In the previous episode, we had witnessed the continuation of what happened at Hastinapura as the Brahmana Rishi goes from Viraata Desha with his peace message to Duryodhana and Co. As the Brahmana Rishi finishes his accord, it does not seem like anyone being interested in brokering peace and returning back the Indraprastha kingdom to Yudishtra. Everybody including the likes of Ducchaasana, Karna, and the others have a feeling that Yudishtra should “earn” back his kingdom, rather than requesting them like this, and the only way to earn back the kingdom is through war. As all these people are steadfast in their decision, King Dhritarashtra is oscillating as usual! He doesn’t know which side to take! On one hand, he wants to favour his son Duryodhana more than Yudishtra and on the other hand, he doesn’t want a ghastly war between the two camps on this issue. Hence, King Dhritarashtra requests some time to think and explains to the Brahmana Rishi that he would shortly send Sanjaya (his minister) to try and find a mid way to this problem.
Now as we go into this discussion, we’ve to witness one more important discussion here. As Duryodhana is steadfast in war, we’ve seen that he had gone to Bhagawan Krishna to seek help in preparing for the war. We’ve also understood that Bhagawan Krishna too had favoured Duryodhana with whatever he has asked for – His entire Dwaraka army! On the other hand, Bhagawan Krishna had to do the balancing act because Arjuna had also come precisely for the same reason. Now the question comes – Whom did Bhagawan Krishna actually favour? Is it Duryodhana or Arjuna? If we look at things outwardly, it would seem as if Bhagawan Krishna favoured Duryodhana more, as He had gifted His entire army and cavalry to Duryodhana, and on the other hand, He only promised His mere physical presence to Arjuna! So with this view, can we come to a conclusion that Bhagawan Krishna favoured Duryodhana more than Arjuna? We shall witness this from multiple angles today.
One angle in which we can view this is – Of course, Bhagawan Krishna might have favoured Duryodhana more than Arjuna because he had given away His entire army to him. However, if we look at another perspective, we can infer here that Bhagawan Krishna favoured Arjuna more than Duryodhana. Mere presence of Bhagawan Krishna can imply a lot of things, isn’t it? In fact, during the Kurukshetra war, we are going to witness how Bhagawan Krishna is going to protect Arjuna at various instances and enable him to win the war, even though Bhagawan Krishna doesn’t take a single weapon in His hand to fight! So if this is the case, it might seem to us that Bhagawan Krishna has favoured Arjuna more than Duryodhana, isn’t it? Of course, we can always say here that the Paandava brothers followed the path of “Dharma” and obviously Bhagawan will take the side which stands by “Dharma”. This is one way of looking at it as well.
There is a fourth angle to this as well, and this is the spiritual angle. Till now we’ve witnessed various perspectives based on the facts of the case. But now, we can look at it in a slightly different way – Bhagawan Krishna had given an equal opportunity to both Duryodhana and Arjuna to request whatever they required, didn’t He? We’ve witnessed this in our earlier episodes as well. We’ve subsequently seen that Duryodhana wanted Bhagawan Krishna’s entire army, and this is because, he did not have that spiritual maturity to understand who exactly Bhagawan Krishna is and what He can do. However, Arjuna had this spiritual maturity to request Bhagawan Krishna’s mere presence, since he knows that Bhagawan Krishna is a “Paramatman” (Supreme Consciousness). Thus, when both of them requested whatever they wanted, Bhagawan Krishna immediately granted it to both, didn’t He? Hence, we can see here that Bhagawan is carefully treading a neutral stance here, isn’t He? When Duryodhana asked for His army, Bhagawan Krishna readily gave him. Similarly when Arjuna asked for His mere presence, Bhagawan Krishna readily granted Himself to Arjuna! Even after this, Duryodhana sought to clarify whether Bhagawan Krishna will team up with Arjuna and fight the war, and for this too, Bhagawan Krishna assures Duryodhana that He wouldn’t take the weapon in hand, isn’t He?
Thus, we can see here that Bhagawan is always neutral towards all His Jeevatmas and it is only up to us to ask whatever we want to Bhagawan! So for today, let us understand this point very clearly and in the next episode, we shall witness what are the implications that we have to take home from this! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 