Swami Gober's Bhagavad Gita Commentary: Introductory Essay - 26

Taint of Pity

My heart is overpowered by the taint of pity, my mind is confused as to duty. I ask Thee: tell me decisively what is good for me. I am Thy disciple. Instruct me who has taken refuge in Thee.

Bhagavad Gita, chap 2, ver 7

This lamentation of Arjuna sets off the great teaching of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. It gives Krishna the license to go on rambling and raving about whatever would come into his mind. Countless gober swamijis have meticulously examined and extensively elaborated upon this great conversation between Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita, but always consistently missing the obvious. When one is trying to focus on the depth, there is a greater likelihood for one to simply overlook the obvious. But even otherwise, people seem to have an uncanny ability to miss the obvious. As Sherlock Holmes put it: "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." This is the pitfall we will try to keep away from in our own explorations of the Gita.

What does Arjuna say in this verse? 'Taint of Pity'! And what does what Arjuna says say? Many interesting things. To begin with, pity is a taint — such condemnation! Let's suppose, a forlorn, destitute child who may not have eaten for two days is begging at the traffic signal on the road. Automobiles pass by. Many would feel a little pity for the child, whether they give the child any change or not. Some others wouldn't feel anything at all, either because they have grown completely insensitive or simply because they generally don't have any capacity to feel or think about anything but themselves. And then there could be a guy who may sense some pity stirring up in him, he would then become gravely concerned — not about the child but about himself! 'What is happening to me, I shouldn't be feeling this sort of thing. This is ridiculous.' Arjuna seems to be this last type. Otherwise rarely would anyone feel pity and then feel uneasy or guilty about it. What a blot on my normally spotless character!

Arjuna has obviously never before in his life felt anything like pity, particularly not during any battlefield situations. And he has been continually involved in all types of gory fights, scenes of terrible carnage. In such battlefields, people's limbs would be torn off, heads would be smashed, bodies would be smeared in a thick ooze of blood. Maimed, mangled, mutilated, pierced and lacerated bodies would be lying about everywhere writhing in agony. In general, places of large-scale armed conflict, say, like Gettysburg and other areas in the American Civil War, are crucibles of extreme torment and misery. We would think that not to feel any kind of emotion for numberless innocent suffering souls strewn all around would be humanly impossible. True, soldiers fighting the battle have to be highly desensitized to their own and others' suffering, but it is difficult for us to conceive people who cannot experience any kind of human sympathy whatsoever, just moving about like machines and constantly killing other humans, least perturbed by any emotion. Because deep down it's our capacity to feel that makes us human. And yet Arjuna is typically such a perfect inhuman monster. It is a question of immaculate perfection, and right now he has become aware that he is falling from his habitual levels of efficiency.

On the other hand, if Arjuna was indeed susceptible to some degree of compassion – let's just assume it could be – he would have only complained to his buddy, “O Krishna, I am feeling overpowered by pity,” implying, 'yes, I do feel this emotion to some degree or other in this type of situations but it usually only stays in the background whereas now it is taking over me.' Instead, Arjuna says, in conclusion to a long speech, “I am overpowered by the taint of pity.” The actual word Arjuna uses, or put in the mouth of Arjuna by the Gita author, is 'dosha' or flaw. "This despicable defect that seems to be arising in my otherwise flawless character – how to get rid of it, O Krishna?" This is the nature of Arjuna's plight. Arjuna is less bothered about all the warriors gathered on the field, and more worried about himself, and the way Arjuna puts it tells certain things about himself. Gober swamiji's always invariably portray Arjuna as an archetypal human being, prey to human emotions and a deep sense of attachment. This is pure nonsense. Arjuna is what we would consider a creature totally alien to most of the normal human sensibilities. In other words, he is a monster, someone like Hitler or Stalin.

