Was Yudhisthira the most immoral among all the Pandavas because he gambled away all of them and even their innocent wife?

Transcript

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Any other question? Great Krishna. Question.
Was Yudhishthira the most immoral among all the Pandavas because he gambled away all of them and even the innocent Draupadi? Answer. Not at all. Yudhishthira Maharaj is known as Dharmaraj.
He is the most virtuous person and definitely the most virtuous among the Pandavas. Even his gambling was actually a result of his virtue not his lack of virtue. After Yudhishthira Maharaj performed the Rajasuya Yajna and it was very successful.
Vyasadev who had presided over supervised the performance of the sacrifice met him and told him that O King, this sacrifice will lead to great fruits but after 13 years there will be a great war and you will be the cause of that war and after that your rule will become stable. So at that time that war will kill the world’s leading Kshatriyas. Yudhishthira became concerned, even alarmed and he did not want to become a cause of such violence.
So at that time he took a resolve. He said that violence is caused by harshness. So he said that from now on I will not speak harshly to anyone.
I will not differentiate. I will not discriminate between my children and others children and I will obey my elders command as if it were the command of God and in this way I will try to avoid dissension. So his intention in taking such a vow was that if you can avoid harshness, if you can avoid conflicts then that may lead to the avoidance of war.
But unfortunately this very resolve that he took that I will not take up, I will not be violent. I will try to avoid dissensions and conflicts that worked against him because when Duryodhana came up with the evil plan through Shakuni of having a gambling match, rigged gambling match then he manipulated Dhritharashtra and Dhritharashtra sent Vidura as a messenger and because Yudhishtira had taken a vow to follow the instructions of his elders and he saw Dhritharashtra as a worshipable elder like his father who in turn was like God for him so he could not disobey him and when he went there, the first thing that he said is, he protested as much as he could that he said that first he said you know gambling is the root of all vies in conflict there should not be any gambling, that’s what the first thing he said to Vidura when Vidura came with the message but then Dhritharashtra’s instruction was there even when he went to the gambling match at that time the first thing he said to Shakuni and Duryodhana is that gambling leads to conflict and why do you want to take from me the wealth that I want to use for the service of brahmanas service of the brahmanical culture and then he said I don’t wish to attain any wealth from you, therefore why should I fight why should I play the gambling match so he gave clear reasons for not wanting to play and then Shakuni said if you are afraid, there is no need to play then but I am challenging you to play now the Kshatriya code was that if one is challenged one should not refuse and that alone was not the reason he was challenged and along with that the instruction of Dhritharashtra was there then after that also now the normal gambling match as per the normal rules would have been between two equals so the amount of wealth that Yudhishthira could stake Shakuni could not stake that and if Duryodhana played the match, Duryodhana was not such a such a evil genius at gambling so when Duryodhana said that Shakuni will play and I will stake the wealth so Duryodhana, so Yudhishthira protested strongly he said this is against the rules the person who plays, that is the person who stakes the wealth this is against the rules but then, even then Dhritharashtra remained silent as did all the Kuru elders and then Yudhishthira again protested and he said that actually it is forbidden that the sages have told me that if you want to play, play for the sake of playing, don’t play with professional gamesters and Shakuni was a professional gamester he spent hours and hours practicing and perfecting and gambling and he would constantly play with professional gamesters and that’s how he had become a maestro at gambling and still, again Shakuni laughed and Duryodhana laughed and he said you don’t want to play, don’t play if you are afraid, don’t play so they confused the issue over there and Yudhishthira obeyed not just because one cannot refuse a challenge but he could not refuse the command of an old elder. Now we could say that Yudhishthira did commit a mistake.
That mistake was that he got carried away in the fever of gambling and he gambled away everything during the course of the gambling match when they had lost a lot of wealth Arjuna gently tapped on the shoulder of Yudhishthira and shook his head indicating stop now but Yudhishthira felt that I have already lost so much, I must gain it back otherwise how will we live? I have lost our wealth, I have lost almost our kingdom and that’s why desperately, the desperate hope that somehow we would be able to get back things. He gambled away everything and again if he just wanted to gamble away he gambled away actually himself before he gambled away Draupadi. So if he had been really driven by selfishness a person won’t make himself a slave if a person would want to sell others away before he sells himself.
