The Need for a Kshatriya Mindset:
An Address at the HSC Camp (Hindu Students Council--www.hindustudentscouncil.org), 

May 2013, 

in Vraj, PA (www.vraj.org)

Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanur-dharaḥ …:
Krishna, Arjuna, the Battlefield & The Need for a Kshatriya Mindset

“Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanur-dharaḥ
tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama”

(Wherever there is Bhagavan Krishna, the Lord of Yoga, and wherever there is Arjuna, the wielder of the Gandiva bow, goodness, victory, glory and unfailing righteousness will surely be there: such is my conviction.)
(Bhagavad Gita (“BG”) 18:78)

Shrinath-ji

I am so happy to be here today in Vraj Bhoomi, in this beautiful temple and retreat area, under the auspicious gaze of Shrinath-ji.  Shrinath-ji is a crystallization of a particular form of Sri Krishna, who is also my ishta devata or personal deity of worship.  In this form, Sri Krishna is a 9-year old boy.  I have not yet been to the famous Shrinath-ji temple (Nathadwara) in Rajasthan, but I feel a special bond with Him.

A little over 10 years ago, I was at the lowest point in my life.  I had been through some traumatic events in my personal life and was struggling with a sense of existential despair.  So, I did what many of us do when we are in angst or heartache—I went on a shopping spree.  I happened to be in Delhi for the summer.  I found myself at a jewelry store, looking at rings and bracelets, and on a whim, I asked if they had a locket of Sri Krishna that I could wear around my neck.  They had only one—a locket of Shrinath-ji, whose image I had never seen before.  I found the locket exquisitely beautiful and bought it right away.  Since that day, I have always worn this locket around my neck, and in this form, Shrinath-ji has been close to my heart, literally, for over 10 years.  On the rare occasions I have to remove the locket out of necessity, I cannot tell you how bereft I feel, how empty, much more naked than if I wore no clothes.  What I found in a jewelry shop has become one of my most important and special spiritual talismans—I feel now, looking back, that Shrinath-ji came to me in this form as a blessing and I marvel that He came to me in this way at a jewelry shop of all places.

Starting from around that time, a number of positive opportunities began opening up for me and from that place of existential despair, I found my way towards the path of sadhana (spiritual practice).  The old depression and angst eventually fell away. 

Several years later, I had gone to Vrndavana on pilgrimage and undertook the Govardhan parikrama.  The Govardhan parikrama is a circumambulation of the famous Govardhan mountain (which over time has become gradually reduced to the size of a large hill), which Sri Krishna lifted on top of His pinky finger as a young boy.  The parikrama which is slightly over 13 miles long, takes approximately 7 hours or so, and many devotees undertake this parikrama.  Some great devotees and sadhus perform this parikrama on a daily basis.  The entire area is divine, and there are many sacred leelas (transcendental pastimes) associated with various spots along the way.  One of the highlights of the Govardhan parikrama is visiting the site of the original Shrinath-ji temple.

I do not know how many of you know the history of the Shrinath-ji vigraha.  He originally revealed Himself in Govardhan, close to Vrndavana, and He was first worshipped there for a number of years.  With the Muslim invasion of India and their genocidal and violent rampages against Hindu temples and devotees, many of the worshipped deities in Vrndavana were smuggled to Agra and other places and reinstalled in safer environs.  Shrinath-ji was taken away in a similar fashion and was later installed in Rajasthan where He is worshipped today.

When I reached the site of His original shrine in Govardhan, I began weeping.  I cried like this for almost 20 minutes.  Part of it was, I think, exhaustion and fatigue from the heat and the long day.  More than that, it broke my heart to see this empty shrine in which Shrinath-ji had resided.  I felt great sorrow that Shrinath-ji had to be removed from His own home.  I felt ashamed of our people, that we allowed back then and still today allow our temples and deities to be destroyed, our people persecuted and killed, without putting up a stronger fight.

However, I was also overcome by gratitude.  Even in His absence, I could feel the presence of Shrinath-ji there and I thought of His compassion and love and how He had come to me in that little jewelry shop so many years ago.  I was overcome by the truth of the principle that if you take one tiny step, not even a step, if you so much as even lean towards Iswara, Iswara comes rushing towards you.

So, when I think about Shrinath-ji, I think of all of these things—the sublime and also things very much of this world.  I think that is fitting, because that is how I also think about Sri Krishna—His life and teachings are transcendental and sublime, but at the time, so much of what He did, so much of what He taught us, is about how to handle oneself in this world, how to successfully navigate earthly affairs, how to be in this world without being of the world, like the lotus that is untouched by the mud in which it lives.  And today, what I would like to talk about, is one aspect of Sri Krishna that I think weaves together all of these threads—the sublime and the earthly—His relationship with Arjuna and their interaction on the battlefield just before the Mahabharata war began.

