Good Men Do Not Kill🔗

1.36 What pleasure will we get by destroying the sons of Dhritarashtra, Janardana? Only sin will overcome us if we slay these wrongdoers.

1.37 It is not proper for us to kill the sons of Dhritarashtra and our friends.

How could we be happy by killing our own kinsmen, Madhava?

1.38, 1.39 O Janardana, although these men are consumed by greed and they see no fault in killing one's family or quarreling with friends,

Why should we, who understand the evil of the destruction of a dynasty, not turn away from these acts?

Here is Arjuna's dilemma spoken plainly. He had two options and is looking to be convinced of one or the other. The first was that going to battle was wrong, especially against his kinsmen. Therefore he should cease and desist, walk away from the war before it starts. All his arguments up to this point were in this line of thinking. At the same time, Arjuna was open to the possibility that what he had set out to do was indeed correct, in which case he would go back into battle mode, as a true kṣatriya would do.

To begin with had Arjuna been totally convinced that war against his kinsmen was wrong, he would not have come to the battlefield. It was his degree of awareness that raised within him the question of retreat from his duty. To Arjuna's credit, he listened to what his mind had to say and turned to the master for guidance and resolution.

Arjuna's mind now brings up one more argument. Arjuna agreed that Duryodhana and his allies were the aggressors and wrongdoers. Whatever they had done to him, his brothers and his wife was not pardonable, and they needed to be punished for that. The laws of the land would concur. By all rights Arjuna would have been quite justified in attacking and killing those wrongdoers for what they had done.

‘But,’ Arjuna asked, ‘Would one wrong be corrected by another wrong? How can I be happy killing my kinsmen, however justified I might be in doing that? Their misdeeds cannot be remedied by my misdeed and that would only make me miserable.’

There are two factors central to Arjuna’s dilemma.

The first one is that of relationship. The problem that Arjuna faced is one that we all face when asked to do unpleasant things to people we know. It is always easier to criticize and punish people one does not know. To be faceless is to be fearless. With people one knows, with whom one has established bonds of friendship, there is a danger of breaking it through perceived negative behavior, even when it may be fully justified.

To face this factor in one’s dilemma, one must first break the connection or develop a sense of detachment that allows action without worrying about the consequences. One follows the process and the path and leaves the result to the process. As long as the path is right, whatever destination the path takes one to, will also be right.

Over the ages, this sense of connection had been broken by religious and societal separation. Contrary to what anyone may say, religion separates. It segregates and it destroys. More people have been killed in religious wars over the ages than for any other reason. As Lenin famously remarked, ‘Religion is the opium that blunts one’s sensitivity to another human and allows one to ill-treat, maim and kill another human.’

Terrorists are only the modern representation of what has gone on for centuries in many nations in the name of religion. It is nothing new. Destroying one another has happened through the ages, within religions through artificially created separations, and between religions in the name and defense of my god versus your god.

When religion was deemed insufficient reason to kill, man found other ‘rational’ reasons to segregate and kill: color of the skin, language and cultural differences, territorial disputes and more. Anything that could differentiate, anything that created the possibility of fear or threat was a good enough reason to discriminate and destroy. As one present day activist has put it, ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds hatred and hatred breeds violence. It begins with our ignorance.

To overcome this isolation, we need to realize that no man is an island. We are all connected. We are interconnected at the spiritual level, and recent discoveries show that we are also interconnected at the cellular level. Studies in molecular cellular biology by path-breaking scientists such as Bruce Lipton show that Darwin was wrong when he said we must compete to survive. In fact, we need to collaborate to survive. That is what cells do. They know intuitively that they are interconnected, that they are part of a larger system.

When we arrive on planet earth, we are open to all possibilities. As children, we are centered upon ourselves as children in a simple and beautiful way, and open to all connections. It is as if we are a large open area that anyone can access. Over time, we build walls. We build walls believing that these walls will keep us safe and that the connections that we have established inside the walls are ours to keep. Bit by bit, the open space we started with becomes a maze. We do not know how to exit and if we do exit, we do not know how to enter again. We are lost inside!

