Daily Shlokas: Nov.1, 2015

Bg 1.36

pāpam evāśrayed asmān hatvaitān ātatāyinaḥ

tasmān nārhā vayaṁ hantuṁ dhārtarāṣṭrān sa-bāndhavān

sva-janaṁ hi kathaṁ hatvā sukhinaḥ syāma mādhava

Bg 1.37

yady apy ete na paśyanti lobhopahata-cetasaḥ

kula-kṣaya-kṛtaṁ doṣaṁ mitra-drohe ca pātakam

Bg 1.38

kathaṁ na jñeyam asmābhiḥ pāpād asmān nivartitum

kula-kṣaya-kṛtaṁ doṣaṁ prapaśyadbhir janārdana

Bg 1.39

kula-kṣaye praṇaśyanti kula-dharmāḥ sanātanāḥ

dharme naṣṭe kulaṁ kṛtsnam adharmo ’bhibhavaty uta

Bg 1.40/41

adharmābhibhavāt kṛṣṇa praduṣyanti kula-striyaḥ

strīṣu duṣṭāsu vārṣṇeya jāyate varṇa-saṅkaraḥ

Translation:

36. Killing these sons of Dhritarashtra, what pleasure can be ours, O Janardana? Sin alone will be our gain by killing these felons.  Therefore we shall not kill the sons of Dhritarashtra, our relatives; for how can we be happy by killing our own people, O Madhava?

37. Though these, with their intelligence clouded by greed, see no evil in the destruction of the families in the society, and no sin in their cruelty to friends; . . .

38. Why should not we, who clearly see evil in the destruction of the family-units, learn to turn away from this sin, O Janardana?

39. In the destruction of a family, the immemorial religious rites of that family perish; on the destruction of spirituality, impiety overcomes the whole family.

40/41. By the prevalence of impiety, O Krishna, the women of the

family become corrupt; and women being corrupted, O

descendent of the Vrishni-clan, there arises "intermingling of

castes" (VARNA-SAMKARA) .

Commentary:

…Arjuna seems to draw new inspiration from his foolishness, and each time his creative intelligence puts forth fresh arguments in support of his wrong philosophy.

…He indicates here that, when individual families are destroyed, along with them the religious traditions of the society will also end, and soon an era of impiety will be ushered in.

Cultural experiments were the pre-occupations of our forefathers and they knew that the culture and tradition of each family was a unit of the total culture and integrity of the whole nation. Hence the important of the family- Dharma so seriously brought forth by Arjuna as an argument against this civil war.

 In spite of all that Arjuna said so far, Krishna is as silent as a sphinx. Therefore, Arjuna gives up his melodramatic expression and assumes a softer, a more appealing tone and takes the attitude of explaining in vain, a serious matter to a dull-witted friend. The change of strategy becomes conspicuously ludicrous when we notice Krishna's continued silence!! In the first line of the stanza he explains to Krishna that no good can arise out of killing the sons of Dhritarashtra... still the wooden-smile of Krishna does not change and the Pandava hero, his intelligence shattered, tries to find a

cause for Krishna's attitude. Immediately, he remembers that the Kaurava brothers were behaving towards the Pandavas as felons. 'Atatayinah' means felons, who deserve to be killed according to the Artha Shastra.

Sin is only a mistake committed by a misunderstood individual ego against its own Divine Nature as the Eternal Soul. To act as the body or the mind or the intellect is not to act up to the responsibilities of a man but it becomes an attempt to behave under the impulses of an animal. All those acts performed and motives entertained, which create grosser mental impressions and thereby build stronger walls between us and our cognition of the Real Divine Spark in ourselves are called sins.

Arjuna's seemingly learned objection to killing enemies is a misinterpretation of our sacred texts (Shastra), and to have acted upon it would have been suicidal to our very culture. Therefore, Krishna refuses to show any sign either of appreciation or criticism of Arjuna's stand. The Lord understands that his friend is raving hysterically and the best policy is to allow a mental patient first of all to bring

out everything in his mind and thus exhaust himself.

Here, Arjuna concludes his seemingly logical arguments which have got a false look of Hindu scriptural sanction. More than deliberate blasphemers of a scripture, the unconscious misinterpreters of a sacred text are the innocent criminals who bring about the wretched downfall of its philosophy. Purring with the satisfaction of a cat in the kitchen, Arjuna, in this verse, is licking up his arguments all round and is coming to the dangerous conclusion that he should not kill the aggressors, nor face

their heartless challenge! Even then Krishna is silent.

Arjuna's discomfiture makes him really quite conspicuous in his ugliness. In the second line of the stanza, he makes a personal appeal to Krishna and almost begs of him to think for himself and endorse Partha's own lunatic conclusions.

With the familiarity born out of his long-standing friendship, Arjuna addresses his charioteer with affection as Madhava, and asks him how one can come to any happiness after one has destroyed one's own kinsmen... Still, Krishna remains silent.

No doubt, the Kauravas, grown blind in their greed for power and wealth, cannot see the destruction of the entire social structure by this war. Their ambition has so completely clouded their intelligence and sensibility that they fail to appreciate or understand the cruelty in annihilating their own friends.

But Arjuna seems to retain his reasoning capacity and can clearly foresee the chaos in which society will get buried by fratricidal war. Now his argument amounts to this: if a friend of ours, in his drunkenness, behaves nastily, it would be worse than drunkenness in us, if we were to retaliate; for, we are expected to know that our friend, with his fumed-up intelligence, does not entertain enough

discriminative awareness of what he is doing. At such moments, it would be our duty to forgive the mischief and overlook the impudence.

Similarly, here, Arjuna argues: "If Duryodhana and his friends are behaving as blind aggressors, should the Pandavas not retire quietly and suffer the ignominy of a defeat, and consider it their dutiful offering at the altar of peace?" How far this philosophy is dangerous in itself will be seen as we read more and more the passages of the Geeta and come to appreciate the pith of its philosophy which is the very kernel of our Hindu way-of-living. "Active resistance to evil" is the central idea in the doctrine expounded by Krishna in the Geeta.