Suppose Hitler was on a sudden undeclared inspection to one of his concentration camps, and seeing the actual conditions of the place, the way tens of thousands of people are being treated and working like pigs, if he were to feel the faintest tingling of compassion somewhere in his mind — how would he react to it? Would he try to alleviate the conditions of the concentration camp ever so slightly? Not likely. Rather, he would be alarmed by what's happening to himself. He would immediately cut short the visit, return to Berlin, call Himmler and his other advisers, and discuss the matter seriously with them. Unknown to many people, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was also well-versed in all kinds of occult and esoteric matters. He was actually the head of a whole division of Nazi researchers investigating esoteric philosophies of the East and the West. Himmler would have been well familiar with the Bhagavad Gita and would have offered a copy of this Aryan sacred text to his leader, saying, “Three thousand years ago, Mein Fuehrer, a great and noble warrior just like you, by name Arjuna, once felt a twinge of conscience. But fortunately he had an Aryan god by his side, who by elaborating upon philosophy and metaphysics relevant in such situations put his conscience to rest and made him an efficient and praiseworthy killing machine again.

"Look at how Krishna urges Arjuna, Mein Fuehrer. 'Yield not to impotence, O Arjuna, son of Pritha! It does not befit thee. Cast off this mean weakness of the heart. Stand up, O scorcher of foes!' Compassion is a serious weakness of heart, Mein Fuehrer. Compassion in great souls like you equates to impotence, something that has to be avoided at all costs. Arjuna was a scorcher of foes, Mein Fuehrer, but so are you. You are a little advanced, that's all. You literally burn people, roasting them alive in stoves, and not just your foes who may have done some harm to you directly or indirectly, but all kinds of people, millions of them about whom you wouldn't be knowing anything personally, you just scorch them all down to death. You are a far superior being to Arjuna. Still, pity may arise on its own, being a widely prevalent human tendency, but you should learn to be completely untouched by it. You see, Mein Fuehrer, you are different from your body and mind. If you practice meditation and spirituality, you would realize these things for yourself. Please read the Bhagavad Gita, Mein Fuehrer. And if you have any doubts, call me up." Hitler, of course, would be immensely pleased to have found a solution to all his moral and spiritual dilemmas, and thereupon would set about to ravish the Bhagavad Gita with great delight!

Thank God, any such scenario didn't come to pass! If indeed the Bhagavad Gita fell into the hands of Hitler, it would have been far worse than a couple of nuclear bombs coming into his possession. A major weakness with Hitler was that he didn't have any God. Although he went to Churches sometimes and endorsed Christianity (I think he had some tie-ups with the Pope), there was no way for him to accept the only begotten son of the Jewish God to be his savior. In Krishna, Hitler would have found the perfect 100% Aryan God, a God after his own heart, someone whom he could zealously follow and worship! And then no force in the world could have stopped the Nazi war machine that went rolling on relentlessly, inspired by a divine philosophy and empowered by divine zeal. The whole world would be Nazified, and the Bhagavad Gita would be made the official Bible for the entire society, revered and studied in schools, colleges, offices, clubs and all such places worldwide. Now imagine a whole world full of emotionless people, unmoved in pain and pleasure, dispassionate, deathly poised, perfectly indifferent to outer circumstances, totally nonattached and free from human bonds and relationships, in perfect control of their minds, utterly insensitive to any suffering they may see around in the world, highly disregardful of all life both human or animals; millions and billions of such people, working for the ubiquitous all-powerful Nazi party, without seeking the fruits — that would be the ultimate nightmare! Of course humanity in us cannot be totally quashed, in all probability there would be underground movements, singing anthems resembling that famous Pink Floyd song:

We don't need no Bhagavad Gita

We don't need no thought control

..It's just another brick in the wall.

...You're just another brick in the wall.

But nothing would come out of these movements, not at least for the next thousand, two thousand years.

