We’re at an extremely important juncture at Day 3, wherein Bhagawan Krishna Himself jumps onto the ground to stop Bhishmachaarya’s rampage as Arjuna and Bheemasena fail to bring him under control. Bhagawan Krishna, after observing that Arjuna isn’t doing enough, gets immensely frustrated and He decides to break His “Pratignya” of not taking a weapon in the battlefield, which in turn satisfies Bhishmachaarya’s “Pratignya” of making Bhagawan Krishna take the weapon in the same battlefield! However, as Bhagawan Krishna rushes with immense ferocity, Bhishmachaarya has tears in his eyes as he puts down his bow and arrow! He surrenders himself to Bhagawan Krishna’s divine lotus feet and announces openly that he’s ready to be killed by Bhagawan Krishna at that instant itself! Even though, as we might be aware, Bhishmachaarya has a unique boon to decide the day and time of his death – At this moment, Bhishmachaarya decides that this is the moment that he was waiting for – To be killed by Bhagawan Krishna’s divine hands!
Meanwhile, Arjuna runs to Bhagawan Krishna from his chariot and falls on His divine lotus feet seeking forgiveness. Arjuna urges Bhaagwan Krishna to put down the “Chakra-Aayudham”, as this act of His is totally against the “Pratignya” that He had taken. Moreover, Arjuna had earlier taken a “Pratignya” that he would be the one to kill Bhishmachaarya and now as Bhagawan is going forward to kill him, Arjuna is scared that he would fail in this “Pratignya”. Hence, he rushes towards Bhagawan and holds Him back. Even as Arjuna tries to hold Him back, Bhagawan pushes Arjuna’s hands and continues to walk further towards Bhishmachaarya. As Bhagawan advances more and more, Bhishmachaarya is very happy. On the other hand, Arjuna is getting more nervous! Here is a classical example of how two people who are ardent devotees of Bhagawan Krishna, wanting Him to dance to their tunes individually! Now, whom does Bhagawan Krishna favor? On one hand, Bhishmachaarya is saying thus, “Oh Bhagawan Krishna! You’re only a few more feet away from me! Please come forward!” Whereas, on the other hand, Arjuna says thus, “Oh Bhagawan Krishna! You are only a few more feet away from Bhishmachaarya! Please do not go there! Please stop!” As both of them try to pull Bhagawan to their respective sides, Bhagawan Krishna’s heart starts melting! His anger starts coming down as He takes a pause and stops His forward movement! Arjuna somehow succeeds this time in turning Bhagawan Krishna back to his chariot, as Bhishmachaarya loses an opportunity to be killed by Bhagawan Krishna!
We are witnessing this incident today as part of the third day of the Kurukshetra war, aren’t we? The same kind of an event is going to unfold on the ninth day as well, wherein Bhagawan Krishna is once again going to take out His “Chakra-Aayudham” and rush towards Bhishmachaarya to finish him off. Even at that time, Arjuna is going to stop Bhagawan Krishna from advancing forward, and this is the time, Bhishmachaarya decides to call it off and to reveal the secret to Arjuna as to how his downfall would be coming by. As Bhagawan Krishna comes twice and Bhishmachaarya is left unscathed by Him, we might be thinking that Bhishmachaarya escaped the wrath of Bhagawan Krishna’s might, but on the hindsight, we should realize that Bhagawan Krishna had given Bhishmachaarya two golden opportunities to be killed by His divine hands and thereby attain the highest “Moksha” and Bhishmachaarya had lost both of them! However, when the opportunity goes away for the second time, Bhishmachaarya realizes that this opportunity is not going to come for the third time and thus, on the ninth day, Bhishmachaarya is going to be struck down!
We’re of course going to see this in detail in our coming episodes, but the reason behind me stressing upon this point earlier is very simple – If Bhagawan is giving us an opportunity to redeem ourselves and attain the highest “Moksha” through His divine “Leela” (Play), we should be ready to grab it with both hands, shouldn’t we? Instead, if we’re trying to escape from Bhagawan, what are we trying to do here? We’re only trying to squander away the golden opportunity that Bhagawan is giving us! Hence, this is the message that we’ve to understand from this event. In other words, when we say that Bhagawan Krishna is on an attack-mode towards Bhishmachaarya with a lot of anger, it simply means that Bhagawan Krishna is unleashing His divine “Leela” to protect Bhishmachaarya and to enable him to attain the highest “Moksha”. Hence, during day three, rather than saying that Bhishmachaarya escaped the wrath of Bhagawan Krishna’s anger, we should understand that he had lost a golden opportunity to attain “Moksha” through Bhagawan Krishna’s divine hands! So with this event, we come to the end of Day three at Kurukshetra and we shall wait till the next episode to move into Day four! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 