Sri Krishna

Let us begin with Sri Krishna.  Sri Krishna is recognized as one of our most joyous forms of the Divine.  He is full of mischief and humor, His flute music enchants all souls, His dance is mesmerizing, He brings joy and sweetness to all those who cross His path—His cowherd friends, the gopis, the cows and deer of Vrndavana, Kubja on the road to Mathura, His many, many wives, His friends like Sudama and Uddhava, the Pandavas—the list goes on. 

But when you think about Sri Krishna’s life, it is full of difficult moments that for most ordinary people would have led to a life full of suffering and disappointment.   

He was born in a dungeon, His parents, Vasudeva and Devaki, tied in chains.  He was then smuggled into Gokul, handed over to the care of His foster parents, Nanda Maharaj and Yashoda.  As a baby and a child, He is hounded by demon after demon.  His uncle, Kamsa, was unrelenting in his hunt to find and kill Him.  Eventually, Sri Krishna and His associates are driven out of Gokul and move to safer grounds in Nadagaon / Vrndavana.  His brief idyllic boyhood in Vraj is interrupted when Akrura comes to take Him to finally fight Kamsa.  When Sri Krishna leaves Vrndavana, He is torn away from the only parents He has ever known, from the cows He so lovingly tended all these years, from His dearest friends, from His beloved gopis, and from Radharani, His consort.    

After He kills Kamsa, He reinstalls his grandfather, King Ugrasena, on the throne of Mathura.  To avenge Kamsa’s death, the powerful king Jarasandha, Kamsa's father-in-law, begins repeatedly attacking Mathura.  Sri Krishna and his elder brother Balarama defeat Jarasandha in battle eighteen times but he keeps coming back.  After the eighteenth battle, Sri Krishna decides to retreat and convinces King Ugrasena to move his kingdom from Mathura to Dwaraka in order to escape the wrath of Jarasandha.  The king, his ministers, and even Sri Krishna’s father vehemently oppose this decision.  Vasudeva, Sri Krishna’s father, warns Sri Krishna that He will earn infamy for this act, that He will forever after be known as ‘Ranchod,’ or he who runs away from the battlefield.  Sri Krishna accepts the consequences of this without a second thought.   

Then, it is time for Sri Krishna to be married.  He claims His bride, Rukmini, in the rakshasa form of marriage, and therefore has to wage war against her brother and other family members in order to spirit her away. 

No sooner is the new kingdom in Dwaraka established than Sri Krishna’s attentions are turned to protecting the Pandavas, the five sons of Pandu—Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva and their wife, Draupadi—and restoring them to their rightful kingdom.  He has to play ambassador and diplomat, pleading with Duryodhana, their cousin and enemy, for the smallest parcel of land on which the Pandavas may live.  When even that request is denied by Duryodhana, Sri Krishna has no choice but to instigate the most famous, most destructive, most renowned war in our history.  In this war, Sri Krishna is not a commander—He is a mere charioteer on one side while His armies fight on the other side.  He masterminds the war, whispering into the ears of the warriors.  Sri Krishna compels the Pandavas, over and over again, to break the rules of war, for that is the only way they can win.  (This is not out of partiality towards the Pandavas but rather because the Kauravas, having first and repeatedly departed from the rules of dharma, could no longer expect dharmic rules to be extended to them during the war).  At the end of the war, Duryodhana is finally defeated in a mace-fight with Bhima when of Bhima, at Sri Krishna’s bidding, strikes him on the thigh, which broke the rules of mace-fighting.  Duryodhana then cries out that the Pandavas only won because of cheating and trickery, that their names will always be blackened by these acts.  Sri Krishna acknowledges the truth of Duryodhana’s accusation.  After the war is finally over, there is no glory of victory awaiting Sri Krishna.  Instead, He is cursed by Gandhari for all of the lives he has taken, all the widows He has made, all the mothers He has deprived of children.

The other princes and kings of the realm do not ever fully accept Him in their midst.  He is jeered at and taunted, most famously by His cousin, Shishupala, the would-be suitor of Sri Krishna’s bride, Rukmini.  At a great assembly, Shishupala insults Sri Krishna, mocking Him as a cowherd who is not worthy of being king.  Finally, after having endured 99 of such insults from Shishupala to honor a promise He made to Shishupala’s mother, Sri Krishna slays him by cutting off his head with the Sudarshana Chakra (the Divine Discus).

After all this, after His life’s work is done, Sri Krishna has to watch silently as His family and clan, the Yadavas, destroy themselves.  At the very end, Sri Krishna has to face an ignominious death.  He sits at the base of a tree, and is shot in the foot by a hunter who mistook His feet for a deer.  This is how He, one of the greatest avataras of Iswara in our tradition, departs from this world.

When we look at the bare facts of Sri Krishna’s life, we think, what a life of hardship, of incessant sacrifice that is never rewarded, of separation, sorrow and suffering.  We think this is not a life worthy of a hero, let alone a god, the most beloved god of many Hindus.  Where is the glory of His deeds?  He spends much of His life running away, first from Kamsa, then from Jarasandha.  The war for which He is remembered, He is remembered for breaking the dictates of war.  He is constantly separated from His family, His friends, His loved ones, His consort.  Rama faced pain, too, but He had to his credit Rama Rajya—a reign of unsurpassed nobility, righteousness, peace and harmony; Sri Krishna, on the other hand, presided over the end of one era and the dawning of a darker era; He wrought and presided over the most destructive war this world has ever seen, a war that led to the demise of the greatest heroes of that time, a war that resulted in a hollow victory that brought no joy to its survivors.

