Rights and wrongs are the fulcrum of our lives. Since childhood, we are taught to follow the right path and stay away from the wrong ones. However, there is so much confusion about what is right and what is wrong. Every culture has different rights and wrongs. Rights and wrongs also vary across times. Most importantly, there are individual rights and wrongs, societal rights and wrongs, and spiritual rights and wrongs.
Mahabharata is one of the most profound scriptures to give the widest possible perspective of rights and wrongs. There are many individual rights and wrongs. All the Pandavas have their own rights and wrongs. They feel that they have been cheated by the Kauravas and therefore want to take revenge and take their kingdom back. Kauravas have their own rights and wrongs. They feel that just because their father was blind, he was wrongfully deprived of being the king despite being an elder son and therefore felt that they were rightfully fighting the battle of Kurukshetra. Bhishma thought that he was right fighting the battle from the side of Kauravas since he took a vow to serve the kingdom of Hastinapur and since Dhritrastra was the ruler of Hastinapur, he was right while supporting Kauravas. Karna thought that he was right to support Duryodhana because it was Duryodhana who supported him in difficult times. Thus everybody had his own individual rights and wrongs.
There was also a societal right and wrong. Pandavas were deprived of their well-accepted rights when they claimed their kingdom back after completing the Ajnyatvas. Duryodhana tries to deprive them of their rights by cheating in the game of Chausar and also using the strength of his soldiers and army while the Pandavas were quite resourceless. He refused to give even 5 villages to Pandavas when Krishna tried to convince him to avoid the battle. In terms of social justice, Pandavas were right and Kauravas were wrong.
This is how life gets complicated. There is a conflict between individual and societal rights and wrongs. The same conflict was faced by Bhishma and Karna. Bhishma preferred his individual right over the societal right. Similarly, Karna preferred his individual right over the societal right. Both of them decided to fight from the side of Kauravas. There was no conflict in their minds and that is the beauty of narrowness. The narrower a person is the more he is certain in his decisions. It is because he decides to close his eyes to anything beyond that narrowness. Similarly, the people who are driven by their individual rights and wrongs have an absolute view of rights and wrongs and there is no confusion in their minds.
It was Arjuna who did not close his eyes to the wider reality. He could experience a conflict between what he considered to be right and what his traditions and society taught him. He asked a lot of questions from Krishna and all those questions are contained in different chapters of Bhagwada Geeta. Arjuna took a significant decision before the commencement of the battle of Kurukshetra and that was to choose Krishna for his army. He had complete trust in Krishna which was the starting point of his spiritual journey. Krishna showed him his Vishvaroop and explained how all the beings have emerged from Him and merged back into Him. That widened the perspective of Arjuna. He understood the wideness of his own existence.
Similarly, when we move out of the narrowness of ego, we get a lot of conflicts. In those moments we have an option to become narrow and limited again and be certain that most of the people choose to be because they can not handle uncertainty. However, if we trust the divine, we start getting answers to all our questions. There would always be conflicts between the individual rights and wrongs and the societal rights and wrongs. It is because they are two different ego centers. Both define rights and wrongs in order to ensure their survival and expansion. However, the reality is that all the individuals and communities just emerge from the divine and merge into that. Divine is the ultimate reality. We are not able to see the reality due to limited vision.
Once we realize the ultimate reality, whatever we do in this life, we do with that awareness. We study and learn new things not with a narrow perspective to be more knowledgeable or to clear an exam but to explore the deep secrets of nature. We study psychology to understand the deeper aspects of human nature, learn biology to learn the deep secrets of the human body, and so on. Similarly, when we fight a battle, we do not fight the battle for the sake of winning the medals. Rather we fight the battle to create better opportunities for the people to explore their lives as human beings. Love and compassion guide even the wars. The act of killing Bhishma by Arjuna was an act of compassion and love. Love and compassion are not divided. Love has its origin in oneness. Killing the cancerous cells is an act of compassion for the body rather than cruelty against the cancerous cells. That is the holistic perspective of the body.
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