In the previous episode, we had witnessed Bhishmachaarya continuing with his important accord on “Raaja Dharma”, wherein he is currently explaining thirty-six different qualities of a leader. As part of this discussion, we’ve seen during yesterday’s episode that a leader should definitely maintain good and healthy relationships with his / her family members, however, there should be a caution that if someone walks the path of “Adharma”, a safe distance should be maintained from that person. Just because relationships are important, it doesn’t mean that a leader should support people for anything and everything that they might do. Secondly, we’ve seen that it is important for a leader to have spies (intelligence agents). However, that also comes with a catch – Those people who are acting as spies, should be the ones who follow “Dharma” systematically. If this is not happening, chances are very high that these spies can leak out important administrative and army-related secrets to the enemy camps. Hence, having spies is a very important aspect of leadership, however, a leader should be very careful while choosing his / her spies.
Moving on further, Bhishmachaarya explains – “Oh Yudishtra! It is extremely important that you’ve to perform “Dharma-Kaaryam” as part of your administrative responsibilities. You’ve to simultaneously defend your kingdom from enemies. However, just because you are doing something good, it doesn’t mean that your actions should harm others!” For instance, in our house also, we might be waking up early, performing our daily routines, offering our prayers to Bhagawan before sunrise, etc. These are extremely good things and it is a mandate that all of us should follow these routines as much as we can. However, having said that, if there are some aged people at home who are perennially ill – Our actions should not disturb their sleep in the morning, isn’t it? Rather, if we wake up early in the morning, go here and there inside the home, drop some utensils on the floor and create unwanted sounds during the early hours of the morning, the resting period for others might get disturbed. Hence, it is very important that we perform “Dharma-Kaaryam”, but it should be done without any hindrance to anyone. For instance, many places of worship have loudspeakers these days. If there’s any festival occasion, devotional songs of that particular deity would be played through the loudspeakers with enormous sounds early in the morning. Of course, worshipping the deity on important and auspicious days is definitely to be done, however, this should not cause disturbance and hindrance to the others in the neighbourhood. Our actions should never cause any kind of disturbance to anybody, Bhishmachaarya is exactly explaining the same here.
Moving on further, Bhishmachaarya explains thus, “Oh Yudishtra! You might be exceptionally talented and I know that you yourself are an epitome of “Dharma”. However, there is a catch here – Where will you showcase your knowledge and wisdom? You should do so only amongst those who really deserve to understand you and “Dharma”. You should be very careful in talking about “Dharma” and about your likes / dislikes in a way that these aspects should only reach the right people. Whereas, especially if your likes and dislikes are told to wrong people and through them if your enemy comes to know these pointers, you will be in trouble. Hence, you should keep your likes / dislikes and “Dharma” reserved only to those who deserve to know them!” Even in today’s context this is extremely important. Given that we are in the “age of technology”, communication has become very easy through social media. It is also very easy to connect with anybody around the world through social media – both known and unknown people. We’ve to be very careful if we’re going to connect with people whom we do not know before. We should never reveal our personal details, our likes / dislikes, our interests, etc. to strangers. Many people are falling into the trap of cyber crimes like extortions, blackmailing, etc. and we are seeing this almost every day in the news, aren’t we? Hence, we’ve to be very careful in sharing our personal details, preferences, etc. to unknown people. In other words, it is always better to keep a safe distance from strangers on social media, so as to avoid unwanted troubles later on.
So for today, let us understand up to this point, and in the next episode, we shall continue this discussion further! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 