As we can see, just a little stirring of human emotion in the non-existent heart of someone like Hitler can lead to devastating consequences. It is simply something which shouldn't be there. That is the reason Arjuna became so terribly agitated. All the guys who gathered that day on the Kurukshetra were just a few seconds away from a full head-on clash with each other, but then Arjuna says to Krishna ‘Wait a minute,’ — all the proceedings are instantly suspended, we must assume — ‘What the heck was that, Krishna, I felt for a moment some emotion which I think is pity. This is pure insanity, maybe I am losing my mind or something, please bring me back to senses, my normal self. I simply cannot go to war, unless this base emotion is totally purged out of me!’

And so Krishna begins his crash psychotherapy program on Arjuna. It is something with an interesting twist though! In a normal psychotherapy session, the client would sit there on the couch blabbering whatever nonsense occurred to his mind, while the psychoanalyst would be seated next to him, most of the time calmly listening, just now and then putting questions or offering comments or insights. In the Bhagavad Gita-type of psychotherapy, it's the doctor who goes on pouring out all kinds of nonsense, while the patient keeps listening to him patiently trying to make the least interruption! Our mental doctor seems to have the least insight into what exactly is ailing his patient, what sort of a remedy does it require. Arjuna just says ‘I am thy disciple, instruct me in whichever way you please’ — that's all Krishna needed. It is a fantasy come true! Nobody ever approached him like that in his whole life, people would ask for some free advice now and then, but nothing full-blown like this. This is a golden opportunity, perhaps Krishna has been reading some books of late, this is the perfect occasion to show off his learning and wisdom! Doesn't matter even if they were in the midst of a great battle. If he missed this opportunity maybe he would never ever get one again!

In his eagerness and delight to play the mental doctor, Krishna just misses the whole point. He begins with saying stupid things like ‘Nobody ever dies, only the bodies perish, the soul goes to another body.’ Wow, what a revelation! He makes these statements as if he has been sitting in the laboratory for the past 30 years and made all these fabulous discoveries about life and existence. While the simple fact is that every kid in every street in those days knew about reincarnation. It was just in the air. The theory of reincarnation has always been an intrinsic part of the very core of Indian religion and culture. And as for Arjuna, just over an year earlier, he returned from a 5-year long trip to heaven, his dad's place; not even an absolute idiot would think that Arjuna was some kind of materialist who believed that the whole person dies, with all the mind and interiority, when the body dies. If Krishna was any less pretentious and less bogus, he would have asked Arjuna ‘Arjuna, you know that nobody ever dies, they either go to heaven or reincarnate or attain nirvana, so why are you grieving so much over the possible deaths of these people?” Nothing like that. Krishna seems to be in a terrible rush to appropriate all the teachings and discoveries of the sanatana dharma — 'the eternal religion', the Hindu name for the Hindu religion — and present them to the posterity as his own. And what an awfully sloppy way of presentation at that!

The ego, intellect, Karma, reincarnation, Nature, Maya, Atman, Brahman: there is this beautiful and elegant conceptual edifice of Hindu philosophy, Krishna seems to just bumble in with a massive sledge hammer in his hand, knocking all about the place like a maniac, shouting 'Kill, destroy'! He just erodes away the integrity of this majestic structure in every way, big and small. And with all this whamming, whacking, whopping — the din and the tumult — Arjuna's shaken mind is even more shook up.

At the outset, Arjuna had a little confusion in his mind. Krishna takes a very radical and innovative approach to it. He doesn't go for a solution, he goes for dissolution! There seems to be a tacit understanding between Krishna and Arjuna: ‘You see, Arjuna, this confusion has arisen in your mind. Mind always causes confusion. We have to eradicate this confusion at its root. Let's do one thing, let's just annihilate your mind. It is so simple to go about it really. You just sit there and listen to me attentively, I will be speaking to you so many nonsensical things which nevertheless seem to make so much deep sense, and in just trying to figure them out, your mind will enter into such terrible confusion that it will simply implode, like a building collapsing upon itself. When that happens you just give me an indication saying that all your doubts are utterly wiped out, we shall then proceed to the battle.’ When one comes to think of it, Krishna has really a deeper logic to his ways. Sometimes we can make it out, sometimes we can't. But, after all, Krishna is the Maha Yogi!