Still, it is Sri Krishna who is considered the purna-avatara, the complete avatara, amongst the bhakti movements of India.  Even Rama did not reach this status—which does not mean He is inferior to Krishna.  It is just that they had different purposes and roles to play as exemplars or models for mankind.  Dharma has to be constantly rejuvenated for each of the ages, and that is the concept of the birth of avataras in Sanatana Dharma theology and philosophy.  What is it that makes Sri Krishna purna-avatara?  There is a list of 16 kalas or 24 attributes, according to various devotional traditions, that make Sri Krishna a purna-avatara.  But, in my mind, I have perhaps a more simplistic answer.  An avatara may be more or less omniscient and omnipotent—many gods are conceived of with these attributes.  But what makes Sri Krishna special, unique from all other avataras, from all other gods of whatever religion, is that Sri Krishna is ever conscious of his Divine Nature and has no attachments.  Most gods are attached to being good or doing good, but Sri Krishna has not even that attachment to morality or to our conventional understanding of goodness.  He is ready to do whatever it is that needs to be done in the moment for the overall harmony of the cosmos, for the wellbeing of all sentient beings, for the greatest good for the greatest number.

Osho (Bhagwan Rajneesh) says in his book on Sri Krishna that what makes Him unique is that Sri Krishna had the courage to be as ruthless as Genghis Khan or Hitler.  The difference is that whatever Sri Krishna did was for the wellbeing of the world—there was no personal gain for Him.  He is not a jealous god or one that demands to be worshipped.  He was fully surrendered to that Dharma which is higher than the invariant Dharma of rules and regulations, the code of honor to which even Rama was attached, for which Rama gave up everything else.  That lower form of Dharma Sri Krishna was willing to and did break again and again for the sake of the higher form of Dharma.  He would happily be called Ranchod if it would bring peace and prosperity to the people of Mathura.  He would happily slay Bhishma and Karna and cheat to win the war if that was the only way to restore the balance of the universe.  

It is because Sri Krishna has no attachments, no preferences to be in a particular place or position or to be in a particular form, that He can do what needs to be done in the moment.  This is the highest form of no-mindedness in Buddhism.    

This is what makes every moment of Krishna’s life a transcendental leela (sacred play/pastime), no matter how seemingly mundane or inglorious.  I used to do a yoga video where the instructor, Bryan Kest, would say that in yoga, it doesn’t matter what you do but how you do what you do.  Similarly, it is not what Sri Krishna did, it is how He did what He did that makes Him so remarkable.  It is Krishna’s vision, His no-mindedness, His non-identification with any attributes or qualities we may wish to ascribe to Him, that make him unique among all the divinities, that make each moment of His life sacred and sublime. 

He has no preferences of His own.  This is what makes Him perfect in everything.  If He needs to be a charioteer or a cowherd, He does not mind.  If He needs to be king, He will do that, too.  Whatever He does, He is the best at it.  He excels at and is supreme at each role that He plays, and He can play an infinite number of roles because He has no limitations.  This is why He can bring unlimited bliss (ananda) to all others, because there is nothing He wants for Himself, because there is no notion of self to which He is attached.  And so, when He is with Yashoda Mata, He is the sweetest of babies.  When He is with His cowherd friends, he is the most mischievous and fun-loving boy to be around.  When He is with the gopis in their romantic mood, He is the most passionate of lovers.  When He is with his guru, He is the perfect brahmacari.  He never says no to anyone or anything; even when Duryodhana approaches Him before the war, He consents to let His armies fight for Duryodhana, His enemy.  This is what it means to be Sri Krishna.

He will do whatever needs to be done in that moment, and if in the next moment, the opposite is to be done, He will do that, too.  Yet there is nothing capricious, arbitrary or self-indulgent about this; there is always a higher purpose, a method to the seeming madness.  When it is time to run away from the battlefield, He will run without shame.  When it is time to fight, He will fight fiercely and valiantly.  When the gopis run to Him, surrendering themselves to Him, He will dance with them and unite with them in love.  When He is called to Mathura, to fight His uncle, He will leave them behind without a backward glance. 

If you are ever asked what makes Hinduism different from other religions, one answer is that no other religion in the world could give birth to Sri Krishna.  It is the high philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedas, the ethical framework of situational dharma conceived of by our rishis, that make Sri Krishna possible.  It is only the rich, intricate tapestry of our Itihaasas and Puranas that could weave together His life story.  It is the passionate bhava of our bhakti traditions that brings Him alive for us, through song, literature, art, through the deepest of meditations and pujas.  It is only in Hinduism that Sri Krishna can exist.

