Verses 1.1–1.7🔗

It is significant that a blind man gave the opening statement of this great scripture. Not only had he lost the power of sight, but also the power of insight, the wisdom to distinguish between right and wrong. Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s brother Pāṇḍu handed over to him his throne, as well as the care of his five children. From the point of view of any righteous person, these five Pāṇḍava princes were Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s responsibility as well. However, the separation born out of the self-doubt in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s mind was clear when he said, ‘My sons and the sons of Pāṇḍu.’ Planet Earth Is A Battlefield ‘What are they doing?’ he asked Sañjaya plaintively, ‘These sons of mine, the hundred Kaurava princes, and those five sons of Pāṇḍu, the Pāṇḍava princes?’

He claimed no ownership or responsibility of the Pāṇḍava princes or concern for their welfare. His concern was for his own sons. Dhṛtarāṣṭra is the embodiment of self-doubt which is always blind! His attachment to his sons, especially the crown prince Duryodhana, had blinded his powers of reasoning. Whatever his son did received his endorsement. From early adolescence, Duryodhana had been plotting to kill his Pāṇḍava cousins. Although Dhṛtarāṣṭra pretended ignorance of his son’s evil deeds, he was aware of what his son was up to. Even when Duryodhana and his brother Duśśāssana went to the extreme of disgracing Draupadī, the wife of Pāṇḍavas, trying to disrobe her in public court, Dhṛtarāṣṭra seemed powerless to act.

When Duryodhana finally refused to give the Pāṇḍavas even a needlepoint of land, still Dhṛtarāśṭra kept quiet, ensuring that blood would be shed. Dhṛtarāśṭra was fully aware that he was non-integrated and inauthentic, following the evil path of adharma and that it would result in the destruction of his clan. Yet he seemed powerless to act otherwise. Dhṛtarāśṭra’s tale is common to humankind. Often, we follow wrong paths even though we know it is wrong, we go out of integrity and authenticity almost as if under a hypnotic spell of doubting ourselves. Gītā, therefore, begins from this premise of blinding self-doubting pattern, the primal pattern that invokes all other patterns in us!

Mahābhārat is not merely the fight between good and evil. Far from that, it is about our root patterns, our inner conflict in being unable to do the right thing, not being courageous enough to stand for what is right, and not taking responsibility to be complete. It is about the lack of awareness, clarity and courage to follow the path of righteousness, dharma of integrity, authenticity, responsibility, and enriching. It is a fight between good and evil within us, not merely outside of us. It is actually a fight between the completions and incompletions within us, between possibilities and patterns within us. Kṛṣṇa, the Superconscious, constantly looms over our being, eternally reminding us of our space of highest positivity, possibility, divinity and enlightenment with His tremendous patience and infinite compassion.

Yet we ignore this divine call within us, caught in self-doubting illusion that what we choose instead will make us happy. Listen. I tell you, all wars between countries are nothing but triggering the collective root patterns of that society. Whether it is war at home, or war in the communities, or war between the countries, the root pattern is responsible. Incompletion at the level of a single individual piles up and becomes the incompletion at the level of society. Incompletion in the level of society piles up and becomes the incompletion in the level of large communities. Incompletion in the level of large communities piles up and becomes the incompletion in the level of the whole country.

Incompletion in the level of countries leads to and causes wars. War is the result of incompletions. Whether it is war between you and you, or war between a country and country, it is the result of incompletions, which is there in a single human being. Kurukṣetra war is the ultimate war of the collective root patterns of humanity itself. Dhṛtarāṣṭra refers to Kurukṣetra, the site of this world war, as a holy land or place of righteousness, dharmakṣetra. dharmakṣetre kurukṣetra samavetā yuyutsavaḥ I māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāś caiva kim akurtava sañjaya II 1.1 People ask, ‘How can a battlefield be called a holy land?’ If you study the history of humanity, you find that it has always been a battlefield.

Whether these wars were morally guided or misguided is a matter of opinion. What is right for one need not be right for another. Listen! Mahābhārat beautifully says, ‘Let the fight be in kurukṣetra!’ In Saṃskṛit, kurukṣetra means space of creation. Kuru means doing. Let the fight be in the space of creation. The whole place of fight should not be with the lowest realm, but with the highest realm! So, you will always be in the middle. In the fight itself, you will always be in the middle, and in the end you will be at the peak. Look into your life. Now all your fight is, ‘Will I lose this job or not?’

