The Mahabharata

            

The Mahabharata

A Guide to life

By Adriana Moran Diaz

Lit 230-302

Thesis Statement: The Mahabharata is a guide to life.

I-                 Only when a man makes a decision can he be distinguished as a righteous man.

a)Yudhistira Plays dice.

II-Human action VS Godly action

a)    Human action is based on earthly motives

b)   Gods Have no need for earthly motives

c)    Krishna’s words of justice

III-Humans have the gift of wisdom.

                            a)The fable of the Grandfather and the Grandson

                            b) Law of Karma

For an individual to read The Mahabharata and be able to discover the true meaning behind the words, the reader would have to read with the eyes of the soul, and not the eyes of the body. The Mahabharata was written to impress upon the reader the paths of righteousness and how to distinguish between right and wrong. The Mahabharata is a guide to life where the reader can find examples of behavior and how to distinguish the Right path to take.

As a story The Mahabharata is full of fables and amazing tales of semi Gods. Yet, it is when a man makes a decision that he can distinguish himself as a righteous man. To exemplify this point one can refer to the fable of Yudhistira in which he chooses to gamble by playing a game of dice and therefore loosing his entire kingdom.

“I cannot reproach you for your words and for the feeling behind them. I agree that it was all my mistake. I confess to something now. I agreed to gambling only with a secret hope that I would be able to snatch away the whole Kingdom and sovereignty from Duryodhana and maki him my vassal, while we had only half the kingdom after our return from Pancala Sesa; but he played with the aid of that expert, Sukini, and now I am paying for my own cupidity, which I had not confessed to any one till now.” (The Mahabharata, Pg 80)

            Within this paragraph there is more than Yudhistira confessing to a love for gambling. Yudhistira is accepting his human half. If one believes in the Gods of the old, then one would say that Gods do not commit sins, yet Yudhistura has commited a sort of sin by allowing himself to gamble. This is a weakness that Gods should not have. Yudhistira desires power and fortune. A God would have no need for Power or for fortune and so he would not desire them. Yudhistira makes his decision to gamble based on an earthly desire to obtain riches and power. This choice allows the reader to differentiate between a Godly action and a Human Action.

Before we can continue perhaps it would be wise to define what a Human action is. A human action is an action based solely on earthly motives. Motives such as vanity, greed, hatred and vengeance are beyond Gods because they have no need for them. This definition is molded out of reading The Mahabharata.One way to demonstrate this would be by reading the passage in which Krishna finds out what has come about due to the gambling game and speaks to Yudhistira

“I had to be away in another mission. Otherwise I would have come to Hastinapura and stopped the game which has brought you to this pass. I would have persuaded the Kauravas to give up their sinful ways-or I would have destroyed them all on the spot” (Page 76)    

            Krishna is a God that has been born to a human. This does not mean that his soul is human. His soul is Godly. He knows all that has happened and all that will come to pass. Within this paragraph one can see that Krishna finds no fault in Yudhistira for playing dice. Krishna knows that it was a human mistake and no ill intensions laid behind his actions. Yudistira did not play in order to banish his cousins, or to embarrass his cousins the way his cousins embarrass Yudhistira and his family. Krishna, however, knows that the Kauravas had played with malicious intent. The Kauravas had only played seeking the destruction of their cousins.

When Krishna tells Yudhistira that he would have killed the Kauravas if they had not stopped pursuing their sinful actions he was telling the truth. But, he did not say it out of anger, or vengeance. It is justice that made Krishna utters those words. The Kauravas had been performing a sinful action and their death would be justice. Krishna however tells Yudhistira that he had been away in another mission and therefore had not been there to help them. He might have been in another mission, but, what Krishna does not say is that Yudhistira has to go through this episode to understand a part of him, and Krishna would not have been able to destroy the Kauravas because the pandavas had to recover their kingdom by fighting and destroying the Kauravas.

The Mahabarata also shows that one does not need to be a God to do Godly actions or to be as wise as a God. There is a story within the fable in which a Grandson asks his Grandfather if blind forgiveness is superior to judicious anger.

 To this the Grandfather replied

 “Child, Aggressiveness is not always good, nor is forgiveness. One who is known to be forgiving always suffers. Servants, strangers, and enemies ill treat him, steal his goods under his very nose, and even try to take his wife away. The evil minded will never be affected by compassion. Equally bad is indiscriminate anger and the exercise of force. A man of anger and violence will be hated by everyone, and suffer the consequences of his own recklessness. One should show forgiveness or righteous anger as the situation may demand” (pg 77)

Within these words is a wisdom brought on by a human being that had no Godly powers. This exemplifies how Humans can know the way to the righteous path. It also shows how one does not have to have a God whispering in their shoulder to know what is right and what is wrong. 

This paragraph refers to the balance of nature. One must know good to know evil and visa versa. To appreciate the wisdom behind this words one would have to know the law of Karma, What you give out comes back to you. In the case of the man who is always obsessively angry it is easy to see how Karma would work. He would be so full of hatred that he would end up hurting innocent people that do not deserve to get hurt. Karma in turn would bring back the same amount of hurt to him. In the case of the man who always forgives one could think that it is only because others are taking advantage of him that he would suffer. Yet, Karma plays into this as well, since Karma would have to give back the same amount of pain to the ones who are hurting him.   

If one reads the Mahabarata with human eyes, than the reader will see nothing more than an adventure story. Yet, if one would be able to read with the eyes of the soul, one would be able to see the Mahabarata for its true reason for being. The Mahabarata is a guide to righteous the path and liberating truth.