Arjuna                                                                                                           

Now, we turn to Arjuna.  Arjuna was certainly a valorous hero of the Mahabharata.  He was the son of Indra, the highest among the devas.  He was an unparalleled archer and warrior.  But he was also very human.  He was proud, impetuous, and did not possess the steadfast, thoughtful wisdom of his elder brother, Yudhishthira.  He was not an uttama adhikari (one who has the highest qualification for spiritual evolution).  There is a famous story that shows Arjuna’s ignorance and pride even after the Gita had been revealed to him.

At the end of one of the days of fighting in the Mahabharata war, Sri Krishna takes the chariot to a remote place and suddenly tells Arjuna to take his Gandiva bow and dismount first.  Being the charioteer, it was Sri Krishna who had always dismounted first.  Puzzled, Arjuna obeys.  Sri Krishna releases the horses and dismounts.  The banner of Hanuman disappears, too, and in just a few moments, the entire chariot erupts into flames and burns to ashes.  Sri Krishna explains, “Arjuna, this chariot has been attacked by so many different kinds of weapons.  It is because I had sat upon it during battle that it did not fall into pieces.  Now it has been reduced to ashes upon My abandoning it after your success has been ensured.”  Hearing the words of Sri Krishna, Arjuna was humbled by how much he owed to Sri Krishna and ashamed of his pride, his arrogant assumption that it was his valor alone that was winning the war for the Pandavas.

In short, other than his military prowess and valor, Arjuna was very much like any of us.  This is what makes it easy for us to relate to him, if we try.

For the most part, the relationship between Sri Krishna and Arjuna looks very much like what we may call today a bromance.  They hang out together, they go hunting together.  Arjuna marries Sri Krishna’s sister, Subhadra, at Krishna’s urging, cementing their bond even more closely.  There is a special bond between Sri Krishna and the Pandavas, but Arjuna seems to be Sri Krishna’s especial favorite.  Save for the extraordinarily deep friendship between Sri Krishna and Draupadi, His friendship with Arjuna may be the closest friendship Sri Krishna had. 

The Mahabharata War                                                                   

But then something happens—the revelation of the Bhagavad Gita—that turns this sweet friendship into something different and deeper, something extraordinary, a communion between the Divine and the human that is every bit as intimate and loving as the exchanges between Sri Krishna and the gopis, just expressed and manifested in a very different way. 

Imagine you are Arjuna.  The battle, the great war, for which you have been preparing your entire life, which you dreamt of all those cold nights sleeping on the forest floor while in exile, for which you went to Swarga itself to retrieve the necessary weapons, is about to commence.  The armies are arrayed against each other in intricate arrangement.

The air is rent by the sound of the holiest and most powerful of conches being sounded in unison with bugles, trumpets, kettle drums and cow horns.  Then, for a few moments, everything is still and silent, before the tempest of the bloodbath begins.  You are on the chariot, and your mouth turns dry.  It is not fear of war, for you have fought so many times, against even more powerful foes.  But this is something different, something truly terrible and awesome.  Your eyes fall upon Sri Krishna, your dearest friend, your charioteer, the one who never fails to bring you comfort and succor.  All of the millions of pairs of eyes of the humans and beasts assembled on this great field are turned towards you.  You look at Sri Krishna, and ask Him to bring you to the middle of the battlefield, between the front lines of the two armies so that you may look upon those whom you are about to fight.

He does so, and in the opposing army, you see your uncles, your cousins, those you grew up with, those you have loved, and so many strangers whom you have never met before.  You know so many of them will die at your hand.  And suddenly, for the first time in your life, your courage deserts you, you lose your nerve.  You begin trembling in despair and a sudden fear that you have never known.  You turn to Krishna, and you begin to lament as you would to a friend, a confidante.

You say that you do not want any of this, you cannot bear to kill these people, that nothing good can come of it for anyone.  You say, O Janardana, although these men, their hearts overtaken by greed, see no fault in killing one's family or quarreling with friends, why should we, who can see the crime in destroying a family, engage in these acts of sin?  Better for me if they, weapons in hand, were to kill me unarmed and unresisting on the battlefield.  You go on like this for a while before finally casting aside your bow and arrows and collapsing on the chariot, overwhelmed by grief.

Sri Krishna looks upon you with such soft eyes, such compassion, and you wait for the balm of His comfort and consolation.  So it is all the more a shock, a bucket of cold water poured over you, when He speaks such hard words, berating you as a coward, as unmanly.  His words pierce you like arrows.  He says, “Yield not to unmanliness, Arjuna; this does not befit you.  Shaking off this weakness of the heart, arise, O scorcher of enemies.”

You begin to ask questions.  He answers rapid-fire and expounds the most beautiful, the most sublime philosophy, beyond anything you had ever conceived.  When philosophy no longer works, He shows you His universal form and you are awed and struck speechless.  You cannot bear the sight for too long; this form that is majestic and terrible, beautiful and horrifying all at the same time.  You beg Him to come back to the form in which you have always known Him and He does so.  Sometimes He is gentle with you, and sometimes He castigates you like a father would a misbehaving son.