‘What will happen if I fall sick, if I am alone?’ ‘What will happen if I become bankrupt?’ ‘What will happen if this happens, that happens?’ Then you console yourself, ‘All that will not happen! Don’t bother!’ This is the fight you always do! Shift from the zone of fight into positive creation. Listen! You are fighting in the wrong zone of your life. For example, if you are all the time afraid of becoming bankrupt, decide, ‘I am going to be a billionaire.’ So, in your inner space the fight will be about—will you become a billionaire or not. You may have millions, but the fight will no more be of self-doubting thoughts of bankruptcy or not.

Let the fight always be in kurukṣetra, the zone of creation, not in the zone of destruction. All your worrying, all your thinking, all your basic cognition is, ‘Will I lose this job or not?’ Even in your nightmare dreams, you will only be worried about, ‘Will I lose this job or not?’ No! Always let your fight be, ‘Will I become CEO or not?’ not ‘Will I lose this job or not?’ Shift the battlefield onto the land of creation! Let kurukṣetra be the battlefield—dharmakṣetre kurukṣetra. Please listen! The fight in your life, if it is in the field of creation, you are living in dharma. If it is in the field of failure, you are living in adharma.

This is the meaning of this first śloka (verse) of the Gītā. Practically every century, if not every decade, there have been battles in some part of the world. Almost all were created out of the belief that one party was morally right and the other wrong. In that sense, each battle was fought to restore righteousness, as believed by both parties. So, in that sense every battlefield was a holy site according to someone’s belief, restoring the highest values and beliefs. In the case of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, he had an additional reason. He implicitly recognized the divinity of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, whose mere presence on this battlefield conferred upon it the mantle of dharma.

Wherever Kṛṣṇa was, that was where dharma, righteousness would prevail. Even in his confused state of doubtful thinking, there was enough clarity in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s mind to acknowledge the supremacy of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. This revealed itself in his choice of words. It was as if, at one level, Dhṛtarāṣṭra knew that the fate of his Kaurava clan was sealed. Listen. Life is a fight till you are enlightened. But, let your fight be in kurukṣetra, the field of creation, not in the field of losing. Don’t be constantly fighting with, ‘Will I get heart-attack and die?’ ‘Will my health collapse?’ ‘Will others leave me?’ ‘Will I become bankrupt?’ No! The ground on which the battle happens decides your existence and expansion.

Let your visualization be—‘Will I become CEO or not?’ ‘Will I become yogi or not?’ ‘Will I become jñani or not?’ ‘Will I become rich or not, leader or not?’ ‘Will I become enlightened or not?’ I tell you, if your fight is in the direction of kuru, you will win the game very easily with least or no stress. It does not take more than forty-eight hours to convince yourself to shift the battleground. You just need to complete some of the self-doubts that you got from your elders, family and societal conditioning. Complete with them! So, all you need to do is just shift your core visualization, your core cognition, your core energy.

Change the battlefield and enter the energy-field of dharma, led and controlled by Śrī Kṛṣṇa, immediately you will experience so much of completion. Kṛṣṇa is the epitome of dharma (righteousness), and Kṛṣṇa was on the side of the Pāṇḍavas, then how could they lose? The tragic fate of Dhṛtarāṣṭra was that he knew that the destruction of his clan was inevitable, and yet his self-doubts had turned into self-denial, making him powerless and deny the obvious path of dharma. Listen. The moment you change the battlefield from adharma to dharma, you may even become enlightened; because it is your default parking spot that decides whether you are enlightened or not.

Otherwise you ARE enlightened! You just need to remember and reclaim it. The best way to remember and reclaim it is to complete with your self-doubting patterns and shift the battlefield itself. See, now your battlefield is—‘any one day I am going to become bankrupt. Let me delay it as much as possible!’ Instead, let it be—‘any one day I am going to become the richest being. Let me do it as early as possible!’ So, your goal should be your parking spot, default parking spot. You can take your car wherever you want, but finally you will park where it belongs; your garage. Same way, your mind can go wherever it wants, but end of the day it should come and parking spot of your goal, not your accident spot.

Accidents may or may not happen, but accident spot cannot be the parking spot. In your life, bad things may or may not happen, but that is not the spot where you should park yourself. Listen, your parking spot should be the spot of creation, the field of Kurukṣetra. Kauravas were fighting all the time with their insecurities and lost everything. Pāṇḍavas were fighting all the time to create Indraprastha, the land of creation. So, Pāṇḍavas were living dharma. Kauravas were living in their self-denial, self-hatred and self-destructive mentality, adharma. Pleaselisten,ifyouthink,‘AnyonedayIamgoingtobecomebankrupt. Let me do whatever I want to delay it,’ then you are living in adharma. Shift the battlefield. Shifting the battlefield itself is victory!

