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They are indeed interesting figures, and this is what makes the Ramayana and Mahabharata such interesting stories, they challenges you to seek a deeper understanding rather than imposing morals.Originally Posted by Viraja
Kaikeyi is indeed a very good person, but as the stories goes on and she does such a horrible thing we start doubting her goodness. Is this really possible or was she never that good a person? The story insist that she is, and that brings us the understanding that even good people can go horribly wrong if they are under the continuing influence of evil people. We should never underestimate their power. Also is interesting how Kooni is able to derail Kaikeyi. The weak point of every mother is her children, their is nothing a mother would not do to protect her child. It is exactly this excellent loving property that Kooni is using to manipulate Kaikeyi, by creating the illusion that her son will be done grave injustice. At first she does not listen, but like commercials, by constantly repeating it, Kaikeyi becomes poisoned. Then she is pressured to act now or else miss the opportunity, the same kind of time pressure salespeople try to built to lure people to act without proper thinking. Although wrongly, Kaikeyi acts as a mother and that is why Rama repeatedly insists that his brothers bring her motherly respect.
Ravana has ten heads. How literal must we take this? This is not important. What is the natural form of a Deva or an Asura? The answer is none, They either take a shape they think fit or they are given a shape as a form of punishment. 10 heads with ten mouths and 10 ten times the senses signifies greed and immense desire, but also power.
Yes he is extremely devout man, and the mayor lesson the Ramayana tells us here is that even extremely evil people can be very devout too. This is a real eyer opener as evil people are often portrayed as irreligious people. But when look at the history of Christianity we and see the countless atrocities and genocides done by extremely devout people. Then it is said, those people are not real believers, not real Christians. This is a lie.
Even more the Ramayana tells us that the Gods are impartial to the wishes of good or bad people. The Sun shines for the good and the bad, and the evil/selfish are granted their wishes as much as the good. Ravana is great bhakt, he is prepared to sacrifice many of his lower desires (nine heads) for what he wants most, power. That does not make him good but an even more dangerous person.
This trait to be prepared to do great personal sacrifices makes these people exceptionally powerful and makes them create a loyal following who adore them. Think of people like Alexander the Great, or Caesar. But everything they do is foremost for their own glory.
That Ravana steals another men's wife is another element to take notice of. It tells us an important sign to recognize Demons and people under demonic influence. Not only do they seek power but they are often oversexed, and sooner or later they are surrounded by sex scandals because they can not control their demonic nature. Ravana as powerful as he is, has no self-control when it comes to sex, he has a wonderful wife he dearly loves and as many other women he can have, but he has to posses Sita, even if this means destroying and losing everyone and everything he cherishes. Their lies the weakness of the demonic nature.
The purpose of the story is not to tell us that Kaikeyi is not good or that Ravana is not evil, but to convey to us where their weaknesses lay. So we can avoid them or make use of them. For these stories also makes clear we can not turn our back on the world, we are a path of action. The Devas help us but they also help the evil when prayed to. They are not going to solve our problems for us if we do not take action ourselves.
And if their is one lesson to be learned from the Ramayana, it is not to be gullible, the evil are religious too, they pray to their God too. But that does not mean they are on a path of Dharma. If people do not walk the path of Dharm we should not trust them because they are religious, or praise their Lord, or call themselves believers. All praise their God as the highest, all use their God for their purpose, either for Dharma or aDharma.
If we know that the hero of a religion and his followers pronounce and show perverse love for sadomasochistic suffering or that a religious leader had fifteen wives and forced even his best friend to divorce and give him is wife for his desire, what does that tell us? What are we dealing with here? Are these the representatives of Dharm or aDharm? The stories show us too what happens if you leave these people unchecked, things will only grow worse, for people under demonic influence are not able to control their desires, if not stopped.
Hare Krishna
Avyaydya, what a great post you have made! I truly enjoyed reading every sentence of your great post, that pours with wisdom. Thank you for a wonderful post!
jai hanuman gyan gun sagar jai kapis tihu lok ujagar
Hare Krishna
Sikhandi is truly an interesting character. Thanks for posting and thinking about her.
jai hanuman gyan gun sagar jai kapis tihu lok ujagar
New Member
Thank you Viraja.Avyaydya, what a great post you have made! I truly enjoyed reading every sentence of your great post, that pours with wisdom. Thank you for a wonderful post!
I think if there are two scriptures that have defined Sanatan Dharm it is Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These are the stories that inspire Hindu's from every walk of life. And these are the stories that tell us how to walk the path of Dharm.
Nowadays the Vedas are often misused. People no longer realize or know that that these scriptures were meant to be secret. They were meant for the initiated. Who are the initiated? Those are people that reached such a high level of consciousness that they have come towards the end of the cycles of life. Now they change their attention from living in the world towards reaching Moksha.
