Edited on 18/09/2016
People accept religious beliefs without any rational thinking or trying to understand the science behind them
People accept religious beliefs without any rational thinking or trying to understand the science behind them
Many families follow a totally false belief and do not keep the
epic Mahabharata in their homes
When I visited the 5111 year old Vyas gufa (cave) in mana village
off Badrinath; the place where Ved Vyas is said to have dictated the
Mahabharata, the priest over there had the same false belief that keeping
Mahabharata would bring conflict and disharmony in the home.
To understand the teachings of the Mahabharata one has to start
from the Vedas then the Ramayana and finally the Mahabharata, also the age or
era in which they were followed is most important.
There are four yugas namely satya, treata, dvapara, kali and they
represent the collective consciousness of humankind. Every yuga represents the
mentality of the four caste divisions
In the satya yuga the collective mentality is that of a Brahmin a
religious person that is God centred, in the treata yuga it is of a Kshatriya
meaning a ruler where honour and integrity prevail, the dvapara has a
collective mentality of a trader or a businessman where profits and monetary
gains are considered the upmost and finally the kali yuga or the dark ages where
the collective mentality is that of a shudra the lowest.
{However in the above the most important point to note is that a
person acquires this mentality by his karma (deeds) and not by birth. There is
a hymn from the Rig Veda which indicates
that one's caste is not necessarily determined by that of one's family:
Rig Veda 9.112.3 —“I am a bard, my father is a physician, my mother's job is to
grind the corn.”}
First the Vedas
Vedas were composed in the ages where humans communicated with the
higher dimensions.
The beginning of the Vedas are related to the performance of
yagya’s {fire ceremonies / mantras}
They were transmitted from generation to generation by oral
tradition alone, never written down for the simple reason they were magical
words, formulae used to communicate with higher realms and were beyond language
Then comes the knowledge part of the Vedas which is in the form of
Vedanta mainly the Upanishads they were written down. The Vedanta explains
everything from the creation of the universe, the soul, all sciences, the way
to lead a life in accordance with universal laws to the final liberation and
merging of the soul with the supreme consciousness.
Only a God centred
civilization is able to comprehend and follow the Vedas. So as the times (and
hence the yugas) changed the divine teachings were transmitted in the form of
stories; hence the Ramayana and Mahabharata became the scriptures to guide
humans to follow virtue and to annihilate vice
The Ramayana
The Ramayana is an epic from the Treata yuga, at that time it was the
virtuous Ram against Ravan a ratio of 1:1.
An army of monkeys helped Sri Ram in his fight against evil; the
symbolism of monkey represents the restless mind and when the mind was
controlled the monkeys could help in establishing a righteous order in society.
The Mahabharata
Towards the end of Dvapara yuga just before the commencement of the
Kali yuga the Mahabharata was composed; here it was the five virtuous Pandava
bothers against the hundred kauravas, a ratio of 5:100, signifying that such
times have come when against five persons who follow virtue there are a hundred
unrighteous people.
Mahabharata is a
spiritual allegory, and hence has a deep hidden meaning
In an age when it is not possible to establish
connections with higher realms like in the Vedic age and hence today we are
deprived of Knowledge; the first step we can take is to lead a life in
accordance with the universal laws which the Mahabharata provides all the
teachings in a story form.
Lessons to be learnt from Mahabharata:
At an old age King shantanu fell in love with satyavati--- was that
the right age for an old man to fall in love with a young girl? Satyavati's condition
to marry him was that her son would be the next King instead of the deserving
Bhishma. Since the King was old their
children very born weak hence unworthy to become rulers
King Dhritarashtra the bling King represents the undiscerning mind,
his wife Gandhari even though she could see decided to cover her eyes
forever---meaning that instead of being a guide to her husband she turned a
blind eye to all his misdeeds, Also like satyavati they both wanted their unworthy sons to rule instead of thinking about the overall welfare of their kingdom
The five pandava brothers represent the first five chakras of the
body and draupadi represents the kundalini Shakti which has to unite with the
five chakras in order for mortals to reach divinity
Dronacharya was a Brahmin by birth who was supposed to lead a
simple life and to guide others to God realization, but instead was skilled in
the art of warfare and taught the same to the royalty because of his ambition for
wealth and power and when the time came to fight he came by the side of the unrighteous
kauravas. Are not most of the Gurus like him today always on the side of the
rich and powerful.
The cause why evil flourished was because Bhishma did not change,
he stuck to his promise to serve the rulers of Hastinapura, even when the
rulers were unrighteous; He could not change his thinking. It is clearly
written in the Gita saar that change is a universal law and one must welcome
change.
Pandavas lost all in Gambling because the Kauravas cheated; is this
not applicable today; people always tend to loose when they gamble and
speculate in the financial markets only those who cheat and manipulate the
markets make monetary gains
The kauravas kept on doing wrong but the pandavas
and bhishma always stuck to their integrity; this was wrong on their part, if
they would have stood against the wrongdoings of the kauravas from the very beginning
it would not have led to the biggest war which took the lives of so many
people. It was ok for Ram to always follow the code of conduct for which he is called
maryada purushottam, but Ram was from the treata yuga; a different era.
The last chapter when yudhisthira alone remains and walks his final
journey after other pandavas have passed away; a dog follows him. Later the
Gods appear to take him to heaven but ask him to abandon the dog which he
refuses; hence giving the lesson to us that one must be truthful in
relationships and not abandon any relationship. It turned that the dog was Dharma
{righteous spiritual path} himself, signifying that if one does not abandon
Dharma; dharma follows you till the end.
Finally the battle of Mahabharta where initially Arjuna throws his weapons
down and declares that he will not kill his own signifies ones attachment and inability
to kill his own wises
I have written a few examples as per my understanding of the
Mahabharata but every page has a profound meaning providing a framework for our
moral life. It is indeed the essence of the Vedas and Upanishads written in a
story form, lessons for us what to do and what not to do.
If people believe that Mahabharata should not be kept in the house then why do they keep the Bhagavad Gita which is a part of the epic Mahabharata and
finally just by keeping the Ramayana in the house do we become like the
righteous Ram; the answer is a simple no, we need to practice leading a good
righteous life to be like Ram; thus by not keeping the Mahabharata and hence
not learning the lessons from the Great story people are surely at a great
loss.
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