Because, your whole energy will be flowing in that direction. Only if you know you are going to make it, only if you don’t doubt yourself, you will even take the risk of investing in it, whether it is your time, energy, money, emotions, anything; investing happens only when you know you are going to make it. I tell you, the moment you complete with your selfdoubts and your battlefield changes, your strategy, your understanding and your whole expression will also change. Sañjaya was Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s minister and charioteer. By the grace of sage Vyāsa, Sañjaya was given the power to see what was going on in the battlefield, to faithfully convey to king Dhṛtarāṣṭra and queen Gāndhāri the tragic happenings therein.

His third eye or centre of intuition was opened, and not only could he see what was happening at a faraway location, but he had the power of intuition as well, to know what would unfold. Please listen! Your life is nothing but seeing. Seeing is your life. If you can see something through the eyes, you can experience it with your physical body. If you can see something with your mind, you can understand it with your mental body. If you can see something with your consciousness, you can control it, as the Lord of it. We are all blind in one sense or another, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra represents the majority of mankind in this aspect.

Blindness in this case is not only the physical inability to see. It essentially represents the inability and the absence of desire to discriminate between right and wrong. It represents the non-integrity to separate completion from incompletion. We can all be like Sañjaya, with our third eyes open instead of being blind like Dhṛtarāṣṭra. This is one of the messages of Gītā. Whether you are blind or have physical eyes, you continue to see through your inner eyes. Dhṛtarāṣṭra blinded by his self-doubts, saw only his sons, who represent his incomplete identity. Listen. The third eye is not just an eye; it is the very source of consciousness. Third-eye is nothing but conscious-seeing.

Consciously seeing our incompletions, our inner conflicts is the first step in opening the third eye, the energy center located between the eyebrows. Third eye can be awakened with right thinking. Let me define right thinking, the thinking based on dharma. Aligning all your thinking based on the cognition of the four principles—tattvas of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching is right thinking. Again, it is interesting the way Sañjaya started his description of the proceedings. Before the War... Duryodhana was the crown prince, and for all practical purposes the king as well, since his father was both blind and powerless to stop him. Duryodhana saw the soldiers of the Pāṇḍava army arrayed in front of him.

There were many ways he could have responded to the sight. As the person who single-handedly instigated this war, Duryodhana could have gloated, that surely he would vanquish his cousins. As a measure to reassure himself and his army, Duryodhana could have roared out in anger and in defiance. Yet, after seeing the army he chose to approach his teacher and mentor, Droṇa, one of the commanders of the Kaurava army, to seek his blessings. The move was to ensure that any blame for the outcome of the war would fall on Droṇa’s shoulders; it was to hold him responsible more than to seek reassurance or blessings. This is how most people act when they go forward with a plan of action, knowing fully well that it is wrong and can lead to serious consequences.

They find something or someone else to blame. Blaming somebody else will only make you feel more and more powerless, more and more incomplete. Duryodhana understood well the modern management concept of delegation. Like many managers today, he delegated so that he could abdicate responsibility. It is very unfortunate that human beings are taught from the beginning to put the responsibility on others. Duryodhana, aware that there was no hope to win the war, yet his greed for power and wealth blinded him to a point where he could not face reality as it IS. Please understand, sometimes we believe what IS. The reality, the creation IS and we are seeing it.

Most of us always feel, ‘It is there. I am seeing. So I am caught! I don’t know what to do!’ Duryodhana also was caught in his greed patterns and wished to change what IS, the reality so that he could control the outcome. Please listen. We are not seeing what IS. We are only seeing what we want. We create what we want. When Duryodhana cognized, ‘It is there! I am seeing and I need to control it,’ he already lost the game! He was fighting a losing war! He was feeling powerless! He put all the blame on what IS, ‘It is there! What can I do?’ What is Responsibility?

Responsibility means living and responding to life from the truth that you are the Source of, and therefore responsible for all happenings in and around you. Listen. There are only two types of human beings on planet Earth— those who feel responsible for everything and those who don’t feel responsible for anything. People who feel responsible become leaders. People who don’t feel responsible become slaves. There are some people who don’t feel responsible even for their actions. Duryodhana is one of them. He could not take responsibility for the situation as it was, since he was caught in his root patterns. He was not planning for success, he was only planning to hold others responsible, if he fails.

All he could do was turn to his mentors and tell them they were responsible for ensuring his success. Duryodhana was blunt in his message to Droṇa on the battlefield. Not a typical warrior, Droṇācārya was a brāhmaṇa, a scholar, and learned his skills of archery and warfare from his father, sage Bharadwāj. Drupad, the prince of Pāñchāla, was a fellow disciple, and he once had insulted Droṇa, turning him away from his court. Droṇa became the teacher of the Pāṇḍava and Kaurava princes. Droṇa later avenged Drupad by having Arjuna capture him, as part of Pāṇḍava’s gurudakṣina, and also released Drupad. Drupad, mortified at his capture, went into penance to please Lord Śiva and sought a child, Dṛṣṭadyumna, who ironically, became disciple of Droṇa.