They do not do that like a Christian who has grown desperate of the world, and wants to escape to another roam, but they do that like people that have fulfilled their other desires and now seek to fulfil their final desire. They have grown wise and for them the Veda's is written to help them make the final stretch.
But for all normal people the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were written, so we can cope with life and how we can follow the path of Dharm. They do this brilliantly. Studying high scripture prematurely is dangerous. When our mind is not subtle enough we do not pick up the subtlety, the nuances and the ambiguity in the texts. Ambiguity? Yes ambiguity, for Reality itself is full of paradoxes and ambiguity and to do right to Reality Holy Text must reflect this. Our mind may be sharp as a razor, but if it can not handle ambiguity, nuances and great subtlety, it will misinterpret the texts. It will see answers where questions are posed.
Here lies the great trap for all intellectuals. No matter how knowledgeable we are, it does not help us, when we can not see our own weaknesses. Only a Guru can do that for us, and that is why high texts should only be studied with a good Guru and only if he deems we are ready for them.
But the texts of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata we can study on our own. Why? Because they couple wisdom with real life experience even if it is not our own. When we read the epics we live the story like we are the main characters. We identify with them and so their experiences become like our own and recognizable.
Where high scriptures not coupled with sufficient experience can make us arrogant and increase our ignorance, the great epics do the opposite, they make us humble. Even if we identify with the great hero's we easily realize we can not meet their standards. Who will claim he is as patient and righteous as Yuddhistir or as Loyal as Hanuman or Bharat? They shame our pretence. When we see great people like Bhishma fail, we see an enormous gap between the noblest intentions and the results.
Ravan is the loudest warning to all of us seeking wisdom. Ravan is not only a supreme bhakt, he is also a master of the Veda's! Through a superior intellect he commands all the knowledge in the Veda's, but what good does it do him? None! It has a reverse effect on him.
After having acquired a power greater than any God and also all the wisdom of the Veda's, Ravan has reached the pinnacle of Ignorance. We all seek God, the evil as much as the good. But the wise and the ignorant have a different perception of God.
The good see God as total Love, total Bliss, total Liberation. The ignorant see God as all powerful, all knowing. When Ravan reaches the pinnacle of power and knowledge, he concludes he is God. He is immortal, all powerful, all knowing, he is God and he demands that all bow for him.
And though this may not fit peoples perception, Ravan is on is his own path to Moksha. He meets God and God liberates him. He finds liberation in his self-destruction. For Moksha is a suicide too. It is a destruction of the lower selves, but rather then seeking obliteration by self-destruction, Hinduism offers us much more pleasant and optimistic outlook. Thanks to the path of Dharm we can live happy, fulfilling lives shaping our own fate by our actions. Samsara is not the burden many people think of it, if we walk the path of Dharm, it is an interesting and overall pleasant journey.
And that is why the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are such a great treasure.
Jai Ganesha!
New Member
Bhishma
I think Bhishma was a very noble figure. I do not think Bhishma made one action in his life that was led by lower motives. Bhishma rather is an example of someone who is the victim of fate (result of actions in previous lives). Everything he did, he did out of noble intention, but all his good actions still turned against him because of fate. When he swore he would not marry and have no children, so his father could marry the woman he loved, that opened the possibility for the wrong people on the throne. When he swore allegiance to the throne he had to see how he was forced to serve the wrong people later on. But as a truly honorable person and a Kshatriya he could not break his oath.
As I see it, Bhishma fate was sealed anyway, no matter what choice he would have made. Like his parents Bhishma was a God born on earth to undergo his Karma. He and his brothers the Dasus stole a cow from Sage Vashista. He was the one to pay the price for him and all his brothers. His suffering was having to serve the wrong people and dearly regret it. Maybe the deeper lesson of his story is that when you wrong good people, you will be forced to serve less good people.
I think another important lesson the story of Bhishma tells us is to NEVER EVER swear to the Gods unless you can oversee and are willing the bear all the consequences. One may see it is as a form of hubris in itself, as man can not oversee all the consequences of his actions. Once Bhishma swore his oaths there was no way back. Noble as he was he wanted to take personal suffering on himself for the happiness of his father. It was the most noble act as he felt it as his duty to protect his fathers happiness. His act was completely in line with what the Sages had taught him. Sage Parshuram taught that to obey ones father is the ultimate good, the only path to happiness, a fathers right is a hundred times that of a Sage. (A mothers right even higher). But he had not foreseen the wider consequences for the Kingdom of Hastinapur.
