Krishna asked Arjuna to fight but Buddhism supported Ashoka’s resolve not to fight Why the difference?
From: Krishna Dhan Das
When Arjuna wanted give up fighting Lord Krishna inspired him to fight. When King Ashoka wanted to retire from fight after fighting Kalinga war, Buddhism supported this. Are Lords opinions contradictory? how to reconcile?
Transcript
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Question from Krishna Dhan Prabhu When Arjuna wanted to give up fighting, Lord Krishna inspired him to fight. When Lord Ashoka wanted to retire from fighting after fighting Kalinga war, Buddhism supported this. Are lord’s opinions contradictory? How do we consign? Answer The war that Arjuna was fighting was clearly one of Dharma against Adharma and even then Krishna tried his best to do everything possible to avoid the war but because of Duryodhana’s obstinacy, the war became unavoidable.
In the case of Ashoka, if we look at the overall history of the times Ashoka basically was the king who wanted to keep expanding his kingdom and for that purpose he wanted to fight war and wanted to conquer Kalinga so now at that time there was enormous amount of bloodshed and then when Ashoka saw that huge amount of bloodshed and got a change of heart what is the need for fighting does in violence so where the war is for personal aggrandizement, then that is never recommended by the lord so the contexts are different and the lord’s instructions will depend on the context so the principle is that we should do what we can to make spiritual advancement and to contribute to the good of the world so for Arjuna, both these purposes of making spiritual advancement and contributing to the good of the world was through fighting because that’s how he would be in harmony with the will of the lord, he would be doing his duty as a Kshatriya and he would be removing adharma from the world not entirely but at least from the ruling position in the world on the other hand at the same time of Ashoka for a Kshatriya who is totally in the mode of passion and simply is thinking of expanding the kingdom more and more and more to recognize that this is not a worthwhile goal to cause so much bloodshed for and then to become more peaceful and satisfied and to become more of a spiritual seeker that is the way Kshatriya will advance, moving from passion upwards slowly towards transcendence through goodness and similarly at that time for the social good, the bloodshed and the warfare was undesirable so the lord’s instructions depend on time, place, circumstance not the principle, the principle is always the same but the application of the principle will vary depending on time, place, circumstance usually Prabhupada would sometimes tell some sanyasis that sanyasi means you should not stay at one place you should travel and preach, another sanyasi was doing a very good preaching, developing a community Prabhupada told him stay here don’t be restless stay here and preach here so the spiritual master and ultimately Krishna can give instructions the principle is the same but the application will vary depending on time, place, circumstance