Well aware of the intent of Dṛṣṭadyumna’s birth, Droṇa still accepted him as a disciple. Dṛṣṭadyumna became the Commander-in-Chief, senāpatī of the Pāṇḍava army, and Droṇa was the opposing Commanders in Kaurava army. Duryodhana then started praising the strength of the great Pāṇḍavawarriors,suchasBhīmaandArjuna.Next,heexplainedtoDroṇa about the great Kaurava warriors. Duryodhana was no longer a disciple addressing his master, but was berating Droṇa’s lack in foresight in training his potential killers, who now led the opposing army and then pacified him by listing him at the head of his own great warriors. At one level, as a kṣatriya, Duryodhana did not have respect for Droṇa, a brāhmaṇa scholar; he felt that a brāhmaṇa had no business engaging in warfare.

However, knowing the unmatched warrior skills of Droṇa, Duryodhana had no choice but to keep him on his side; it would have been too dangerous had Droṇa taken sides with Pāṇḍavas. At another level, he had no trust in Droṇa. He always felt that Droṇa was partial to the Pāṇḍava princes, that Arjuna was his favorite, and that Droṇa held Kṛṣṇa in great esteem. Duryodhana is embodiment of self-denial. His whole life was filled with deep inner conflict and painful reactions as he was fully convinced that he is a failure, the feeling of ‘I cannot make it!’ So, constantly he has to prove his failures to himself by destroying others, never creating anything by himself.

He had no sense of guilt going to war against his brothers, as he desperately wanted to keep the kingdom for himself and did not believe that he would be safe as long as the Pāṇḍava princes were alive. Listen. If you are suffering with greed, your root pattern will be fear. If you are suffering with insecurity, your root pattern will be worrying.Understand,oncethepatternsareformedtheyactinacompletely different way so that we can never discover them. Duryodhana’s inner identity, mamakāra was rooted in deep fear and insecurity born from self-denial. Self-denial was Duryodhana’s root pattern. And his outer identity, ahaṁkāra, the image he projected to others, was greed to possess, which led to anger, hatred, violence, and ultimately his destruction.

His problem was not one of doing right or wrong. His pattern was might is right. Whatever he did was right, according to him. He was not a man given to deep thinking. Please listen, all incompletions boil down to just two patterns— violence and fear. Both are one and the same. When fear comes, violence comes. When violence comes, fear comes. That’s all! Understand, I am defining incompletions. Incompletions are nothing but not looking at the fact and trying to pervert it, interpret it, manipulate it. All your plans to manipulate, pervert and exploit is incompletion. Duryodhana tried to pervert, manipulate, push and pull as he wanted to possess and conquer everything.

But victory remains as victory wherever dharma is, wherever Kṛṣṇa is. However, Duryodhana had no trust in many of the great warriors who had taken his side. Please understand, all distrust, all doubting others is self-doubt. This is the rule of thumb. When you are in incompletion driven by your root pattern, you will never be able to trust anybody. You will go on doubting others and you. All self-doubting is not having the right reason or adequate reasons. Duryodhana did not have right or adequate reasons for his action to wage the war. So, he constantly kept on doubting and distrusting others. He knew that many, especially Droṇa, Bhīṣma, and Kṛpa, who were also the teachers of the Pāṇḍava princes, did not want to fight the Pāṇḍava army.

He knew that they were compelled from a moral standpoint to fight for him and not as directed by their consciousness. This was the source of his conflict, uncertainty, and incompletions. Duryodhana’s root pattern of self-denial was steeped in deep fear of survival. His pattern of self-doubting, ātma saṇdeh led to self-denial, ātma droḥa, leading to his self-destruction, ātma hatyā. I tell you, the worst killer is the self-doubting pattern. The one who doubts himself and doubts others is already in hell. Hell is sponsored by the people who doubt themselves and others. It was also strange that at the beginning of the war Duryodhana chose to go to Droṇa, and not Bhīṣma, his great grandfather and Commander-in-Chief.

Droṇa was a subject of the king, to whom Duryodhana could talk abrasively. Bhīṣma, on the other hand, was his great grandfather, the one who had given up his chance to be king to fulfill his own father’s moral obligations, and to satisfy his father’s lust. Duryodhana could not have said the same words to Bhīṣma at this stage of the war.