Understanding the intricacies of Dharma – Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Every book has some defining purpose. For example, the Srimad Bhagavatam’s focus is on what is the duty of a dying person.
If we look at the Ramayana, that starts with Valmiki Rishi asking Narada Muni, what are the characteristics of an ideal human being? And then in response to that, Narada Muni tells about Lord Ram and his character and his activities. Right at the start of the Ramayana, there is a quick summary of the major events of the Ramayana. And then after that, Valmiki Muni goes into a trance and he gets the meter of the Ramayana and then he composes the Ramayana.
So the theme of the Ramayana is primarily that, what are the characteristics of an ideal human being? So this question permeates the full book. So every book has a defining question that permeates the entire book, around which everything in the book is centred. Similarly, the Mahabharata has a defining question.
And that question is, what is Dharma? What is Dharma? That is the question that the Mahabharata centres on. There are several places where it is said that Dharma is very guhya. It is not very easy to understand Dharma.
Its intricacies are very complex to figure out. Now, one of the characteristics of the Mahabharata is that it explains that Dharma is contextual. It is not categorical.
What do I mean by contextual and categorical? Here, roughly when I use what is Dharma, the word Dharma has multiple meanings. And in the Mahabharata, when it is used as a defining question, it basically means, what is duty? What is one’s duty? That is the question which the Mahabharata asks. Now, duty or morality or the right code of conduct, what the Mahabharata’s narrative tells us is that it is contextual.
It is not categorical. Categorical means that this is the category of right and this is the category of wrong. And everything in this category will be right and everything in this category will be wrong.
So, real life is not so simple that you can classify things so easily, this is right and this is wrong. So, for example, in a general sense, to be truthful is good. And to lie is bad.
But, there can be exceptional situations. Suppose, there is a religious or a racist or a communal riot going on and there are a hundred blood crazy people chasing someone. And that victim comes to our house and asks to be saved.
So, we give him a hiding place and then that crowd comes along and says, is anyone here? What should we do? Should we be truthful? At that time, by being truthful, we will cause the death of that person. So, truthfulness is a good quality. But, you cannot put it in an absolute category that being truthful is always very good.
And being false is always bad. it also works out in a in a… Puranas also have this. There is a story of involved story, I won’t get into the specifics of the story.
But the point is, there was a Brahmana who had taken a vrata that I will always be truthful. And he was sitting in a village at a sort of crossroad under a tree and he was doing meditation. At that time, he saw a cow rushing away in great fear.
So, it was a crossroad and the cow went in the left. And then a butcher came there with a butchering knife and he asked this Brahmana, where is the cow? Now, this Brahmana had a dharma sankat. So, what to do? He said, I cannot speak a lie but how can I speak a truth? So, finally, he decided to take a medium course of action and he did not speak anything but he just pointed.
The butcher went and he slaughtered the cow. And the Puranas describe that in the next lifetime, it’s a whole intricate story but he became a travelling mendicant and he came to a particular house and in that house the lady was there and the husband was there. So, this lady, this woman of the house, she became attracted to this mendicant and then when he refused, she got very angry and she blamed him.
She took a knife and she stabbed her husband and then she started screaming. And when the neighbours came, he said, he had evil designs on me. When my husband came to defend me, he killed my husband and now he wants to abuse me.
So, then the villagers were shocked. He is a mendicant, how can he do such a thing? And then they decided that we can’t kill him but they chopped off his hands. Because with his hands he tried to assault her.
That was the accusation. And then, when he went, he was thinking, how did such a thing happen? He started praying fervently and then he heard Akash. In which, that story was told.
So, that Brahmana had become this travelling mendicant now. That cow had become the wife and the butcher had become the husband. So, basically, the cow killed the butcher but because with his hands he had pointed where the cow had gone.
So, his hands got cut in this way. So, the point of the story is that we cannot have morality as absolutely categorical. It is contextual.
There will be certain situations where certain things which are normally right may