by Christopher Key Chapple
The Mahabharata is a story of staggering proportions, recounting the birth and death of a family and a people that is symbolic of the birth and death that touches all mankind. By looking at this story of the descendants of Vyasa, one glimpses the totality of life: joy and tragedy, love and deceit, peace and war are all portrayed. We have all heard the adage “Everything in the Mahabharata is elsewhere. What is not there is nowhere.” Even in the dramatic abridgement of Jean-Claude Carriere, which is a mere fraction of the original, one gets a sense of its magnitude and depth.
Each of the major characters of the epic stems from or in some way becomes related to Vyasa, the teller of the epic. It is from Vyasa’s seed that the story grows. The familial interconnectedness of these characters serves to underscore not only the drama and tragedy of the events with Oedipan grandeur, but also reveals an underlying tenet of the Indian world view: that we are all interconnected beings and need to more fully recognize and embody this fact. Theologically, this perspective can be traced to Upanisadic monism, the notion that there is an all-pervading higher reality out of which we are born and to which we will ultimately return. Or the Buddhist analysis could be applied, denying any absolute source or destination but asserting that, according to the laws of karma and samsara , all beings have been here before for so many innumerable lifetimes that all creatures, at one time or another, have been our mother or father [Lankavatara Sutra, VIII].
The unfolding of the epic in many ways mirrors the Hindµ account of cosmic creation as articulated in the ]J g Veda [10:129], the Satapatha Brahmana [VI: 2.27], the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad [1:4], the Chandogya Upanisad [3.19, 6:2, etc.] as well as other texts. It tells how all things emerge from an indiscriminate chaos, the asat. From this chaos first arises the one. Through desire, this one first breaks in two and then multiplies, generating multifarious worlds. This process, the mode of pravrtti , continues and then goes into the reverse: bit by bit the created world disintegrates. All particularities are lost and one again returns to the asat [pralaya or nirvrtti] , waiting perhaps to reemerge.
In the life of an individual, the creation process takes place as one steps from the single state into marriage and responsibility, through the accomplishment of artha [intended object], kama [love], and dharma [duty, appropriate activity] during the first two stages of life. The cycle is completed as one is weaned from the world one has issued forth, leaving it to one’s children. One then returns to the forest [vanaprastha ], to solitude and renunciation [ samnyasa ], in anticipation of the final stage, the reabsorption into the nirguna or nirvrtti realm. In the epic tale, Vyasa is called forth to father two sons [plus a third not revealed in the Brook production]. These two multiply into 105, and further multiplication takes place. But then, tragically and unavoidably, as Krishna warns in the Bhagavad Gita, all are destroyed, all enter into the final state of pralaya. In a sense, this process is the cornerstone of all great epic texts: in tracing the birth, maturation, decline, and demise of a character or characters, a message is communicated that speaks to the condition of all beings. The epic medium, in its vast scope, gives one pause to consider more than the obvious. In reflecting on the struggles and joys and disappointments of the offspring of Vyasa [who are both his literary and biological progeny] we are catching a glimpse of the cosmic flow of life which marks us all as humans. Yudhisthira himself, when asked by his father Dharma at the poisonous lake “What is the greatest marvel?,” replied that “Each day, death strikes and we live as though we were immortal. That is what is the greatest marvel” [Carriere, p. 105).
Once the substance of Vyasa divides into two camps, the sons of Pandu and the sons of Dhrtarastra, conflict and its seemingly impossible resolution becomes constant theme in the Mahabharata. The two sets of cousins are locked in a struggle for sovereignty and wealth, due primarily to the weakness of greed. Duryodhana wants what the Pandavas have and entices Yudhisthira to gamble it all away. Later Yudhisthira reveals to Draupadi that he succumbed to the challenge in hopes of winning the entire kingdom. The warring camps are of the same flesh and blood, having been reared as one family by the grandsire Bhisma. To one another they are both self and other. At root, this is a story about self identity and relationship with other. In the Laocoon that is the Samtanu lineage, each of the selves is also other; each of the others is also part of oneself. As Sukthankar has noted, and to the disdain of early European Sanskritists, in the dharmic Pandavas there is much adharma–the battle is won only by treachery-and in the adharmic sons of Dhrtarastra there is virtue; particularly in the tenacity exhibited by Duryodhana and Dussasana. The apparently opposite is in fact seen to be the same; both originate from the same hidden yet omnipotent source.