So he actually sold himself and actually the thought of gambling Draupadi also did not come till there was nothing left and Shagunti with his evil mind suggested that. So this was we could say that the extent to which he gambled that was a mistake and the subsequent section of the Mahabharata, this is the Sabha Parva, after that Vana Parva, Yudhishthir repeatedly laments that and his lamentation is not that oh how I have lost all wealth his lamentation is two-fold, he says that my loved ones my faithful brothers and my chaste wife, they were subject to such mortification, humiliation because of me and his second lamentation is that I am not able to serve the brahmanas now because he was himself of such a virtuous disposition brahmanas loved to be around him and then he loved to maintain them, take care of them, give them charity and his lamentation was that I cannot take care of them and it was because of that he did tapasya and got Akshaya Patra so we see his lamentation was also based on virtue and it was not based on just self-pity, oh that I have lost everything he says I have become the cause of suffering for others and if he had been less virtuous then when he was departing actually citizens allowed the Pandavas and citizens said for us citizens you are our king we want to live with you so we will come out with you to the forest and in fact the Kauravas are so sinful that they have cheated you of wealth and they have dishonored your wife we will become contaminated by sin if we live with them, so we don’t want to live with them we will come out in the forest with you so there was dissension among among the citizens and there could have been rebellion also but what did Yudhishthir do? Yudhishthir told them that Bhishma, Vidura Deya and Kunti and Dhritharashtra they are our worshipful elders if you want to do something for me and for us Pandavas then please do this one thing please don’t do anything that will increase their misery so Dhritharashtra might have been gloating in pleasure but he knew the others were miserable and a rebellion from the citizens and again having to curb that rebellion by force would have been agonizing for virtuous rulers like virtuous members of the ruling class like Bhishma and Vidura so he says please don’t rebel against them, don’t speak against them and please try to serve them the way you would have served us this is what I asked from you so this is the extent of virtue that he had that he did not want to use manipulative means and then if at all we want to say about virtue and compare the virtue of Yudhishthir with others then we see that in the towards the end of the exile when the exile was almost over at that time in the kingdom of Drupada the Pandavas were living and eventually a Brahmin’s wealth was lost and they all went to try to regain the Brahmin’s wealth and then they came to the lake they were thirsty and then what happened was Nakula was sent the youngest was sent to see if there is some water available and then he came to the lake of death where he was told first answer my questions then drink water now Nakula being unable to resist the thirst he neglected the question and drank the water and he fell as if dead at that time then after that same happened to Sahadev now after that Arjuna and Bheema when they came they were not just overcome by thirst they were overcome by anger also since who could have killed and Arjuna shot arrows here and there and an invisible voice told him that first answer my questions don’t drink the water so he shot arrows everywhere but there was no nothing that was hit by it and then Bheema also whirled his mace around and tried to attack so eventually both of them they went one by one they also drank they succumbed to thirst drank the water and they also fell as if dead when Yudhishthira came he did not succumb either to thirst or succumb to anger and when the invisible voice that was the voice of actually Dharmaraj Yudhishthira’s father only who was testing them and who was testing them in the form of a Yaksha so first he saw he heard the voice don’t drink this without first answering my question he says this lake belongs to me and you cannot steal from me so Yudhishthira we see his virtue he says I do not want to steal from you please tell me how I can get back my brothers and if you have any questions please I’ll answer those questions so if you want to compare this incident is very clearly demonstrative that Yudhishthira was more virtuous than his brothers that he did not succumb either to thirst nor did he succumb to the physical urge for thirst he did not succumb to the emotional urge for anger so he remained fixed in virtue yes there was a immorality on his part and of course again if you want to compare at the end of the Mahabharata there is a description of the Swarga Arohan Parva the last parva so all the other Pandavas fall away and it’s Yudhishthira alone who reaches Swarga and that time also a dog has accompanied him to Swarga I won’t tell the whole story here but all the other Pandavas they fall away one by one even Draupadi falls Yudhishthira alone reaches and a dog has accompanied him and then then when they are climbing up the Himalayas and finally when they reach the top Indra comes over there and says yes you can come to Swargana but this dog cannot come with you so now why is Yudhishthira first of all alone able to reach to the top because he alone is most virtuous the others they have had some moral lapses because of which they cannot reach so then what Indra says that you can come but dogs are not allowed into heaven so he said this dog has taken shelter of me and he has accompanied me for all this I cannot abandon him then he says you will not be able to come to Swarga then he says okay but I cannot abandon one who has taken shelter of me and that time the dog also transforms into a Deva and then they bless him and then they all come back and eventually when the Pandavas also attain auspiciousness actually in the Mahabharata they are depicted as going to Swarga because Mahabharata talks about Dharmarthakama Moksha I have answered this question elsewhere in about why Dashrath Maharaj went to Swarga they did not actually why they went to Swarga and not to the spiritual world that is a different issue but the point which we are making over here is that the Yudhishthira Maharaj is most virtuous and he is so virtuous that even when he had renounced his kingship he still wanted to preserve even when he did not have the privilege of kingship still he wanted to preserve, he wanted to do the duty of kingship so similarly if we see in that same lake of death Yaksha Samvat when Yaksha asks, Yudhishthira answers some of his questions, Yaksha says okay I will revive one of your brothers, whom do you want to be revived so he asks for Nakula to be revived he asks Yaksha is surprised, he said if you want to regain the kingdom then actually for you Bhima or Arjuna are more important, they will be able to win the war for you so why are you asking someone else to be revived, some of the other brothers, he said one should never give up virtue for the sake of selfishness and he said that Kunti has one son alive so Madri should also at least have one son alive that’s why I am asking for him and seeing this adherence to virtue, Yaksha becomes pleased and then he reveals his identity and revives all his brothers so this is even in times of great crisis Yudhishthira Maharaj always adheres to virtue and we see if you want to compare again another time is when the Gandharvas attack Gandharvas attack Duryodhana because Duryodhana in Kamnayak when he wants to parade his wealth Gandharvas arrest Duryodhana so some other Kura soldiers they come and run to the Pandavas for help Pandavas on the other side of the river and at that time Bhima starts laughing and he says what we would have had great trouble to do in future the gods have done for us wonderful and he is very happy, so what does Yudhishthira say Yudhishthira says that this is not the time for pettiness of Bhima our royal family members, our royal ladies have been insulted and they have been arrested, now Duryodhana did not think of Draupadi as our royal lady, he saw her as merely the wife of his opponents and he wanted to dishonor her but Yudhishthira had no such malicious intentions against those who were not directly to be blamed in fact he had no malicious intentions against anyone practically speaking, so he said within we may have conflict between us five and them hundred but for outsiders we are hundred and five, we are united we are all Kurus and it is our family members who have been dishonored go and help them, he says I would have done that but I am performing a sacrifice and I cannot get up right now, so here also we see the virtue of Yudhishthira so mind relatively compared to other Pandavas, his virtue is higher, so we should not give in to arbitrary readings of the Mahabharata or interpretations which have been done by uninformed or misinformed people who try to twist the facts and portray Yudhishthira as immoral even if in the worst case we say that there is one immoral lapse but overall his character was exemplary exemplary immoral Thank you, Hare Krishna