One of the basic things I can't make out is, even if Krishna was a Maha Yogi, a purported fact in which our gober swamijis seem to always exult in, what gave him the right to discuss esoteric knowledge with an avowed psychopath and terrorist like Arjuna? This man Arjuna is much worse than a Hitler. Let me explain. All the top warriors present there like Bhishma, Drona, Karna – they would have all felt some sadness at the slaughter that was going to take place, while the remaining lesser warriors and soldiers would have experienced more of a fear for their own lives. Perhaps even Hitler would have experienced some human concern if he were in that situation. But Arjuna didn't feel any kind of pity whatsoever, that much is certain! Yes, Arjuna keeps talking about pity, and the most glaring fact that stares you in the face, one which all the thousands of gober swamijis and billions of general readers of the Bhagavad Gita down through the centuries completely missed, is that Arjuna expresses compassion only for his uncles, fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law, cousins, teachers — he sees just these people! There are millions and millions of others on the battlefield, totally innocent people, who have nothing to do with all this nonsense, who simply joined the army to make a little livelihood, who were forcibly drawn into this guaranteed death trap, who are all definitely going to be ripped apart by swords or crushed by elephants or things like that, but Arjuna hasn't the slightest, the very least of least, concern for them. It simply doesn't occur to him at all. Now, isn't that surprising? It is not for me, but what totally surprises me is that everyone so utterly missed this most obvious thing! Millions of people, billions of people, scores of generations, altogether!

In the first chapter Arjuna goes on defending his position from various angles, but not a verse, not a single passing reference to the only real thing that is happening there. Millions of warriors and soldiers are going to die, millions of families would go to ruin, and Arjuna very well knows that, but all that he is so desperately concerned about is the destruction of his own family and relatives! Some pity, some human emotion! It is as if Hitler visited that concentration camp and felt pity – exclusively – for all his SS officers lashing the Jews and driving them to work: god how much work these few officers must be doing day and night managing these tens of thousands of animals! Hitler's heart is moved! Arjuna's pity is like that. It is as bogus as Krishna's divinity! Most people present there would have experienced pity or fear or both in various degrees, and not just for their own family members and friends. But they didn't all come down with it, paralyzed. Arjuna did. What's different about Arjuna? The difference is this, what really caught Arjuna is not any kind of compassion, in the first place.

Let's consider another illustration. Say, two men went to meet someone. Of these two guys, one is the normal variety, and one is a long-practicing yogi. They enter the house and see the picture of a sexy model in a bikini on a calendar there. The normal guy is maybe slightly amused and aroused, and hardly pays it much attention. But our yogi has been practicing celibacy in a locked up room for twenty years now. He is under the impression that he achieved perfect celibacy, he could even stop the practice any of these days and declare himself to be a siddha. This yogi sees the calendar and there is a sudden, tremendous emotional upheaval in him. He might even literally collapse on the floor on the spot. What happened? He may not have been overpowered by a sudden high voltage spike of years of suppressed lust. He may have been only slightly aroused by the poster girl, just like the other guy. But that was enough to shatter his self-image instantly! This is what happened in the case of Arjuna, he was not overcome by pity or sorrow themselves, he was broken within when his self-image shattered. Pity, even if it is only exclusively for one's relatives in a situation of global disaster, had no place in Arjuna's scheme of things. His world-view itself shattered! He was bewildered. Pity has little to do with it, it was just the initial trigger, much happened immediately after it surfaced. His precious self-image itself cracked up.