The biological link of the primary characters is made amply clear; any reading of the Mahabharata necessitates familiarity with the genealogy of Samtanu’s strange lineage. Even the truly other, the Raksasas, the demons of the epic, become biologically linked through Hidimbi’s seduction of Bhima and the subsequent birth of Ghatotkatcha. Wherever they travel, the Pandavas find or make relations, in both the social and biological senses of the word. Krishna is linked to Arjuna through the marriage of Krishna’s sister to Arjuna and the birth of the beloved Abhimanyu, whose son, rescued in utero by Krishna, ensures the continuity of life. In all major aspects of the story, the planting of seed tied peoples together.
Just as dualities of race are eliminated by marriage, another duality is conflated in the collapse of the otherness of the sexes at critical junctures in the narrative. The rejected bride Amba becomes the warrior Sikhandin. Arjuna becomes a half-and-half. In contrast to the dependent role of Hindu women emphasized in later texts, Kunti, Gandhari, and Draupadi emerge through their suffering and endurance in many ways stronger and wiser than the men upon whom they rely. Kunti calls forth the gods to serve her when her husband is unable, and then shares her secret with her sister wife Madri. Gandhari’s renunciation of her eyesight shows amazing resolve and tapas [austerity]. Draupadi plumbs the depths of Krishna’s seeming duplicity when she declares: “Sometimes the only way to protect dharma is to forget it. Ask Krishna. He knows.” [Carriere, p. 198]. The wisdom and power of women clearly outshines that of men in more than one instance.
The otherness of Karna addresses universal issues of nature versus nurture: the special paradox lie presents is of particularly tragic impact. The identity of Karna is unclear at first to all: he knows not who he is and thus knows not to whom he is other. His self is apparently defined by those who raised him, the “lowly” driver and his wife. Nonetheless, his royal, solar origins shine through; perhaps he is immediately recognized by Kunti. But it is Duryodhana who embraces him, who establishes the nurturing relationship by offering acceptance and power to him. And it is to Duryodhana that Karna remains faithful, even after his bio/theological parentage and claim to the throne is The oldest of the sons of Kunti, the hidden sixth brother, rejects his birthright and possible kingship out of loyalty to the one who offered welcome, while at the same time pledging to kill only one of Kunti’s sons. His earthly life is split, he never becomes fully self nor fully other until the final end.
The play of the Mahabharata –and I use play in both senses of the word–begins in unity, with the single seed of Vyasa. It splinters into dozens of pieces, the offspring of Pandu and Dhrtarastra. The peaceful, solitary substance of the bearded ascetic is dissipated into the world of action and yet the origin, Vyasa himself, like a Samkhyaka purusa, stands outside, gazing over the entire affair with detachment and dispassion, isolated from the world of action and yet observing and recounting it. Each of the pieces of himself is defined by both membership in one group and by otherness from the other. Ultimately the estrangement becomes fatally real, only then to be erased upon the final destruction of all members and the appearance of the final illusion. Much like our biological image of the dividing cell, the solitude of Vyasa breaks into the realm of manifestation [vyakta ], then through decrepitude and war is cast back into nothingness [pralaya , avyakta ]. Only one seed remains: the son of Abhimanyu, Pariksit, rejuvenated by Krishna to continue the story of humankind. Otherness and strife, so rampant in the text, stand in stark relief to the background origins of peace and pacification. Yet the two exist in reciprocity; they define one another. Without the tragedy of battle, without the greed and treachery, deceit and disappointment, the story would be incomplete.
The illusion of otherness captivates the minds of Duryodhana and Yudhisthira and occasions the violence of the Mahabharata. At first it is sublimated in the form of the dice game and then it is postponed through the thirteen years of exile. But finally the peace is shattered and, for one third of the epic, war consumes all. In reading the Bhagavad Gita, which provides most people with their first introduction to the Mahabharata , one could easily assume that the basic premise of the Krishna’s teaching glorifies war. Many a reader has winced when Krishna urges Arjuna to take up arms and Arjuna finally resolves to do so. A larger reading gives an utterly different picture: the war on Kuruksetra becomes a holocaust wherein the winners find no enjoyment in their spoil and in fact are ultimately punished, at least temporarily, for their imprudent activities in war. Furthermore, the gruesomely graphic detail of battle presented in the narrative has the impact not of an advertisement to join the armed forces, but rather of an anti-war film that exhausts, repels, and instructs its viewers regarding the horrors of war. The reader/viewer yearns for resolution to this seemingly endless conflict, hopes that this might be a war to end all wars, a hope that ultimately is not found in the realm of winners and losers but in the realm that transcends both winning and losing, the dissolution of the veil of otherness and This place beyond both, revealed in the final scene, is a realm of pacification, where self and other become one, where the blind see, and all illusions are removed. It is to the other place, the place of pacification, peace, and nonviolence, symbolized by the detachment of Vyasa, to which our attention now turns.