It is not a smooth exchange.  You have so many questions, so many doubts, and His words are like quicksilver, hard to catch, even harder to hold onto.  Like this it goes on for what seems to you to be an endless stretch of time, but in reality, it lasts for less than a few hours.  Finally, He says to you, “Thus, has this wisdom, more profound than all profundities, been imparted to you by Me; deeply pondering over it, now do as you like.”  (BG 18:63)

You look upon Him, at He who was once your charioteer, your friend, but who is now something more.  He is your master, your Lord, and you His devotee.  This moment, too, this feeling may not last, but it is here now.  You say something that will become one of the most famous lines of the Gita itself, that will be repeated with reverence by millions of people aspiring towards the same devotion and surrender you feel at this moment.  You say, “Naṣṭo mohaḥ smṛtir labdhā; tvat-prasādān mayācyuta; sthito 'smi gata-sandehaḥ kariṣye vacanaḿ tava” (Sri Krishna, by Your grace, my delusion has been destroyed and I have gained wisdom.  I am free of all doubt.  I shall do as you have instructed.) (BG 18: 73)

This feeling that Arjuna experiences at this moment does not last very long.  After the war has ended, he confesses to Sri Krishna that he has forgotten what He taught him when He espoused the Gita to him.  Sri Krishna sternly tells him that the Gita was spoken from a very high state of absorption and that it would be impossible for Him to repeat the Gita again.  But, out of compassion, He proceeds to give him a summary of what He had said in the Bhagavad Gita.  This is the famous Anu Gita.  The lesson here is that even though Arjuna lapses again and again, it does not matter—you do not have to be perfect in order to have a moment of perfection.  Increasing the frequency of such perfect moments is the work of sadhana or spiritual practice. 

What this dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, this discourse, has given birth to will become the most renowned philosophical tract and spiritual discourse in the world – the Bhagavad Gita.  More specifically, what transpires is so sublime, so powerful and inspiring, that it causes Sanjaya, the other most famous charioteer of the Mahabharata, to utter the famous concluding verse of the Bhagavad Gita:

“Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanur-dharaḥ
tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama”

(Wherever there is Bhagavan Krishna, the Lord of Yoga, and wherever there is Arjuna, the wielder of the Gandiva bow, goodness, victory, glory and unfailing righteousness will surely be there: such is my conviction.) (Bhagavad Gita (“BG”) 18:78)

Dharma for This Age

As discussed earlier, Sri Krishna violated (and instructed others to violate) many of the norms of warfare in order to win the war.  Nowadays, a number of modernists largely brainwashed by Abrahamic categorical concepts of right and wrong are uncomfortable with the Krishna of the Mahabharata.  They try to whitewash Him by disparaging His actions but proclaiming that it was justified in this one special case because the war of the Mahabharata was somehow a special war, a just war, a war that had to be waged and won for the welfare of humanity.  And therefore, while Sri Krishna’s actions viewed in isolation, according to these people, would be reprehensible, it can be excused in this instance as a special case because of the importance of this particular war.  They miss the fundamental ethos of the forest religions out of India, which have always been grounded in a constantly mutating situational ethic which nevertheless is grounded in a higher eternal principle of truth.  This was not about the ends justifying the means but about acting in accordance with Dharma, which is based on a subtle and intricate framework of situational ethics.  This is why Sanatana Dharma ever changes but at its core never changes and the ever changing is never different from the never changing.

If you think about it, what was the Mahabharata war really all about?  It was a dispute over a measly bit of land between rival sets of cousins.  Through a complicated network of alliances and other rivalries, just about every kingdom in Bharatavarsha (at the time geographically much, much larger than the current India / Pakistan / Bangladesh) became involved.  It became a war of huge proportions, but it was triggered by one small intra-family dispute.  It is rather similar to World War I, which was also catalyzed by a petty dispute but then pulled in all the nations of Europe through various alliances and concern about imbalances in power on a continental and global scale.

We rightfully think of the Pandavas today as heroes.  And so perhaps it seems to make sense that a whole nation should come together to wage war on their behalf.  But in their times, the Pandavas were not great heroes.  They were misfits of shadowy parentage; pariahs who were alternately exiled and in hiding for long stretches of years; five brothers who brought disgrace and dishonor upon themselves by gambling away their wife to their enemy and allowing her to be disrobed, manhandled and shamed before the entire court.  Nor was Duryodhana an altogether terrible villain.  He was an administrator without peer and Hastinapur his capital was eulogized for being a well-administered kingdom.  (By the way, Lanka, the capital of Ravana, was similarly eulogized).  Duryodhana was widely and justly regarded as a competent and fair king.  Balarama, Sri Krishna’s elder brother, actually favored Duryodhana and his brothers over the Pandavas in the great war.