In my mind, Bhishma was not to blame for this, he became a pawn in a complicated game of the Gods and a web of fate. His father Shantanu made the mistake of stopping his wife Ganga throwing their last child in the river breaking his oath. (Again this is fate as He had angered the father of Ganga when falling in love with her). There is another lesson about oaths here, Bhishma life begins with the breaking of an oath by his father, this perpetuates the bad luck to his son. Then the Son swears an oath to protect his fathers good luck. But he does keep his oath and that way he fulfills his Karma, without creating new bad karma. Unfulfilled Oaths to the Gods will haunt in next lives or burden next generations. One can argue that his father failing to keep his oath led to his son taking oaths. But although such events shape our destiny they are not necessarily the cause of it.
As Bhishma was a God only to be punished in this life, he could not ward off Karma by good deeds. He had to drink this cup to the bottom. This corresponds with a belief that the more pure people are, the more directly they will undergo the consequences of their actions. And that is what they also desire. A righteous person will not foolishly walk away from a sentence or otherwise negative results of his actions. He accept his faults and the consequences. Bhishma is a great example of this.
In the Mahabharata Krishna does not make any reproaches to Bhishma for acting as he does. He may fight on the wrong side destined to lose, rather than the wrong action this in itself is punishment for wrong action. Nothing could have hurt him more than to have to do this. And it is also a warning that we can create circumstances in which there are no more good choices, and every choice will hurt.
I think we should not reduce the Mahabharata to a simplistic black/white struggle between good and evil. Yes it is a war between Dharm and aDharm but noble people fight on both sides. As Krishna makes clear: The outcome of the war is already written in the stars before it is fought. It is determined by the produced Karma of the main people involved: The noble actions of the Pandavas versus the foul actions of Duryodhana and his brothers. All the participants can do is play their role to perfection.
Bhishma certainly is a role model, he is a warning what can happen to the best of us in a moment of thoughtless action but also how to accept the consequences while continuing to follow the path of Dharm. For even following the path of Dharm does not protect us from undergoing previously acquired Karma.
The story of Bhishma is all about Karma. We also see that in the related story of Ambi, who Bhishma kidnapped with her sisters to marry his King Vichitravirya. But Vichitravirya refuses to marry her because she told him she was already promised to Subalu and did not want anyone else. Subalu however rejected her in shame of losing the battle over her with Bhishma. So she demanded Bhishma to marry her, But he could not because he had vowed never to marry. So Ambi vowed revenge on Bhishma. She committed suicide and was reborn as Shikhandi. Shikhandi became the instrument in Bhishma's death as Arjanu used him as a shield in his fight with Bhishma and he could not shoot her recognizing Ambi in him. We see this often in the Mahabharata. When people become the cause of death of someone, these people will somehow be connected to their death. Again Bhishma acted purely unselfishly but still it turned against him.
Karma is subtle and the web that is woven is often difficult to understand. However the Mahabharata beautifully shows us how actions and Karma of different people become intertwined. The Karma of one person becomes the actions of others. And in the case of Bhishma we even see how Karma starts defining his actions. His own actions turn against him en become his suffering. Something we more often see with the most noble people.
We see some other things too. The Karma of deeply related persons gets intertwined. Bhishma is taking the Karma of all his brothers. How is this possible? Why only him? Well if beings are deeply connected, then what happens to one is felt by all. All suffer with their dear one. We see that in the suffering that Santanu undergoes when he realizes that his love for a women born in desire becomes the sacrifice of his sons happiness.
We also see something else: The Karma of Sages and the Gods influence us all. They are the purest and we should always help them remain pure, for their mistakes will influence us all. The wrongdoing of Bhishma an the consequent curse of Sage Vashista has the effect of an avalanche on humanity. The Gods play their games and in their hands people are pawns. The same we see with our great leaders. Rather than flattering and corrupting them for our own gain, we should be true and just in our appreciation. We should not give false praise in the hope of favors. For if the ones that lead us become corrupted, even in the slightest, they will make mistakes that will shape our destiny.
In our lives we are confronted with Karma. There is a natural tendency to want to forget when we wrong people by rationalizing it and pushing it to the back of our minds. We want to forget. When we do that it becomes harder to understand why things happen to us. If one can be frank with oneself it becomes more easy to see that we harvest what we sow. And this makes it much easier to accept it, instead of seeking retribution. In Karma there is no getting even, there only accepting it or creating the next iteration of events.
Bhishma is interesting because he is an extreme case. Being a God he has to undergo all his previous karma in one life. Also Bhishma is special because he shows perfect behavior so we know that what he undergoes can only be explained as fate (Karma from previous life). You will rarely meet someone that is cursed by fate. But sometimes there are very striking examples of excellent people who meet tragedy after tragedy. And all start to wonder: What in Earth has caused this? What is the curse that befell on them? For a curse too is a form attached to fate. A curse in itself can not cause Karma, it can only shape Karma already produced.