The practice of nonviolence [ahimsa] is the basic requirement for religious life in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. It is called the greatest of dharmas. On his bed of arrows, Bhisma offers instruction to Yudhisthira regarding this and other matters, and ‘in chapter 114 of the Anusanasana parvan, he invites the sage Brhaspati to discourse on the topic. In the brief passage that follows, Brhaspati explains this practice in terms of both the physical abstention from committing harm and the perspective of seeing all things as one’s self. These ideas, amplified in following chapters are summarized as follows:
A Translation of the Mahabharata Book Thirteen, Chapters 114-116
Chapter 114
- Yudhisthira said:
Nonvioience, Vedic dharma, meditation, control of the senses, austerity, or service to the guru–which of these is best for a person?
- 2. Brhaspati said:
All these in all ways are distinct doors of dharma.
Listen indeed, 0 Chief of the Bharatas, as the six are praised.
- Listen! I will speak of the unsurpassed, the most excellent thing for a human: the refuge of nonviolence, the dharma which truly causes a man to succeed.
- That person attains success who has always reflected on the three faults amongst all beings and has controlled lust and anger.
- The one who, desiring the pleasure of the self, abstains from killing helpless animals with a stick, would attain happiness. |
- That person who indeed sees beings as like his own self, who has cast aside the stick and whose anger is conquered, prospers happily in the life to come.
- Even the gods are bewildered at the path of the one who seeks the abode of no abode, who sees all beings with the being of oneself as that of all beings.
- From not holding to the other as opposite from oneself there is the essence of dharma; the other proceeds [as other] due to desire.
- In rejecting and giving, in pleasure and pain, in the pleasant and the unpleasant, the person who sees all things as the self goes to samadhi.
- When the other strides amongst the others, then the other strides in the other*
Let them imitate this indeed in the world of living beings; by this skill, all dharma is taught.
- Vaisampayana said:
Having thus spoken to the dharma King Yudhisthira, the preceptor of the gods ascended to heaven before our eyes.
*In this instance, the word other [para] also can mean self [atman ].
In this discourse, several interesting statements are made regarding the process of surrendering commitment to one’s self-position in such a way that the other is not seen as different from oneself. This surrender of possessiveness is referred to as “the abode of no abode,” a place where nothing is held as one’s own, yet everything becomes one’s own: “the being of oneself is seen as that of all beings.” The otherness of things, and the otherness of other being dissolves, resulting in a state of samadhi , described in Yoga Sutra I. 41 as “like clear jewel, with unity among grasper, grasping, and grasped.” With this jewel-like consciousness, wherever one goes, there the self is seen. Whomever one sees, there the self is seen. In such consciousness, violence becomes improbable. Who would want to do violence to oneself? “When the other strides among the others, then the other strides in the other” [XIII: 14:10]. In this usage of the word other [para], it clearly becomes interchangeable with the term “self”; it also can mean highest self.
The impact of the Mahabharata lies in its dramatic presentation of These words of nonviolence resonate in a battlefield littered with the stinking bodies of those who saw other as other, not self as other or other as self. Though literally of the same substance, the Pandava clan decimated the sons of Dhrtarasta. The oneness of Vyasa had become mired in otherness and hence self-destructed, leaving behind only one baby to continue [shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey ?]. Multiplicity is eliminated not through a wisdom gained by understanding and knowledge, but by enduring the ravages of life and war and death. The battle that obliterates and liberates all is a battle of pain and sorrow.
Krishna in the Mahabharata might be seen as little more than a war monger who desires the dissolution of the world for some mysterious, inarticulated reason discovered only in the final scene. On the one hand, this seems to be true: Krishna sees the battle as inevitable. In fact, it does serve to purify the world. However, the true lovers of war, the great leaders of both sides, dread the coming of the war and the anguish it will bring. The images conjured in anticipation sicken everyone. Arjuna’s hesitation and despondency in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is perhaps the most famous example. Duryodhana, for years, suffers nightmares over the coming war. Karna, in one of the most powerful speeches in the Carriere drama, laments its inevitability:
Flesh and blood rain from the sky
Bodiless voices cry in the night
Horses weep. One-eyed, one-legged monstrosities hop across the land.