Still, Sri Krishna orchestrated this war and made sure that it was fought and won by the Pandavas.  Surely, He did not come to Earth just to help five misfit brothers reclaim their kingdom and dispatch some other demons on the side.  No, there is something much deeper than that.  The Mahabharata is all about wheels within wheels in terms of lessons to be learned as to how to live an ethical and principled life under complex circumstances—not too different from the complexity of life situations that many of us are facing or will be facing in the near future.  Through this seemingly simplistic war over a bit of land, something much greater was happening, something that was necessary for the overall harmony of the universe and the smooth turning of the wheels of time.  An age was coming to an end and a new age about to begin—the Dvapara Yuga was drawing to an end and it was time for the advent of the Kali Yuga, the 4^th Age of the Universe.  The Kali Yuga is the lowest of the four yugas in the cycle of time in Hinduism—it is an age of increasing darkness and disorder.  It was time for the great heroes of the earlier era to pass from this world and leave the world to the humans of diminished faculties and energies.  A very large part of Sri Krishna’s role was to usher in this new age of increased degradation in the most harmonious way possible and, in the process, to teach us how to live and make spiritual progress in this new world. 

It was also a pointed lesson to us that in this age of tamas (one of the three gunas, the main characteristics of which are sluggishness, darkness and ignorance), we must always be vigilant against the tamas that creeps up within us, that deludes us into inaction and apathy.

Sri Krishna comes to us in a world that is increasingly gray rather than black and white, as the Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) sometimes rather simplistically portray it to be.  Arjuna’s lament at the beginning of the Gita finds resonance within us.  It is a difficult task that has been laid upon his shoulders.  And this is part of what Sri Krishna wants to show us, that in our times, things become more complicated, and thus what is right and what is wrong is harder to discern.  Our world is not as simple as it once was.  Our roles and responsibilities are not as prescribed.  Arjuna always knew he was a Kshatriya—but we live in a world of multiple identities.  Still, Sri Krishna’s lesson to us is that a clear path of dharma can be revealed to us when we follow the principles of the Gita. 

It is also a powerful reminder that we must always fight for what is right, even when the stakes are seemingly minimal.  Perhaps the Pandavas and their armies thought they were only fighting for a little piece of land, but in reality, their war gave us the Bhagavad Gita, the instruction manual of Dharma and sadhana for our times, and enabled the smooth passing of one yuga into another. 

Similarly, in our own lives, we may think that what we do or do not do is of little consequence.  But in life, it is not what we do that matters but how we do what we do that matters.  We may not always understand the larger purpose of what we are doing, but there is a bigger purpose to everything that simply has not yet been revealed to us.  But when we do our dharma, we can have faith that this is contributing to the overall harmony of the universe.     

The Kshatriya Mindset                                                                                

One thing I firmly believe is that we must all meditate on the image of Sri Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield, because this promotes something that I believe is sorely needed in our community today, a kshatriya mindset, i.e., the proper values and attitude of a kshatriya.  Kshatriya means holder of the kshatra (i.e., rule or authority).  Kshatriyas are not just warriors—they are political leaders, they govern and rule.  Most of our Puranas and Itihaasas are about the lives and doings of the kshatriyas, because they are really the ones who shape, lead and govern our society, the ones who perhaps have the most direct impact on human history.  They are the guardians of the people; their swords and shields protect our culture, our religion, our traditions, our lives and our very civilization.    Hinduism has survived for so long in large part because of the valor and sacrifice of kshatriyas like the Rani of Jhansi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and others.

We find very few true Kshatriyas—either physical or intellectual Kshatriyas—in Hindu society today.  There are many people who at least aspire to be brahmanas, to dedicate themselves to austere lives of renunciation and spiritual practice.  There may not be a whole lot of true brahmanas, but least the Brahmana ideal is well-understood and sought after.  Certainly, there are many vaishyas, or those dedicated to the art of creating and redistributing wealth.  There are also a fair number of shudras, those who are in the field of service.  But there are precious few who are real kshatriyas, and this is especially lamentable at a time when Hindus desperately need kshatriyas.

Hinduism is under siege today on multiple fronts.  Today, scores of temples are being ravaged and destroyed in West Bengal in India on a daily basis.  Hindus are being routinely beaten, raped and killed by Muslim fanatics in Bangladesh and Pakistan.  Conversions seeking to destroy Hindu culture and Hinduism’s hold over India are growing by a staggering amount and are often accomplished through foul means.  Nor is this a problem confined to India alone.  In America, Hinduism is attacked, wrongly portrayed and castigated in academia as an oppressive religion that must be weakened or radically reformed.  Media portrayals tell the same story.  The marketable aspects of our traditions are being recast as non-Hindu phenomena, like yoga, meditation, etc., thus looting Hinduism of its market share in the marketplace of religions.  This is why so many of us do feel the stigma of being Hindu.  This is why so many of us do not want to identify ourselves as Hindu, so through this form of “soft” warfare in the West, Hinduism here, too, is weakening under constant attack. 

I urge you to read Rajiv Malhotra’s books, Breaking India and Being Different, to learn more about this.

There is an ever-growing pattern of atrocities and attacks against Hindus and Hinduism that continues on unchecked.  Our enemies know they can get away with it because hardly anyone stands up to forcefully and in a principled way champion the cause of Hindus.  If we cannot find our Arjuna in our midst, then we must ourselves become Arjuna.