Even to begin with, this so-labeled pity is not any kind of concern for the lives of others. It is Arjuna's concern with himself. The ego — 'me' — is erected on the foundation of 'mine'. All these relatives and friends are those who boost and bolster one's ego. Without them being around, and in such large numbers, a massive ego like that of Arjuna would seriously dwindle away. He would still have position, wealth, and power to support his ego, but it would be a dull affair, the liveliness would have gone. He asks Krishna 'how can we be happy by killing our own people?' But then, he knew for several years now that there would be a final battle and he would be killing his own kinsmen, so what's new? Suddenly the realization must have dawned on him that without his relatives, his life itself would become empty. The pity that Arjuna felt was really self-pity, and that is all he has the capacity to feel really. And he knew he would overcome even that, after all the mind of a greedy killing machine like him shouldn't have any place even for self-pity.

If Arjuna was moved by any genuine emotion or concern, he would have said to Krishna something like ‘Okay Krishna, enough is enough. We can't go ahead with this kind of stupid meaningless war. We made a big mistake bringing things this far. But it is still not too late. Let's immediately stop this war, turn back and deliberate upon the options open to us.’ Something mature and decisive like this. But no, what Arjuna does is, he says ‘Oh I am feeling deep sorrow and pity for my relatives, I will not fight,’ and he sits down and stays put. Compare "I will not fight" which is what Arjuna says with "Let's stop this war," which is what he should have said. Arjuna has no real intention of stopping the war, he is just sulking, inviting Krishna to coax and cajole him! He is like a 7-year-old kid, his parents are going to the cinema, he wants to go too, but he wants buttered popcorn and ice cream in the interval, and his mother says no, he begins to sulk, "I will not go to the movie." He sits down and stays put. Now some deal has to be negotiated between his mom and him. Arjuna is like that, Krishna has to simply say, "There is lot of buttered popcorn and ice cream in store for you, Arjuna, even after the war, even after the whole population has been wiped out. Just give up your sense of attachment and your ego, and then you can enjoy the pleasures of kingdom till you die, and after that you can go to heaven and enjoy. It is just enjoyment and enjoyment for you, stop all worrying."

Notice Arjuna's imperative request to Krishna in the verse we are discussing. "I ask thee: tell me decisively what is good for me." It is not the good of the country he is concerned about, it is not the good of the society, not what is good for the posterity — all these can go to hell. 'What is good for me' — that's all that matters! No matter how you pull and push Arjuna, no matter in what situation you keep him, you cannot simply make him think beyond 'What is in it for me, what is good for me?" And for thousands of years countless idiots have attributed buddha-like compassion to this psycho. "Oh how human Arjuna is, how quintessentially human, what a sensitive heart Arjuna has, he is willing to sacrifice his own life for the lives of his relatives!"

For decades now, researchers have wondered what is the fundamental difference between psychopaths and normal human beings. The root causes are of course still being studied, but symptomatically serial killers and other psychos have one most essential trait in their character which distinguishes them. These people are, owing to some defect in their brains, utterly incapable of feeling any thing at all for others. My own theory is that the reason why these people usually subject fellow humans, especially innocent young girls, to unspeakable tortures before finally finally killing them and relieving them of their misery, is that these people are seeking to feel human emotions. Perhaps the great torture they inflict on their victims is only carried out in the vain hope that this may stir some pity or compassion within themselves. Then they would know that they too are human beings, not just soulless killing machines. Through killing others they perhaps hope that the concentrated life essence escaping from their dying victims would resonate with something akin within themselves. They would then be able to feel they are alive and human. Because the life and humanity within us happens only in resonance with other fellow beings. When that passion and compassion disappear in us, the humanity in us dies, our soul itself dies. We become psychos, monsters, always hungry for something, crazy for something, perpetrating atrocities, but never getting what we want. Arjuna is a psycho, but still maybe he has some little humanity left in him, he can feel some pity even if only for his own relatives. Krishna's task is to shrink his head and turn him into a perfect psycho — detached, calm, collected, perfectly composed, unruffled in all circumstances, executing the task at hand with machine-like efficiency! You take a look at terrorists, psychos and villains portrayed in Hollywood movies, you will find a majority of them fitting this description! — at least until the last segment of the movie which is when they begin to panic and unravel!