Birds perch on flags with fire in their beaks
crying “Ripe! It’s ripe!”
A cow gives birth to an ass,
a woman to a jackal.
Newborn babies dance.
Sons learn to be men between their mothers’ thighs.
Statues write with their weapons.
Torches no longer give light.
Cripples laugh.
The different races merge.
Vultures come to prayer.
The setting sun is surrounded by disfigured corpses.
Likewise, Yudhisthira is reluctant, though it was his greed for the entire kingdom that precipitated the disastrous dice game. This error led to his chastisement by Draupadi which prompted his resolve to wage war. But throughout he bemoans the tragedy of it all, expressing even during the forest exile that one person’s victory is another’s defeat. When his father Dharma, having taken his brothers’ lives at the mysterious poison lake, asks Yudhisthira for an example of defeat, Yudhisthira replies, “Victory.” And again when Dharma asks, “What is your opposite?,” Yudhisthira answers “Myself ‘ [p. 105). Yet despite his insight and despite the hesitation of the other warriors, the war is played out to its gruesome conclusion. Players and audience alike are dragged along.
The origins of the Mahabharata war, like the origins of creation, are found in desire. Duryodhana and Yudhisthira desire what the other has, without seeing the other as self. This bifurcation of consciousness, dramatically played out to its ignominious conclusion, ultimately collapses with the death of the characters: the sons of Dhrtarastra, then the sons of the Pandavas, and finally the five Pandavas themselves. When first acquainted with this tale many years ago, it annoyed me that it did not end with Yudhisthira and his brothers living happily ever after. It further shocked and puzzled me that the Pandavas landed in hell. These misgivings were indeed shared by a troop of European scholars, including Olden berg, who proclaimed the ending chaotic.
However, from the perspective of classical Hinduism, in continuing the saga beyond the earth, beyond the heaven and hell to its conclusion in the other-worldly fourth domain, Vyasa echoes the Mandukya Upanisad’s fourfold analysis of reality. He reminds the listener that the life of bifurcated consciousness in the waking state is suffering. As long as human life is ensconced in individual selves it stands in opposition in the other. This opposition can lead to heaven or to hell. But the final scene, the last illusion, shows a return to unity. Here we find the happily ever after scene but with a twist. All blemishes, all the marks have been removed. The bad guys are no longer bad, the good guys are no longer good. All such differentiations have been appeased. The blind can now see, and the past has been forgotten in this festive communion. A Yogic state of unity has been achieved; karma has been purged so that, in the words of Prajapati in the Chandogya Upanisad, “they arise from yonder space and reach the highest light, appear each with its own form…such a one is the supreme person. There such a one goes around laughing, sporting, having enjoyment with women or chariots or friends…all worlds and all desire have been appropriated by them” [CU 8:12]. There is only enjoyment, no strife, no separation, no other, only self. All have become yogis, and hence the action performed is pure illusion: not white, not black, not mixed [YS IV:7]. The final scene is a metaphor for the ultimate pralaya , the pralaya of nirvikalpa samadhi , the state of utter pacification of shanti, a state common to both accomplished Buddhist and Hindu Yogi. The emission of Vyasa has returned to its source; the imaging and imagining has been played Without this conclusion, the story would be untrue to tradition, Zoroastrian at best. Here enemies truly disappear. Here consciousness without an object is made firm. Here also the audience concludes its austerity with darsan, a vision of pure silence, harmony, and bliss: no good, no bad, no struggle.
According to Vyasa’s tale, the struggle in life is not between good and evil: both share a common source. The struggle itself is the struggle and must be surrendered. Even the good guys, despite their noble goals, are punished for violating dharma; the evil are rewarded for their resolve and steadfastness of purpose. The message here is one of transcending opposites: when we are in the game, the rules of the game must be applied. When the game is renounced, then final release is attained. And yet, we got the sense that for the fullness of life to be achieved the battle must take place. To be human is to desire, to bring forth worlds and ultimately lose those worlds. To live in these worlds is to suffer, and from our suffering wisdom and freedom are attained.