I am not telling you to become an extremist or to take up arms.  I am telling you that politics matters, that we have to live in the world of realpolitik and learn how to thrive in this world to protect and preserve the treasures of our spiritual heritage.  Or else they will be looted and destroyed.  No one will stand up for us unless we stand up for ourselves.  We do not have the luxury of running away from this dharma-kshetra.

This is the whole point of Sri Krishna’s lesson to us.

I believe that as Hindus, we must take up a kshatriya mindset; this does not mean necessarily a military mindset.  It means we must not shy away from politics.  We must understand the world around us; we must learn to think tactically.  We must build strong alliances with other communities who will stand together with us.  We must learn how to be powerful diplomats and ambassadors.  We must develop leadership skills and learn how to accumulate and wield power, not for ourselves but for the greater good.  We cannot become Sri Krishna, but we can learn from the wide array of roles He played and the toolbox of tactics that He used.

It is important to have courage, to have conviction, to never back down from what must be done, to never compromise our principles.  We must live and breathe the ethos of what Swami Vivekananda expressed so eloquently: “Arise, Awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!”

This is what I mean by a kshatriya mindset.  

This is the time in your life when you can best practice these skills.  College is a time for exploring and experimenting, for wading into the world of politics in a relatively safe environment, for learning how to be leaders.  This is the time of idealism and passion, when you can dedicate yourselves completely to causes dear to your heart.  This is where you will learn to be the leaders Hinduism needs today and tomorrow.

There is one concrete example that I would like to discuss in this context.  A few months ago, there was a controversy at Wharton, the famous business school at UPenn.  Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, potentially the next prime minister of India, a staunch Hindu leader and a controversial figure in some circles because of discredited allegations regarding his role in the Muslim-Hindu riots in Gujarat around a decade or so ago, was first invited to be a speaker at a prestigious India business forum that Wharton hosts annually and then was unceremoniously disinvited because a few radical Marxist, non-Wharton professors protested his invitation. 

I won’t go into the specifics of the incident, but I’d like to make a few observations.  I was involved in organizing a rally held in front of Wharton to protest against the rescinding of CM Modi’s invitation.  I was involved in trying to recruit people to get involved, especially  disheartened to see how few people in our community were engaged on this issue, especially those within the student community, since, at heart, this was a college campus issue. 

I do not mean to say that I think everyone should have supported holding a protest or joining the protest.  There is definitely room for reasonable people to differ on how this incident should have been addressed.  But I do think that people were remarkably ignorant and apathetic about what was actually going on here, the various forces at play and the important geopolitical ramifications of the incident for us as Hindus and/or as Indian-Americans or even as minorities in this country.  I do think that, on the whole, even our community leaders have not taken the time and effort to do their homework, to educate themselves about how this incident fits into a larger pattern of anti-India / anti-Hindu moves in academia.  This ignorance and apathy plays into the hands of those who are anti-Hindu and, by not engaging in these issues, we become complicit in the attacks upon us and our faith.  The ramifications of the Modi incident are not about Modi himself, just as the war that the Pandavas fought was not ultimately about the Pandavas themselves—it has a direct impact on our standing in this society, our freedom of expression and association, and our ability to build a strong Hindu leadership for our community without undue interference. 

Developing a kshatriya mindset means taking all of these factors into account, thinking strategically and tactically about the long-term implications and stakes, not acting out of fear or dejection, being proactive rather than reactive, and then making a reasoned, principled approach.  This did not happen with respect to the Modi incident and a thousand other such incidents that occur routinely, the net effect of which is the weakening of our community and religion.  We need to educate and engage, and we need to develop a kshatriya mindset.

If we educate and engage, then I think there could have been a higher quality level of discussion and debate than what took place and a better outcome.  I believe that if, as a community, we develop a kshatriya mindset, there will be better discourse, better engagement and better activism on such issues.  That will make us a stronger community and that will strengthen Hinduism.

Dharmakshetra                                                                                

Back to the last verse of the Gita.  The first word of this verse is “Yatra,” which means “where” or “the place where.”  What is this place where this moment between Krishna and Arjuna takes place?  The place is, as proclaimed by the first words of the first verse of the Gita, Dharmakshetra / Kurukshetra.  Kurkshetra is the geographical appellation.  Dharmakshetra has a deeper meaning.  Dharmakshetra means the kshetra of Dharma or the field of Dharma.  What does this mean?    

The field of dharma here means the battlefield of life or living.  In other words, the battlefield is the site of where Dharma will be practiced at this moment.  Too often nowadays, Hinduism is mistakenly reduced to something that sadhus or yogis practice, or to what takes place in a temple or in the puja room.  But the real name for Hinduism is Sanatana Dharma—the dharma that is without beginning or end, the dharma that belongs to and for all times.  This encompasses everything—all worlds, all facets of the world.  Nowadays, the gems of Hinduism—yoga, meditation, ecstatic forms of kirtan—are being enthusiastically embraced by many, especially as part of the New Age movement. This is a good thing, but if such practices are divorced from Dharma, the practices will become distorted and corrupted, and the effects will diminish in effectiveness over time.  To be authentic to Hinduism, we have to combine sadhana and dharma. 

