible authority, under an authority, that doesn’t mean that they can do anything or everything in fighting. They can fight against the enemies according to proper codes. But even if they are fighting another authority, if they choose a reprehensible mode of attacking the enemy, that is condemned.
So, we have to follow authority, but that doesn’t mean blindly follow authority. If the authority tells us to do vicious things, that doesn’t mean we should do vicious things. Or just because the authority wants us to achieve some things, that doesn’t mean we use vicious means to achieve those things.
If we act viciously, either by our own initiative or by being impelled by authorities, if we fight contrary to the codes of dharma, we are responsible for the consequences. Now, how exactly those consequences will come upon us, that may vary according to the overall quality of life that we have led, the kind of punya-papa, the kind of positive-negative karma balance that we have. But we will, some activities are so reprehensible that there is no condoning them.
There will be serious consequences for them. So, to summarize, the act of dying heroically while fighting on a battlefield is glorious. But the result will be determined of what one gets in the future, determined not just by that action alone, but by the overall life that one has led, and the kind of character or consciousness one has cultivated.
If one is a wrongdoer being killed on a war field, that doesn’t mean they will go to heaven. Even if somehow they go to heaven, heaven is not permanent, they will come back and they will have to bear the consequences for the actions that they have done in other parts of their life also. And especially if one acts viciously, either by one’s own volition, by one’s own initiative, or because one has been instructed by others.
So, then that will also have its own consequences. So, just obedience to an authority does not free us from responsibility for our actions. The idea is obedience should make us more responsible by guiding us about the wise course of action.
But the principle of obedience doesn’t free us from the other principle of using our own intelligence and our conscience