The silos need to be broken. The islands need to be bridged. People need to communicate and collaborate instead of isolating themselves and competing. At the basic cellular level, it is now found that cells like to cluster together, and form clumps that can communicate. It is found that cells communicate through their boundary membranes and not through their nuclei as had been assumed. Competition does not ensure survival; collaboration does. Communication does.

However, when we work valuing only the results, our efforts become counterproductive. As long as this collaboration is selfless, as long as it is for the collective good and collective survival, from the awareness that we all are a part of the collective consciousness, this collaboration is extremely effective. We must consider process and source along with the result.

The other factor that Arjuna faces is the problem of directness of action. In a war of this type, Arjuna was faced with the transparent consequences of his action. If he shot an arrow and killed a kinsman, death was a direct result of his action. This is far different from modern warfare. Pressing a button could result in the death of millions. There is enough nuclear arsenal stored in the world to destroy the planet many times over.

Arjuna did not have the luxury of remote destruction. He had to look the victim in the eye before releasing his arrow. He was aware of whom he was killing and why. He felt the destruction within himself when he killed someone else.

Arjuna was affected by the combination of these two factors: that of being connected by kinship to his enemies and the fact that he had to kill them directly and personally. It affected him because he was not a Duryodhana, who denied to himself and others the consequences of his actions. It affected Arjuna because he was not a Krishna who would have taken responsibility for his actions, being aware all the time. Arjuna was neither Krishna nor Duryodhana. His mind was pointing out that he might be doing wrong, but his mind had not yet ascended into that state of awareness to be able to take responsibility for such actions.

This was Arjuna's dilemma.

Arjuna has now distanced himself further from his kinsmen. He earlier said that even if his kinsmen had made big mistakes, he should not repeat the same mistakes; he would not, even if he were to be offered the entire universe. He wondered what joy he would get by destroying his kinsmen and what would be the point of living as a king if he was alone to enjoy it.

He said that his kinsmen were in darkness. They saw nothing wrong in destroying one another and their own kinsmen. They were blinded by greed for power and control. They were ruled by blind ego. He asked Krishna, 'Shouldn't we be distancing ourselves from these people and their attitudes, we who are not ignorant, not in darkness and not blinded?'

Arjuna was pleading with Krishna, 'Please tell me, am I right? Please tell me, should I withdraw from this battle?'

But now, he condemned the same fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles and friends that he had referred to so passionately a few moments earlier. These are the same people who he claimed to hold in great respect and affection and therefore did not wish to kill. He shifted gears now and moved from the position of not killing them because they were his flesh and blood to a greater moral position of not wishing to kill them because it was morally reprehensible.

Arjuna said that destruction of the lineage, the dynasty, is evil, and that he recoiled from such a deed even though his opponents had no such compunction, blinded as they were by greed. Arjuna moved to higher ground from arguments of family to lineage and dynasty. It was now a matter of tradition and respect for the lineage that could be traced back to the moon, and an old, established tradition that would be a sin to dismantle and destroy.

Arjuna's dilemma now jumps to a larger arena. It's no longer about individuals, it is about the destruction of a race that had existed for thousands of years, tracing its roots back to celestial beings. How could he be expected to carry out such a horrible act, he pleaded.

In Arjuna’s mind this was a big doubt. Killing a few individuals, even if kinsmen, was a mistake. Killing a whole generation was a far bigger sin, and now he was expected to destroy a whole race, the foundations of a proud and legendary dynasty. How could the future generations forgive him?

This was how the argument of Arjuna’s dilemma shifted.

When Arjuna talks about the threat to his dynasty, it arises out of a fear of his own mortality. He has asked, ‘Even if I am to die, as I must, should I not ensure the continuance of my dynasty that bears my signature, my identity, my DNA?’

Q: You talked about Arjuna’s dilemma. Was there really a dilemma? Dilemma is when one has choices. In many ways Arjuna had no choice about fighting his cousins. Wasn’t it really fear that caused this confusion?