Dharma is a multifaceted thing.  It cannot simply be translated as duty.  It encompasses a wide variety of roles that we as individuals play, in our individual life, in our family life and social life; it is tailored to what would be appropriate to our age and stage in life, to the times and place in which we live, our socioeconomic role in society.  Dharma is both inward looking and outward looking.  It ensures harmony at all levels of society and provides a proper balance and order to the cosmos.

Nowadays, our tendency is to pick and choose that which makes us feel good in the moment and pursue that.  But that by itself will not lead us towards spiritual enlightenment.  Spirituality cannot be a mere form of escapism, a guise under which we can hide from the world.  In the first part of the Gita, when Arjuna is lamenting and coming up with all these seemingly pious reasons to not fight the battle, Krishna immediately pierces through this posturing, telling Arjuna that these are flimsy excuses not worthy of him.

This wallowing in tamas and fatalism masquerading as spiritualism that Arjuna briefly displays has become endemic in Hindu society.  In my own case, my guru made sure that I learned what my dharma is.  For many years, when I would ask him what sadhana I should do, he would promptly say that my very first priority, beyond anything else, was to excel in my job as a tax lawyer at a Wall Street law firm. 

This answer was anathema to me.  In my ignorance, I saw my job as a hindrance to true spirituality.  I wanted something more idealistic, more sattvic, more suitable for a yogic lifestyle.  How could working until midnight, engaging in hard and sometimes confrontational negotiations, representing wealthy investment banks, making rich people and rich corporations richer, how could that be conducive to my spiritual progress?  I did not appreciate that this was my dharma kshetra.  I read the words of the Gita but did not apply them to my own life.

Left to my own devices, I would have done the bare minimum to get by in my work.  But my guru wanted something more—he wanted me to truly do my best and not just go through the motions.  It was very hard for me to do that, not simply out of laziness, but because the type of job I had required me to step out of my comfort zone and do things that did not rest comfortably with my psyche.  I had to learn how to be assertive and sometimes confrontational in order to be effective.  I had to learn how to not just do legal research and analysis but come up with solutions to problems and then implement them and figure out how to get other people to go along with me.  I never became great at this and I probably never got to where my guru wanted me to reach, but I became better.

This was important for me, because similar to Arjuna, I needed to snap out of tamas into rajas.  I needed to develop more of a kshatriya mindset, even though that wasn’t naturally part of my psyche. 

Learning these skills was as integral a part of my spiritual practice, if not more so, than whatever other puja or japa or bhajans or chanting I did in my puja room.  My time at this law firm was as important to my spiritual progress as pilgrimages I made to the Himalayas and other famous temples in India. 

The point of this is not to say that you should take up a job on Wall Street.  That was right for me at that time because of my karma and my psyche.  My point is that Hinduism has a holistic and integrated approach to what is spiritual life and spiritual practice, which inextricably links our sadhana with our dharma.  And that is what makes it Sanatana Dharma.  When people say Hinduism is a way of life, what it means is that we are not defined by going to church on Sunday.  Every moment in life is an opportunity for the practice of yoga, for performing karma yoga or bhakti yoga or jnana yoga or raja yoga; every activity of the day is sacred if we approach it the right way.  And, through the Gita, Sri Krishna teaches us to never forget that we are always in one kind of a dharma kshetra or another and that we must always uphold our dharma in every setting and in every moment of our lives.

Active surrender

There is one last thing I would like to say about Sri Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield.  At heart, I am a devotee, and there is one more way that I look upon Sri Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield which is purely devotional.  To me, that moment, when Arjuna says near the end of the Gita that he will pick up his bow and fight is the epitome of “active surrender” or saranagathi.  True saranagathi or surrender cannot be born out of weakness, out of fear or despair—it comes from a place of strength, from an active choice to surrender.  A great Buddhist master, Shifu Sheng-Yen, once said that with his disciples, he first had to make their ego (or small self) bigger before he could ask them to transcend and surrender their ego.  Someone with low self-esteem is not in a position to surrender their ego.

So, the beautiful thing to me about that moment is that Arjuna is the most powerful warrior in the world.  His prowess with the bow is unchallenged and unparalleled.  When someone that powerful and strong surrenders to Sri Krishna, that is meaningful and beautiful. 

To me, true saranagathi is standing with a bow raised to my shoulder, and when Sri Krishna whispers into my ears to release the arrows, I do so without hesitation, without doubt, secure in the conviction that I am following my dharma. 

Again, this is not about taking up arms but about an attitude towards life. 

The reward for that surrender, for saranagathi, is the most beautiful, most glorious, most sublime promise that is made by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita:

“sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaḿ śaraṇaḿ vraja
ahaḿ tvāḿ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ”

(Relinquishing all other dharmas, surrender to Me alone; I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions; do not despair) (BG 18:66).