This is the verse following our topic verse, and coming just before where Arjuna says "I will not fight" and Krishna takes off:

I do not see that it would remove this sorrow that burns up my senses even if I should attain prosperous and unrivalled dominion on earth or lordship over the gods.

chap 2, ver 9

To attain prosperous and unrivaled dominion on earth and lordship over the gods — that seems to be the big idea. Previously, just a while before, Arjuna was saying he didn't wish to kill the people "...even for the sake of dominion over the three worlds, leave alone killing them for the sake of the earth!" A few verses thereafter he remarks what a sin it is "to kill our kinsmen through greed for the pleasures of a kingdom." Pleasures, kingdoms, power, dominion, this theme seems to be the only big thing running in Arjuna's mind. He doesn't even pretend he started this war for the sake of righteousness, or to promote good in the society, or something like that. As we know, all terrorists fight for a higher cause whatever it is, whether it is valid or not, whether it is just a façade or genuine. However, the only cause that Arjuna can think of, the only cause that would be renounced should he give up on this war, is his power, his glory, his pleasure, his dominion. Now, his dad is the lord of gods, so he may have been secretly hoping he would inherit the lordship of gods too someday!

But alas, this overwhelming sorrow has whelmed over him now! There is an interesting point here. Please note that when you are very sad or very happy you wouldn't be too self-conscious of your own state of being. You simply forget yourself. Say, if you win Rs.10,000 in some lottery, surely you could say to your friend, "Wow, I got lucky, I won 10,000 rupees, I am so happy." But if you were to win 10 crore rupees, the idea of your happiness wouldn't even occur to you, at least for a good amount of time. Ten crore rupees simply goes far beyond you, whether you are lucky, or happy, the thought itself wouldn't occur to you. You would be in state of dizzy euphoria. Similarly if your child is ill, and you are talking to a friend on the phone, you may say 'I really feel so sad, I am just helpless." But if your child has died, you wouldn't call up your friend and tell him how sorrowful you are, how shocked you are, right? That would look ridiculous! Maybe it would take a month for you to become even aware that you are sad. But Arjuna is highly conscious of himself right at the moment, oh this pity, oh this sorrow, oh this pity, oh this sorrow! Thank God, at least he doesn't say my pity, my sorrow!

Right from the very beginning, he is completely aware of what is happening to himself in great detail! His very first sentence in the Bhagavad Gita is "My limbs fail and my mouth is parched up, my body quivers and my hairs stand on end!" Do you ever see people speaking like this? Suppose you are living in the countryside and an airplane carrying 50 passengers just crashed in your neighborhood. You run to the scene. It is an emergency situation, there are still some passengers alive who need to be rescued. Would you immediately get into action or would you stand by at the fringes and strike up a conversation with another loafer like you, saying how sad you feel, how overcome by pity you are, how sorrow is burning up your senses! Man, that would be so pathetically ridiculous! Remember, Arjuna is in an emergency situation. If he really panicked, he would have set out to do something about it, not just stand there prattling pure nonsense with Krishna. He would have immediately gestured and called up Yudhisthira's chariot to talk to him first. "Look bro, I have changed my mind." It would be an instinctive reaction, just like you go and fetch water when you see fire. But Arjuna just stands there and describes in great detail, blow by blow, what all is happening to him, all the thoughts occurring to him. "The (bow) Gandiva slips from my hand and my skin burns all over; I am unable even to stand, my mind is reeling, as it were." As it were, indeed!

