Just as Bhishma chose the wrong side, so do we – how can we learn properly from such role models?

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side and sometimes we also despite knowing what is right chose the wrong side so what do we learn from our own how can we learn from our own models properly first of all a very important principle to understand is everything in scripture is not the teaching of scripture everything in scripture is not the teaching of scripture scripture has a descriptive section and a prescriptive section description means these were this is how things were at that time now but that doesn’t mean this is how we should act so that is this description and then there is prescription prescription is this is how you should act so to give another example some people say Yudhishthira was dharmaraj and he gambled so why should we gamble why can’t we gamble but if you see the thrust of the Mahabharata is Yudhishthira was dharmaraj but still when he got into gambling he was so caught by the fever of gambling and he lost everything now we are nowhere as dharmic as Yudhishthira if we get into the grip of gambling the fear of gambling will be ruined completely so Yudhishthira’s gambling is not prescriptive it is descriptive and the prescription is not to be gambled not to gamble but to not gamble because it’s so it’s so dangerous so similarly with respect to Bhishma he is a great devotee but the at the same time the Mahabharata does not idealize its characters that means there are great characters but also they may sometimes have some limitations now the the epics the Mahabharata Ramayana and other epics Madhavacharya says in his Brahmasutra Bhashya commentary on the Vedanta Sutra that they can be understood multiple levels we can take them at literal level this is what happened just hear it relish it and you will get purified the other is at a ethical level ethical level means that we look at it from ethical perspective this was the situation this person acted like this and this was a wrong action and we should not act like this or we should act like this so at the literal level if we take it we just see everything is orchestrated by the Lord it is a Lord’s Leela and we just hear it in relationship that’s one way of looking at it that’s perfectly valid from that perspective whatever Bhishma did was also a part of the Lord’s plan and Bhishma acted in that way because the Lord ultimately wanted to demonstrate that especially remain silent when Draupadi was being disrobed so he did not oppose strongly at least because the Lord wanted to demonstrate that even when we have many protectors we may end up with no protector except him and later on when Bhishma fought against the Pandavas so Bhishma was a warrior who had been trained by the greatest warrior Parshuram in warfare and he had been trained by the great sages in Shastra so he was expert in Shastra and Shastra and yet when he chose the side against God he was going to be ruined he was defeated he was defeated so the point which is being taught at the transcendental level at the Leela perspective is that no matter how great a person may be if they choose the wrong side they’ll perish in having said this at the ethical perspective if you see then Bhishma was what you could call a literalist in some ways literalist means he will always stick to the literal word of the law so sometimes he said they will stick to the letter of the spirit letter of the law and not understand the spirit of the law so it’s important to understand rules in the context of the purpose of the rules sometimes if you just stick to the rule and forget the purpose then we may get lost that means the rule is like the is like the road and the purpose is like the compass which tells us the direction now normally we take a road and by that road we get going that say if I want to go eastwards I take a road that is going eastward and I get to the eastern direction but suppose that road takes a u-turn and if I stay on following that road then I will end up going in the direction opposite to what I wanted to go so we have to follow the rule but we also have to remember the purpose of the rule and see whether the following the rule is serving the purpose of the rule otherwise the road might be having u-turn so now he had taken a vow that I will always be I will always fight on the side of the Kuru ruler and the purpose of that was to protect the Kuru dynasty but now when the Kuru dynasty was itself being destroyed because the evil member of the Kuru dynasty was had gained power unscrupulously then if he had kept his purpose in mind it is to protect the Kuru dynasty not just stand by the Kuru ruler so if he had not fought then the chance of Duryodhana going against the Pandavas was lesser so what happens is the Mahabharata does not idealize its characters and Krishna does not overlook a devotee if a devotee commits mistakes Krishna does not overlook that devotee’s devotion because of the mistakes or you made a mistake so your devotion is of no use but at the same time we can’t assume that just because we are devotee and we have committed a mistake it is not that Krishna will overlook our mistakes and just look at our devotion mistakes at a material level may have consequences so say suppose if somebody has diabetes and they eat a lot of sweets saying this is prasad well it is prasad but all the other food items are also prasad why are you specially attracted to this so we say eating prasad will purify but if I am taking sweets and my body is vulnerable to sweets then it will have a consequence at the material level so if we commit mistakes they will also have consequences so Bhishma exemplifies what is called as Niyamagraha Niyamagraha means sticking to the letter of the law without understanding its purpose and without pursuing its purpose so some Mahabharata commentators say that Bhishma had to get that extremely painful situation before death so many arrows pierced his body and he was lying on the arrow bed so that was like a something which he had to go through because he neglected his duty because he did not protect Draupadi as a Kshatriya because he fought on the side of the Kauravas of course because he has been a devotee so Krishna blessed him so that he did not feel the pain at that time Krishna raised his consciousness to spiritual level so in that sense it’s not just simply karma coming over there it is Krishna’s plan happening over there so we shouldn’t take the wrong example from scripture say we have the other example of Vibhishan so Vibhishan was on Ravana’s side but he chose to come on Rama’s side we also have another example of Vidura Vidura decided I can’t fight on the Kauravas side but he did not go to the Pandavas side he went on the pilgrimage and in that case he did that because in the Ramayana the main villain was himself Vibhishan’s brother and he was irredeemable but in the case of Mahabharata Dhritarashtra was not like a very bad person he was attached to a bad person so if Vidura had gone to the Pandavas side and fought against the Kauravas and Vidura had been a party in the death of Dhritarashtra’s sons then Dhritarashtra would have had so much anger towards him that he would not have been able to hear from Vidura so Vidura just went away didn’t take sides over there and later on when he came back and instructed Dhritarashtra, Dhritarashtra could hear from him and could gain detachment and enlightenment thereby so we may have to if we have to take sides in a conflict and we know which is right then we needn’t follow Bhishma as a model we can follow Vibhishan or Vidura as a model