Arjuna uvaacha
katham bheeshmamaham sankhye dronam cha madhusoodana |
ishubhihi prati yotsyami poojaarhaavarisoodana || 4 ||
guroonahatvaa hi mahaanubhaavaan shreyo bhoktum bhaikshyamapeeha loke |
hatvaarthakaamaamstu guroonohaiva bhunjeeya bhoogaanrudhirapradigdhaan || 5 ||
Transalation
How can I, O Madhusoodana, fight against Bheeshma and Drona with arrows? Both of them are worthy of worship, O destroyer of enemies.[2.4] I will not kill my revered teachers, because in this world, I would prefer to partake of food received through alms, rather than enjoy the blood-stained worldly pleasures derived from killing my teachers.[ 2.5] To conquer them, or to be conquered by them, I do not know which is the better of the two. Dhritraashtra's kinsmen, after killing whom we certainly don't wish to live, stand here before us.
Summary
Let us briefly recap the context of this verse. The Mahabharatha war is about to begin. Arjuna, the ace archer of the Pandavas on seeing his own kith and kin arraigned against him on the enemy side, loses his emotional stability and refuses to fight. We have also seen from the earlier verses, that he is in a hyper stressed situation and is not able to think clearly.
Strangely, even in this situation, he gives out arguments justifying his reason for not fighting. As can be seen from this verse on to the next couple of verses, the arguments seem cogent. We have discussed earlier about the structure of an individual consisting of the body, mind and intellect. Looking closely at the last two, the mind is full of emotions and can never decide. It is the intellect which acts as the guiding principle and advises the mind. But in several situations, the emotions are so powerful that they cloud the intellect. Without the intellect, the mind seemingly takes decisions. But without the guidance of the intellect, it is not a good decision. However, since the intellect is blinded, one does not even know the thinking or the decision is wrong and believes that the emotion driven mind is talking logically.
This is the same set of strong conviction brought about by an emotion driven mind, without the guidance of the intellect, that makes people commit heinous crimes.Even Godse, after he killed Gandhi had very logical arguments to support his stand. By most analysis of rational thinking, this argument could be invalidated. But being in an emotional state, the logic to eliminate Gandhi, would have appeared totally logical to Godse and made him pull the trigger. Imagine a former president of USA having a torrid affair with an intern in his own office. Would a sane man holding a powerful office do something so crazy in normal circumstances? It was again a passion driven mind clouding the intellect, which gave seemingly convincing arguments to go ahead and do something insane, in normal circumstances.
The emotions clouding the intellect extends to non-heinous crimes too. Look at the various office crimes including money laundering, embezzlement etc done by reputed people. We had the top executive of Mckinsey, a top class management consulting firm getting embroiled in an insider trading case and being jailed.
Now, why would a rational thinking highly respected executive take the totally crazy step of doing a criminal act? Would he not have known the consequences of this act? Again, he was overtaken by emotion of greed, power or whatever, which clouded his intellect and the emotion driven mind gave apparently strong arguments which convinced him that it was fine to go ahead.
In summary a weak mind by definition is that which is having or showing a lack of mental firmness. It is irresolute and vacillating. But it has the troubling ability to cloud the intellect and prevent right thoughts and action. In a hyper stressed / distressed state , the mind will put forth a lot of arguments These arguments may appear logical. But remember, these arguments comes out of a weak mind. There is no virtue / value in the arguments of a weak mind.
But as we said, a man in this emotional state will not even know that his intellect is clouded and his arguments are not right. What is the way out then? We will see that in the next blog post.
As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.
I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.
1. My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality
My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality
2. Attain Infinite Bliss
Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide
3. The Spirit Of Spirituality
The Spirit Of Spirituality
katham bheeshmamaham sankhye dronam cha madhusoodana |
ishubhihi prati yotsyami poojaarhaavarisoodana || 4 ||
guroonahatvaa hi mahaanubhaavaan shreyo bhoktum bhaikshyamapeeha loke |
hatvaarthakaamaamstu guroonohaiva bhunjeeya bhoogaanrudhirapradigdhaan || 5 ||
Transalation
How can I, O Madhusoodana, fight against Bheeshma and Drona with arrows? Both of them are worthy of worship, O destroyer of enemies.[2.4] I will not kill my revered teachers, because in this world, I would prefer to partake of food received through alms, rather than enjoy the blood-stained worldly pleasures derived from killing my teachers.[ 2.5] To conquer them, or to be conquered by them, I do not know which is the better of the two. Dhritraashtra's kinsmen, after killing whom we certainly don't wish to live, stand here before us.
Summary
Let us briefly recap the context of this verse. The Mahabharatha war is about to begin. Arjuna, the ace archer of the Pandavas on seeing his own kith and kin arraigned against him on the enemy side, loses his emotional stability and refuses to fight. We have also seen from the earlier verses, that he is in a hyper stressed situation and is not able to think clearly.
Strangely, even in this situation, he gives out arguments justifying his reason for not fighting. As can be seen from this verse on to the next couple of verses, the arguments seem cogent. We have discussed earlier about the structure of an individual consisting of the body, mind and intellect. Looking closely at the last two, the mind is full of emotions and can never decide. It is the intellect which acts as the guiding principle and advises the mind. But in several situations, the emotions are so powerful that they cloud the intellect. Without the intellect, the mind seemingly takes decisions. But without the guidance of the intellect, it is not a good decision. However, since the intellect is blinded, one does not even know the thinking or the decision is wrong and believes that the emotion driven mind is talking logically.
This is the same set of strong conviction brought about by an emotion driven mind, without the guidance of the intellect, that makes people commit heinous crimes.Even Godse, after he killed Gandhi had very logical arguments to support his stand. By most analysis of rational thinking, this argument could be invalidated. But being in an emotional state, the logic to eliminate Gandhi, would have appeared totally logical to Godse and made him pull the trigger. Imagine a former president of USA having a torrid affair with an intern in his own office. Would a sane man holding a powerful office do something so crazy in normal circumstances? It was again a passion driven mind clouding the intellect, which gave seemingly convincing arguments to go ahead and do something insane, in normal circumstances.
The emotions clouding the intellect extends to non-heinous crimes too. Look at the various office crimes including money laundering, embezzlement etc done by reputed people. We had the top executive of Mckinsey, a top class management consulting firm getting embroiled in an insider trading case and being jailed.
Now, why would a rational thinking highly respected executive take the totally crazy step of doing a criminal act? Would he not have known the consequences of this act? Again, he was overtaken by emotion of greed, power or whatever, which clouded his intellect and the emotion driven mind gave apparently strong arguments which convinced him that it was fine to go ahead.
In summary a weak mind by definition is that which is having or showing a lack of mental firmness. It is irresolute and vacillating. But it has the troubling ability to cloud the intellect and prevent right thoughts and action. In a hyper stressed / distressed state , the mind will put forth a lot of arguments These arguments may appear logical. But remember, these arguments comes out of a weak mind. There is no virtue / value in the arguments of a weak mind.
But as we said, a man in this emotional state will not even know that his intellect is clouded and his arguments are not right. What is the way out then? We will see that in the next blog post.
3 of my books
I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.
1. My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality
My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality
2. Attain Infinite Bliss
Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide
3. The Spirit Of Spirituality
The Spirit Of Spirituality
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