We want to remind us we can only produce results ourselves. All others do is give it a shape. Those who harm us are never the inner cause (that is our actions) only the outer cause, the occasion, the reason (what we see as cause). This is the hard part of Karma, understanding that even if others purposely hurt us, we ourselves are still the true cause. This is what the mind rejects, unless it has a realization of previous actions in which one deeply hurt others in similar ways. We can only do that if we can truly sympathize with others and reject lying to ourselves and living in denial.
Bhishma may look a tragic figure, but actually is doing quite good. He lives his life without creating more negative Karma and is released in death from further rebirth. Those who say he should have fought on the other side must realize this would not have changed the outcome of the war the slightest bit, but breaking his oath he would not have been able to retrieve his place among the Gods. We see the same situation with Karna, who was bound by his oath to serve Duryodhana.
We should also be aware that when we strive for high positions in society our choices become restricted and actions carry more weight, and our karma becomes intertwined with much more people. That is what we call responsibility. Positions of power may appear attractive until one starts to realize that they produce large karmic effects negative and positive. Wise people do not volunteer for such positions, and if they do it is reason not to chose them. Those who seek power are more likely to underestimate. misunderstand, and misuse it. If we have sincere leaders we should not let them fall because we think they made a mistake. And if we find out they are dishonest we should not want to keep them because they seem capable. Short term success is what people of lower consciousness strive for.
Bhishma was not a failure because he could not singlehandedly turn things around. One can even argue that Bhishma's role was one the hardest of all in the Mahabharata.
Hare Krishna
Thanks for a detailed and thorough analysis of the life and traits of Bheeshma, Avyaydya. Another good post of yours.
"We want to remind us we can only produce results ourselves. All others do is give it a shape. Those who harm us are never the inner cause (that is our actions) only the outer cause, the occasion, the reason (what we see as cause). This is the hard part of Karma, understanding that even if others purposely hurt us, we ourselves are still the true cause. This is what the mind rejects, unless it has a realization of previous actions in which one deeply hurt others in similar ways. We can only do that if we can truly sympathize with others and reject lying to ourselves and living in denial. "
The above are golden words. When young (in my 20's), I met with first depression because someone's words had hurt me very badly. For a long time, I cursed him for that. Only later, I came to evaluate this incident in terms of my own karma from past birth and also, I appreciate it because this illness had given me some insights and humility that I wouldn't have otherwise acquired.
jai hanuman gyan gun sagar jai kapis tihu lok ujagar
Older male native Hindu
Namaste,
The grandsire Bheesham revisited,
http://hindudharmaforums.com/showthread.php?t=12475
Pranam.
According to Hindu dharma,I think the qualities are all well defined.Some are desirable and some are undesirable.If a person acquires undesirable qualities like jealousy,greedy,hurting others then he is categorized as a wicked or cruel personality.Why he acquires such qualities is due to his karma.He knows that those qualities are undesirable but he is unable to get rid of them due to his past karma.Whether it is our epics like Ramanaya and Mahabharata or present kaliyuga we see several personalities in life,some are wicked some are good(harmless).In universe there is a constant battle between good and bad,dharma and adharma.In our Hindu epics some personalities are identified with undesirable qualities,it is only to guide us to follow good path or dharma.How much we can follow dharma depends on the qualities we acquire.That way Hindu dharma is great philosophy of life as it constantly reminds us of doing good in our life time.Finally "Truth" only prevails,"Satyameva Jayate".
saswathy
Re: Interesting personalities..
Dear friends ,
I feel Thara , wife of Vali is an interesting personality .When vali was alive she did her duty perfectly as his wife . She drowned in sorrow when Vali was killed . She even wanted to die at that time . But later when Sugreiva ascended the throne , she became his queen according to their custom .But she never allowed her self to drown in sorrow , and neglected her duty as his wife .When Lakshmana came fuming with rage thinking that Sugrieva failed to keep up his promise of sending his assistants to search for Seetha , Thara came to Sugrieva's rescue saying it was but natural to indulge in pleasures after abstaining from them for long .Here the point is it was not her sensuality which made her to defend him . It was her duty to her husband which made her to plead with Lakshamna and pacify his anger .She was included in the pancha pathivrathas . I feel according to their concept , the pathivrathyam pertained to the status of being a wife to a particular person and not to the person actually So as long as she was Vali's wife , she was loyal and dedicated to him . When destiny made her Sugrieva's wife , she did her duty as a loyal and devoted wife .Though it looks a bit weird to us , the merit of every case has to be decided by the rules and standards of that particular time and place . leelasastry
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