Another interesting point. Even this fake pity and fake sorrow of Arjuna is ridiculously misplaced. To begin with he feels pity exclusively for that section of the opponent's army, as if all the relatives on his own wouldn't be dying, freaking idiot! The primary objects of his pity are Bhishma and Drona, two invincible warriors who cannot simply even die except out of their own volition! Both are old, Bhishma is supposedly over 250 years old by then! Even the rest of his friends and relatives on the opposing side have come here completely of their own accord, what to feel pity for them? They could have as well opted out of this nonsensical war, everyone on either side must have really boycotted this stupid war, just like Balarama, Krishna's brother, did. But no, they have all come to the war voluntarily, courting death with great delight. So let them die. What to feel pity about them? If anything, one should feel pity for their wives and children, they are the ones who would pay the heavy price for this colossal folly! But again the most obvious thought doesn't simply occur to our hero, it invariably escapes all those who read the Bhagavad Gita as well!

To get a better feel of this nonsensical drama of Arjuna's despondency, it would help if we contrast it to Draupadi's pity for Arjuna in a scene elsewhere in the Mahabharata. There is not much of a contrast though for the stupidity is the same in both the cases. This episode takes place in the forest. The Pandavas have just lost the gambling match and are set up in the forest. One evening they sit under the trees, chatting. Draupadi keeps trying to provoke their anger and self-pity, addressing Yudhishthira this way:

Beholding that Arjuna that tiger among men worshipped by both the celestials and the Danavas so anxious, why, O king, dost thou not feel indignant? I grieve, O Bharata, that thy wrath doth not blaze up at sight of that son of Pritha in exile, that prince who deserveth not such distress and who hath been brought up in every luxury!

And Arjuna is not in the least bit distressed or anxious himself! In the first place, Arjuna is there in the forest entirely of his own accord, he could have easily refused to be a part of the whole nonsense of the gambling match, but he didn't. So he is suffering, though not much really. They are living in a nice big hermitage there in the lap of Mother Nature, in a beautiful forest, surrounded by trees, birds and animals, with forty personal attendants, along with the company and services of scores of others Brahmins. Not only are they able to look after their every need, they are still doing a lot of charity, distributing gold coins to the Brahmins every day. But it is true, 'every luxury' is not present in the forest, and so Draupadi is grievously grieved for the sake of Arjuna! Nothing short of all the luxuries in the world will do for the hero, or else it is such a tragedy, isn't it! She continues:

Why doth not thy wrath blaze up at sight of that Arjuna in exile, who, on a single car, hath vanquished celestials and men and serpents? Why, O king, doth not thy wrath blaze up at sight of that Arjuna in exile who, honoured with offerings of cars and vehicles of various forms and horses and elephants, forcibly took from the kings of the earth their treasures, who is the chastiser of all foes, and who at one impetus can throw full five hundred arrows?

Okay, so Arjuna forcibly took all the treasures from the kings of the earth, looted them left and right, pillaged, murdered, destroyed, caused havoc wherever he went, even after the kings worshipped him and honored him with ritual offerings! (We have looked into this story in detail in an earlier essay). Such great and noble deeds Arjuna did! Such a great warrior he is, able to kill a couple of hundred people in one stroke! Yet this is the reward he got! How cruel fate is! Draupadi is naturally wailing and complaining to Yudhisthira, trying to elicit some human reaction from him.

This entire Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita thing is so bogus that it never ceases to amaze me how all the millions of people who read these could so totally miss it, this very essence of bogusness! Arjuna is not alone, there are a whole bunch of psychopaths here, and Krishna tops the list! Arjuna and the others are forgivable to some extent though. Yes, they brought on a great destructive war, devastated a nation and a civilization, still the society recovered in time. But what Krishna did is unforgivable, he corrupted the single greatest, transcendental achievement of Indian culture. He brought in the great philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga into the putrefying mass and fetid mess of the Mahabharata and muddled everything up.

Fortunately there are still some texts which retain that original flavor of these philosophies. If you want Yoga, you can still go to Patanjali Yoga Sutras. If you want Vedanta, you can still go to Ashtavakra Gita. And by any chance if you want total confusion, mess, muddle and nonsense, you come to... well you know where!