We have choices in everything that we decide and act upon. In life we have choice in everything, including our birth and death.

Even in birth and death our spirit does have a choice. It is our undying spirit that decides where and to whom we will be born in the next birth. We choose our parents before birth just as we choose spouses and work once we are alive. We do not choose our children. They choose us.

Our spirit does decide our death. It is just that we are living deep in our unconscious during our lifetime and so we are unaware of this. Even a hundred years ago in India, old people had the capacity to foretell how and when they would die. Today there are people who can tell you when you are going to die and how to change that.

So, we do have choice. So did Arjuna.

At every point Arjuna had a choice, not just on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. In all earlier events, he allowed himself to be carried along with whatever happened around him. He was a wise man and understood that in life choices are fruitless.

Living in the realm of dilemmas is living in the realm of the mind, the outer edges of our personality. Since we have not been exposed to any other way, we consider this normal and efficient. But that is not true. When we operate from the center of our being, we move beautifully with the flow of life operating out of a place of clarity and intuition. It is much more efficient and creative.

In the battlefield of Kurukshetra Arjuna found it difficult to make the choice. So far, in everything he did he went by whatever was good for his brother or wife or loved ones. Everything he did was for others. He did not see the need to choose. Whatever option presented itself he chose. He was guided by the code of conduct of the kṣatriya, when he had to decide and act.

Even choosing Krishna was not his decision. Krishna made the offer to Duryodhana: ‘Would you like me to be with you unarmed or would you like my unmatched Yadava army?’

In greed, Duryodhana chose the Yadava army. On the other hand, Arjuna gladly accepted Krishna unarmed!

For the first time now, Arjuna had a problem. He thought that the point of decision-making was over. The decision to wage war was a done deal. Of his brothers, Bhima was focused on the war because of his hatred for Duryodhana and what he had done to Draupadi. The two younger brothers went along with the others. Even the eldest, Yudhishtira, though he was ready to walk away without his kingdom, followed Krishna’s advice to fight for it. He considered the war a responsibility that he had to fulfill. The Mahabharata war, in its essence, was Krishna’s making.

Arjuna probably thought the same also. It was his responsibility to avenge the dishonor heaped on his clan. Unmatched in valor and skill, he was not afraid in any ordinary sense of the word. He was a man without fear. What happened to him on the battlefield, the choice that he was presented with now, was not something he had anticipated.

The sight of his kinsmen and his elders, ready for slaughter, presented for the first time the choice of either going ahead as he had planned or walking away from the battlefield. This was a choice that came from the depths of his unconscious, as we said before, his saṁskāras. Why?

As a kṣatriya, a fearless warrior, his code of life and his conditioning from birth was to avenge, to fight and to win. What is this saṁskāra that suddenly raises doubts in his mind?

The fact is that at this crucial moment, when the armies are all set to clash, the one moment when it is necessary to be focused and aware, Arjuna slips out of the present moment. That creates the dilemma. Arjuna’s dilemma is one of being caught in the regrets of the past and the speculative prospects of the future.

Arjuna is upset that he has to fight against his elders, who are a part of his past. He is upset that many things will go wrong in the future. He is no longer focused in the present moment.

This happens to all of us in times of crisis. Because of the intensity of the situation, when we need to be the most focused, we are often the most flustered. We somehow think that we must bring the past and future into the equation for a successful outcome in the present situation. You need to remember that nothing of what has happened and what may happen are of any help or relevance to us in the present moment. The best decision comes from the spontaneous, creative intelligence available only in the present.

Usually when we are in a panic, we don't think clearly. Our minds are clouded with memories and fantasies that distract us. Our negative ideas about our potential future also keep us from giving all our attention to the internal intelligence always available to guide us. As of now, fantasies and fear rule Arjuna's mind. His unconscious mind in turn rules him. This creates his dilemma.

The only way out of his dilemma is with the guidance of his friend and master, Krishna. It is to Him that Arjuna turns now for clarity.